Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/833/en

With its root excretions the plant seems a bucket without a bottom — a useless loss? The opposite is the case. In spring it extends its "life organisation" into the soil space it has permeated with roots and takes over the direction of the countless host of microbes. The root excretions refute the one-sided view that the soil feeds the plants and these are merely the passive recipients. In spring, conversely, the plants feed the soil to a significant degree out of their own active impulse, and set in motion within it processes through which they lay claim to the soil's fertility for themselves. It is a happening at once as subtle as it is immeasurably complex, governed by the life body of the plants, in accordance with the needs of their advancing stages of growth.