Leland Searles is a photographer and ecological consultant with expertise in botany, hydrology, soils, streams, and wildlife. -promoted by Laura Belin
The horsetails and scouring rushes (genus Equisetum) are rather odd plants on the Midwestern landscape, because they look like nothing else. They are related, by their genetic makeup and reproductive means, to the ferns. Occasionally, scouring rushes grow in dense colonies in the roadsides, where their dark green color and parallel vertical growth are a contrast with the other plants on their margins. A few plants manage to rise in the midst of such colonies, but these plants often are very dominant in the space they occupy.
Horsetails and scouring rushes have historical uses for several tasks, and they have provided medicines for some ailments, although those sometimes contradict each other. In general, the medicinal purposes are not backed by scientific evidence – only the testimonials of herbalists and the recorded uses by ethnobotanists who studied small-scale cultural groups in North America and elsewhere.
Yet the frequent occurrence of at least two species makes them deserving of attention as a native plant species.
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