Translations:Manfred Klett: Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst/1575/en

of sunlight and the release of water vapour, a surface area amply large. The latter is so constituted that the horsetail's high water throughput is assured. Its close relationship to the element of water finds expression also in the fact that it withdraws from the water streaming upward through the conducting pathways of the xylem the silica that derives from the mineral weathering of the soil. Its inorganic nature enlivens itself through the life-giving working of the sun within the plant. One may say: the water, mediating the forces of the Moon, renders the silica — in this plant that reaches back into 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-nature of the past and what works from the earth-solar nature of the present. In this, the horsetail stands in polar contrast to the dandelion. If the dandelion, as a member of the Compositae, belongs to the most highly developed plants, then the horsetail belongs to those that stand at the beginning of the evolution of land plants. In the horsetail, silica connects past stages of evolution to the present; in the dandelion, the evolutionary achievement of the present to the future.