equisetum
ek-wih-SEE-tum
Equisetum arvense
The horsetails, jointed and gritty and unlike anything else growing. One letter in the name does the work of two sounds, which is the whole difficulty.
7 recorded spellings
Horsetails, clubmosses and spikemosses
Not ferns. Older than ferns, with the oldest names in the book and the worst spellings.
The ground
Horsetails, clubmosses and spikemosses are grouped with ferns out of habit rather than kinship. They reproduce by spores and they are not flowering plants, and that is where the resemblance stops. Equisetum is the last surviving genus of a group that made forests in the Carboniferous. Lycopodium creeps through acid moorland on wiry stems. Selaginella is the one many people meet first, as a low green mat in a terrarium.
The names
lycopodium
ly-koh-POH-dee-um
Lycopodium clavatum
The clubmosses, creeping over acid ground on wiry stems. The name has been through Greek and Latin before reaching English, and each language left a letter behind that does not sound like.
10 recorded spellings
selaginella
sel-a-ji-NELL-uh
Selaginella kraussiana
The spikemosses. Six syllables, one soft g that has no business being soft, and a doubled l you cannot hear.
5 recorded spellings
Worth noting
These three carry the site's hardest sounds: a qu that is one consonant pretending to be two letters, a c before o that has to be hard, and a g before i that in English goes soft when the Latin says it should not.
Elsewhere