"paghat" wrote in message
news
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.

Paghat, you're probably correct. As usual! I am not known for my powers of
observation, but I do know our County Flower, the horsetail, as I was born
and rolled in the stuff for 20 early years. Then things changed, and I lived
and scratched ground in amateurish ways in several States, and in several
countries on several continents for almost 40 years. Tonight, back home
where I started from, in the coolness of evening, I pulled up more horsetail
in an hour than I saw in all those other places in those nearly 40 years. It
is a blessing, as you suggest, that it is both hardy, beautiful, and kind of
fills in where I've forgotten to stick anything else. Do you know if there
is any nutritional value lurking here? If it was something I tried to grow
to eat, I know it would rapidly develop a disease and the slugs would
suddenly find it attractive. But I digress.
Old Chief Lynn in NW Washington State