Country diary: All hail the horsetail, a plant that could survive anything | Kate Blincoe

Newton Flotman, Norfolk: It looks like a toilet brush yet predates the dinosaurs. I can’t help but give it a stroke by the roadside, even if I get strange looks

The rural road is flanked with a bank of green fuzz. It’s jungly and verdant – lush in a landscape that has turned brown and yellow from drought. I run my hand over the green bristles erupting from a bamboo-like stem.

Equisetum arvense, or field horsetail, looks fluffy, but it is wiry and rough. One could serve effectively as a toilet brush. The bristles are rich in abrasive silicon, which gives the texture of sandpaper. This explains another of equisetum’s common names, scouring rush, from when it was used to clean wood and polish metal. If you are careful, a hollow jointed stem can be separated at its junction and then rejoined like children’s tubular pipes for building, slotting back in a satisfying way.

Equisetum has been on Earth since before the dinosaurs. These flowerless plants were giant then, reaching more than 20 metres tall and probably the diet of herbivorous dinosaurs. To have persisted since prehistory, surviving mass extinction events, tells you plenty about its adaptability and resilience – features that also make it a successful if invasive weed.

Their ability to thrive despite the lack of rain here in the east tells of their aggressive underground network of rhizomes. This can reach metres deep and even spread beneath roads or foundations. They are difficult to eradicate, spreading rapidly by spores and invisibly underground. Luckily, this patch is harmless here, in the middle of nowhere. Equisetums don’t damage trees, and their dense cover provides habitat for invertebrates such as weevils, sawfly larvae and many species of spider.

A passing driver looks at me strangely as I part the green fronds and stroke the wiry bristles. I’ve read that they can be used as a shine treatment for hair, because of the silicon. Could I boil them up, I wonder? I’m glad to live in this particular period of equisetum’s history – a few hundred years ago, my fascination for strange plants and their hidden properties might have seen me persecuted as the village witch.

Whether you see it as a living fossil or an invasive weed, chances are it will be here for millions more years. As the planet burns, I find that thought, that endurance, somehow comforting.

• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com