Plant kingdom

The plant kingdom goes from algae and fungi over mosses and ferns over flowers, bushes and trees: over 300.000 species are classified in botany. The plant kingdom is the basis for most of Earth's ecosystem, and Man has learned to master it to produce grain, fruit and vegetables as human food. Materialistic or mineral science sees the plant as producing oxygen for the earth and studies a.o. the plant seeding process and photosynthesis.

From a spiritual scientific point of view, the physical plants we see on earth are permeated by an etheric body, but have an astral body of the plants around the earth and their group soul in the lower spirit world.

Aspects

Spiritual science considers the plant from the following perspectives.

What is a plant?

• the plant's I-consciousness are the group souls in lower spirit world.
  • There are seven plant group souls belonging to the Earth and corresponding to seven spheres varying in size with their spiritual center in the center of the Earth. It are these spiritual beings that impel the plants out of the earth. The plant root grows towards the centre of the Earth, because what it really wants is to reach the centre of the Earth, where is the centre of the spiritual being to which the plant belongs.(1912-01-01-GA134)
  • all plant I's at the centre point of the Earth are mutually interpenetrating beings, for in the spiritual world a law of penetrability prevails and all beings pass through one another. (1908-02-02-GA098)
  • the group-I's of the plant kingdom are the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom (1912-04-13-GA136)
• structure
  • physical and etheric body on Earth
  • astral body of the plants around the Earth:
    • The plant does not have an astral body of its own, rather the whole astral body of the Earth forms the common astral body for the whole plant kingdom. This consists of the astral beings called Elementals of nature, involved in the alchemy of the seasons. One can say that the plant blossom reaches out and touches the astral and 'receives a kiss'.
  • The I of the plant is in the center of the Earth (1907-12-13-GA101)
• on the spirit plane for the group I's and the Earth's feelings
  • cutting off of blossoms, stalk, leaves .. gives the plant soul a feeling of well-being, of pleasure (just as it gives pleasure to a cow, for example, when the calf sucks milk from her udder) .. when in late summer we go through fields where corn is being cut, where the blade is passing through the corn stems, then the whole fields breathe out a feeling of bliss .. and a feeling of contentment sweeping over the earth as the corn falls to the ground. (1908-02-02-GA098)
  • uprooting of the plants is painful for the plant souls .. when the roots are pulled up, plants suffer. (1908-02-02-GA098)

Growth process - three worlds

• in summary: the metabolism is given by the Earth, the growth process by the planets, the form is given by the zodiac (1922-07-22-GA213)
• growth process for a tree (1923-10-31-GA351)
  • 1 - growth from the Earth: stem - wood sap (earthy-fluidic influence) .. wood is when the fluid evaporates and the solid remains behind. In the tree the wood sap is dying, loses its life-giving quality, and it becomes merely a chemical. Wood sap is a chemical, relatively thin and peculiarly fitted to allow chemical changes to take place in it.
    • Note: in a plant, he whole process occurs much more quickly, and the sprout does not separate off the solid matter and make wood like the tree, it remains like a cabbage stalk
  • 2 - life sap of the plant (fluidic-airy influence - moisture in the air) which circulates from the leaves; travels all round and brings forth the leaves (arranged in spirals),gives life again. The life sap is a giver of life, much thicker, clings more to the plant-form, separates off its gum.
  • 3 - the cambium of the plant (airy-warmth, influence of the stars) forms as layer between the bark full of living sap (that still belongs to the leaves) ,and the woody stem, because the plant develops warmth while it takes up life from outside and his warmth goes inward and develops the cambium inside. Still thicker and sticky, but still fluid enough to take the forms given by the stars.
    • In this process, before the cambium forms, there is first a thicker substance that develops: the plant gum. When retained this forms the cambium.
      • The yearly process of the season forms the yearly rings with the gummy wood of each year
      • Plants also secrete resins, amber is fossilized tree resin. When the Earth was less dense and damper, the gum became transparent and turned to amber.
    • the cambium brings the plant into connection with the stars, in such way that within this cambium the form of the next plant develops. This passes over to the seeds and in this way the next plant is born, hence the stars indirectly create the next plant through the cambium
• planetary influences
  • flower forms and petals, and spiral forms of leaves and in flowers, and correspondence to the planets and the rhythms of their influeces or etheric formative forces
  • seven trees and correspondence to the planets
    • used for the pillars in the Goetheanum
    • verses or aphorism for the seven planets and trees by Johannes Hemleben (see Further reading section below, see also Frits-Hendrik Julius)
  • effects of influences from planets with short cycles (Moon, Mercury, Venus) or long cycles (Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) and relation with water (rain) and warmth and the effects in lime and silica (1924-06-07-GA327)
    • the annual life of the plant is connected with those planets whose period of revolution is short
    • that which frees itself from the transitory nature .. the trees with bark and rind .. and makes them permanent, is connected with the planetary forces which work via the forces of warmth and cold and have a long period of revolution, as in the case of Saturn: thirty years; or Jupiter: twelve years. Examples: oak and Mars period, coniferous forests and Saturn period.

• effect of the soil
  • plants with wrinkled leaves .. in the earth there, you will find traces of copper; if you have leaves which are dry and withered at the edge .. in the earth you'll find traces of lead; a common plant like mare's tail with which people clean pots grows just where the ground contains silicon, hence the little thorns (1923-08-30-GA227) - see Potentization#1923-08-30-GA227
• Plant-life in the form in which we see it today can only thrive in the equilibrium and co-operation of the two forces or, to choose two typical substances, in the cooperation of the limestone and silicious substances. (1924-06-07-GA327, see Working of substances and their forces#1924-06-07-GA327) and Working of substances and their forces#silica and lime.

Nature's yearly seasonal (growth) process

For a spiritual scientific explanation of how the yearly alchemical process of nature runs through the seasons on earth, see Rhythm of a year (e.g. FMC00.249). The base elements are explained below.

• on Earth, the working together of the elementals of nature and the higher ethers,
  • Undines carry the action of the chemical ether into the plants; sylphs the action of the light-ether and fire-spirits the warmth, and carry it into the blossoms of the plants into the plant's blossoms (1923-11-02-GA230, explained in depth in 1923-11-GA230 - see below)
• form of the plants
  • the form-giving formative forces are worked by the second Elementary Kingdom (from lower spirit land) - see Schema FMC00.175 and Schema FMC00.142D below and two references: RSL 1907-12-04-GA098 below, as well as the key passage of 1916-04-13-GA167 (on Rhythm of a year)
  • there is a relationship between the form of plants and the fixed stars constellations (1922-07-22-GA213 below)
    • the basis for a cosmological botany was developed by Frits-Hendrik Julius and Ernst-Michael Kranich (1929-2007), see 'Further reading' section below
• the rhythm of the etheric formative forces as a factor underlying the differentiation in growth patterns, see Schema FMC00.379 below
  • the process is one of unification of two principles or influences. At the time of the year when the plant progresses towards its fructification, certain Spirits of the Rotation of Time unite:
    • spiral principle of movement - the forces of movement coming down from the planets to the plants (and that work spirally in the stamens)
    • with the forces which come down from the sun (and that works in the stalk) At than time then, those organs which until then followed the planets spirally, are arranged in a neat circle like the stamens, while the stalk itself elongates and terminates in the ovary (in the center of the plant). "This is like a marriage of the influences caused by the two spiritual activities of the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom and of Motion, united by the activity of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time." (Spirits of rotation of time#1912-04-13-GA136)
• and coordination done by the hierarchy of archangels along the rhythm of the yearly Earth cycle

the above maps, in terms of epistemology and building up of a spiritual scientific understanding, to ao

• the growth process of plant metamorphosis, pioneered by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• metabolic base processes of transmutation and photosynthesis
• the plant as a symbol for the (appearance of) the etheric life principle - and as an area of research into the formative forces and geometries in the plant kingdom

Other aspects

• the plant world is perceiving the smells that come from the planetary world, eg the violet smells Mercury, the asafoetida perceives Saturn .. "and so in very truth the fragrances of heaven come to us out of the plants" (1924-08-09-GA354)
• the relation with animal kingdom (eg bees, feeding animals)
• Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) flower clock: Linnaeous discovered in 1748 that different plants open or close their flowers at particular times of the day, and one could use this to make a clock that indicates time. to accurately indicate the time. He also looked into seasonal changes and described how different plants prepare for sleep during the night
• the evolutionary aspect of how the plant kingdom arose as offspring of the hierarchy of the Spirits of Wisdom during the Old Sun evolutionary stage, as fruits of the thoughts of the archangels, see oa FMC00.147 and FMC00.149 in Four kingdoms of nature

Application areas:

• biodynamic agriculture
• the application of plant remedies in healing

Inspirational quotes

Rabindranath Tagore

Life sends us in blades of grass .. it's silent hymn of praise .. to the unnamed light

and

The tree is a winged spirit .. released from the bondage of seed .. pursuing its adventure of life across the unknown

Illustration

Schema FMC00.009A depicts that a plant doesn't just grow with water and sunshine. As a start, we can study the processes of photosynthesis (above the ground) and transmutation (under the ground). The first is accepted and studied in mineral science (though incompletely), the second currently not at all, resulting in an incomplete understanding.

In spiritual science the process is considered as the workings of spiritual beings, in this case the Elementals of nature, and the beings of The elementary kingdoms that are the forces behind the higher ethers.

Schema FMC00.195 illustrates the same as Schema FMC00.009A, now with BBD and lecture reference and extract:

Schema FMC00.150 is an illustration (by Catherine Van Alphe, in 'Plant Study Manual') to symbolize that we should study not just the effect of sunshine and the water cycle in plants (as per mineral science) but also of etheric and astral forces, and do this in an alchemical way.

Schema FMC00.518 illustrates the consciousness of the four kingdoms of nature at different planes of consciousness.

Only Man has individualized Human 'I' consciousness as he was and is in the process of detaching himself from the various granular levels of the group souls of humanity through the process of individuation and Development of the I.

In the animal kingdom, a collective of animals part of a certain species have their group soul on the astral plane, the working group of the animal group soul intelligence can be seen for example in flocks of birds and herds.

The plant kingdom has its group soul on the lower spirit plane. The astral body of the Earth forms the common astral body for the whole plant kingdom, the I of the plant is in the center of the Earth. The astral world does not penetrate the individual plant but merely touches it through the 'kiss of the Sun', which is the origin of the blossom causing the appearance of the flower.

The mineral kingdom is frozen and chaste and has the group soul in the higher spirit world.

Schema FMC00.192: shows two illustrations with short descriptions by Rudolf Steiner of the astral body of plants. On the left, the illustration made in the lecture 1908-02-24-GA098, and on the right the BlackBoard Drawing (BBD) of 1922-07-02-GA213.

Schema FMC00.616: is an illustration of the 1923-10-31-GA351 that explains the workings of the wood-sap (earthy-fluidic), life-sap (fluidic-airy) and cambium (airy-warmth) in the tree. See variant Schema FMC00.616A for the complementary tabular view.

Compare also with Schema FMC00.195 and FMC00.009A.

Schema FMC00.616A: provides a synthetic table summary of the visualization Schema FMC00.616, comparing the three carriers of the life processes in the tree, showing the comparison with the human being, and especially the description of the elemental environment and different spiritual influences.

Compare also with Schema FMC00.155 and the the three bodily humors in Man (chyle, lymph, and blood)

On the right, from the description of cambium added from another lecture, is the important distinction between the plant life that grows on the tree's cambium, and the plant life that springs directly out of the Earth.

Schema FMC00.142D is a variant of master schema FMC00.142 used for the Golden Chain. It shows the physical body of plants as we see it around us in nature, and the plant consciousness: the Group soul of plants, lying just as the second Elementary Kingdom in the lower spirit world. The schema does not show the plant kingdom's astral body, which is spread out across Earth. For an explanation of the yearly process of nature along the seasons on earth, see Rhythm of a year.

Schema FMC00.379 illustrates the rhythmic aspect of the etheric formative forces and the various planetary influences and their reversal, as explained in Wachsmuth on Formative forces. This principle explains the principles underlying the differentiation of plant growth, see also the 'Further reading' section on Overview on etheric research and the plant kingdom.

Lecture coverage and references

1907-12-04-GA098

describes the second elementary kingdom

.. the second Elementary Kingdom moulds and forms the shapes of the plants. But its activity extends also to the human being — to his many elements which have a plant-like character — nails, hair, etc.

(Hair and nails are products from which the astral body has already withdrawn, they are not permeated by the astral body (any more, as was the case before) but merely by the etheric body; for this reason they feel no pain and it is possible to cut them, without causing pain.)

Many things in the human being are of a plant-like nature, and within all these plants-like elements, the beings of the second Elementary Kingdom are active. Hence, that which builds up the body of a plant consists of the forces belonging to the second Elementary Kingdom.

Within the plant are active both the plant 'I' (which permeates the etheric and astral bodies) and these beings of the second Elementary Kingdom. Whereas the I of the plants works upon the plant from within, these other Beings work upon it from without — forming it, making it grow and blossom.

The whole plant is permeated by an etheric body. But it does not possess an astral body of its own; instead the entire astral body of the Earth forms the common astral body of the plants. The I of the plants is to be found at the center of the earth. This is true for all plants.

For this reason, if you pull up a plant by the roots you cause pain to the earth; but, if you pick a flower, the earth will have a feeling of well-being, as a cow has a feeling of well-being when her calf sucks her milk. It is also a wonderful experience when the corn is moved in the autumn, to see how great waves of well-being streamed over the earth.

The Beings which work upon the plants, from out of the second Elementary Kingdom, and help it to take form, fly toward the plant from all sides, like butterflies. The renewal and repetition of the leaves, blossoms, etc., is their work. This is what acts upon the plants from out of the second Elementary Kingdom.

... The leaves, etc., of the plants are formed by the second Elementary Kingdom; this work consists chiefly of repetitions.

... the plant owes its form entirely to the second Elementary Kingdom — for, without it, it would be spherical.

