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Equisetum hyemale
Also called Common Scouring-Rush, Scouring-Rush, Shave-Grass, Dutch Rush, Tall Scouring Rush, Scouringrush Horsetail, Great Scouring Rush
Rough horsetail is a hardy, evergreen-to-deciduous perennial fern ally with rough, silica-ridged hollow green stems, grown for its architectural look and spreading colonies. The key to growing it is moist soil and a spot where its vigorous rhizomes can be contained.
Equisetum hyemale, commonly known as rough horsetail or scouring rush, is an evergreen perennial herbaceous pteridophyte in the horsetail family Equisetaceae native to Eurasia and Greenland. It was formerly widely treated in a broader sense including a subspecies (subsp. affine) in North America, but this is now treated as a separate species, Equisetum praealtum.
Equisetum hyemale is native to Iceland, Greenland, and central and northern Eurasia, including Kamchatka and Japan, where it forms clonal colonies in mesic (reliably moist) habitats, often in heavy clay or sandy soils in riparian zones of rivers and streams where it can withstand occasional flooding, but also in lime-rich upland flushes and seeps, and can indicate their presence when not flowing. Other habitats include moist forest and woodland openings, lake and pond shores, ditches, marshes and swamps. It grows from between sea level to 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) in elevation. It has been introduced into Tasmania.
Field Horsetail · Southern Giant Horsetail · Marsh horsetail · Dwarf scouringrush · Great Horsetail · Horsetail
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Equisetum hyemale by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
