Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1065/en

of the root hairs (cf. Ch. "The Spring Process and Soil Cultivation", p. 213 ff.). The root hairs arrange themselves in rhythmic order around the root body. They are outgrowths from the no-longer-dividing cells of the root skin (epidermis). As such, they are on the one hand metabolically active: through them the assimilates from the greening above-ground organs of the plant stream downward via the descending phloem current into the soil, where they activate the microbial and fungal life of the rhizosphere and draw it into symbiotic relationship with themselves. The root exudates amount on average, across cultivated plant species, to approximately 30% of their assimilatory output. In this way the etheric body of the plants — in accordance with their rhythms and needs of growth — governs the soil life through the assimilation stream (phloem): these are low-molecular proteins, carbohydrates, enzymes, vitamins, acids, chelating agents, coumarins, phenols, glycosides, alkaloids, essential oils, ethylene. On the other hand, the root hairs are sense-active. "The root of plants […]: it is an eye, but a poor eye." The root hairs perceive, as it were, the salts that have dissolved in the moist-watery medium of the soil through their own metabolic activity (exchange processes) as well as through their symbionts. In a processual simultaneity running counter to itself — a property of the life body — the root hairs excrete the assimilates into the root's surroundings, stimulate microbial breakdown processes by means of these, and take up the end product of those processes: the mineralized, dead salt. This travels in countercurrent to the assimilates through the cell tissue of the roots and flows into the upward-directed xylem stream. The one stream — dead, mineral, from below — and the other — living, from above — are separated from each other by the cambium.