Wood thief belongs to the fern phylum, wood thief family.
Why is it called "wood thief"?
Because it is a wooden thief, a thief's head thief brain.
How do you say that? Let's first take a look at its morphological characteristics:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Equisetum_hyemale_subsp._affine_-_Cap_Tourmente_Qu%C3%A9bec.
1. There are rhizomes underground, and through the spread and germination of rhizomes in the ground, a large piece of it can be suddenly clustered on the ground.
2, the aboveground part, can only see a green "single stick stem" - really is a single stick, generally not branched (occasionally), can not see the leaves.
The reason why Teacher Cang'er noticed the wooden thief in the vast countryside and then wanted to write about it is precisely because its "single stick" is too eye-catching, and it gives people a feeling of a thief's head and thief's brain, and the ancients named it so, probably for this reason, with my little heart to guess it.
"Single stick" is generally up to 40 to 60 cm long, hollow and multi-knotted, and there are many longitudinal edges on the surface, so there will be a noticeable roughness in the hand touch - it can be used as a sandpaper-like surface grinding material in life (so it is also called "grinding grass" in Japan).
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schuurbies_Leblanc.jpg
The "single stick" section is very pronounced - a bit like a miniature bamboo pole, with slight expansion at each joint, because the joints are surrounded by a leaf sheath. So the wood thief is not without leaves, it has a perverted leaf, that is, a leaf sheath. Relying on these leaf sheath cells and stem bark cells, the wood thief can also photosynthesis, thereby growing, developing, and reproducing.
The top of the "single stick", obedient, has a "sporangia".
The wood thief belongs to the fern and does not produce seeds, so how does it reproduce?
The answer is through vegetative reproduction of underground rhizomes, or spore reproduction of the stem-apex "sporangia", both of which are asexual reproduction.
There are many spores in the "sporangia", and the spores float to the ground, and when they encounter a suitable environment, they can develop into subspecies.
"Spores" are not the same as "gametes" in sexual reproduction, a "spore" can directly develop into offspring, and "gametes", in most cases, require the fusion of male and female gametes to obtain fertilized eggs, and then develop from the fertilized eggs into offspring.
Well, the wood thief we will talk about here, after everyone sees it in the wild, you can carefully observe it according to this small article.
Liné1：https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Equisetum_hyemale_03_by_Line1.JPG