Japan Flora: Stems exten­sively creeping, leafy, mm. across excluding the leaves, al­ternately branched; branches forked, ascending, densely leafy, 6-8 mm. across inclusive of the leaves; leaves all alike, spread­ing, linear to broadly so, 4-5 mm. long, 0.5-1 mm. wide, more or less incurved and filiform at the tip, entire, green, slightly lustrous; spikes erect 1-6, cylindric, 2-6 cm. long; peduncles 7-20 cm. long, erect, loosely leafy, the leaves ascending or suberect, linear, with a long hairlike tip; bracts ovate-deltoid, with a hairlike tip, spreading, the margins narrowly scarious, undulate-erose. Woods in hills to high mountains.

Hok­kaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu; common and very variable. Our plant, sometimes differentiated into 2 or 3 varieties, usu­ally has leaves with a shorter hairlike dp than European plants. The species occurs in Sakhalin, Kuriles, Korea, Formosa, China, India, Malaysia to Polynesia and Hawaii, N. America, Europe, and Africa.

Russia Flora: Plant up to 30 cm tall. Creeping stems long, rather densely covered with dark green phyllodia appressed to the stem. Ascending at the base vertical vegetative branches up to 10 cm high, up to 1 cm wide. Spore-bearing branches up to 30 cm high. Phyllodia spreading, obliquely directed upward or more or less appressed to the stem, lanceolate, up to 6-7 mm long, 0.5-0.6 mm wide, entire-margined or irregularly finely serrate, with a weakly visible vein, tapering toward the apex and transitioning into a long colorless hair-like awn, rather tightly adjoining the axis. At the tops of young branches, the awns form a characteristic colorless tuft. Strobiloids numbering 2-5, up to 5.5 cm long, on common stalks up to 6-8 cm long. Sporophylloids with awn up to 3 mm long, with irregularly toothed broadly membranous margin. Sporangium short reniform, about 1 mm long.

In all regions, except Chukotka, Anadyr, Anadyr-Penzhina and Kolyma (Fig. 5). — Coniferous forests from lowlands to the subalpine belt, prefers acidic soils and rocks. VII-VIII. — General distribution: European part, Caucasus (Colchis), Western and Eastern Siberia, Central Asia; Scandinavia, Atlantic and Central Europe, Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Iran, Dzungaria-Kashgar, Mongolia, Tibet, Himalayas, Japan-China, South Asia, North America.