Plant Between Earth & Sun : Chapter V – Ethereal Space of the Plant Shoot

PLANT BETWEEN EARTH & SUN

CHAPTER V – ETHEREAL SPACE OF THE PLANT SHOOT

by Olive Whicher & George Adams

Chapter 1: The Languge of Plants

Chapter 2 : Science of the Future

Chapter 3: The Polar Forms of Space

Chapter 4: Physical & Ethereal Spaces

Chapter 6: Staff of Mercury

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38 Convex and Concave Growth

In physical construction, dominated as it is by point-centered concepts and measurement from material centres outward, the relationship between convex and concave is a purely external, spatial one, recognized from the physical point of view. Here the most fundamental experience is architectural. In earthly masonry, we must build brick on brick, add stone to stone, each of them impenetrable, external to the other.

The convexity of a building, and the empty, concave aspect of its interi0r, reflect purely and simply the nature of physical spaces and forms; there is an inside and an outside. The larger the building, the greater its potential content.

Architecture takes on many forms, and where the attempt is made to create surfaces or plastic shapes by means of planes, rather than as the locus of a moving point, the impression may be evoked of an enveloping and enfolding quality of form, which immediately begins to lift the architecture out of a mere relationship with centres of gravity; something else begins to speak through the forms. It then becomes unsatisfactory simply to set buildings side by side. The question of a qualitative, mutual relationship between the buildings, and between
their outer and inner aspects begins to require quite other answers. Herein, indeed, lies the future for the art of architecture. ⁵⁰

In contemplating living organisms – in particular, for example, the forms of the higher plants – the gesture is revealed of planar forms, primary and immediate. It is shown often by a single leaf, often by several or even many hundreds of leaves together, as in the beech-woods in early spring. Here, Nature, we suggest, is placing before our eyes the kind of space in which the plane is primary and not the point. And such a space will be endowed with a more definite orientation, form and measure, if there is somewhere an innermost point acting as the “infinitude within” of a living, concave space; just as the outermost plane or infinite periphery gives form and measure to the space
of Euclid, and to the forms characteristic of Earth-space. For each growing shoot of a plant, there will be such a point at the focus of the typical hollow space above the apex of the stem, and to its form –giving presence the enfolding leaves bear witness . We shall refer to
this as the Sun or Star-centre.

Once more, we will formulate our fundamental thought:

The form-giving life of Nature is determined not only in the Euclidean universal space m which matter as such, qua earthly matter, is at home, but also in the polar-opposite type of space-formation. It is a type of space-formation, not a single universal space give once for all. Spaces of this type come into being and pass away again with the life-cycles of living creatures and of their several organs. wherever in effect there is a living seed, a germinating point, a special focus of life or growth – whether within the watery substance of a living body or
hovering outside It as the growing-point of the higher plant- there we shall look for the “infinitude within” of such a space-formation. And as this space-formation is of the planar type, we shall find evidence thereof in the plastic formative activity around the point in question, or in the gesture of the leaf-like organs that envelop it and thence unfold.

Applied to the understanding of Nature, the concept of ethereal spaces involves a two-fold approach. First, the morphological gesture of the living entity must speak, so that it shows how the ethereal spaces are formed, where the ethereal centres or points-at-infinity are located within the living, developing form, and h their fields of action are interwoven both in time and space.

The relative median planes and planes-of-levity will need to be recognized, as well as the more obvious geometrical features, such for example as concentric spheres or again spiral or polyhedral forms, many of which will appear rather different. m the ethereal than in the physically spatial aspect, so that some regularities of form and pattern will only be recognizable to an awakened eye. (Consider, for example, how the conception of the “ethereal concentric spheres” was reached, as pictured in Plate IX.) This aspect of the problem will be
mainly a question of morphological insight and geometrical imagination acquired through practice.

The second range of problems is more difficult. It is to understand just how the physical-material substance of the living body is received into the field of action of the ethereal formative forces. How, in the processes of life and growth, do the physical and ethereal interlock and interweave? To what extent will it still be true to say that in their purely material aspect the processes in the living body are held in balance by physico-chemical forces as hitherto understood? Or will the insight we are now deriving from the living form ultimately change our outlook on these forces too, so that in time to come we shall learn to put the question in quite a different way?

These are the two directions of our problem. Taking them both to some extent together, our line of thought is as follows.

