Horsetail Forests

Walked to St Olaf from 3 to 5 pm. Temperature in the 40s.

I saw several bright feathers scattered across the dirt around home base on the practice field. My first thought was that they belonged to a Meadowlark, but these were feathers of a Northern Flicker. A piece of wing and a few individual feathers didn't give much of an indication as to how or when the bird died.

Two sections of hollow log, placed upright at the edge of a trail, contained in their hollow interiors magnificent growths of Cladonia lichen. Odd, but I don't recall ever seeing these logs before, even though I must have walked by them dozens of times during the last decade.

Equisetum. Puzzlegrass. Horsetail. Scouring Rush. I've admired this plant since childhood, when I was most fond of the way the thallus segments popped when disunited. Occasionally, while camping I've resorted to using it for cleaning pots and pans (although this is not recommended for anything other than cast iron because the silica encrusted in the rush will scratch most surfaces). Now I like them because they grow where there is groundwater near the surface, revealing a secret of the hidden geology below. And I like them because this genus with relatively few species are remnants of a once immense family of plants that dominated the landscape during the Carboniferous Era.

Posted on March 27, 2017 02:26 AM by