[3] The water horsetail ranges throughout the temperate Northern Hemisphere, from Eurasia south to central Spain, Italy, the Caucasus, China, Korea and Japan, and in North America from the Aleutian Islands to Newfoundland, south to Oregon, Idaho, northwest Montana, northeast Wyoming, West Virginia and Virginia.

[4] This horsetail is sometimes seen as an invasive species because it is very hardy and tends to overwhelm other garden plants unless it is contained.

[citation needed] The water horsetail has historically been used by both Europeans and Native Americans for scouring, sanding, and filing because of the high silica content in the stems.

[citation needed] According to Carl Linnaeus, reindeer, which refuse ordinary hay, will eat this horsetail, which is juicy, and that it is cut as fodder in the north of Sweden for cows, with a view to increasing their milk yield, but that horses will not touch it.

[citation needed] Linnaeus was the first to describe water horsetail with the binomial Equisetum sylvaticum in his Species Plantarum of 1753.