The Shade Horsetail 



or Shade Horsetail, Equisetum pratense, appears not 

 unlike the Field Horsetail. There are a few outstand- 

 ing points of difference, however, worthy of notice. 

 The former plant is much rougher to the touch than 

 the latter. Its ridges and furrows and its whorls or 

 branches are also much more numerous. Its stems, 

 too, are of a lighter and more beautiful green. 



Again, it is a plant to be found only in marshy 

 meadows, moist shady woods, and other wet places. 

 This horsetail has three kinds of stems. The first, 

 or fertile stem is short, but the loose, yellowish, sheaths 

 are comparatively large, often quite concealing the 

 stem. The second, or barren, stem, which may reach a 

 height of 2 feet, has about twenty well-marked ridges, 

 and numerous branches towards the top. There is no 

 long tapering end bare of leaves as in the Field 

 Horsetail. On the contrary, the top whorls of slender 

 branches spreading upward reach the top of the stem, 

 and give the flat-topped appearance to which the plant 

 owes its common name. The sheaths, with about 

 twenty teeth, are much smaller than those of the fertile 

 stems. The slender branches are three or four ridged, 

 and bear sheaths with three or four teeth. The third 

 type of stem, the fertile-branched stem, is larger than 

 the fertile, but smaller than the barren one. 



The name, Shade Horsetail, is a reference to one of 



the plant's habitats namely, moist, shady woods, while 



Blunt-topped is descriptive of the appearance of the 



barren stem due to the upward spreading of the leaves. 



79 



