Cryptogams or Flowerless Plants — Equisetacece, 
141 
One British Genus ; Species, 9. 
Stem erect from a creeping rhizome ; barren and fertile similar as in Wood Horsetail ( Equisetumsylvaticum ) 
or Scouring Rush ( E. hyemale); or dissimilar, the fertile stem unbranched, precocious and early withering, as in the 
Common Horsetail ( E . arvense) and Great Horsetail (E. Telmateia). Stem usually simple in Scouring Rush, or with 
more or less numerous verticillate branches as in Field and Wood Horsetail. Joints of the stem and branches with 
toothed sheaths. 
Sporanges usually 6-9 to each peltate scale of the fruit-spike, inflected around the margin of the umbrella-like 
top of the scale parallel with its stalk. 
Reproduction as in Filices. 
USES, &c.—One species, the Scouring or Dutch Rush ( E . hyemale ), in which a siliceous deposit is abundant in 
the epidermis, is used to polish wood and metal. 
Natural Order 
LYCOPODIACEAL Tab. 105. 
D iagnosis.— Trailing or tufted, often slender or wiry herbs with small 2 
(4)-rowed or scattered imbricating leaves, or aquatic or terrestrial stemless 
herbs with tufted linear or subulate sheathing leaves ( Isoetes ). Fructification 
consisting of sporanges in the axils of the stem-leaves, or collected in termi¬ 
nal spikes containing spores of one or two kinds, either minute and indefinite 
(microspores) developing antherozoids, or larger and definite (macrospores) 
developing a prothallus bearing archegonia. 