1908-02-02-GA098

title: The Group Souls of Animals, Plants and Minerals

Just as this describes what we begin to feel with regard to these unsuspected beings, so it is where the souls of the plants are concerned. The plant I's dwell in a higher world than the animal I's. The separate group I's of the plants live on what we call the spirit plane.

We can even state the place where they actually are—in the very centre of the earth, whereas the animal group souls circle round the earth like trade winds. All these plant I's at the centre point of the Earth are mutually interpenetrating beings, for in the spiritual world a law of penetrability prevails and all beings pass through one another.

Studying the plant we see that its head—the root—is directed towards the center of the earth where its group I is to be found. The Earth itself is the outward expression of soul and spirit beings. From the spiritual point of view the plants seem like the nails of our fingers. The plants belong to the Earth, and when we look at them singly we do not see a complete entity, for the single plant is just one among the whole number of beings constituting a group I. In this way we can enter into what the plants themselves feel. The part of the plant that springs up out of the Earth, what from within the earth strives up to the surface, is of a different nature from what is growing under the earth. There is a difference between the cutting off of blossoms, stalk, leaves, and the tearing up of a root. The former gives the plant soul a feeling of well-being, of pleasure, just as it gives pleasure to a cow, for example, when the calf sucks milk from her udder. There is actual similarity between the milk of animals, and that part of a plant which pushes its way out of the earth.

When in late summer we go through fields where corn is being cut, where the blade is passing through the corn stems, then the whole fields breathe out a feeling of bliss. It is an intensely significant moment when we not only watch the reaping with our physical eyes, but perceive the feeling of contentment sweeping over the earth as the corn falls to the ground.

But when the roots of the plants are pulled up, then that is painful for the plant souls.

In the higher worlds the same laws do not hold good which are valid in the physical world. When we rise to the spiritual worlds our conceptions become different; even here on the physical plane there is sometimes opposition between the principle of beauty and that of pain or pleasure. It is possible that, impelled by a feeling for beauty, someone might pull out their white hairs, that indeed would be painful. And it is like that in the case of the plants. When the roots are pulled up this may make for neatness—yet the plants suffer.

...

Thus we have seen how the I's of the animals encircle the earth like the trade winds; how the plant I's have their common dwelling place in the center of the Earth; and how the Earth—being in itself alive, with a soul capable of feeling—is affected by the uprooting of the plants.

1910-12-08-GA060

is an introductory lecture 'the spirit in the realm of plants'

Especially in this contemplation, which is to concern itself with the spirit that finds its expression, its physiognomy, as it were, in the realm confronting us in the gigantic trees of the primeval forest, or those growing on Teneriffa thousands of years ago, as well as in the small, unassuming violet hiding in the quiet woods or elsewhere—especially in such a contemplation a person may feel himself in a rather difficult position, if the natural scientific concepts of the nineteenth century have been absorbed. Yes, a person feels himself in a rather difficult position if he has worked through to what should be said about the spirit in this area, for how could it be denied that great and wonderful discoveries in the realm of material research—even in the realm of the nature of plants—were made in the nineteenth century, thoroughly illuminating the nature of plants from a certain standpoint.

Again and again we should be reminded that in the second third of the nineteenth century the great botanist, Schleiden, discovered the plant cell. He was the first to place before humanity the truth that every plant body is built up out of small—they are called ‘elementary organisms’—independent entities, ‘cells,’ which appear like the building blocks of this plant body. While previously plants were able to be considered only in relation to their crude parts and organs, now attention was directed to how every leaf of the higher plants consisted of innumerable, tiny microscopic formations—the plant cells. No wonder such a discovery had a powerful influence on all thinking and feeling in relation to the plant world! It is entirely natural that the person who first discerned how the plant is built up out of these building blocks would arrive at the thought that by investigating these small formations, these building blocks, the secret of the nature of plants could be revealed.

The ingenious Gustav Theodor Fechner must already have experienced this idea when, around the middle of the nineteenth century, he actually tried to take into his thought sequences something like a ‘plant soul,’ although it could be said that his excessively fantastic elaboration of the nature of plants may have appeared somewhat too early. Fechner spoke comprehensively about a soul of plants (e.g., in his book Nanna), and he spoke not only as one who merely fantasizes but as one thoroughly and deeply acquainted with the natural scientific advances of the nineteenth century. He was unable, however, to think that plants are merely built up out of cells; rather, when he looked at the forms, the structures, of individual plants, he was led to assume that sense reality is the expression of an underlying soul element.

Now, you must admit that in contrast to what spiritual science has to say today about the life of the spirit in the realm of plants, Fechner's explanations appear rather fantastic, but his thoughts were actually an advance. In spite of this, Fechner had to experience the resistance that can come especially through the thinking into which the human spirit had penetrated by the discoveries of the nineteenth century. It must simply be understood that even the greatest individuals were fascinated by what they beheld when, under the microscope, the plant body revealed itself as a structure of small cells. They could in no way conceive how someone could still come up with the idea of a ‘plant soul’ after the material aspects had shown themselves in such a grandiose way to the searching human spirit. It is therefore easy to understand that even the discoverer of the plant cell became the greatest and most vehement opponent of what Fechner wished to say concerning the soul nature of plants. And it is rather interesting to see the fine and subtle mind of Fechner in battle with Schleiden, who became famous through his epoch-making discovery for botany but who did away, in a materialistically crude way, with everything that Fechner wanted to say about plants out of his intimate contemplations.

In a battle such as the one between Fechner and Schleiden in the nineteenth century, something basically took place that must be experienced by every soul who penetrates into the science of our time, working through the doubts and riddles that arise nevertheless, especially when one enters into the achievements of natural science. He will have grave doubts if he is able to work himself out of the frequently quite compelling concepts in such a realm. Whoever is not acquainted with this compelling quality of the materialistic natural scientific concepts of the nineteenth century may find trivial, possibly even narrow-minded, what is said out of the world view that wishes to place itself on the firm ground of natural science. One who approaches matters with a healthy sense for truth and a serious concern for solving life's riddles, however, and is at the same time armed with the botanical concepts of the nineteenth century, can have quite tragic inner soul experiences. Something about this need only be suggested here.

Thus we can learn, for example, what the botany of the nineteenth century has brought. There is much in this botany that is actually magnificent and truly astounding. A person who approaches the natural scientific concepts with a healthy sense for truth reaches the point where these concepts affect him like suggestion, with a tremendous power; they do not let him loose but whisper in his ears again and again, ‘You are doing something stupid if you leave the sure path on which one studies how cell relates to cell, how cell is nourished by cell,’ and so on. Finally it becomes necessary to tear oneself loose from the materialistic concepts in this realm. There is no other choice, no matter how firmly one wishes to be held by the suggestive power of the world views that are merely a consequence of outer materialistic concepts. After a certain point it no longer works. Not many people today experience that point. The suggestive power is experienced by most people who feel fascinated by the natural scientific results, and they do not dare take even a single step beyond what the microscope shows. The next step is taken only by very few. It is clear, however, to whoever maintains a healthy sense for truth, especially regarding the natural sciences—and this is necessary if one wishes to approach the spirit in the realm of plants—that first a person must occupy himself with a certain mental image, for otherwise he will always succumb to error, will always enter a labyrinth such as happened to Fechner despite his serious attempts to examine the symbolic, the physiognomic aspects of individual plant forms and structures.

I would like to suggest to you what is significant here first by means of a comparison. Imagine that someone found a piece of matter, some kind of tissue, on a path. If he examines this piece of tissue, in certain cases it may happen that he doesn't get anywhere. Why not? If this piece of tissue is a piece of bone from a human arm, the examiner will not get anywhere if he wants to look merely at this piece of bone and to explain it out of itself, for it would be impossible for this piece of tissue to come into existence without the prior existence of a human arm.

One cannot speak about the tissue at all if it is not considered in connection with a complete human organism. It is impossible, therefore, to speak about such a formation other than in connection with an entire being. Consider the following comparison. We find an object somewhere, a human hair. If we wanted to explain how it may have originated there, we would be led completely astray, because we can explain this only by considering it in connection with an entire human organism. By itself it is nothing; by itself it cannot be explained.

This is something that the spiritual investigator must consider in relation to the whole scope of our observations, of our explanations. He must direct his attention to the question of whether any object confronting him can be considered by itself or whether it remains inexplicable by itself, whether it belongs to something else or can be examined better as an isolated entity.

Curiously enough, the spiritual investigator becomes aware that it is generally impossible to consider the world of plants, this wonderful covering of the earth, as something existing by itself. When confronted with the plant he feels just as he does regarding a finger, which he can consider only as belonging to a complete human organism. The plant world cannot be considered in isolation, because to the view of the spiritual investigator the plant world at once relates itself to the entire planet earth and forms a whole with the earth, just as the finger or piece of bone or the brain forms a whole with our organism. And whoever merely looks at plants by themselves, remaining with the particular, does the same as one who wishes to explain a hand or a piece of human bone by itself. The common nature of plants simply cannot be considered in any other way than as a member of our common planet earth.

Here, however, we come to a matter that may annoy many today, though it is valid nevertheless for the spiritual scientific view. We come to look differently at our whole planet earth than is done customarily by today's science, for our contemporary science—be it astronomy, geology, or mineralogy—basically speaks about the earth only in so far as this earthly sphere consists of rocks, of the mineral element, of lifeless matter. Spiritual science may not speak in this way. It can only speak in such a way that everything found on our earth—that which a being coming from outer space, as it were, would find in human beings, animals, plants, and stones—belongs to the whole of our earth, just as the stones themselves belong to our earth. This means that we may not look at the earth planet as a dead rock formation but rather as something that is in itself a living whole, bringing forth the nature of plants out of itself, just as the human being brings forth the structures of his skin, of his sense organs, and the like. In other words, we may not consider the earth without the plant covering that belongs to it.

An outer circumstance might already suggest to us that, just as every stone has a certain relationship to the earth, so also everything plant-like belongs to it. Just as every stone, every lifeless body, shows its relationship to the earth by being able to fall onto the earth, where it finds a resistance, so every plant shows its relationship to the earth by the direction of its stem, which is always such that it passes through the center of the earth. All stems of plants would cross at the earth's center if we extended them to that point. This means that the earth is able to draw out of its center all those force radiations that allow the plants to arise. If we look at the mineral realm without also adding the plant covering, we are looking only at an abstraction, at something thought out. We must also add that the natural science that proceeds purely out of the outer material likes to speak about how the origins of all life—including plant-life—must lie in the lifeless, the mineral element.

This issue does not exist at all for the spiritual investigator, because the lower is never a precondition for the higher; rather the higher, the living, is always the precondition for the lower, the nonliving. We will see later, in the lecture, What Has Geology to Say About the Origin of the World,² that spiritual research shows how everything rock-like, mineral—from granite to the crumb of soil in the field—originated in a manner similar to what natural science says today about the origin of coal. Today coal is a mineral, we dig it out of the earth. What was it millions of years ago according to natural scientific concepts? Extensive, mighty forests—so says natural science—covered large portions of the earth's surface at that time; later they sank into the earth during shifts of the earth's crust and were then transformed chemically in regard to their material composition, and what we dig up today out of the depths of the earth are the plants that have become stone. If this is admitted today in relation to coal, it should not be considered too ridiculous if spiritual science, by its methods, comes to the conclusion that all rocks found on our earth have in the final analysis originated from the plant. The plant first had to become stone, as it were. Thus the mineral is not the precondition for the plant-like, but rather the reverse is the case, the plant-like is the precondition for the mineral. Everything of a mineral nature is first something plant-like that hardens and then turns to stone.

Thus in the earth planet we have something before us concerning which we must presuppose the following: it was once, with respect to its densest quality, of a plant nature, was a structure of plant-like being, and only developed the lifeless out of what was living, progressively hardening, turning to wood, turning to stone. Just as our skeleton first separates itself out of the organism, so we have to look at the earth's rock formations as the great skeleton of the earth being, of the earth organism.

Now, if we are able to consider this earth organism from a spiritual scientific viewpoint, we can go still further. Today I can give only the first outlines of this, because this is a cycle of lectures in which one thing must lead to the next. We can ask ourselves, what is the situation with the Earth organism as such?

In studying an organism we know that alternations of different conditions are revealed. The human and animal organ isms reveal a waking and a sleeping condition alternating in time. Can we, from a spiritual scientific viewpoint, find something similar regarding the body of the earth, the earth organism? To outer consideration, what follows may appear to be a mere comparison, but for spiritual research it is not a comparison but a fact. If we study the curious lawfulness of summer and winter, how it is summer on one half of the earth and winter on the other half, how this relationship alternates, and if we pay attention to how this lawfulness—as wintertime and summertime—is to be discerned in relation to all earthly life, then it will no longer appear absurd if spiritual science tells us that winter and summer in the earth organism correspond to waking and sleeping in the organisms around us. It is simply that the earth does not sleep in time in the same way as other organisms but is always awake somewhere and al ways asleep at some other portion of its being. Waking and sleeping move around spatially: the earth sleeps in the part where there is summer, and it is awake in the part of its being where there is winter. Thus the whole earth organism con fronts us spiritually with conditions like waking and sleeping in other organisms.

The summer condition of the earth organism consists of a very specific relationship of the earth to the sun, and because we are dealing with a living, spirit-filled organism we may say that it surrenders itself to an activity that proceeds spiritually from the sun. In the winter condition the earth organism closes itself off from this sun activity, drawing itself together into itself. Now let us compare this condition with human sleep. I will now speak of what appears to be a mere analogy; spiritual science, however, provides the evidence for these observations.

