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Equisetum telmateia
Also called Giant Horsetail, Northern Giant Horsetail, Sxum’xum’
Great horsetail is a large, primitive perennial fern ally that forms tall green sterile stems from spreading underground rhizomes. It grows best in permanently wet or damp soil, such as stream banks, ditches and wet woodland.
Equisetum telmateia, the great horsetail, is a species of Equisetum (horsetail) native to Europe, western Asia and northwest Africa. It was formerly widely treated in a broader sense including a subspecies (subsp. braunii) in western North America, but this is now treated as a separate species, Equisetum braunii.
Great horsetail is widespread across most of Europe north to 56° to 58° N. In Ireland and Great Britain, it is widespread and often common in suitable habitats, but scarcer in Scotland, particularly north of the Central Belt, except for a notable concentration on Skye; the northernmost population of the species anywhere is near Thurso on the north coast of Scotland at about 58°35' N. Further east, it does not reach so far north; in Sweden, it is rare and endangered, confined to just three locations north to about 56°08' N on the west coast of the southern province of Skåne. Its southern and eastern limits are less well mapped, but it occurs south to Madeira (32°45' N), the Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa, and Israel, and east to Iran; the easternmost mapped on iNaturalist ('research grade' records only) is at 52°58' E in Iran.
Field Horsetail · Southern Giant Horsetail · Rough Horsetail · Marsh horsetail · Dwarf scouringrush · Horsetail
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Equisetum telmateia 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.
