The Photography of Fred Michel

Fred Michel explores Horticultural Art through creating still life images of plants and their component parts. Inspired by a deep love of his garden, his images are broad and diverse, ranging from botanically inspired photos to mandalas, patterns, textures, and designs made from plants he disassembles and reconstitutes.

Equisetum arvense, the field horsetail or common horsetail is a herbaceous perennial plant, native throughout the arctic and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. It has separate sterile non-reproductive and fertile spore-bearing stems, growing from a perennial underground rhizomatous stem system. The fertile stems are produced in early spring and are non-photosynthetic, while the green sterile stems start to grow after the fertile stems have wilted, and persist through the summer until the first autumn frosts.

The plant contains several substances which can be used medicinally. It is rich in the minerals silicon (10%), potassium, and calcium. The buds are eaten as a vegetable in Japan and Korea in spring time. E. arvense herb has been used in traditional Austrian medicine internally as tea, or externally as baths or compresses, for treatment of disorders of the skin, locomotor system, kidneys and urinary tract, rheumatism and gout. All other Equisetum species are toxic.