In article , "presley"
wrote:

paghat, now you're making me feel deprived. I've never seen this plant in
Spokane.......maybe it needs a little more than 17 inches of rain a year?
(however, i'm not inviting you to send any over the pass).

They don't often grow in deserty places even though they do often grow in
droughty places (along railroad tracks or in train yards is very common
for some reason) but there has to be water SOMEWHERE their extensive
rhyzomes can reach even if its a quarter-mile away.

However, if you look around hard enough you'll find Equisetum arvense in
Spokane County even if not in your own neighborhood. Where I live you
wouldn't have to look for it, perhaps in yours it'd be a longer walk to
find it.

In the Dishman Hills Recreation Area for example there grows not only E.
arvense the classic horse's tail horsetail, but also E. hyemale & E.
laevigatum or scouring rush horsetails (from Thomas H. Rogers' list of
Dishman Hills flora). E. arvense can be found just about anywhere the
least bit moist from Walla Walla to Spokane & throughout the Columbia
basin, but there are big ultra-dry areas where it wouldn't send its
rhizomes, so always near water even if only seasonal water. It does erupt
in seasonally wet then ultra-dry prairies especially where prairies dip a
little & hold moisture a while after the rain season, like around Waverly
where the prairie goes up & down. Even in the city of Spokane I would lay
odds if you followed the river to some point where it's not all paved over
on both sides for parking lots & roads & buildings you'd find horsetails
among the few things that don't care how ruined the landscape gets; if
there's a bit of dirt, & if there's water within a few blocks nearby, the
horsetails will survive.

-paggers
--
Get your Paghat the Ratgirl T-Shirt he
http://www.paghat.com/giftshop.html
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to
liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot." -Thomas Jefferson