Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1622/en

leaves. What surprises is precisely the absence of leaves — and equally of flowers. Consequently no metamorphosis of form is to be perceived, except that the lateral branches are shorter at the base of the stem, then spread out, and taper again pyramidally toward the tip of the shoot. Leaf development is reduced to elongated, upward-pointed sheath-bracts that lie closely against the base of the stem-joints. In their hexagonal, box-like arrangement the silica-quartz principle that runs through the entire plant comes into its own — equally in the hexagonal shields that cover the anthers of the fertile cones. The whole plant is governed by the stem principle — whereas the ferns, which are of the same temporal origin, are governed by the leaf principle. The club-mosses occupy a middle position. What is so astonishing is the contradiction that the horsetail lives out. On the one side its closeness to the moist-watery in the substratum, on the other its strongly formed, silicified gestalt, which orders itself strictly into the vertical Earth-Sun axis. Field horsetail masters this contradiction.