This is the time of year that weeds are spotted and snarlingly eradicated. Before you lacerate the horsetail Equisetum plants just give it a little thought. Maybe even lie down on your lawn to look at them and imagine them twice the height of a house! Horsetails are the descendants of really ancient trees from over 100 million years ago. Many horsetails fell into swamps and became peat then coal. Their patterns can often be seen in coal today. (assuming you can track down a lump).

The spacing of the nodes on the stems of horsetails increase in frequency towards the top, which inspired Leibnitz to invent logarithms.

They are marvellous plants but to look at only. Crushed and prepared horsetails have been used for centuries as a medicinal herb for slimming, hair, skin and bone health but there’s no evidence they work. Just enjoy their historical provenance.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a stupendously clever genius, a natural observer able to link natural phenomenon, such as the nodes on Horsetails to potential mathematical applications. From his logarithms followed other mathematics to create calculus. Leibniz was also so clever his first name was called after mine.(I was born Godfrey, which in German is Gottfried, only mother and my landlady in Sheffield called be Godfrey!)