1. A  friend in Bulgaria says they use Equisetum arvense as a sore throat gargle, but people are warned not to swallow it [St Mary Cray, Kent, February 2019].

2. September 2015.  On sale at Spellbound, a shop ‘for all your pagan needs’, College Street, Gloucester, small polythene bags full of fragmented horsetail: ‘Horsetail, £4.99, used in fertility mixes or placed in the bedroom for this purpose’.

Images:  main, Mill Pits, Arlesey, Bedfordshire, September 2015; inset, field horsetail, Equisetum arvense, Tooting Common, London Borough of Wandsworth, April 2020.