Equisetum, Aquatic Horsetail, Scouring Rush, Pewterwort, Shave Grass - it's all the same thing.
I didn't plant this...it grows wild near a ditch. Aquatic horsetail roots, looking for water, have been known to go as deep as 12 feet in search of water so can survive fire and plowing.
Blog friend
Sunshineand posted a different variety of horsetail a few weeks ago.
The joints contain silicone so it has been used to scour pots, polish pewter, sand wood. Sanding with horsetail is said to produce a better finish than the finest sandpaper. I haven't tried scouring with it yet but just might try it one of these days. But it's my retired husband's job to do most of the scouring.
Seventeenth-century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper called horsetail “very powerful to stop bleeding… [and] heal ulcers… the juice or decoction being drunk… or applied outwardly… It solders together wounds and cures all ruptures.” It doesn't look too delicious so if it comes to survival while I am wounded in the woods some day far from civilization, I think I will apply the decoction.
America’s 19th-century Eclectics prescribed horsetail as a diuretic and urinary antiseptic for incontinence, gonorrhea, kidney stones, kidney infections, urinary complaints, and congestive heart failure. Hmmm, looks like I would be forced to drink up if I suffered from any of these while in the woods far from civilization.
Contemporary herbalists recommend it externally for wounds and internally for urinary and prostate problems.
Scouring rushes have been around for a long time, since the Paleozoic more than 350 million years ago. Some experts claim that Equisetum is the world's oldest surviving genus. Gigantic woody relatives of our scouring rush formed forest stands up to 20 m (66 ft.) tall, and their fossils are well-known the world over.