If we study the human being in the evening, when he is tired, as his consciousness is diminishing, we find that all thoughts and feelings that enter our soul during the day from the outside, all pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, sink into an indefinite darkness. During this time, the human spirit being—as we have shown in the lecture about the nature of sleep³—passes out of the human physical body and enters the spiritual world, surrendering itself to the spiritual world. In this sleep condition it is a curious fact that the human being becomes unconscious. For the spiritual investigator (we will see how he comes to know this) it is revealed that the inner aspect of the human being, the astral body and ego, actually draw themselves out of the physical and etheric bodies, but they do not simply draw themselves out and float over him like a cloud formation; rather this whole inner aspect of the human being spreads itself out, pours itself out over the whole planetary world around us. As incredible as it may seem, it is nevertheless revealed that the human soul pours itself out in a unified way over the astral realm. The investigators who were acquainted with this realm knew well why they called what departs from the physical the ‘astral body.’ The reason was that this inner element draws out of heavenly space, with which it forms a unity, the forces it needs in order to replace what the day's efforts and work used up from the physical body. Thus the human being in sleep passes into the great world and in the morning draws himself back within the limits of his skin, into the small human world, into the microcosm. There, because his body offers him resistance, he again feels his ego, his self-consciousness.

This breathing out and breathing in of the soul is a wonderful alternation in human life. Of all those who have not spoken directly from an occult, spiritual scientific point of view, I have actually found only one individual who made so fitting a remark about the alternation of waking and sleeping that it can be taken directly over into spiritual science, be cause it corresponds with spiritual scientific facts. It was a thoroughly mathematical thinker, a deeply thoughtful man, who was able to encompass nature magnificently with his spirit: Novalis. He says in his Fragments:

Sleep is a mixed condition of body and soul. In sleep, body and soul are chemically united. In sleep the soul is evenly distributed throughout the body—the human being is neutralized. Waking is a divided, a polar condition; in waking the soul is pointed, localized. Sleep is soul-digestion; the body digests the soul (removal of the soul stimulus). Waking is the condition of the soul stimulus influence: the body partakes of the soul. In sleep the bonds of this system are loosened; in waking they are tightened.

Thus sleep for Novalis means the digestion of the soul by the body. Novalis is always conscious that in sleep the soul becomes one with the universe and is digested, so that the human being can be further helped in the physical world.

With respect to his inner being, then, the human being alternates in such a way that in the daytime he draws himself together into the small world, into the limits of his skin, and then expands into the great world during the night, drawing forth through surrender forces from that world in which he is then imbedded. We will not understand the human being unless we understand him as formed out of the entire macrocosm.

For that part of the earth where it is summer, there is something similar to what goes on in the human being in the condition of sleep. The earth gives itself to everything that comes down from the sun and forms itself as it should form itself under the influence of the sun activity. In that part of the earth where it is winter, it closes itself off from the influence of the sun, lives within itself. There it is the same as when the human being has drawn together into the small, inner world, living in himself, while for the part of the earth where it is summer it is the same as when the human being is surrendered to the whole outer world.

There is a law in the spiritual world: if we direct our attention to spiritual entities far removed from one another—such as, for example, the human being here on one side and the earth organism on the other—the states of consciousness must be pictured as reversed in a certain sense. With the human being, stepping out into the great world is the sleep condition. For the earth, the summer (which one would be inclined to consider a waking condition) is something that can only be compared with the human being falling asleep. The human being steps out into the great world when he falls asleep; in summer the earth with all its forces enters the realm of sun activity, only we must be able to think of the earth and the sun as spirit-filled organisms.

In wintertime, when the earth rests within itself, we must be able to think of its condition as corresponding to the waking condition of the human being, although it may be tempting to consider winter as the earth's sleep. When we consider entities as different from one another as the human being and the earth, however, the states of consciousness appear re versed in a certain way. Now, what does the earth accomplish when it is under the influence of surrender to the sun being, to the sun spirit? To have an easier comparison, we would do well to turn the concepts around now. The earth's surrender to the sun being is simply something that may be compared spiritually with the condition of the human being when he awakens in the morning and emerges out of the dark womb of existence, out of the night, into his joys and sorrows. When the earth enters the realm of sun activity—although this could be compared with the sleep condition of the human being—all the forces that sprout forth from the earth allow the resting winter condition of the earth to pass over into the active, the living, summer condition.

What, then, are the plants in this whole web of existence?

We could say that when spring approaches, the Earth organism begins to think and to feel, because the sun with its being lures out the thoughts and feelings. The plants are nothing but a kind of sense organ for the earth organism, awakening anew every spring, so that the earth organism with its thinking and feeling can be in the realm of the sun activity. Just as in the human organism light creates the eye for itself in order to be able to manifest through the eye as ‘light,’ so every spring the sun organism creates for itself the plant covering in order to look at itself, to feel, to sense, to think by means of this plant covering. The plants cannot directly be considered the thoughts of the earth, but they are the organs through which the awakening organization of the earth in spring, together with the sun, develops its thoughts and feelings. Just as we can see our nerves emanating from the brain, developing our feeling and conceptual life through the eyes and ears together with the nerves, so the spiritual investigator sees in what transpires between earth and sun with the help of the plants the marvelous weaving of a cosmic world of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. The spiritual investigator finds that the earth is surrounded not merely by the mineral air of the earth, by the purely physical earth atmosphere, but by an aura of thoughts and feelings. For spiritual research the earth is a spiritual being whose thoughts and feelings awaken every spring, and throughout the summer they pass through the soul of our entire earth.

The plant world, however, which is a part of our entire earth organism, provides the organs through which our Earth can think and feel. Woven into the spirit of the earth are the plants, just as our eyes and ears are woven into the activities of our spirit.

In spring a living, spirit-filled organism awakens, and in the plants we can see something that is pushed out of the countenance of our earth in some realm where it wants to begin to feel and think. Just as everything in the human being tends toward a self-conscious ego, so it is also in the realm of plants. The whole plant world belongs to the earth. I have already said that a person would be close to insanity if he did not think of how all feelings, sensations, and mental images are directed toward our ego. Similarly, everything the plants mediate during summertime is directed toward the earth's center, which is the earth ego. This should not be said merely symbolically! As the human being has his ego, so the earth has its self-conscious ego. That is why all plants strive toward the earth's center. That is why we may not consider plants by themselves but rather must consider them in interaction with the self-conscious ego of the earth. What unfolds itself as thoughts and sensations of the earth is similar to the thoughts and sensations that live in us, similar to whatever arises and disappears in us during our waking state, what lives in us astrally, if we speak from the viewpoint of spiritual science.

Thus we cannot picture the earth only as a physical structure, for the physical structure is for us something like our own physical body, which can be seen with the outer eyes and touched with the hands, and which is observed by outer science. This is the earth body that present-day astronomy or geology studies. Then we have to direct our attention to what in the human being we have come to know as the etheric body or life body. The earth also has such an etheric body, and it also has an astral body. This is what awakens every spring as the thoughts and feelings of the earth, which recede when winter approaches so that the earth rests in its own ego, closed off within itself, retaining only what it needs in order, through memory, to carry over the preceding into the following, retaining in the plant's seed forces what it has conquered for itself. Just as the human being, when he falls asleep, does not lose his thoughts and sensations but finds them again the next morning, so the earth, awakening again from sleep in the spring, finds the seed forces of the plants in order to permit what has been conquered in an earlier time to emerge again from the living memory of the seed forces.

When regarded in this way, the plants can be compared with our eyes and ears. What our senses are for us, the plants are for the earth organism. But what perceives, what achieves consciousness, is the spiritual world streaming down from the sun to the earth. This spiritual world would not be able to achieve consciousness if it did not have its sense organs in the plants, mediating a self-consciousness just as our eyes and ears and nerves mediate our self-consciousness. This makes us aware that we speak correctly only if we say that those beings who stream from the sun down to the earth, unfolding their spiritual activity, encounter from spring through summertime the being that belongs to the earth itself. In this exchange the organs are formed through which the earth perceives those beings, for the plants do not perceive. It is a superstition, shared also by natural science, when it is said that the plant perceives. The spiritual entities that belong to the earth activity and the sun activity perceive through the plant organs, and these entities direct toward the center of the earth all organs they need in order to unite them with the center of the earth. Thus what we have to see behind the plant covering are the spiritual entities that weave around the earth and have their organs in the plants.

It is remarkable that in our time natural science is actually moving toward a recognition of such spiritual scientific findings, for it is nothing less than full recognition of the situation to say that our physical earth is only a part of the whole earth, that the gaseous sun ball is only a part of the whole sun, and that our sun, as it appears to us physically, is only a part of the soul-spiritual entities who interact with the soul-spiritual entities of the earth. Just as the human world is connected with its environment, and just as human beings have their organs in order to live and to develop themselves, so these entities, which are real, create for themselves in the plant covering an organ in order to perceive themselves. As I said, it is superstitious to believe that the plant as such perceives or that the single plant has a kind of soul. This is just as superstitious as speaking of the soul of an eye. Although a remark able linking of facts, self-evident to spiritual science, impelled outer science throughout the nineteenth century to recognize what has just been said, it is nevertheless a fact that outer science does not know its way around very well in this realm; this is still so today, for what science has brought together so far about the sense life of plants completely sup ports what I have just said about the spirit and its activity in the realm of plants, but in outer science it cannot be comprehended as such. We can see this in the following example. In 1804 Sydenham Edward discovered the unusual plant called the Venus fly-trap, which has bristles on its leaves. When an insect comes near this plant so that contact with the bristles occurs, the insect is trapped by the leaf and then seemingly devoured and digested. It was remarkable when man discovered that plants can eat, can even take in animals, are meat eaters! But it was not known quite what to do with this, and this is interesting, because this discovery has repeatedly been forgotten and then rediscovered, in 1818 by Nuttal, in 1834 by Curtis, in 1848 by Lindley, and in 1859 by Oudemans. Five people in succession discovered the same thing! And science could not do much more with this discovery than for Schleiden, who made such a contribution to research of the plant world, to say that one should be on guard and not succumb to all kinds of mystical speculations attributing a soul to plants! Today, however, science is again prepared to attribute a soul to the individual plant, for example the Venus fly trap. This would be as superstitious as attributing a soul to the eye, however. Especially people such as Raoul France, for example, have immediately interpreted these things in an outer sense, saying, ‘There the soul element is evident, manifesting in a way analogous to the soul element of the animal!’

This shows how necessary it is, especially in the realm of spiritual science, not to succumb to all kinds of fantasies, for here outer science has succumbed to the fantasy that by attributing a soul nature to the Venus fly-trap, it can be thrown together with the human or animal soul nature. If this is done, a soul should also be attributed to other entities that attract small animals and, when these animals have come near, surround them with their tentacles so that they remain caught within. If one speaks of a soul in the Venus fly-trap, a soul can also be attributed to a mouse trap! We should not speak like this, however. As soon as there is the wish to penetrate into the spirit, things must be understood accurately and exactly, and one must not conclude from apparently similar outer qualities that the inner qualities work in the same way.

I have already directed attention to the fact that some animals exhibit something similar to memory. When an elephant is led to the drinking trough and on the way there someone irritates him, it can happen that when the elephant returns he has retained water in his trunk and sprays the person who irritated him earlier. It is said that here we can see that the elephant has a memory, that he remembered the person who irritated him and resolved: ‘On the way back I will spray him with water!’ But this is not the case. With the soul life it is important for us to follow the inner process exactly and not immediately to speak of memory when a later event occurs as an effect of an earlier cause. Only when a being truly looks back to something that took place at an earlier time do we have to do with memory; in every other case we are dealing only with cause and effect. This means that we would have to look exactly into the structure of the elephant's soul if we wished to see how the stimulus applied results in something that calls forth an effect after a certain time.

Therefore we must not interpret things such as what we encounter in the Venus fly-trap by thinking that the entire arrangement of the plant is there in order to determine an inner soul nature of the plant, but rather that what goes on there is brought about from outside. The plant serves as organ of the entire earth organism even in such a case. How the plants on the one hand pertain to the ego of the earth and on the other hand to the aura of the earth—the astral body, the earth's world of sensations and feelings—was shown particularly by this research in the nineteenth century. One can actually be grateful to those natural scientists—such as Gottlieb Haberlandt—who simply presented the facts they discovered in their research, and did not—like Raoul France or others—draw from these results purely outer conclusions. If the natural scientist were to present things as they really are, then one could be grateful to him; if he draws from them conclusions regarding the soul life of a single plant, however, then he should also immediately conclude something about the soul life of the single hair or tooth.

If we now study grain-producing plants, we discover remarkable little organs present in all these plants. Small structures in the starch cells are discovered. These cells are constructed in quite a remarkable way, so that within them there is something like a loose kernel. These structures have the unique property that the cell wall remains insensitive to the kernel at only one spot. If the kernel slips to another spot, it touches the cell wall, leading the plant to return to its earlier position. Such starch cells are found in all plants whose main orientation is toward the center of the earth, so that the plant has an organ within that always makes it possible for it to direct itself in its main orientation toward the center of the earth. This discovery, made during the nineteenth century by various scientists, is certainly wonderful, and it is most remarkable if it is simply presented as it is. Even if Haberlandt, for example, believes that this is a matter of a kind of sense perception by plants, he nevertheless presents the facts so clearly that one must be especially grateful for his dry and sober presentation.

But now let us turn to something else. If the leaf of a plant is studied, it is discovered that the outer surface is actually always a composite of many small, lens-like structures, similar to the lens in our eye. These ‘lenses’ are arranged in such a way that the light is effective only if it falls onto the surface of the leaf from a very specific direction. If it falls from another direction, the leaf instinctively begins to turn in such a way that the light can fall into the center of the lens, because when it falls to the side it works in another way. Thus there are organs for light on the surface of the leaves of plants. These light organs, which actually can be compared with a kind of eye, are spread out over the plants, but the plant does not see by means of them; rather the sun being looks through them to the earth being. These light organs bring it about that the leaves of the plant always have the tendency to place themselves perpendicularly to the sunlight.

In this—in the way the plant surrenders itself to the sun's activity in spring and summertime—we have the plant's second main orientation. The first orientation is that of the stem, through which the plants reveal themselves as belonging to the earth's self-consciousness; the second orientation is the one through which the plants express the earth's surrender to the activity of the sun beings.