The simplest manifestation of life will be a growing watery or semi-fluid sphere as in a single living cell, a unicellular organism, or the morula and blastula of animal embryology. Life here reveals itself in convex, outward growth, nor should we expect this to be otherwise. For the living body is material, and a material body is ipso facto more or less filled with matter from within outward, presenting, on the whole, a convex surface to the outer world.

The living sphere at this stage differs from the dead not so much in its form as in its growth and other living functions. We see it now as the manifestation of an ethereal space, with the point-at-infinity within, in the watery-living substance. This will be the ethereal focus of the space, or of the form in question.

The primitive phenomenon of life and growth will always be of this kind, as in the simplest instance when a spherical or spheroidal organism, with the point-at-infinity at its centre, lives and grows at the expense of its surroundings. Growth then appears as a primary phenomenon of suctional, levitational expansion. In such a case we shall speak of primitive or convex growth.

In life and growth, the physical material, otherwise only subject to gravitational and other physical forces, is in some way linked on to and received into the ethereal, formative activity. In formative tendency and function it becomes more surface-like; greater surface-areas are formed, where without life it would remain predominantly point-like, inert and centred within its dead, material substance, subject to disintegration and decay- “dust unto dust”.

It is essential to our hypothesis to conceive that it is the watery matter of the Earth, which, once received into a living organism, is capable of this change – this surrender to the ethereal, peripheral qualities of space-formation.

Here, indeed, we touch on the whole question of the properties of all fluids and of water itself in Nature’s great laboratory. We refer the reader here in particular to the writings and researches of Theodor Schwenk. ⁵¹The phenomena of sensitive surfaces in flowing water (in air and warmth also), and of surface tension, demand renewed insight in the light of the concept of planes of levity or Leichte. So also new ideas must be brought to bear on the phenomenon of osmosis, which in the non-living world follows a fairly simple course; in the living organism it will take on a new light, once the concept of Leichte has been assimilated into the science of biology.

There is already, in modern biochemistry, a tendency to overcome the old additive habit of thought which would regard the organism as a mere summation of the molecular events going on in each single cell or volume-element within a cell. Biologists are amazed by the subtle and pervasive quality of the chemical influences – hormones and auxins for example-with which the living organism regulates its life and growth; also by its selective power with regard to osmotic and ionic processes.

From the whole concept here developed – the interplay of centric and peripheral formations and forces – it may well be expected that living forms, seen as a whole and penetrated with this kind of understanding, will also provide essential clues to the nature of the substances which they produce and to the chemical formative processes which are today interpreted as an outcome of the minute molecular constitution.

Looking once more at the primitive living cell or sphere and thinking of it as an ethereal or planar space-formation with the ethereal focus somewhere within it, the orientation of the ideal tangent planes will in this simplest instance be in relatively concentric spheres about this focus (Plate X top right). Predominant, in the phase of growth, will be the ethereal force of levity. The living sphere expands, taking in watery substance from its surroundings. This is the primary phenomenon of vegetative growth. It is important to recognize that it is primary
– as Goethe would have said, an Ur-phenomenon. We have no elaborate knowledge of its technique; we recognize it as an elemental fact.

For an analogy, polar opposite in kind, imagine the physical planet Earth – the forces of gravity there prevailing. All over the surface of the Earth – in mountain lands where avalanches fall and rocks are loosened; in hail and rainfall; in ocean breakers the falling of the spray; in myriad variety of accident and incident – material bodies are ever falling, down towards the centre of the Earth. This too is the “Urphenomenon,” the geometrical lines of force and dynamic character of which we can clearly recognize, without indulging in any
theories of hidden cause. In like manner we can recognize the Urphenomenon of living growth as a polar opposite phenomenon; it is one of planar, plastic, peripheral and suctional expansion. The planar forces function peripherally,) just as in the inorganic realm the centres of gravity function centrically. If the primitive organism dies, its substance is indeed disintegrated and completely abandoned to the inorganic realm of natural substances; while it lives, it is held in balance between the cosmic and the earthly realm.

Applying this concept of ethereal space-formation to living organisms, and guided in so doing by the phenomena, we recognize at a very early stage an essential differentiation. Besides the type of organism, where the point-at-infinity of the ethereal space is immersed in the watery, living substance, there is another basic type, where the ethereal focus may be outside the confines of the organism, poised in the open air or in the surrounding medium.

