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Article: Herb garden: horsetail and house leeks.
- Article from:
- Natural Life
- Article date:
- November 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Life Media. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Horsetail (Equisteum arvense and spp) is one of the plants that has lived on the planet Earth far longer than humankind. There were giant and small horsetails growing in enormous quantities in the Carboniferous period and large amounts of the plant formed the coal seams we have depended on for fuel. Equisetum has no close relatives in the plant kingdom; in fact, it is more like the ferns than the flowering plants.
Like ferns, horsetail has two generations; in the early spring pale pink, fleshy stems appear in damp meadows, each terminating in a small egg-shaped cone which bears the spores. Later, after dropping their spores, these completely disappear and in their ...