If we now wished to go still further, we would have to find, if the previous considerations are correct, that through this surrender of the earth to the sun, the plants somehow ex press how the earth, through what it brings forth, really lives in the great macrocosm. We would have to perceive some thing in the plants, so to speak, which would indicate to us that something works into the plant world that is brought about outside especially by the sun being. Linnaeus pointed out that certain plants open their blossoms at 5 a.m. and at no other time. This means that the earth surrenders itself to the sun, which is expressed in the fact that certain plants are able to open their blossoms only at very specific times of the day; for example, Hemerocallis fulva, the day lily, blossoms only at 5 a.m.; Nymphaea alba, the water lily, only at 7 a.m., and Calendula, the marigold, only at 9 a.m. In this way we see a marvelous expression of the earth's relationship to the sun, a relationship that Linnaeus termed the ‘sun clock.’ The plant's falling asleep, the folding together of the petals, is also limited to very specific times of the day. A wonderful lawfulness and regularity is evident in the life of plants.

All of this shows us how the earth is surrendered—like the human being in sleep—to the great world, living within it. Just as it allows the plants to bloom and wilt, it shows us the spiritual weaving between sun and earth. Looking at matters in this way, however, we would have to say that we gaze there into deep, deep mysteries of our environment. For the serious seeker after truth, this puts a stop to the possibility—regardless of how fascinating the results of purely material research are—to think of the sun merely as a ball of gas racing through space; it puts a stop to the possibility that the earth can be considered as it is by astronomy and geology today. There are compelling reasons that must lead the conscientious natural scientist to admit the following: ‘In what natural science reveals, you may no longer see anything but an expression of the spiritual life lying at the foundation of everything!’ Then we regard the plants as a physiognomic expression of the earth, as the expression of the features of our earth. Thus what we call our aesthetic feeling in relation to the plant world deepens especially through spiritual science. We stand before the gigantic trees in the primeval forest, before the quiet violet or lily of the valley, and we look at them as single individualities, yes, but in such a way that we say, there the spirit that lives throughout space expresses it self to us—sun spirit! earth spirit! Just as we recognize in a human being the piety or impiety of his soul, so we can come to an impression, from what looks at us out of the plants, of what lives as earth spirit, as sun spirit, of how they battle with one another or are in harmony. There we feel ourselves as living and weaving within the spirit.

Just as an illustration of how spiritual science can be verified by the natural science of the nineteenth century, I will relate to you the following. Listeners who have heard lectures here in the past will recall how I have indicated that there are plants in the earthly world that are misplaced, that do not belong in our world. One such plant is mistletoe, which plays such a remarkable role in legends and myths, because it be longs to an earlier planetary condition of our earth and has remained behind as a remnant of a pre-earthly evolution. This is why it cannot grow on the earth but must take root in other plants. Natural science shows us that mistletoe does not have those curious starch cells that orient the plant toward the center of the earth. I could now begin briefly to take apart the entire botany of the nineteenth century bit by bit, and you will find little by little how the plant covering of our earth is the sense organ through which earth spirit and sun spirit behold each other.

If we pay heed to this, we receive a science—as seems appropriate for the plant world that we love and that gives us so much joy—a science that can at the same time raise our soul, bring it close to this plant world. With our soul and spirit we feel ourselves belonging to the earth and to the sun; we feel as if we had to look up to the plant world, as it were, we feel that it belongs to our great mother earth. We must do this. Everything that as animal or human being seems to be independent of the immediate effect of the sun is actually, through the plant world and its dependence on the plant world, indirectly dependent on the sun. The human being does not undergo the kinds of transformations that plants go through in winter and summer, but it is the plant that gives him the possibility of having such a constancy within himself. The substances that the plant develops can be developed only under the influence of the sun, through the interrelationship of sun spirit and earth spirit. The carbohydrates can arise only if the sun spirit and the earth spirit kiss through the plant being. The substances developed here yield what the higher organisms must take into themselves in order to develop warmth. The higher organisms can only thrive through the warmth developed by taking up the substances prepared by the sun via the plants.

Thus we must look to mother earth as to our great nourishing mother. We have seen, however, that in the plant covering we have the physiognomy of the plant spirit, and through this we feel as though standing in soul and spirit. We gaze, as it were—just as we gaze into the eyes of another person—into the soul of the earth, if we understand how it manifests its soul in the blossoms and leaves of the plant world.

This is what led Goethe to occupy himself with the plant world, which led him to an activity that consisted fundamentally of showing how the spirit is active in the plant world and how in the plant the leaf is formed out of the spirit in the most diverse forms. Goethe was delighted that the spirit in the plant forms the leaves, rounds them, and also leads them to wind around the stem. And it was remarkable when a man who truly recognized the spirit—Schiller, who met Goethe after a botanical lecture in Jena—when Schiller, who was not satisfied by the lecture, said, “That was just an observation of plants as they are in isolation!” whereupon Goethe took out a sheet of paper and sketched in his way, with a few lines, how for him the spirit is active in the plant. Schiller, who was un able to understand such a concrete presentation of the spirit of the plant, said in reply, “What you are drawing there is only an idea!” to which Goethe could only say, “Isn't it nice that I can have ideas without knowing it and can even see them with my own eyes!”

Especially in the way in which a man like Goethe studied the plant world on his journey over the Brenner—when he looked at the coltsfoot with completely different eyes—the way in which he saw in this how the spirit is active on the earth and forms the leaves, shows us how we can speak of a common spirit of the earth that brings itself to expression only in the manifold plant being as in his own special organ. What is physical is spirit; we simply have the task of pursuing the spirit always in the right way. Whoever pursues the plant as it grows out of the common spirit of the earth will find the earth spirit that Goethe already had in view when he let his Faust address the spirit active in the earth, who says of him self:

In Lebensfluten, in Tatensturm

Wall' ich auf and ab,

Webe hin and her!

Geburt and Grab,

Ein ewiges Meer,

Ein wechselnd Weben,

Ein gluhend Leben,

So Schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit

Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.

In the tides of life, in action's storm,

Up and down I wave,

To and fro weave free,

Birth and the grave,

An infinite sea,

A varied weaving,

A radiant living,

Thus at Time's humming loom it's my hand that prepares

The robe ever-living the Deity wears.

The person who beholds in this way the spirit in the plant life of the earth feels himself strengthened by seeing what he must consider his inner being poured out over the whole environment he is allowed to inhabit. And he must say to himself, “If I study what encircles my space, I find it confirmed that the origin of all things is to be found in the domain of the spirit.” And an expression of the relationship of human spirit and human soul, and also the relationship of plant soul and plant spirit, we can encompass in these words:

Die Dinge in den Raumesweiten,

Sie wandeln sich im Zeitenlauf.

Erkennend lebt die Menschenseele

Durch Raumesweiten unbegrenzt

Und unversehrt durch Zeitenlauf.

Sie findet in dem Geistgebiet

Des eignen Wesens tiefsten Grund.

To the sense of man there speak

The things in breadths of space

Transforming themselves in course of time.

Knowing lives the human soul

Unbounded by the breadths of space,

Unaltered by the course of time;

It finds in the realm of spirit

Its own being's deepest ground!

1912-01-01-GA134

covers the seven group souls of plants (SWCC)

When we go beyond what our senses can behold of the plant, we come to the group souls of the plants, which are related to the single plant as a whole to a part. Altogether there are seven group souls — plant souls — belonging to the earth, and having in a way the centre of their being in the centre of the earth.

Hence it is not enough to conceive of the earth as this physical sphere, but we have to think of it as penetrated by seven spheres varying in size and all having in the earth's centre their own spiritual centre. And these spiritual beings impel the plants out of the earth.

The root grows towards the centre of the earth, because what it really wants is to reach the centre of the earth, and it is only prevented from pushing right through by all the rest of the earth matter which stands in its way. Every plant root strives to penetrate to the centre of the earth, where is the centre of the spiritual being to which the plant belongs.

You see how extraordinarily important is the principle we laid down — to go always to the whole in the case of every being or creature, to see first whether it is a part or a whole.

Some scientists look upon the plants as ensouled, but they look upon the individual plant in this way. That is no cleverer than if we were to call a tooth a man; both stand at the same mental level. To look for individual souls in the separate plants is to say: I will extract a tooth from a human being and look in it for a human soul. The plant soul is not to be found in the single plant but has its most important point in the centre of the earth, whither the root tends, for the root is that force in the plant which strives ever towards the most spiritual part of plant existence.

1912-04-06-GA136

makes the link with the second hierarchy H2, and also mentions the 'lily and tulip' topic

Now in these beings of the Second Hierarchy we can distinguish several categories just as we did among the beings of the Third Hierarchy. To distinguish between these categories will be more difficult, for the higher we ascend the more difficult it becomes. We must in the course of our ascent, first of all gain some idea of all that underlies the world surrounding us, in so far as the world around us has forms. I have already said that as regards this second stage of clairvoyance, we need only consider that which lives, not that which appears to us lifeless. What lives comes into consideration, but what lives has in the first place, form. Plants have forms, animals have forms, man has a form. If clairvoyant vision is directed with all the qualities described to-day, to everything around us in nature which has form, and if we look away from all the other parts of the being and only see the forms, considering among the plants the multiplicity of the forms, as also in the animals and in man, this clairvoyant vision then perceives from the totality of the beings of the Second Hierarchy those which we call the Spirits of Form (SoF). We can, however, turn our attention to something besides the form in the beings around us in nature. We know indeed, that everything which lives changes its form, in a certain respect, as it grows. This change, this alteration of form, this metamorphosis, strikes us more particularly in the plant-world.

Now if we direct, not the ordinary vision but the clairvoyant vision of the second stage, to the growing plant-world, we see how the plant gradually gains its form, how it passes from the form of the root to the form of the leaf, to the form of the flower, to the form of the fruit. If we look at the growing animal, at the growing man, we do not merely consider a form as it exists at a given moment, we see the growth of the living being. If we allow ourselves to be stimulated by this contemplation of the growth of the living being; reflecting how the forms change, how they are in active metamorphosis — then, the clairvoyant vision of the second stage becomes aware of what we call the category of the Spirits of Motion (SoM).

It is still more difficult to consider a third category of such beings of the Second Hierarchy. For we must consider neither the form as such, nor the changes of form, nor the movement; but that which is expressed in the form. We can describe how a man may train himself to this. Of course it does not suffice to train the ordinary normal consciousness in such a way as has just been described, he must he helped by the use of the other exercises which raise man to occult vision. He must perform these; and not educate himself by means of his ordinary consciousness but by clairvoyant consciousness. This must first train itself as to how man himself becomes, in his outer form, the expression of his inner being. As we have said, that can also be done by the normal consciousness, but in that way one would attain to nothing but conjecture, a supposition of what may lie behind the bearing, gestures, and the facial expression of the human being. But when the clairvoyant vision which has already been trained to the second stage of clairvoyance, allows the physiognomy, gestures, and facial expression in man to work upon him, it produces stimulations through which he can gradually train himself to observe the beings of the third category of the Second Hierarchy. But this cannot take place — please take note of this — if he merely observes the gestures, imitative expression, and physiognomy of man; if he remains at this stage very little can really be gained. He must pass on — occult education is carried on in this most rational way in this realm — he must pass over to the plants. The animals can be left out, it is not very important to study them, but after one has trained oneself a little, clairvoyantly, to learn the inner being of his soul from a man's physiognomy and gestures; it is important to turn to the plant-world and educate oneself further by means of this.

Here someone clairvoyantly trained can have very remarkable experiences; he will feel profoundly the difference between the leaf of a plant which — let us say — runs to a point (diagram a.) and the leaf of a plant which has this form (diagram b.); between a blossom which grows upwards in this way (c.) and one which opens outwards. (d.) (See Figure 2) A whole world of difference appears in the inner experience if one directs the occult vision of the second stage to a lily or to a tulip, if one lets either a panicle of oats or a wheat or barley stalk work upon one. FIGURE

All this becomes as livingly speaking as the physiognomy of the human being. And when this speaks as livingly as the physiognomy, the gestures, of a man speaks, when we feel how the blossom which opens outwards has something of the character of a hand which turns outwards with the inner surface below and the outer surface above, and when we find another blossom which closes its petals above, like the two hands folded; it we feel the gestures, the physiognomy, and the colors of the plant-world to he something like a physiognomy, then the inner vision, the occult perception and understanding are stimulated; — and we recognize a third category of the beings of the Second Hierarchy, whom we call the Spirits of Wisdom. This name is chosen by way of comparison, because when we consider man in his mimicry, physiognomy and gestures, we see the spiritual part of him, that which is filled with wisdom, springing forth externally, manifesting itself. In this way we feel how the spiritual beings of the Second Hierarchy permeate all nature, and find expression in the physiognomy, the collective gestures, the collective mimicry of nature. Flowing Wisdom passes full of life through all beings, through all the realms of nature; and not merely a general flowing wisdom, for this flowing wisdom is differentiated into a profusion of spiritual beings, into the profusion of the Spirits of, Wisdom. When occult consciousness raises itself to these spirits, it is at first the highest stage of those spiritual beings whom we can reach in this manner; but just as we could say that the beings of the Third Hierarchy, the Angels, Archangels, and Spirits of the Age — have offspring who separate from them, so, too, the beings of the Second Hierarchy have offspring. In the course of time there are detached from the beings of the Second Hierarchy, in the same way as we were able to describe yesterday with regard to the beings of the Third Hierarchy, other beings of a lower order who are sent down into the kingdoms of nature, just as the nature-spirits by the Third Hierarchy who then become, as it were, the master-builders and foremen in miniature in the Kingdom of Nature. — Now the spiritual beings which are detached from the beings of the Second Hierarchy and which sink down into the kingdoms of nature, are those designated in occultism as the group-souls of the plants and animals, the group-souls of the individual beings. So that occult vision of the second stage finds in the beings of the plant and animal kingdoms, spiritual beings which are not, as in man, individual spirits in individual human beings; but we find groups of animals, groups of plants which are of like form, ensouled by a common spiritual being. The form of the lion and tiger and other forms are, for instance, ensouled by a common Soul-being. These we call group-souls, and these group-souls are the detached offspring of the beings of the Second Hierarchy, just as the nature-spirits are the offspring of the Third Hierarchy. Thus when we penetrate from below upwards into the higher worlds, we find, when we look at the elements, which are of importance to all the beings of the plant and animal kingdoms and to the human kingdom, that in these elements, in solid, fluidic, and gaseous matter, there rule the nature-spirits which are the offspring of the beings of the Third Hierarchy. If we ascend from the elements of earth, water, and air, to that which lives in the nature kingdoms by the aid of these elements, we find spiritual beings, group-souls, who animate and interpenetrate the beings of these nature-kingdoms, and these group-souls are spiritual beings detached from those we call the beings of the Second Hierarchy.

