Salty Thumb wrote in message news:ZikXc.2153$Cc.1690@trnddc07...
(Christopher Green) wrote in
om:

You have to admire, even if grudgingly, a plant that is capable of
withstanding everything nature and man have thrown at it since the
Triassic...

Horsetails have been around since the Devonian if not earlier which means
they also survived whatever cause the Permian extinctions. However, it's
possible they can be displaced by other more advanced plants given the
right environmental conditions, though this may require a herbivore that
mows them down repeatedly..

The class Sphenopsida does go back to the Devonian, and the order
Equisetales was the only order of sphenopsids to survive the Permian
extinction. If the extinct genus Equisetites is really the same as
modern Equisetum, as some think, then Equisetum goes back to the
Carboniferous, survived the Permian extinction, and is the oldest
living genus of vascular plants.

Problem with grazing them is they're poisonous (especially to horses,
but also to other livestock). Equisetosis is a common ailment when
animals are pastured on horsetail-infested fields.

Other than that, have you tried harnessing the most destructive force known
to man: a group of pre-school kids? Perhaps a game of "pin the horsetail
on the dustbin modified to look like a donkey" is in order.

Paid a penny bounty on snails once. A hundred dollars didn't put a
dent in the snail population.

Grazing or letting kids pillage it won't do any good with horsetail
anyway, because it comes back from rhizomes that can run as deep as
six feet.

Dichlobenil (Casoron) is the rancher's poison of choice for horsetail.
It just snickers at gardeners armed with glyphosate (Roundup,
Kleenup).

--
Chris Green