What is the difference between Ephedra and horsetail? A quick guide to telling them apart

Ephedra is a shrub, subshrub or herbaceous form, rarely a twining shrub, 5 cm to 2.5 m tall, up to 8 m at most. It branches profusely, with branchlets opposite or whorled, dioecious, with 1-3 seeds. Horsetail, by contrast, is a perennial herb, single or clumping, up to 70 cm tall, and branches mostly below the middle.

I. About Ephedra

1. Distribution

Ephedra is distributed in the arid and desert regions of Asia, the Americas, southeastern Europe and northern Africa. In China it is fairly widely distributed; apart from the provinces and regions of the lower Yangtze and the Pearl River basin, it occurs everywhere else, with more species in the northwestern provinces and regions as well as in Yunnan and Sichuan. It often grows in arid mountains and deserts.

2. Uses

Ephedra has antitussive, antiasthmatic, expectorant and diaphoretic effects, can be used medicinally, and is the main raw material for the industrial extraction of ephedrine. It has forage value, ecological value, economic value and social value. It is therefore called the “treasure of the desert” and the “golden plant”.

II. About horsetail

1. Distribution

Horsetail is also known as tu mahuang, cao mahuang, mujzei cao, cao mahuang and jiejie mujzei. In China it is distributed in Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan and other regions. It likes to grow near water, along streams, rivers and the seaside, and at the edges of paddy fields. It grows in wetlands, by streams, on wet sandy ground, by roadsides, and in orchards and tea gardens.

2. Uses

Horsetail has the functions of dispelling wind and dissipating heat and of releasing the muscles and reducing fever, and clinically it can treat condyloma acuminatum and psoriasis. This species is a toxic plant recorded in the Chinese plant atlas database, and its toxicity is that the whole plant is poisonous.