1912-04-13-GA346

see: Spirits of rotation of time#1912-04-13-GA136

1917-04-12-GA175

synopsis extract

Botany and moral judgements. Goethe-Schiller meeting and the archetypal plant. Schelvers’ view on plant reproduction: a-sexual reproduction the natural process. Goethe deplores emphasis on sexual reproduction in plant kingdom. The plant kingdom and kingdom of cold-blooded animals unable to fulfil their original potentialities. Deterioration in the kingdoms of nature due to man who succumbed to the Luciferic temptation.

1917-04-14-GA175

Goethe and botany. His perception of the “Idea” behind phenomena, of the spirit present in the plant kingdom. Approved of Schelver's belief that plant reproduction was originally a-sexual.

1922-07-22-GA213

describes the link between the form of the plants on earth, and the constellations of the fixed stars.

See also Elisabeth Vreede who discusses this lecture (references below), and goes into the 'lilly and tulip' topic of the two archetype classes of blossom formation:

• lily: calyx that opens itself (re eg constellation 'Corona Borealis' between Hercules en Bootes)
• tulip: calyx that closes itself (re eg constellation 'Lyra' between Cygnus and Hercules)

1923-10-31-GA351

It will be well if we speak about the whole plant. The health of men is completely dependent on the growth of plants and therefore we must know what really is involved .. it is well that you should understand the whole question of the growth of plants.

The plant grows out of the ground—I will represent it today with reference to the question which has been put. (Dr. Steiner makes a sketch on the blackboard.) The root grows out of the seed. Let us first take a tree; we can then pass to the ordinary plants.

[tree]

[growth from the earth: stem - wood sap]

We take a tree: the stem grows up. This growth is very remarkable. This stem which grows there, is really only formed because it lets sap mount from the Earth, and this sap in mounting carries up with it all kinds of salts and particles of earth; and so the stem becomes hard. When you look at the wood from the stem of a tree, you have a mounting sap, and this sap carries with it fine particles of earth, and all sorts of salts too, for instance, carbonate of soda, iron, etc., into the plants and this makes hard wood. The essential thing is that the sap mounts.

What happens, in reality? The earthy, the solid, becomes fluid! And we have an earthy-fluid substance mounting there. Then the fluid evaporates and the solid remains behind: that is the wood.

You see, this sap which mounts up in the tree, let us call it wood-sap, is not created there but is already contained everywhere in the Earth, so that the earth in this respect is really a great living being. This sap which mounts in the tree, is really present in the whole Earth: only in the Earth it is something special. It becomes in the tree what we see there. In the Earth it is in fact the sap which actually gives it life. For the Earth is really a living being; and that which mounts in the tree is in the whole Earth and through it the earth lives.

In the tree it loses its life-giving quality; it becomes merely a chemical; it has only chemical qualities.

So when you look at a tree, you must say to yourself: the earthy-fluidic in the tree—that has become chemical; underneath in the Earth it was still alive. So the wood-sap has partly died, as it mounted up in the tree.

[ growth in the air - life-sap]

Were this all, never would a plant come into existence, but only stumps, dying at the top, in which chemical processes are at work. But the stem, formed from this sap, rises into the air, and the air always contains moisture. It comes into the moist air, it comes with the sap which has created it, from the earthy-fluidic into the fluidic-airy and life springs up in it anew so that around it green leaves appear and finally flowers. ... Again there is life.

You see, in the foliage, in the leaf, in the bud, in the blossom, there is once more the sap of life; the wood-sap is dead life-sap. In the stem, life is always dying; in the leaf it is always being resurrected. So that we must say: We have wood-sap, which mounts; then we have life-sap. And what does this do! It travels all round and brings forth the leaves everywhere: so that you can see the spirals in which the leaves are arranged. The living sap really circles round. It arises from the fluid-airy element into which the plant comes when it has grown out of the earthy-fluidic element.

The stem, the woody stem, is dead and only that which sprouts forth around the plant is alive. This you can easily prove in the following very simple way. Go to a tree: you have the stem, then the bark, and in the bark the leaves grow. Now cut the bark away at that point; the leaves come away too. At this point leave the leaves with the bark. The result is that there the tree remains fresh and living, and here it begins to die. The wood alone with its sap cannot keep the tree alive; what comes with the leaves must come from outside and that again contains life. We see in this way that the Earth can certainly put forth the tree, but she would have to let it die if it did not get life from the damp air: for in the tree the sap is only a chemical, no giver of life. The living sap that circulates, that gives it life.

And one can really say: When the sap rises in the spring, the tree is created anew; when the living sap again circulates in the spring, every year the tree's life is renewed. The Earth produces the sap from the earthy-fluidic; the fluidic-airy produces the living sap.

[cambium]

But that is not all. While this is happening, between the bark, still full of living sap, and the woody stem, there is formed a new layer. Now I cannot say that a sap is formed. I have already spoken of wood-sap, living sap, but I cannot again say that a sap is formed: for what is formed is quite solid: it is called cambium. It is formed between the bark which still belongs to the leaves, and the wood. When I cut here (see sketch) no cambium is formed. But the plant needs cambium too, in a certain way.

You see, the wood sap is formed in the earthy-fluidic, the life sap in the fluidic-airy, and the cambium in the warm air, in the warm damp, or the airy-warmth. The plant develops warmth while it takes up life from outside. This warmth goes inward and develops the cambium inside.

Or if the cambium does not yet develop - the plant needs cambium and you will shortly hear why - before the cambium forms, there is first of all developed a thicker substance: the plant gum.

Plants form this plant gum in their inner warmth, and this, under certain conditions, is a powerful means of healing.

Thus

• the sap carries the plant upwards,
• the leaves give the plant life,
• then the leaves by their warmth produce the gum which reacts on the warmth.

And in old plants, this gum, running down to the ground, has become transparent.

When the Earth was less dense and damper, the gum became transparent and turned to Amber.

[wikipedia:

• amber is fossilized tree resin
• resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant that is typically convertible into polymers. Plants secrete resins.
• pitch is a viscoelastic polymer (natural or manufactured) .. plant-derived pitch, a resin, is known as rosin in its solid form]

.

You see, then, when you take up a piece of amber, what from prehistoric plants ran down to the ground as resin and pitch. This the plant gives back to the Earth: pitch, resin, amber. And if the plant retains it, it becomes cambium.

[Again]

• Through the sap the plant is connected with the Earth;
• the life-sap brings the plant into connection with what circulates round the Earth - with the airy-moist circumference of the Earth.
• But the cambium brings the plant into connection with the stars, with what is above, and in such a way that within this cambium the form of the next plant develops. [re 1923-GA230 cycle Man as Symphony of the Creative Word]
• This passes over to the seeds and in this way the next plant is born, so that the stars indirectly through the cambium create the next plant! So that the plant is not merely created from the seed—that is to say, naturally it is created from the seed, but the seed must first be worked on by the cambium, that is: by the whole heavens.

It is really wonderful—a seed, a humble, modest little seed could only come into existence because the cambium—now not in liquid but in solid form—imitates the whole plant; and this form which arises there in the cambium—a new plant form—this carries the power to the seed to develop through the forces of the earth into a new plant.

Through mere speculation, when one simply puts the seed under a microscope, nothing is gained. We must be clear what parts the sap, the life sap, the cambium, play in the whole matter.

• The wood sap is a relatively thin sap: it is peculiarly fitted to allow chemical changes to take place in it.
• The life sap is certainly much thicker, it separates off its gum. If you make the gum rather thick, you can make wonderful figures with it. Thus the life sap, more pliable than the wood sap, clings more to the plant-form.
• And then it gives this up entirely to the cambium. That is still thicker, indeed quite sticky, but still fluid enough to take the forms which are given it by the stars.

.

[plants]

So it is with trees, and so, too, with the ordinary plants.

When the rootlet is in the Earth, the sprout shoots upward. But it does not separate off the solid matter, does not make wood; it remains like a cabbage stalk. The leaves come out directly on the circumference, in spirals, the cambium is formed directly in the interior, and the cambium takes everything back to the Earth with it.

So that in the annual plants the whole process occurs much more quickly. In the tree, only the hard parts are separated out, and not everything is destroyed.

[tree]

The same process occurs in ordinary plants too, but is not carried so far as in trees. In the tree it is a fairly complicated matter. When you look at the tree from above, you have first the pith inside: this gives the direction. Then layers of wood form round the pith. Towards the autumn the gum appears from the other side, and fastens the layers together.

So we have the gummy wood of one year. In the next year this is repeated. Wood forms somewhere else, is again gummed together in the autumn, and so the yearly rings are formed.

So you see everything clearly if only you understand that there are three things: wood sap, life sap, and cambium.

• The wood sap is the most fluid, it is really a chemical;
• the life sap is the giver of life; it is really, if I may so express myself, a living thing.
• And as for the cambium, there the whole plant is sketched out from the stars.

It is really so. The wood sap rises and dies, then life again arises; and now comes the influence of the stars, so that from the thick, sticky cambium the new plant is sketched out. In the cambium one has a sketch, a sculptural activity. The stars model in it from the whole universe the complete plant form. So you see, we come from life into the spirit. What is modelled there is modelled from out of the world-spirit. The earth first gives up her life to the plant, the plant dies, the air environment along with its light once more gives it life, and the world-spirit implants the new plant form. This is preserved in the seed and grows again in the same way. So that one sees in the growing plant how the plant world rises out of the earth, through death, to the living spirit.

...

[in Man]

For everything that works in the plant and passes over from the plant to the Man, is of great importance.

• Wood sap develops in Man as the ordinary colourless mucus. Wood sap in plants is, in Man, mucus. [wikipedia: mucus is a thin, clear liquid consisting of water, salts, and protective immune cells. It lines many parts of the body, including the mouth, sinuses, eyes, stomach, and even the intestines. It's also produced in the lungs and the lower respiratory tract. We often refer to this type of mucus as phlegm or sputum]
• The life sap of the plant which circulates from the leaves, corresponds to the human blood.
• And the cambium of the plant corresponds to the milk and the chyle in the human being.

[milk]

When a woman begins to nurse, certain glands in the breast cause a greater flow of milk. Here you have again something in human beings which is most strongly influenced by the stars, namely, milk. Milk is absolutely necessary for the development of the brain—the brain, one might almost say, is solidified milk.

[impact of .. ]

Decaying leaves create no proper cambium because they no longer have the power to work back into the proper warmth. They let the warmth escape outwards from the dying edges instead of sending it inwards. We eat these plants with an improperly developed cambium: they do not develop a proper milk; the women do not produce proper milk; the children get milk on which the stars cannot work strongly, and therefore they cannot develop properly.

1923-GA230

part three covers 'The Plant World and the Elemental Spirits' in three lectures:

1923-11-02-GA230

synopsis

Mystery of plant life:

• Gnomes, which work in roots, are sense organs in which perceiving and comprehending are one. They despise human logic. Through the plant they gaze at the forces of the universe while remaining connected with the earth. The earth threatens them with the danger of becoming frogs or toads.
• Undines or water-spirits work in leaf formation, living in the moist air. They dream the chemistry of plant life. Their fear is to become fish.
• Sylphs live in warm air, especially in air movement caused by birds, which give them a feeling of ego. They bear cosmic love through the atmosphere, and are light-bearers, weaving archetypal plant forms out of light, which later fall down to the gnomes.
• Salamanders or fire spirits live in light-warmth which they carry to the blossoms in the pollen, which in turn the stamens carry to the seed-bud. All this is a male process.
• Fructification takes place in winter when seeds meet the ideal plant forms received by the gnomes. Goethe's instinctive feeling for this.
• Fire spirits feel their I in connection with insects which actually live in their aura. Hence comes the power of butterflies to spiritualise matter. Gnomes and undines bear gravity forces of earth upwards to meet light and warmth sent down by sylphs and salamanders.

the following key section of ethers activity

After it has passed through the sphere of the sylphs, the plant comes into the sphere of the elemental fire-spirits. These fire-spirits are the inhabitants of the warmth-light element. When the warmth of the earth is at its height, or is otherwise suitable, they gather the warmth together. Just as the sylphs gather up the light, so do the fire-spirits gather up the warmth and carry it into the blossoms of the plants. Undines carry the action of the chemical ether into the plants, sylphs the action of the light-ether into the plant's blossoms. And the pollen now provides what may be called little air-ships, to enable the fire-spirits to carry the warmth into the seed. Everywhere warmth is collected with the help of the stamens, and is carried by means of the pollen from the anthers to the seeds and the seed vessels. And what is formed here in the seed-bud is entirely the male element which comes from the cosmos. It is not a case of the seed-vessel being female and the anthers of the stamens being male. In no way does fructification occur in the blossom, but only the pre-forming of the male seed. The fructifying force is what the fire-spirits in the blossom take from the warmth of the world-all as the cosmic male seed, which is united with the female element. This element, drawn from the forming of the plant has already earlier seeped down into the ground as ideal form, and is resting there below. For plants the earth is the mother, the heavens the father. And all that takes place outside the domain of the earth is not the mother-womb for the plant. It is a colossal error to believe that the mother-principle of the plant is in the seed-bud. The fact is that this is the male-principle, which is drawn forth from the universe with the aid of the fire-spirits. The mother comes from the cambium, which spreads from the bark to the wood, and is carried down from above as ideal form. And what now results from the combined working of gnome-activity and fire-spirit activity — this is fructification. The gnomes are, in fact, the spiritual midwives of plant-reproduction. Fructification takes place below in the earth during the winter, when the seed comes into the earth and meets with the forms which the gnomes have received from the activities of the sylphs and undines and now carry to where these forms can meet with the fructifying seeds.

