Anyone been growing horsetail reeds?

Cafe Society
1

I have a gardening question for any green-thumbed Dopers:
I recently bought some horsetail reeds(also known as scouring rushes) for a big rectangular metal container. I’ve been wanting them for a while, and my sweet partner Mr. Horseshoe finally convinced me that we won’t starve in the streets if I buy myself an $8 plant.

It looks great, and is already spreading in its container. (Dire-sounding warnings about the plants’ invasiveness are not to be ignored. Keep it in a pot.) It’s put out lots of nice-looking new growth. Did I mention that it looks great?

The new growth points straight up towards the sky, really gives the plant that nice structural architecture, blah blah. But the older growth has … fallen. It bends over and curves, rather gracefully, back towards the ground. The odd thing, to me, is that it’s curving away from the light. Into the shadowy part under the overhang. WTF? :confused: If this thread goes anywhere I’ll take some pictures and post them.

It’s possible - ok, entirely likely - that I’ve “pushed” the shoots over with water pressure. The container sits up on a brick wall, so when I’m standing there with the hose, the water comes almost horizontally to the plant.

But I thought they’d … straighten back out? Grow towards the light?

Has anyone else seen their horsetails do something like that? What should I do - cut off the bending part?

(I thought about posting this q in the forums for Dave’s Garden but thought, surely the Dopers will come through for me. You’re not going to let a bunch of hippies be the better advice-givers, now are you?) :stuck_out_tongue:

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Around here, horsetails are a weed that can be really hard to get rid of. Aren’t they considered a noxious/invasive/whatever-the-term-is species?

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They’re not invasive, in the sense that they were around (including the area that became the U.S.) long before we were. *Equisetum *is a far-flung and ubiquitus genus. They are native, not an invasive exotic.

I poked around the USDA’s invasive species databaseand didn’t see it listed there.

The ARE invasive in the sense that they spread once established, but again, that’s why I’m growing it in a container. These plants spread by underground rhizomes, not seeds carried on the breeze, so it’s not like my neighbors will have volunteers sprouting up in their azalea beds.