This "Weed" is very useful. I've been using Horsetail Tea as a fungicide for years. Believe it works by changing the ph of the plant surface making conditions unfavorable for fungal spores. Stops bean blight in its tracks. Claud

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This plant is beautiful and works very well with tropical plants, but can be invasive. We grow it in an old galvanized washtub that's been half-buried, and that contains it just fine.

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The sterile stems of this plant contain 7-10% of silicic oxide and are so rough, lowering the quality of the green fodder and the hay with which it is mixed.

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This seems to be the most common species of Horsetail in the Northern Hemisphere in arctic and temperate regions. It grows in open woods, meadows, along roads, and along railroad tracks. It has fertile, reproducing, non-photosynthetic stems that begin pinkish then tan in early spring that bear the cone-like strobulus that holds the spores. After those fertile stems wither, the sterile, non-reproducing, green stems appear for the purpose of photosynthesis until frost. It spreads a lot by underground rhizomes. I don't know of this species being used in ornamental horticulture. I have seen it along railroad tracks.

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