1923-11-03-GA230

• Late evolved creatures, corresponding to head evolution in man, lack a bone system and are spiritually completed by gnomes. Gnomes form their bodies out of gravity. The acuteness of their attention to the world. They are masked behind our dreams.
• Undines support animals requiring a bony covering.
• Sylphs supply the limb-system to birds.
• Fire spirits complete butterflies in their bodily nature. The butterfly, with its fire spirit, resembles a winged man. Fire beings stand behind waking consciousness and thoughts.
• Malicious gnomes and undines produce parasites. Malicious sylphs produce poisons, e.g. bella donna. Fire spirits and poisonous almonds.

1923-11-04-GA230

• For the gnomes solid earth is hollow and offers no resistance. They experience the different qualities of its substances. Their relation to the moon, and their different appearance at its phases. Their work in carrying over the hard structure from one manifestation to another. Undines and sylphs find their true life in death.
• Undines assimilate the colours of phosphorescent water, and offer themselves to the hierarchies.
• The sylphs carry the astrality of dying birds to the hierarchies.
• The fire beings do the same with the gleaming of the warmth ether on the butterflies' wings. All four classes of elemental beings are astonished at man's lack of awareness in sleep. They speak to man in admonishment. Their sayings, which form part of the creative Word.

1924-02-16-GA235

Study the plant kingdom, the sphere of living things. Study the plant in a real way, and we shall find that we are never able to account for the effects merely from causes which lie within the plant kingdom — in the same kingdom where the effects occur. No doubt, there is a science nowadays which tries to do so, but it is in a blind-alley! It is at last obliged to say: “We can investigate the physical and also the chemical forces and laws at work in the plant. Something is then left over ...” And at this point they diverge, so to speak, into two parties. On the one hand are those who say: “What is left over is a mere synthesis — a kind of form. The physical and chemical laws are the sole effective principle.” “No,” say the others, “there is something more, which science has not yet discovered, but it will do so no doubt in time.” — They will go on speaking like this for a long while yet. For it is not so. If you wish to make research into the plant kingdom you cannot understand it without summoning the whole universe to your aid. You must perceive that the forces for the plant-activity lie in the wide universe. All that takes place in the plant is an effect of the great universe. Before any effects can take place in plant-life, the sun must come into a certain position in the universe. And other forces too must work from the wide universe, to give the plant its form, its inner forces of growth and so on.

Now, if we were able — not in a Jules Verne — fashion, but in reality — to travel say to the moon or to the sun, there too we should not be much wiser in our quest of causes than we are on earth, if we acquired no other faculties of knowledge than those we now possess. We should not reach our goal merely by saying, “Well and good: the causes of effects occurring in the plant kingdom of the earth are not to be found in this kingdom on the earth itself. Let us therefore go to the sun; there we shall find the causes.” No, not at all, there too we shall not find them with the ordinary faculties of knowledge. We find them however when we work our way up to Imaginative Cognition — i.e. when we possess quite a new faculty of knowledge. But then we do not need to travel to the sun; we find them in the earth-domain itself. Only we have to pass from “one world” into another; from the everyday physical into the etheric, the ether-world. In the wide universal spaces on every hand, the cosmic ether with its forces is working. It works inward from the wide spaces. The ether is working in on every hand, from the wide spaces.

DIAGRAM

Thus, if we wish to find the causes of the effects in the plant in this kingdom, we must actually pass into a second realm of the universe.

Now man also partakes in what the plant partakes in. The forces working into the plants out of the ether-world, work also into man. Man carries in himself the etheric forces, and we describe the sum-total of these etheric forces which he carries within him, as the human ether-body. I have already told you how the ether-body goes on expanding for a few days after man's death, and how at last it loses itself, so that the human being remains over only in his astral body and his Ego-being.

That which man carried with him etherically, becomes ever larger and larger and loses itself in world-wide distances.

And now once more: compare what we can see of man after his passage through the gate of death, with that which we see in the plant kingdom. Of the plant kingdom we must say: its causative forces come in to the earth from the widths of space. Of the human ether-body we must say: its forces go outward into the widths of space. That is, they go whence the forces of plant-growth come — as soon as man has passed through the gate of death.

Here it already becomes clearer. When we observe only the physical corpse, though we recognise that it becomes lifeless, we do not find it easy to relate it to the rest of lifeless Nature. When on the other hand we consider the living kingdom of plants, when we become aware how the causes, the forces for the plant-kingdom come inward from the ether of cosmic space, then — as we enter with spiritual imagination into the human being — we perceive that with man's passage through the gate of death the human ether-body goes thither, whence come the forces, the ether-forces, for the plant kingdom.

Now there is another characteristic. The causative forces that affect the plants, work comparatively quickly. The day before yesterday's sun has little influence upon the plant as it springs from the soil or receives blossom and fruit. The day before yesterday's sun can have little effect today with all its causes. To take effect today, it must shine today. This point is important; mark it well. You will presently see how important it is.

The plants with their etheric causes have, it is true, their actual fundamental forces within the earthly realm, but they have them in the universe simultaneously with the earth.

And when man as a soul-and-spirit being has passed through the gate of death, when the human ether-body dissolves, this again lasts but a short time — only a few days. Here again you have simultaneity. For the duration of the world-process, the few days are a mere trifle. Thus, when the human ether-body returns to where the forces for plant growth — the ether-forces — come from we, can say: As soon as man is living in the ether, his etheric activity is not restricted to the earth (for on the contrary, it leaves the earth), nevertheless, it develops simultaneously. Hence I may write you this scheme:

• Mineral Kingdom; Simultaneity of causes and effects within the physical.

Yes, you will say, but surely the causes of some things that take place in the physical are antecedent in time. No, it is not so in reality. For any effects to arise in the physical, the causes must continue working. As soon as the causes cease working, no more effects will occur.

And when we come into the plant kingdom (and the same will apply to the plant-nature which we can trace in man himself), there we have simultaneity in the physical and in the superphysical, so we may write:

• Plant Kingdom; Simultaneity of causes in the physical and superphysical.

1924-06-07-GA327

continuation from Working of substances and their forces#1924-06-07-GA327 on silica and lime, re Working of substances and their forces#silica and lime

If forces come into the Earth from Moon, Venus and Mercury and become effective in the life of plants, by what means can the process be more or lese quickened or restrained? By what means can the influences of Moon or Saturn on the life of plants be hindered, and by what means assisted?

Observe the course of the year.

[more or less rain and water]

It takes its course in such a way that there are days of rain and days without rain. As to the rain, the modern physicist investigates practically no more than the mere fact that when it rains, more water falls upon the Earth than when it does not rain. For him, the water is an abstract substance composed of hydrogen and oxygen. True, if you decompose water by electrolysis, it will fall into two substances, of which the one behaves in such and such a way, and the other in another way. But that does not yet tell us anything complete about water itself. Water contains far, far more than what emerges from it chemically, in this process, as oxygen and hydrogen.

Water, in effect, is eminently suited to prepare the ways within the earthly domain for those forces which come, for instance, from the Moon. Water brings about the distribution of the lunar forces in the earthly realm. There is a definite connection between the Moon and the water in the Earth. Let us therefore assume that there have just been rainy days and that these are followed by a full Moon. In deed and in truth, with the forces that come from the Moon on days of the full Moon, something colossal is taking place on Earth. These forces spring up and shoot into all the growth of plants, but they are unable to do so unless rainy days have gone before.

We shall therefore have to consider the question: Is it not of some significance, whether we sow the seed in a certain relation to the rainfall and the subsequent light of the full Moon, or whether we sow it thoughtlessly at any time?

Something, no doubt, will come of it even then. Nevertheless, we have to raise this question: How should we best consider the rainfall and the full Moon in choosing the time to sow the seed?

For in certain plants, what the full Moon has to do will thrive intensely after rainy days and will take place but feebly and sparingly after days of sunshine. Such things lay hidden in the old farmers' rules; they quoted a certain verse or proverb and knew what they must do. The proverbs to-day are outworn superstitions, and a science of these things does not yet exist; people are not yet willing enough to set to work and find it.

[more or less warmth in the air of atmosphere]

Furthermore, around our Earth is the atmosphere. Now the atmosphere above all—beside the obvious fact that it is airy—has the peculiarity that it is sometimes warmer, sometimes cooler. At certain times it shows a considerable accumulation of warmth, which, when the tension grows too strong, may even find relief in thunderstorms. How is it then with the warmth?

Spiritual observation shows that whereas the water has no relation to silica, this warmth has an exceedingly strong relation to it.

The warmth brings out and makes effective precisely those forces which can work through the silicious nature, namely, the forces that proceed from Saturn, Jupiter and Mars.

These forces must be regarded in quite a different way than the forces from the Moon. For we must not forget that Saturn takes thirty years to revolve round the Sun, whereas the Moon with its phases takes only thirty or twenty-eight days. Saturn is only visible for fifteen years. It must therefore be connected with the growth of plants in quite a different way, albeit, I need hardly say, it is not only working when it shines down upon the Earth; it is also effective when its rays have to pass upward through the Earth.

Saturn goes slowly round, in thirty years. Let us draw it thus (Diagram 1): here is the course of Saturn.

• Sometimes it shines directly on to a given spot of the Earth.
• But it can also work through the Earth upon this portion of the Earth's surface.

In either case the intensity with which the Saturn-forces are able to approach the plant life of the Earth is dependent on the warmth-conditions of the air. When the air is cold, they cannot approach; when the air is warm, they can.

And where do we see the working of these forces in the plant's life?

We see it, not so much where annual plants arise, coming and going in a season and only leaving seeds behind. We see what Saturn does with the help of the warmth-forces of our Earth, whenever the perennial plants arise. The effects of these forces, which pass into the plant-nature via the warmth, are visible to us in the rind and bark of trees, and in all that makes the plants, perennial.

This is due to the simple fact that

• the annual life of the plant—its limitation to a short length of life—is connected with those planets whose period of revolution is short.
• That, on the other hand, which frees itself from the transitory nature—that which surrounds the trees with bark and rind, and makes them permanent—is connected with the planetary forces which work via the forces of warmth and cold and have a long period of revolution, as in the case of Saturn: thirty years; or Jupiter: twelve years.

If someone wishes to plant an oak, it is of no little importance whether or no he has a good knowledge of the periods of Mars; for an oak, rightly planted in the proper Mars-period, will thrive differently from one that is planted in the Earth thoughtlessly, just when it happens to suit.

Or, if you wish to plant coniferous forests, where the Saturn-forces play so great a part, the result will be different if you plant the forest in a so-called ascending period of Saturn, or in some other Saturn period.

One who understands can tell precisely, from the things that will grow or will not grow, whether or not they have been planted with an understanding of the connections of these forces. That which does not appear obvious to the external eye, appears very clearly, none the less, in the more intimate relationships of life.

1924-06-15-GA327

To understand the tree, we must say:

• There is the thick tree trunk (and in a sense the boughs and branches still belong to this).
• Out of all this the real plant grows forth. Leaves, flowers and fruit grow out of this; they are the real plant—rooted in the trunk and branches of the tree, as the herbaceous plants and cereals are rooted in the Earth.

Here the question will at once arise: Is this “plant” which grows on the tree—and which is therefore describable as a parasitic growth, more or less—is it actually rooted?

An actual root is not to be found in the tree. To understand the matter rightly, we must say: This plant which grows on the tree—unfolding up there its flowers and leaves and stems—has lost its roots. But a plant is not whole if it has no roots. It must have a root. Therefore we must ask ourselves: Where is the root of this plant?

The point is simply that the root is invisible to crude external observation. In this case we must not merely want to see a root we must understand what a root is.

[image sketch]

A comparison will help us forward here. Suppose I were to plant in the soil a whole number of herbaceous plants, very near together, so that their roots intertwined, and merged with one another—the one root winding round the other, until it all become a regular mush of roots, merging one into another. As you can well imagine, such a complex of roots would not allow itself to remain a mere tangle; it would grow organised into a single entity. Down there in the soil the saps and fluids would flow into one another. There would be an organised root-complex—roots flowing into one another. We could not distinguish where the several roots began or ended. A common root-being would arise for these plants (Diagram 15).

So it would be. No such thing need exist in reality, but this illustration will enable us to understand. Here is the soil of the earth: here I insert all my plants. Down there, all the roots coalesce, until they form a regular surface—a continuous root-stratum. Once more, you would not know where the one root begins and the other ends.

[in the tree: cambium]

Now the very thing I have here sketched as an hypothesis is actually present in the tree. The plant which grows on the free has lost its root. Relatively speaking, it is even separated from its root - only it is united with it, as it were, in a more ethereal way. What I have hypothetically sketched on the board is actually there in the tree, as the cambium layer - the cambium. That is how we must regard the roots of these plants that grow out of the tree: they are replaced by the cambium. Although the cambium does not look like roots, it is the living, growing layer, constantly forming new cells, so that the plant-life of the tree grows out of it, just as the life of a herbaceous plant grows up above out of the root below.

Here, then, is the tree with its cambium layer, the growing formative layer, which is able to create plant-cells. (The other layers in the free would not be able to create fresh cells). Now you can thoroughly see the point.

In the tree with its cambium or formative layer, the earth-realm itself is actually bulged out; it has grown outward into the airy regions. And having thus grown outward into the air, it needs more inwardness, more intensity of life, than the Earth otherwise has, i.e. than it has where the ordinary root is in it. Now we begin to understand the tree. In the first place, we understand it as a strange entity whose function is to separate the plants that grow upon it—stem, blossom and fruit—from their roots, uniting them only through the spirit, that is, through the ethereal.

