Content
- Horsetail - ornamental plant and beneficial herb. A personal description
- Horsetail - A profile
- Horsetails contain a lot of silicic acid
- Which horsetail species are poisonous?
- Tips
The horsetail is a very decorative and robust fern
Horsetail - ornamental plant and beneficial herb. A personal description
Horsetail is certainly not one of the most popular garden plants. The plant is very persistent and difficult to fight. In addition to the field horsetail, which is often seen as a weed, there are also some species that are attractively ornamented on ponds or in the pot as an ornamental plant. A personal description.
Horsetail - A profile
Horsetails contain a lot of silicic acid
In the straws of the horsetail store large quantities of silica. Up to seven percent may be the proportion.
Therefore horsetail is used in natural medicine and in natural cosmetics.
The silica forms small crystals that make the stems very rough. Horsetail has therefore been used for centuries for cleaning and polishing tin and dishes. Therefore also the popular names horsetail, pancake or Scheuerkraut touch.
Which horsetail species are poisonous?
Not all horsetail species are poisonous. The weed dreaded horsetail is edible.
Marsh horsetail and all varieties suitable for ponds, on the other hand, are poisonous. Especially on cattle pastures, this can be a real problem. To combat swamp horsetail is almost impossible. Because of the low-lying rhizomes and the proliferation of spores even chemical weed killers like round-up fail.
When collecting and consuming caution is therefore caution, especially since marsh horsetail and Horsetail see very similar at first glance. But there are differences with which an assignment is possible.
Tips
Horsetail is one of the oldest plants in the world that already existed on the prehistoric continent of Gondwana. Even in prehistoric times, there were whole forests with horsetails, which grew to 30 meters as tall as trees.