| Tails of Green Horses?!! |
| Location: Oval, across from student parking lot |
| The wispy green plants growing
here (in late Spring and Summer) only look like horses’ tails.
They are related to ferns and, like ferns, do not produce flowers,
fruits, or seeds. Early in the Spring (about the third week of
April) the underground stems (rhizomes) of these plants send up light
brown shoots with small cones on the top. These cones release
spores as part of the sexual reproduction of this plant. After
spore release those shoots die and are replaced by the bright green
shoots that remain throughout Summer. Ancestors of these plants lived in the swamps of Ohio more than 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period of geologic time. They were as large as trees and when they died and fell into the swamps their decaying bodies formed a portion of the coal for which Ohio is so famous. Those tree-sized species are extinct now but have been replaced by these much smaller plants that still like to live in wet places. The plants are commonly known as Field Horsetails and their scientific name is Equisetum arvense. The English translation of this Latin name is Equus meaning “horse” and seta meaning “animal hair or bristle.” The word arvense comes from the Latin word arvum which means “field.” Common names of this plant also include Bottlebrush, Pipe Weed, Corn Horsetail, Pinetop, and Jointed Rush. Horsetail is sometimes considered an annoying weed when it invades your garden or roadside ditches or railroad embankments. It reaches an average height of 2 feet. The stems are hollow, except at the joints where the branches are produced. The outside of the stem is covered with a series of ridges and grooves -- features which are also clearly visible in the fossils from our coal deposits. The plant produces leaves at the nodes (joints) but they are quite small and usually do not play a role in photosynthesis which is carried out by the green stem. Native Americans used the plant to make a urine-inducing tea. Later the plant was made into cough medicine for horses! Now the only remaining use of the plant is to sand wood or for polishing or scrubbing. While camping the Horsetail’s leafless stems can be gathered, dried in the sun, and tied together to clean pots and pans. The scouring action is due to the fact that the plant deposits silicon dioxide (a component of sand and glass) in its cell walls. -- Jody Kuhn
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