Horsetails

There are masses of Horsetail ferns along the old rail tracks by the E&N path. They seem a bit out of place since they usually grow in damp shady areas, and this is neither. I wonder if there used to be a wet ditch beside the rail tracks that was lost when they built the E&N path.

Horsetails are interesting. They are "living fossils", once dominant, now an oddity. I think these are Great Horsetails. They reproduce by spores instead of seeds, and what you can see in this photo are the spore producing stalks that don't photosynthesize. After releasing their spores they die and are replaced by sterile green photosynthesizing stems.