Horsetails, clubmosses and spikemosses
equisetum
say 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.
What it is
The plant
Equisetum arvense is the field horsetail, a hollow ridged stem with a toothed sheath at every joint and a whorl of thin branches coming out of each one. The cell walls are stiffened with silica, so the stems feel rough and were once used to scour pewter and smooth wood. In spring the plant sends up a separate pale brown stem with a cone on top, and the green branched shoots follow after it.
Why
Why the letters and the sound disagree
Latin equus, a horse, and seta, a bristle. Horse bristle, which is what the whorls of fine branches around each joint look like, and which is also how English got horsetail. Pliny was already using the word, so this is not a modern coinage dressed up in Latin. It is Latin.
Recorded
Spellings people arrive at
- ekwisetumhard cequisetum. The q is spelling the whole kw sound on its own.
- equasetuman unstressed vowelequisetum.
- equisatuman unstressed vowelequisetum, with an e.
- equisetaman unstressed vowelequisetum.
- equissetuma doubled consonantNo. One s.
- equisettuma doubled consonantNeither. Nothing in equisetum is doubled.
- equesetuman unstressed vowelBecause equus loses its ending and takes an i to join the next word.
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