Translations:Manfred Klett: Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst/1379/en

What is generally characteristic of the nature of trees — a strong condensation of astrality in the tree crown — marks the oak in a quite particular way. In this it is related to the stinging nettle, though in the opposite sense. In the latter, what is characteristic is its extraordinary inward working. In the oak, by contrast, a kind of outward working — a strong power of attraction upon the world of insects, a cradle, one might almost say, for many of their species. In the root zone it is the larvae of a great number of beetle species above all; in the mulch of the hollow old trunk, among others, the larva of the stag beetle; and in the leaf zone the gall wasps. Their dwelling, the gall, is symptomatic of the working of the animal's astral nature. The gall wasp ensures that through

395