Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1628/en

of silica, quartz and light — toward a sufficiently large surface area for the uptake of sunlight and the release of water vapour. The latter is so constituted that the high water-throughput of the field horsetail is assured. Its close relationship to the element of water comes to expression also in this: that it withdraws from the water streaming upward through the xylem vessels the silica that derives from the mineral weathering of the soil. The inorganic nature of this silica is enlivened through the life-giving working of the sun within the plant. One can say: the water, mediating the forces of the moon, makes the silica — in this plant that points back into the most ancient times of plant evolution — receptive once more to the present working of the sun. It is endowed with forces that establish a harmonious balance between what works from the moon-imbued past and what works from the earth-and-sun-imbued present. With this, the field horsetail stands in a polar opposition to the dandelion. If the dandelion, as a member of the composites, belongs to the most highly developed of plants, then the field horsetail belongs to those that stand at the very beginning of the evolution of land plants. In the field horsetail, silica links past stages of evolution to the present; in the dandelion, it links what evolution has achieved in the present to the future.