Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1441/en

As a result of the girth-growth of the trunk and the spreading branches, the outer bark tears open into deep fissures. The cork cells protect the dead bast tissue from decay — and with it the calcium oxalate and a portion of the less volatile essential oils and aromatic compounds and their derivatives that have formed within the bark. The aromatic compounds in question are hydrocarbons whose end product is the highly polymerised resin. When Rudolf Steiner speaks of "the oak resin still being quite effective" — for as such a secretion the oak does not produce it — he certainly means the lower-polymerised intermediate stages on the way toward resin. These are, among other things, the readily volatile fragrant substances, akin to blossom secretions, or the aromatic hydrocarbons contained in plant oils. They arise during the devitalisation phase of the plant as it moves toward flowering. They "waft away" — partly by virtue of hydrogen, which has become the processual "sole sovereign" — into the indistinguishability of the cosmos; or they are, as in the case of the outer bark, less volatile, and are preserved for a longer period through the encasement of the cork. These "blossom-adjacent" substances owe their composition to the formative forces of the bark and its devitalisation toward the astralised form of the outer bark. Life has withdrawn from the outer bark, as is also the case in the process toward flowering. The forces of the astral remain preserved in the organic "structure" of the oak's outer bark, which encloses the blossom-kindred aromatic substance-formations as well as the crystallised calcium oxalate. The oak thus first creates within the outer bark the structure that lends calcium its plant-healing efficacy — and that can be made serviceable for soil and plants along the path of the subsequent preparation steps.