It is evident from all but the simplest of morphologies that the living form is determined not only by convex outward growth but by another kind in addition – by an ethereal space which, though its focus, to begin with at any rate, is outside the living body, yet belongs organically to it, determining the way it grows. The growing body produces organs or tissues tending to enfold and envelop the ethereal focus in question, thus making evident the presence of the latter. We then have the phenomenon of concave growth. It will be evident enough that primitive or convex growth must be there as a foundation before concave growth can ensue. The interplay of convex growth and concave leads m the
simplest instance to a bipolar living organism. Axial development is therefore often to be interpreted by the presence, at either end, of an ethereal focus of the one and of the other kind. Precisely this is what we recognize in the higher plant, root and shoot (Plate III, Fig. 14).

Of the two types of growth the convex is the more earthly; here the ethereal is more immersed in and surrendered to the material and physical, and the resulting organic forms, though they are living, will often adapt themselves to the more centric and radial structure of the latter realm. The concave on the other hand is related to the Sun and to the realm of light, where the ethereal is manifest more fully in its own domain, unalloyed by matter. For this reason we described the focus hovering above the growing-point of the shoot as a sun- or star-centre, and the space which it engenders in the formative organism of the plant as sunlike. The word “star” is used inasmuch as the Sun is a star among stars. As there are countless individual stars, so are there many species of flowering plant. The “star” above the growing point determines a sunlike space in every instance, but this may be of diverse qualities, just as a physical space, one in type, may be diversely formed and filled with substance.

Thus the polarity of Sun and Earth occurs again, microcosmically, in the living world. Over against the sun- or star-centre, the focus of convex growth with its more earthly character may also be described as the relatively “dark” pole. It is once more the Goethean polarity of light and darkness, but with the light working within the darkness at the convex pole, while at the concave the darkness reaches out to embrace the light.

39 Animal and Plant – Invagination, Evagination

In the phenomenon of concave growth a further great differentiation is recognizable. The living organism, growing initially as from its convex centre, can respond in either of two ways to the additional presence of an ethereal centre which, to begin with, is outside and yet related to it. It will produce, as we have said, organs that envelop and enfold this second centre, expressing the peripheral, tangential nature of the ethereal space which it determines. But this enfolding can thenceforth proceed in either of two directions. In the one case the
living organism draws the more sun-like ethereal space ever more deeply into itself. Beginning with a very slight concavity on the surface of the formerly convex living sphere, the enfolding forms tend to embrace the new ethereal centre ever more closely; they grow up and coalesce around it, until at last a hollow sphere is produced, more or less wholly immersed in the body. This is what happens in animal development; it is the typical phenomenon of gastrulation – invagination. In the play of dimensions the ethereal infinitudes may also take on a linewise form; such a focal line of concave growth underlies for instance the development of the neural groove, leading eventually to the spinal
cord. The further study of animal development from this aspect is beyond the scope of the present work.

The other alternative predominates in the plant kingdom. The organs, namely, of the living body which grow outward to enfold the “star-centre”, instead of tending to embrace it ever more closely and thus draw it inward, thenceforward open and expand, in spherical or conical tangential forms which in their further growth reveal the typical geometry of spheres or cones in negative or planar space. In fact the typical unfolding gesture of the shoot, opening the hollow space which it originally formed at the focus of concave growth, might rather be described as a perpetual evagination, contrasting with the repeated invaginations by which the finished animal body is produced ⁵²(see illustrations in Chapter I). In the growing shoot, the star-centre is not claimed nor drawn down into the dark watery body; it is left free. Ever new leaf-like organs are produced, closely enveloping it to begin with and then opening away. It thus becomes an inexhaustible source of fresh life and growth. This is the typical phenomenon at the growing-point, described in Chapter I.

