106 WAYSIDE. AND WOODLAND FERNS. 



Field Horsetail (Equisetum arvense). 



About cultivated land, damp meadows and roadsides, railway 

 embankments and the margins of woods, the Field Horsetail is 

 a frequent plant some would say a pest but though its long 

 and deep-laid rhizome can seldom be completely exterminated, 

 its stems are scarcely sufficiently abundant to interfere with 

 agriculture or horticulture. For it appears in the garden as 

 well as the field, but probably only seriously annoys those who 

 cannot tolerate in their borders the presence of anything that 

 has not been deliberately planted there, the class who are 

 greatly perturbed should a single daisy rear its rayed head to 

 break the monotony of their close-shaven lawns. In pastures 

 it may be detrimental to grazing cattle owing to the siliceous 

 particles contained in its cuticle setting up intestinal irritation ; 

 yet this danger is probably exaggerated, for cattle, as a rule, 

 know what to select and what to avoid in the usual flora of their 

 pasturage. 



The stems of the Field Horsetail are of two distinct kinds. 

 The fertile stem is succulent, without branches as a rule, and 

 with four or five loose, thin, dry sheaths, whose dark-brown 

 teeth are ribbed to the tip. It is only eight or nine inches in 

 length, is of a pale-brown tint, and appears between the end of 

 March and the middle of May, crowned with its slender, 

 crowded, yellow-brown cone (Plate 116). The barren stem, 

 which appears later, is proportionately more slender, a little 

 rough to the touch, and more or less erect, attaining a length of 

 two or three feet. The branches, which are four-angled or four- 

 ridged with deep grooves between the ridges, are crowded, 

 nearly a foot long, and in most cases spread upwards and out- 

 wards. But we have also found great numbers, growing in 

 copses, whose branches took a downward curve and drooped so 

 gracefully that at first sight they might easily have been taken 

 for E. syl-vaticum. According to the text-books it is the 



