If you spot what looks like bamboo growing in northeastern Illinois, you've likely just stumbled on an ancient native plant that does bear some resemblance to the bamboo plants of Asia.

Our local bamboo-looking plants are called horsetails. Some people also call the plant Equisetum, which refers to its genus. All told, 15 Equisetum plants can be found worldwide. Among those that grow locally are Equisetum arvense, or field horsetail or common horsetail; Equisetum hyemale, or scouring rush; and Equisetum fluviatile, or water horsetail, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach reports. 

While horsetail is its most widely used common name, the plant goes by many other names as well, including snake grass, puzzle grass, horse pipe, snake weed, skeleton weed and jointed monkey grass, according to the Purdue University Extension. Many of the plant's nicknames are used to refer to any and all of the Equisetum species.

Horsetail's comparison to bamboo comes mainly from its hollow, jointed stems. The stems can be separated into their jointed sections, revealing a rough, sandpaper-like surface that people have been known to use to scour surfaces — hence the nickname scouring rush, the Purdue extension reports. At the top of the stems is a structure that resembles a small bottle brush. 

Horsetails are most closely related to ferns, and like ferns, they reproduce by forming spores rather than seeds, the Iowa State extension reports. Unlike mushroom spores, Equisetum spores do not have a major effect on how the plant reproduces. Instead, these plants expand through an underground rhizome system, allowing it to grow in dense colonies.

Locally, Equisetum plants most often are found growing in wet, sandy soils, including fields, pastures, roadsides and along railroad right of ways, according to the University of Illinois Extension. In the preserves, you can find horsetail growing at Kankakee Sands Preserve and Lake Renwick Heron Rookery Nature Preserve among others. 

In home landscapes, horsetail can be a nuisance because it can spread fast and it is difficult to manage thanks to the underground rhizome systems. In many cases, it escapes the area where it was originally intended to grow and then poses challenges to remove and control, the Illinois extension advises. The rhizomes can extend as far as 6 feet underground and can spread hundreds of feet wide. 

If you have horsetail in your yard that has started to grow out of control, the University of Illinois Extension recommends avoiding tilling the area because that could allow the rhizome to further spread. Instead, hand pulling or cutting is recommended because it can weaken the plant over time. For best results, remove the stems about two weeks after they emerge in the spring to prevent the spread of both the spores and rhizome. 

Horsetail is among the most primitive plant families in the world, according to Michigan State University. The plants are considering living fossils because they date back to the Carboniferous geologic period that was more than 300 million years ago. The horsetails' ancient relatives were much larger than the plants of today — some were the size of trees that covered the landscape — and the remains of those ancient plants can be found in Earth's coal deposits.