40 Matter as a Receptive Matrix – Chaos and Cosmos

The differentiation of convex growth and concave, important as it is, is not as absolute as might at first appear. For an ethereal space – compare the pictures of Plate X or the linewise curves in Figs. 31 and 33 – is by its very nature concave, tending towards a potential emptiness at the infinitude within. If an ethereal field is to work at all, it must be working in this way even when the focus is immersed in matter. It can only “lighten” and enliven matter by overcoming the inertia whereby each heavy particle maintains its own centric position – stays where it is until pushed or pulled by others. We do not pretend to have solved the important question, how the ethereal field is “hitched on” to the material. But as a general principle it is clear that in the region of an ethereal infinitude the matter must in some degree surrender its once-established molecular or pointwise structure and become “chaotic”, like an unwritten slate – a receptive matrix, a materia in the original sense of the word. As regards form; a kind of void must be there at the ethereal infinitude, to enable the ethereal formative forces to engender form anew. Though the suggestion that this will happen even at the molecular or atomic level may appear revolutionary, something of this
kind is not unknown to biologists; namely where fresh developmental processes or far-reaching metamorphoses are to take place, tissues and cells already formed often return to a more embryonic, meristematic, relatively formless condition. An outstanding example of this “chaoticizing” process is the butterfly’s pupation. ⁵³

Referring to the realm of the ethereal focus or “infinitude within”, we are here using the word “chaos” in contrast to “cosmos” – manifest and ordered form – rather in the ancient sense. “Chaos” or “matrix” indicates a realm where some specific form is either not yet in being or where it loses hold and passes over into a relatively formless state. Matter that holds fast to its given structure – molecular, cyto- or histological or on whatever level – will be to that extent unable to surrender itself to the formative forces of living growth; it maintains its form, remains, in other words, a “cosmos”.

It is of the essence of a germinating cell, that within it, in the region of the ethereal focus, there will be something of this quality of chaos. The “infinitude within” bears the archetype of the future form. It is the form-giving concept which is in some sense focused in the “infinitude within”; it cannot in the nature of the case be already manifest therein. It becomes manifest towards the surrounding surface or surfaces. Hence it is symptomatic that primitive organisms are in so many instances most clearly and elaborately formed at the periphery, even with a
siliceous or calcareous exoskeleton, while the comparatively unformed portion is within. The section through the growing-point of a plant also gives an unmistakable example of this peripheral mode of formation.

Once more, the polar opposite analogy may help us. We have already mentioned how in the light of projective geometry the crystal
lattice – characteristic form in the mineral kingdom – is seen to derive from an archetype in the infinitely distant plane or ultimate periphery of space. In the nature of the case, the form cannot be manifest in yonder plane. The archetype is unmanifest in the periphery; the crystal form becomes manifest about a centre, somewhere in earthly space.

To dissolve a crystal of some salt so that every trace is lost beyond recovery, we shall dissolve it in the greatest available volume of water. The salt diffuses out towards the infinite sphere, the very realm from whence ideally the form derives. This is indeed the way we treat – or the way Nature treats – every no longer wanted form: it is scattered far and wide, into the void, and the great void receives it in beneficent oblivion. And yet the uttermost extremes of yonder void bear the ideal archetypes of form – with the imaginary circle the very archetype of space itself, also the individual formative types of all the crystals.

This therefore is the essence of physical matter, in so far as matter belongs to the inorganic world, filling the space of Euclid: chaos and void in the periphery, manifest form within, in and about each given centre. The opposite will be true of life, inasmuch as the phenomena of life belong to a negative-Euclidean type of space-formation : there will be relative chaos within, at the very centre from which materially the life appears to proceed; manifest form as we go out from thence.

The “going outward” involves the time-process of growth. Primitive microscopic forms as we have said, like some of Haeckel ‘s protozoa with their reticulate and polyhedral exoskeletons, place the idea before us in a symptomatic, purely spatial picture. For every higher and more complicated organism, growth begins from a minute germ-cell. What afterwards appears, vastly increased in size, in powerful and manifold formation, began in a minute, point-like region. Here, we suggest, the opposite of the customary physical way of thinking is applicable. We have not to look only for the molecular preformation of a complicated organism inside this tiny space. We must also apply the opposite idea. H ere is the “infinitude within” (corresponding to what in physical space would be the infinite surrounding void, the empty nothing). The
formative space, to which the life and growth are due, weaves around it.

In this direction we should seek the explanation both of specific living form – which as a rule begins with a spherical and plastic outline, and in which surfaces and skin-formations are all-important – and of the driving force of life and growth, which appears “suctional” in character. This way of thinking, we believe, will contain the key to many typical phenomena, well-known to biologists: the character of embryonic and meristematic tissues, also what happens in the living organism when at a later stage of the creature’s life new vegetative growth is needed or else a radical metamorphosis is about to set in, as in the transition from the caterpillar via the chrysalis to the imago, or in the leap from leaf to floral organ.