We must learn to look with macrocosmic intelligence into the mysteries of growth. But it goes still further. For I now beg you observe: What happens through the fact that a free comes into being? It is as follows:

That which encompasses the tree has a different plant-nature in the air and outer warmth than that which grows in air and warmth immediately on the soil, unfolding the herbaceous plant that springs out of the Earth directly (Diagram 16). Once more, it is a different plant-world. For it is far more intimately related to the surrounding astrality.

Down here, the astrality in air and warmth is expelled, so that the air and warmth may become mineral for the sake of man and animal. Look at a plant growing directly out of the soil. True, it is hovered-around, enshrouded in an astral cloud. Up there, however, round about the tree, the astrality is far denser. Once more, it is far denser. Our trees are gatherings of astral substance; quite clearly, they are gatherers of astral substance.

[experience]

In this realm it is easiest of all for one to attain to a certain higher development. If you make the necessary effort, you can easily become esoteric in these spheres. I do not say clairvoyant, but you can easily become clair-sentient with respect to the sense of smell, especially if you acquire a certain sensitiveness to the diverse aromas that proceed from plants growing on the soil, and on the other hand from fruit-tree plantations—even if only in the blossoming stage—and from the woods and forests!

Then you will feel the difference between

• a plant-atmosphere poor in astrality, such as you can smell among the herbaceous plants growing on the earth,
• and a plant-world rich in astrality such as you have in your nostrils when you sniff what is so beautifully wafted from the treetops.

Accustom yourself to specialise your sense of smell—to distinguish, to differentiate, to individualise, as between the scent of earthly plants and the scent of trees. Then, in the former case you will become clair-sentient to a thinner astrality, and in the latter case to a denser astrality. You see, the farmer can easily become clair-sentient. Only in recent times he has male less use of this than in the time of the old clairvoyance. The countryman, as I said, can become clair-sentient with regard to the sense of smell.

[cambium]

Let us observe where this will lead us. We must now ask: What of the polar opposite, the counterpart of that richer astrality which the plant—parasitically growing on the tree—brings about in the neighbourhood of the tree? In other words, what happens by means of the cambium? What does the cambium itself do?

Far, far around, the tree makes the spiritual atmosphere inherently richer in astrality. What happens, then, when the herbaceous life grows out of the tree up yonder? The tree has a certain inner vitality or ethericity; it has a certain intensity of life.

Now the cambium damps down this life a little more, so that it becomes slightly more mineral. While, up above, a rich astrality arises all around the tree, the cambium works in such a way that, there within, the ethericity is poorer.

Within the tree arises poverty of ether as compared to the plant. Once more, here within, it will be somewhat poorer in ether. And as, through the cambium, a relative poverty of ether is engendered in the tree, the root in its turn will be influenced.

All this you must clearly envisage. Now whatever arises in this way will always involve something of deep significance in the household of Nature as a whole. Let us then enquire: what is the inner significance, for Nature, of the astral richness in the tree's environment above, and the etheric poverty in the realm of the free-roots?

We only need look about us, and we can find how these things work themselves out in Nature's household. The fully developed insect, in effect, lives and moves by virtue of this rich astrality which is wafted through the tree-tops.

Take, on the other hand, what becomes poorer in ether, down below in the soil. (This poverty of ether extends, of course, throughout the tree, for the spiritual always works through the whole, as I explained yesterday when speaking of human karma). That which is poorer in ether, down below, works through the larvae. Thus, if the earth had no trees, there would be no insects on the earth. The trees make it possible for the insects to be. The insects fluttering around the parts of the tree which are above the earth—fluttering around the woods and forests as a whole—they have their very life through the existence of the woods. Their larvae, too, live by the very existence of the woods.

Here you have a further indication of the inner relationship between the root-nature and the sub-terrestrial animal world. From the tree we can best learn what I have now explained; here it becomes most evident. But the fast is: What becomes very evident in the tree is present in a more delicate way throughout the whole plant-world. In every plant there is a certain tendency to become tree-like. In every plant, the root with its environment strives to let go the ether; while that which grows upward tends to draw in the astral more densely. The free-becoming tendency is there is every plant.

1924-08-09-GA354

.. since the universe is filled with the gaseous substance we perceive in the zodiacal light, this universe would be found to be emitting all kinds of different smells if organs of smell existed. It would have no picture of these stars like that transmitted through the eyes, but it would get the sun smell, the moon smell, the Saturn smell, the Mars smell, the Venus smell.

If there were such creatures, they would be guided by what the spirit inscribed in the smell of the cosmic gas, by what the spirit of Venus, Mercury, Sun, Moon inscribes into world existence. Such beings do exist. There are beings that can actually smell the universe: namely, the plants. The plants smell the universe and adapt themselves accordingly.

• What does the violet do? The violet is really all nose, a very, very delicate nose. The violet is beautifully aware of what streams from Mercury and forms its scent-body accordingly, while
• the asafetida has a delicate perception of what streams from Saturn and forms its gas-body accordingly, having thereby an offensive odor. [editor: asafoetida is the dried latex exuded from the rhizome or tap root of several species of Ferula, perennial herbs of the carrot family. It is produced in Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, northern India, and Northwest China. Different regions have different botanical sources.]

.

And so it is that every being in the plant world is perceiving the smells that come from the planetary world.

And so we can say when we smell a violet: this violet is really all nose — but a delicate nose, inhaling the cosmic scent of Mercury. It holds the scent, as I have indicated, between its solid parts and exhales it; then the scent is dense enough for us to be able to smell it. So when Mercury comes toward us through the violet, we smell Mercury.

If with our coarse noses we were to sniff toward Saturn, we would smell nothing. But when the asafetida, which has a keen nose for Saturn, sniffs toward that planet, it smells what comes from it, adapts its gas content accordingly, and has a most foul odor.

And so in very truth the fragrances of heaven come to us out of the plants.

About plant reproduction- pollination and fertilization

the section below was taken from web page (creative commons, non commercial sharing) with title 'Plant reproduction- pollination and fertilization' by Daniela Dutra Elliott & Paula Mejia Velasquez. Adapted, shortened and SWCC.

[introduction]

The process of sexual reproduction in plants consists of the following chronological steps:

1. Production of flowers
2. Pollination
3. Fertilization (produces seeds)
4. Formation of fruits

As with animals, for sexual reproduction to happen in plants the sperm needs to join the egg. The sperm of plants is contained in the pollen grains, therefore the pollen must be transferred to another plant for sexual reproduction to take place. Since plants cannot walk to find a mate, they have to use other means of bringing the pollen to the egg.

[pollination]

Pollination is defined as the transfer of pollen from the male part of a flower to the female part of the flower, usually the flower on another plant. Some species of plants will self-pollinate (pollen is transferred to the stigma of the same flower); however, the majority of flowering plants out-cross (are pollinated by another plant). This interchange of genetic material, a characteristic of sexual reproduction, increases diversity in the population. Genetic diversity is important because that’s how plants can adapt to new challenges. If all plants in a population have the same genetic makeup (clones), as is the case with plants that reproduce mainly asexually (e.g. bananas), they may all get killed by a disease. However, if some plants in the population have a different gene that provides resistance to that disease, they will survive and be able to pass on their genetic material to their offspring. Flowers provide a clear advantage to flowering plants, allowing them to reproduce sexually. This is one of the reasons why flowering plants are so successful and are the dominant group of plants in most of the terrestrial ecosystems on our planet.

In some plants, like pine trees, the pollen is transported by water or by wind. This strategy is very energy-consuming for the plant, as it requires the plant to produce millions of pollen grains to ensure that at least some of them will reach a nearby female flower of another plant. Flowering plants have evolved an innovative strategy where they enlist the help of animals to transfer the pollen to the female parts. Through this strategy plants do not need to produce as much pollen, since pollinators will visit the same type of plant, ensuring the successful transfer of pollen to the right target. However, the plant will likely have to produce other substances, like nectar, to attract pollinators.

Insects are the most famous pollinators, with bees and butterflies attracting most human attention. However, some plant species are pollinated by birds, bats, or even lizards. Some plants have coevolved with certain animals for millions of years, forming some unique pollination strategies.

[process of fertilization]

Once the pollen that is brought in by a pollinator comes in contact with the stigma of the flower, a pollen tube grows down into the style of the flower. The tube elongates to reach the ovary, where it releases two sperm cells. One of these sperm cells will find the ovule (egg) and it will fertilize it to form the zygote.

Fertilization is the fusion of the male and female reproductive cells (gametes), forming a zygote and eventually an embryo (baby plant). Flowering plants have a unique process of fertilization, called double fertilization, where through the process of fertilization they produce an embryo as well as an energy pack to feed the embryo (endosperm).

The process in the simplest terms goes as follows: one of the two sperm cells that were released from the pollen grains and delivered to the ovary via the pollen tube will join the egg to give rise to an embryo, while the other sperm cell will fuse with a structure, found inside of the plant egg, called the polar nucleus giving rise to a nutritive tissue called the endosperm. Both embryo and endosperm are located inside the seed. The endosperm is important because it is the energy reserve that the embryo will use to grow during the germination process.

Astral body of plants around the Earth

1907-12-04-GA098

The following extract from comes from a lecture on The Elementary kingdoms

Within the plant are active both the Plant I (which permeates the etheric and astral bodies) and these Beings of the second Elementary Kingdom. Whereas the I of the plants works upon the plant from within, these other Beings work upon it from without — forming it, making it grow and blossom. The whole plant is permeated by an etheric body. But it does not possess an astral body of its own; instead the entire astral body of the Earth forms the common astral body of the plants. The I of the plants is to be found at the center of the earth. This is true for all plants.

1910-12-08-GA060

lecture called: The spirit in the realm of the plants

If we pay heed to this, we receive a science — as seems appropriate for the plant world that we love and that gives us so much joy — a science that can at the same time raise our soul, bring it close to this plant world. With our soul and spirit we feel ourselves belonging to the earth and to the sun; we feel as if we had to look up to the plant world, as it were, we feel that it belongs to our great mother earth. We must do this. Everything that as animal or human being seems to be independent of the immediate effect of the sun is actually, through the plant world and its dependence on the plant world, indirectly dependent on the sun.

The human being does not undergo the kinds of transformations that plants go through in winter and summer, but it is the plant that gives him the possibility of having such a constancy within himself. The substances that the plant develops can be developed only under the influence of the sun, through the interrelationship of sun spirit and earth spirit. The carbohydrates can arise only if the sun spirit and the earth spirit kiss through the plant being. The substances developed here yield what the higher organisms must take into themselves in order to develop warmth. The higher organisms can only thrive through the warmth developed by taking up the substances prepared by the sun via the plants.

Thus we must look to mother earth as to our great nourishing mother. We have seen, however, that in the plant covering we have the physiognomy of the plant spirit, and through this we feel as though standing in soul and spirit. We gaze, as it were — just as we gaze into the eyes of another person — into the soul of the earth, if we understand how it manifests its soul in the blossoms and leaves of the plant world.

1922-07-02-GA213

(SWCC)

If I am to sketch it diagrammatically, it will be somewhat like this (a drawing is made on the blackboard):

Here is the earth, with some accumulation of slate-formation on it, and then the plants growing out of the earth towards the outer universe. Spatially, the plants need by no means coincide with the slate-formation, just as, for instance, a thought, which is based on the instrument of the brain, need not coincide with a movement of the big toe. We are not concerned here with spatial coincidence, but with apprehending the nature of the slate-formation when we try to do so not only through chemical and physical examination, but also through penetrating to the essence of this slaty formation by means of spiritual investigation. Then we shall come to the conclusion: If the forces inherent in slaty matter were to act upon the earth only by themselves, they would have to be connected with a condition of life which develops in precisely the same way as the plant-world.

The plant-world develops in such a way that it represents only physical corporeality, etheric corporeality; that is, in the actual plants themselves. But when we come to the astral element of the plant-world, we must imagine this astral element of the plant-world as an astral atmosphere which encompasses the earth. The plants themselves have no astral bodies, but the earth is enveloped in an astral atmosphere, and this astrality plays an important part, in the process of the unfolding of blossom and fruit. The terrestrial plant-world as a whole, therefore, has one uniform, common astral body which nowhere interpenetrates the plant itself, except at most in a very slight degree when fructification begins in the blossom. Generally speaking, it floats cloud-like over the vegetation and stimulates blossom and fruit formation.

What unfolds here would fall into decay but for the astral forces which emanate from the rock-material of the slate-formation. Thus we have in the slate-formation all that which tends to turn the whole earth into one organism. Indeed, we must see the relation of the plants to the earth as being similar to that of our hair to ourselves, as being of one and the same order. And what holds this whole organisation of the world together are the forces that radiate from the rock-material of the slate-formation.

the longer extract belows is just an excerpt from the description of the relation with slate formation

The plant-world develops in such a way that it represents only physical corporeality, etheric corporeality; that is, in the actual plants themselves. But when we come to the astral element of the plant-world, we must imagine this astral element of the plant-world as an astral atmosphere which encompasses the earth. The plants themselves have no astral bodies, but the earth is enveloped in an astral atmosphere, and this astrality plays an important part, for instance, in the process of the unfolding of blossom and fruit. The terrestrial plant-world as a whole, therefore, has one uniform, common astral body which nowhere interpenetrates the plant itself, except at most in a very slight degree when fructification begins in the blossom. Generally speaking, it floats cloud-like over the vegetation and stimulates blossom and fruit formation.

What unfolds here would fall into decay but for the astral forces which emanate from the rock-material of the slate-formation. Thus we have in the slate-formation all that which tends to turn the whole earth into one organism. Indeed, we must see the relation of the plants to the earth as being similar to that of our hair to ourselves, as being of one and the same order. And what holds this whole organisation of the world together are the forces that radiate from the rock-material of the slate-formation.

...

The plant-life of the earth would tend to spread with over-exuberance into outer cosmic space were it not kept in check by the radiations from the mineral-forces of the slate-formation. One day, people will have to study from this point of view a living geography and geology of the earth; it will be realised that a study of what constitutes the skeleton of the earth, as it were, must be pursued not only from the geological angle, but in relation to the being of the earth as a whole; in relation, also, to its organic life and its nature of soul-and-spirit.

