Equisetum

I went out to Saxe Point Park yesterday because I was told there was a Great Horned Owl living there. I didn't see the owl but as so often happens I saw plenty of other interesting things. It was one of those days when the air was so clean and rain-washed that everything looked deliciously fresh and new. Above and below are plants familiar to us all I'm sure, commonly known as Horsetails. They belong to the genus Equisetum and there are a number of sub-genera and sub-species so I'm not going to try to identify these more precisely. Equisetum have been around for about 100 million years. Above is the vegetative stem and below is a cone-bearing stem which produces spores.