The soil near the pond is almost always wet, but can dry up. Shoreline plants like their roots to be wet, but must be able to survive dry soil conditions for short periods of time.
Ponds sometimes flood their banks during spring melts and heavy rains.
Shoreline plants can survive being totally or partially underwater during part of the year. The commonest shoreline plants are horsetail, sphagnum moss, jewelweed, ferns, reed canary grass, and water willow. Horsetail Horsetail or scouring rush is a plant that is little changed from the Carboniferous age, an age before the time when the dinosaurs lived. It looks like several green spikes growing together. Horsetail can grow to be 60 cm tall.