Equisetum variegatum Variegated Horsetail

A small, slender, evergreen horsetail with wiry, stems that are often branched at the base. The sheaths on the stem are black-rimmed with teeth that have conspicuous white margins. The cones that form at the tips of the stems have apiculate points, quite unlike those of other British horsetail species. It occurs in a number of different habitat such as coastal dune slacks, river shingle, quarries, the gravelly shores of lakes and lochs and gravelled roadsides. In many parts of its circumpolar boreo-arctic range it grows in gravelly habitats on mountains. It has a local northern and western distribution in Britain occuring largely on mountains in Scotland but mostly coastal in the southern part of its range, such as in Wales. It is almost exclusively a species of dune slacks and coastal marshy habitats in West Glamorgan but it has also been recorded here in gravelly soils at the edge of plantation forest roads.

Native