Horsetails

All images on this website have been taken in Leicestershire and Rutland by NatureSpot members. We welcome new contributions - just register and use the Submit Records form to post your photos. Click on any image below to visit the species page. The RED / AMBER / GREEN dots indicate how easy it is to identify the species - see our Identification Difficulty page for more information. A coloured rating followed by an exclamation mark denotes that different ID difficulties apply to either males and females or to the larvae - see the species page for more detail.

Ferns & Horsetails

See our Recording Trees, Wildflowers & Grasses page for useful guidance on what to record.

More on recording in Leicestershire and Rutland and contacts for our County Recorders are on the webpage of our local VC55 branch of the BSBI.

Clive Stace’s ‘New Flora of the British Isles' - 4th edition (C&M Floristics, 2019) is the standard reference book that NatureSpot uses for verifying records. 

Leicestershire and Rutland resources

NatureSpot video: Ferns for Fanatics - watch a presentation by the VC55 County Recorder, Geoffrey Hall, on the ferns of Leicestershire and Rutland.

VC55 Rare Plant Register (Hall, Woodward) - see this link for details.

Useful websites and publications

Keys and a glossary of terms on the British Pteridological Society's website - https://ebps.org.uk/ferns/identification/

Merryweather, J. & Roberts, C. 2005 Common Ferns (FSC 'Wild ID' guide) - a useful and affordable fold-out guide to the commonest ferns of the UK

Merryweather, J.  2007. The Fern Guide: A Field Guide to the ferns, clubmosses, quillworts and horsetails of the British Isles (FSC: AIDGAP) link

If you know of other websites or books that you would recommend, do let us know: info@naturespot.org

Horsetails

Equisetaceae

Horsetails are the relicts of an ancient family that once included tree-sized species, the fossils of which formed huge coal deposits. 

Underground rhizomes produce numerous aerial stems; the stems and branches appear jointed and there is a ring of sheaths modified from leaves at each node. The size of the hollows inside a stem, the appearance of the sheaths and the number of stem ridges/sheaths are all used in identification.  Cut through a stem-internode with your thumbnail to check and photograph the arrangement of hollows in the cross-section.

The spores are borne on cones at the top of the stems - sometimes on a separate brown or whitish stem.