''Equisetum telmateia'', the great horsetail or northern giant horsetail, is a species of ''
Equisetum
''Equisetum'' (; horsetail, snake grass, puzzlegrass) is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of ferns, which reproduce by spores rather than seeds.
''Equisetum'' is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the entire subclass ...
'' (puzzlegrass) with an unusual distribution, with one
subspecies native to
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
, western
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...
and northwest
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
, and a second subspecies native to western
North America.
[Hyde, H. A., Wade, A. E., & Harrison, S. G. (1978). ''Welsh Ferns''. National Museum of Wales .] The North American
subspecies is often simply but ambiguously called "giant horsetail", but that name may just as well refer to the
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
n ''
Equisetum giganteum'' and ''
Equisetum myriochaetum''.
Description
It is an
herbaceous perennial plant
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...
, with separate green
photosynthetic sterile stems, and pale yellowish non-photosynthetic
spore-bearing fertile stems. The sterile stems, produced in late spring and dying down in late autumn, are 30–150 cm (rarely to 240 cm) tall (the tallest species of horsetail outside of tropical regions) and 1 cm diameter, heavily branched, with whorls of 14–40 branches, these up to 20 cm long, 1–2 mm diameter and unbranched, emerging from the axils of a ring of
bracts. The fertile stems are produced in early spring before the sterile shoots, growing to 15–45 cm tall with an apical spore-bearing
strobilus 4–10 cm long and 1–2 cm broad, and no side branches; the spores disperse in mid spring, with the fertile stems dying immediately after spore release. It also spreads by means of rhizomes that have been observed to penetrate 4 meters into wet clay soil, spreading laterally in multiple layers.
[http://www2.fiu.edu/~chusb001/GiantEquisetum/Ecophysiology.html#RhizArch] Occasionally plants produce stems that are both fertile and photosynthetic.
Subspecies
There are two subspecies:[Flora of North America]
''Equisetum telmateia''
/ref>
* ''Equisetum telmateia'' subsp.
telmateia
'. Great horsetail. Europe, western Asia, northwest Africa. Main stem between branch whorls pale greenish white.
* ''Equisetum telmateia'' subsp.
braunii
' (Milde) Hauke. Northern giant horsetail. Western North America, from southeastern Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...
and western British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
south to California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
. Main stem between branch whorls green.
Habitat
It is found in damp shady places, spring fen
A fen is a type of peat-accumulating wetland fed by mineral-rich Groundwater, ground or surface water. It is one of the main types of wetlands along with marshes, swamps, and bogs. Bogs and fens, both peat-forming ecosystems, are also known as ...
s and seepage
Soil mechanics is a branch of soil physics and applied mechanics that describes the behavior of soils. It differs from fluid mechanics and solid mechanics in the sense that soils consist of a heterogeneous mixture of fluids (usually air and wat ...
lines, usually in open woodlands, commonly forming large clonal colonies
A clonal colony or genet is a group of genetically identical individuals, such as plants, fungi, or bacteria, that have grown in a given location, all originating vegetatively, not sexually, from a single ancestor. In plants, an individual in s ...
.[
]
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q936546
telmateia
Flora of North America
Flora of Europe
Flora of Africa
Plants described in 1783
Taxa named by Jakob Friedrich Ehrhart