What is that plant?

One of my current favorite quarantine activities is sitting out on our back deck to either read a book, do a little bit of journaling or simply just sit there and absorb the sun. We have been incredibly lucky during this quarantine so far to have amazing weather. I wish we had a little bit more privacy as our house is on a high traffic road so there is constant street noise. If I could be out there doing homework all day I would be, but sometimes it gets hard to focus with all the noise.

One of my routines is sitting out on the porch in the morning while the sun is still hitting the porch and while the temperature isn't too hot to be making me sweat. Since I have been sitting outside consistently I have been looking down at the sidewalk in front of our house and have been asking myself "What is that plant?". The other day, as I was sitting on my porch eating lunch, I decided that I was going to figure out what they were. I walked around the block (as I can't access the street from this side of the house) and took some pictures. I decided to take 30 minutes to do as much research as I can to try and answer my questions.

Common horsetail growing in the sidewalk

Common horsetail up close

I did a little research first on cattails as those are fairly common in this area to see if they were related in some way. I couldn't find anything so I started typing anything into the search bar, including "orange bulb grass" and other weird combinations. I couldn't find anything!

As one of the many things that Google was suggesting, I found a book on Amazon, I have linked it here if anyone is interested, called "Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast" written by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon. I was unable to view the book as it was not available in ebook format but I remembered that my mom had a book very similar. I decided to call upon her multiple forms of knowledge which are different from mine and ask her if she knew what this plant was, and she did.

Horsetail!

The answer to my 3 week long question was horsetail. A plant I had seen before and heard the name of, but never put the two together. Now that that question was answered, I had so many more:

-Why is it growing through the sidewalk?

-What type of environments allow for it to grow?

-Is it an invasive species or a weed?

-What does it growing here say about the geographical history of this area?

-Does it have a purpose?

After a little bit more research I found out that this is a native plant and that it grows in all of the continental United States and Canada, however it's considered an invasive species in New Zealand. I found out there are several different variations on horsetail but that the one in front of my porch is called, more specifically, Equisetum arvense. Horsetail is closely related to a fern because it reproduces through its spores which can be as much as 6 feet deep!

The stem part of the plant is what you see above, the orange tubular shaped plants that have bumps and a cone shape at the top. What does the cone shape do and what is the life cycle of a horsetail look like? I found that the cone shape on the top is called the strobilus which then is connected to the sterile stem.

One of the best things about horsetail is that it has significant history among Native American communities and is still being used widely today. Horsetail is used in all sorts of different medicines and is used as a diuretic. It is a wonderful, naturally occurring plant that has wonderful health benefits that helps your kidneys, joint pains, diabetes, hair loss...the list goes on! I had no idea!

P.S. The USDA Plant database, is a really good resource if anyone who is trying to look up a little bit more information on plants that you may find outside your house during this quarantine time. You may rediscover something amazing!