60 foot blog: Horsetail & Weevil

We spent a night above Lock 55 near Hassell Green, a very small village South of Wheelock in Cheshire. There was an unmown verge with lots of plants including Greater & Ribwort Plantain, Red Clover, Common Nettles & buttercups (unidentified!). The hedge was mainly the usual Hawthorn, with a few horsetails at the base. I've found them at quite a few locations & have tried several times to figure out which ones they are. I've never succeeded. I tried again here, and although it doesn't entirely fit with the description in my Collins Guide, I think it's a Field Horsetail (Equisetum arvense). It mostly fits apart from the fact that the book says that the Wood Horsetail is the only one with sub-branch. This only had one or 2 & looking on the web I found reference to the Field Horsetail having sub-branches but not regular ones like the Wood variety.

Horsetails are really interesting as they are considered to be 'living fossils'. They are the only living genus of the class Equisetopsida which for over a hundred million years was much more diverse and dominated the understory of the late Paleozoic forests, as well as producing trees of up to 30 metres in height.