Now the entire plant-world is intimately bound up with the sun-forces, with solar action. The effects produced by the sun are not confined to the emanations of warmth and light radiating from the etheric-physical rays of the sun, for the warmth and light are permeated through and through by spirit-and-soul. These forces of spirit-and-soul are allied with those pertaining to the slate-formation. That in a certain way everything of a slate-nature is spread all over the earth is connected with the fact that plant-life on the earth exists in manifold forms. The spatial aspect is — as I said — of no immediate importance; it must not be imagined, for example, that the slate-formation has to be here or there in order that plants may grow out of it. The radiations of the slate-formation stream out; they are carried all over the earth by all kinds of currents, especially magnetic currents, and on these earth-encircling radiations of the slate-formation, the plants live. Where, on the contrary, the slate-formation is in itself developed to the highest degree, plant-life cannot thrive today because there the life-forces of the plants are drawn too forcibly into the earthly element and therefore cannot unfold. There, the forces which fetter the plant to the earthly element are so overpowering that the unfolding of plant-life — in which the cosmic forces must also play their part — is prevented.

To account for the nature of the slaty element in the earth is possible, therefore, only if one can go back, in the sense in which it is described in my Occult Science, to the time when the earth itself had a Sun-existence. It was then that the slaty element within the earth was being prepared. At that time, when the earth had a Sun-existence, the physical part of the earth had advanced only to a state of sprouting plant-life. The Sun-existence was such that no definite plants or animal beings could develop there. Plants as they are today were non-existent, but the earth itself had a kind of plant-existence, and out of this plant-existence there emerged on one hand the plant-world, while on the other hand a hardening took place of what in the plant-world are also formative forces, a hardening into slate-formation.

When, however, we look at the lime-formation, it reveals itself to super-sensible vision as intimately connected with all that permeates animal existence on the earth with — shall I say — independence. The plant is tied to the ground, is connected with it, as our hair is connected with the skin on which it grows. The animal moves about. But the radiations of the lime-formation are connected less with this movement as such, which is a local movement, than with the independent build of the animal-form.

When you look at a plant you can see that with its root it turns earthwards; it grows into the earth — is, as it were, drawn towards the centre of the earth — and then unfolds outwards. The plant's structure gives a clear indication of its complete adaptation to earth-existence. Naturally, a more complicated plant form calls for a more complicated description, but on the whole it remains essentially the same. The plant is not independent. Where it enters the soil it contracts, unites itself with the earth; where it rises up it spreads out and turns towards the light that radiates in all directions. This structure of the plant is best understood if studied in connection with its intimate relation to the plant's position in respect of the earth.

1922-12-31-GA219

Man has evolved to a point when, by help of forces which of course are quite elemental, he has brought the I and astral body into companionship with his physical and etheric bodies. The mineral and vegetable world has not yet accomplished this.

The Earth's I and astral body surround the Earth with soul and spirit but do not permeate her mineral and vegetable activities. The mineral nature of the Earth, as observed by us, shows itself unable to let soul and spirit enter into it, and able only to let them surround it with light. The vegetable nature shows itself also unable to admit soul, but in a certain way the upper parts of the plant may be said to be touched with soul and spirit. Spiritual science gives us the following picture of a plant.

If I draw it with the root below, the stem in the middle and the blossom above, then I have to represent it as in contact with the astral world through its blossom. The astral world does not penetrate the plant; it merely touches it, and this touching is the origin of the blossom. The astral substance surrounding the Earth touches the uppermost portion of the plant, and the flower appears. I have often spoken of this in an analogy (which must of course be received with proper delicacy), saying that the flowering of the plant is the kiss exchanged between the Sun's light and the plant. It is an astral influence in which there is no more than a ‘touching.’

So that when we look into surrounding Nature, we do not see in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms exactly what we see in man. In ourselves as man we behold a mineral nature, a plant nature, an astral nature and an Ego nature, all belonging to one another. (We will leave the animals out for the time being and speak of them on some future occasion.) But we have to see in the mineral and vegetable world themselves that on which physical activity essentially depends. These worlds show themselves, in external Nature, altogether lacking in astral thought, as well as in self-conscious spiritual intelligence which is the product of the Ego. The latter are not to be found in the world outside, neither in the mineral nor in the plant. For mineral and plant are fundamentally results of the past.

Blossoms

1922-04-12-GA082

(SWCC) - see also Formative forces and Mathematics of the etheric

.. considering the plant root we are in the dimensions of space and gravity

When however one wants to explain the form of the blossom, for this we need the peripheral coordinates for forces that work from the periphery in a centripetal way .. this works from the outside with gliding pressurizing movements.

.. for these etheric formative forces, also the coordinate system is qualitatively complementary ..

.. often the error is that for all that etheric, one needs not to use and think in terms of a central coordinate system [and forces], but the sphere that works from the outside to the center ..

1923-10-26-GA230

(SWCC)

Proceeding further upwards, we find contracted to the calyx what is of the nature of the chrysalis. And finally the butterfly develops in the blossom, which is coloured, just like the butterfly in the air. The circle is completed. Just as the butterfly lays its egg, so does the blossom develop within itself the new seed for the future. So you see, we look up towards the butterfly, and we understand it to be the plant raised up into the air. What the butterfly becomes from egg to full development under the influence of the sun with the upper planets, the plant becomes here below under the influence of the earth. When the plant comes into leaf (see diagram) we have from the earth-aspect the influence of the moon, then the Venus-influence and the Mercury-influence. Then there is a return to the earth-influence. The seed is again under earth-influence.

We can, therefore, place before ourselves two verses, which give expression to a great secret of nature:

Behold the plant: It is the butterfly, Fettered by the earth.

Behold the butterfly: It is the plant, Freed by the cosmos.

The plant — the butterfly fettered by the earth! The butterfly — the plant freed from the earth by the cosmos!

If one looks at the butterfly, indeed at any insect, from the stage of the egg to when it is fluttering away, it is the plant raised up into the air, fashioned in the air by the cosmos. If one looks at the plant, it is the butterfly fettered to what is below. The egg is claimed by the earth. The caterpillar is metamorphosed into leaf-formation. In what is contracted in the plant we have the metamorphosis of the chrysalis-formation. And then what unfolds into the butterfly itself, in the plant develops into the blossom. Small wonder that such an intimate relationship exists between the world of the butterflies, the insect-world in general, and the world of the plants. For in truth those spiritual beings which are behind the insects, the butterflies, must say to themselves: There below are our relatives; we must have intercourse with them, unite ourselves with them — unite ourselves with them in the enjoyment of their juices, and so on, for they are our brothers. They are our brothers who have wandered down into the domain of the earth, who have become fettered to the earthly, who have won another existence.

And again, the spirits who ensoul the plants can look up to the butterflies and say: These are the heavenly relatives of the earthly plants.

.. no-one can understand the butterfly, which has sunk down into the earth, unless he metamorphoses abstract thoughts into artistic sense. No-one can understand the nature of the blossoming plant, which, as the butterfly, has been uplifted into the air by the light and by cosmic forces, unless once again he can bring artistic movement into abstract thoughts. ..

It is a unique experience to see an insect poised on a plant, and at the same time to see how the astrality holds sway above the blossom. Here the plant is striving outwards from the earthly. The plant's longing for the heavenly works and weaves above the iridescent petals of the blossom. The plant cannot of itself satisfy this longing. Thus there radiates towards it from the cosmos what is of the nature of the butterfly. In beholding this the plant realizes the satisfaction of its own desires. And this is the wonderful relationship existing in the environment of the earth, namely that the longings of the plant-world are assuaged in looking up to the insects, in particular the world of the butterflies. What the blossoming flower longs for, as it radiates its colour out into world-space becomes for it fulfillment in knowledge when the butterfly approaches it with its shimmer of colours. Out-streaming warmth, out-streaming longing: in-streaming satisfaction from the heavens — this is the interplay between the world of the blossoming plants and the world of the butterflies.

Related pages

• Four kingdoms of nature
• Elementals of Nature
• Worldview Spiritual Science
• Formative forces
• Spectrum of elements and ethers
• Overview on etheric research and the plant kingdom
• Astral body of the plants around the earth
• Rhythm of a year
• Biodynamic agriculture

References and further reading

see also:

• Overview on etheric research and the plant kingdom#References and further reading
• Planets#Working on plant kingdom

General

• Lilly Kolisko: 'Moon & Plant Growth'
• Elisabeth Vreede - Astronomy and spiritual science - Year 3 Letter 5: The world of the stars IV: Plants and stars
• Gerbert Grohmann (1897-1957)
  • 'The Plant: Guide to Understanding Its Nature' (1974 in EN, original in DE in 1929 as 'Die Pflanze als dreigliedriges Wesen in ihren Wechselbeziehungen zu Erde und Mensch')
  • Metamorphosen im Pflanzenreich (Vol 1) and Blüten-Metamorphosen (Vol 2, 1937 in DE).
  • Botanik
  • Die Pflanze, Bd.2, Über Blütenpflanzen (1968)
  • Die Pflanze als Lichtsinnesorgan der Erde und andere Aufsätze (1981)
• Werner Schüpbach
  • Pflanzengeometrie : Die geometrische Organisation der höheren Pflanzen und deren Beziehung zum Planetensystem (1944)
• Rudolf Rissmann: 'Evolution der Pflanze : Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft der Pflanzenwelt' (1969)
• Lawrence Edwards (1912-2004)
• Dick Van Romunde (1916-2010)
  • About formative forces in the plant world (2001)
• Jochen Bockemuhl (1928-2020)
  • In partnership with nature (1980)
• Jochen Bockemuhl, Kari Järvinen: Extraordinary plant qualities for biodynamics (2006)
• Ernst-Michael Kranich (1929-2007)
  • 'Planetary Influences upon Plants: Cosmological Botany' (1986), also in DE as 'Pflanze und Kosmos. Grundlinien einer kosmologischen Botanik' (1976, 1997)
  • 'Pflanzen als Bilder der Seelenwelt. Skizze einer physiognomischen Naturerkenntnis' (1993)
  • 'Urpflanze und Pflanzenreich. Metamorphosen von den Flechten bis zu den Blütenpflanzen' (2007)
• Andreas Suchantke (1933-)
• Frits Hendrik Julius: 'Op zoek naar den verborgen tuin : een reeks natuurstudies op Goetheanistischen grondslag' (see also 'Bomen en planeten')
• Maurice Martin: 'Die Pflanze zwischen Erde und Kosmos : Goethes Urpflanze als Abbild von Planetenkräften und der Stoffesleib der Pflanze als Abbild von Tierkreiskräften ; mit 23 graphischen Darstellungen und 12 Aquarellen zur Metamorphose der Pflanzen im Jahreslauf' (1980)
• R. van Romunde: 'Planten waarnemen. Over de invloed van elementenwezens op het leven van de planten' (1988)
• Margaret Colquhoun: 'New eyes for plants - A Workbook for Observation and Drawing Plants' (1996, 2002)
• Catherine Van Alphen: 'Plant study manual' (freely available as PDF on the internet)
• Craig Holdrege: 'Thinking Like a Plant: A Living Science for Life' (2013)
• Angela Lord: 'The Archetypal Plant: Rudolf Steiner’s Watercolour Painting (2015)

Metamorphosis

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (rev. by Anne E. Marshall and Heinz Grotzke): 'The metamorphosis of plants'; with an introduction by Rudolf Steiner (1978), original in DE 'Die Metamorphose der Pflanze'

• Adolph Hansen: 'Goethes Metamorphose der Pflanzen : Geschichte einer botanischen Hypothese' 2 Volumes (1906)
• Gerbert Grohmann: 'Blüten-Metamorphosen : Metamorphosen im Pflanzenreich' (1936)
• Frits Hendrik Julius: 'Metamorfose' (1979)
• Christian Hitsch: 'Gedanken und Beobachtungen zu Goethe's Metamorphose der Pflanzen' (1982)
• Jochen Bockemühl (and Andreas Suchantke): 'The metamorphosis of plants' (1997)
• Ernst-Michael Kranich: 'Urpflanze und Pflanzenreich : Metamorphosen von den Flechten bis zu den Blütenpflanzen' (2007)

Flowers

• Keith Critchlow: 'The hidden geometry of flowers' (living rhythms, form and number) (2011)

Trees

• Frits-Hendrik Julius (1902-1970)
  • 'Bomen en Planeten' (1971 in NL), in DE as 'Bäume und Planeten: Beitrag zu einer kosmologischen Botanik' (2004)
• Johannes Hemleben:' Seven Trees & Seven Planets'
  • see also link A and link B
• Thomas Pakenham: Remarkable trees of the world (1996)
• Colin Tudge: The secret life of trees (2006)

More

• Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874-1943)
  • Germs of Mind in Plants (1905)
  • Das Sinnesleben der Pflanzen (1905)
  • Les sens de la plante. 2013
  • Die Welt der Pflanze (1912)
  • Die technischen Leistungen der Pflanzen. (Grundlagen einer objektiven Philosophie II) (1919)
  • Die Pflanze als Erfinder (1920)
  • Das Leben der Pflanze (1921)
  • Die Seele der Pflanze (1924)
• Ernst and Johanna Lehner
  • 'Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees
  • also:
    • 'Folklore and Odysseys of Food and Medicinal Plants' (1962)
    • 'Medicinal and Food Plants'
  • review:
    • profusely illustrated archive of more than 200 flowers, plants, and trees was compiled by Ernst and Johanna Lehner — two of the world's foremost collectors of pictorial symbols (who also happen to be devoted flower enthusiasts). In examining the symbolism of flora, the authors consider the religious, magical, and legendary significance of plants such as the mandrake, used as an opiate and love potion; the lotus, revered by the Egyptians and the Mayas of Central America; the mistletoe, a plant believed by the ancients to be capable of raising people from the dead; as well as the Bo tree, sunflower, dragon tree, ice plant, and many other botanical specimens. The development of horticultural images in heraldic devices, emblems, and symbols is also discussed, and a concluding section displays a table summarizing the symbolic meanings of every known species of flora — from absinthe to zinnia.