Thus the phenomena of Nature wherein the forming of ether-spaces plays a predominant part differ from the physical and inorganic, the rationale of which is contained in the geometry and mechanics of the space of Euclid. The difference is so far-reaching as to suggest a certain inversion not only of space but of time itself – an “experiment with time”, to borrow the late Mr. J. W. Dunne’s well-known title. ⁵⁴ It is at least a valuable exercise in thought, once we have grasped the fundamental notion of negative or ethereal space-formation, to follow the growth and development of a living creature backward in time from the mature organism to the germ-cell. In this return from highly articulate form to relative formlessness and chaos – remembering that for the negative space the approach to the ultimate point or infinitude within represents “inward increase“, we are reminded of what is constantly happening in the inorganic world, but now in positive space and forward-going time. Well-ordered forms that were occupying comparatively small spaces tend to disperse and to chaoticize. Enlargement goes hand in hand with loss of form and ordered pattern.

This again sheds a new light upon a well-known chapter of modern science, of which the philosophical and cosmological implications are far-reaching and very difficult, namely the famous second law of thermodynamics. Since Maxwell and Boltzmann this is understood as the expression of a chaoticizing process, a progressive loss of differentiated form and on the whole a tendency of dispersal as when different gases for example tend to mix, each of them wanting to occupy the whole of the available space once it is free to do so. It is an “irreversible”
process.

All the conceptions of probability which modern physics attaches to these phenomena begin by taking for granted a Euclidean type of space, inhabited by molecules or atoms of a quasi-physical kind. Hence the inevitability of which Sir Arthur Eddington so eloquently wrote with regard to this “second law”. Yet to return to the phenomena themselves: if we have watched the potent growth of a living organism, making its form, so to speak, out of formless water, do we not also gain the impression of a certain inevitability in this silent power ? Reverse
the flow of time and simultaneously invert the space so that the ideas of large and small are interchanged in the precise geometrical sense we have explained : the one becomes reminiscent of the other. If time went backward, living organisms would as inevitably appear to lose their form towards the germinating point from which they spring, as do the distributions of inorganic matter scattering to formless mixture. But as things are, in the forward flow of time the two tendencies are mingled, and life renews the forms which death disperses.

Thus if the deep polarity of ideal space proves applicable to the phenomena of Nature as we are here contending, a new page will be opened
in the history of science, also in this respect. But the further influence of these ideas in physical science generally is beyond our present scope. ⁵⁵ It is the living world which is opening our eyes in the new direction and we must tarry longer in this school, learning to walk before we run.

We have described the fundamental notion, reading the primary phenomenon of living growth in terms of ethereal rather than physical space. But the material which is thus formed is physical to begin with; moreover the outcome of the living process is again and again to secrete and deposit more or less hardening materials in shapes that serve the living form and bear its imprint. To the extent that such material, even if still within the living body, becomes a finished form and is no longer imbued with the full force of vegetative life, it is
again more or less paramountly subject to the physically spatial world.

Thus the two forms of space and force are interwoven; probably neither is without the other anywhere, but we can recognize where the one or the other is predominant – the one in germinating regions of fresh life, the other where the living substance becomes hardened to a mere supporting organ, and even mineralized, thrown out of the living process. Whether a modicum of ethereal activity permeates even the so-called “inorganic” world is a question we may here leave open. To understand the living world we must first apprehend, clearly and radically, the notion of ethereal space and of the forces and formative tendencies which this involves, and we must then apply this notion not to the
exclusion of the physical but in conjunction with it. To find the interplay and balance of the two will be the test of insight.

41 Sun-space at the Growing-point

Returning now to the morphology of the higher plant, we come back to the phenomena described in Chapter I. There at the tip of the growing shoot is a hollow space, often deeply hidden and protected amid the young enfolding leaves. It is in the nature of the case, as we have said, that there must first be convex growth to a certain extent, before the typical concave hollow gesture can appear. The archetypal phenomenon of concave growth at the growing-point is preceded at the microscopic level by convex growth; the budding leaf primordia, meristematic growth-forms at the growth-cone of the shoot, as seen under the microscope, are recognizably convex; but as the organs develop and
become visible to the naked eye, the forms reveal more and more a concave gesture (Fig. 59). Within the hollow space enveloped by the young leaves, there is the all-relating point, the inner infinitude of a sun-space. The plant develops on a small scale its own inner sun-space, or spaces, which are related to the macrocosmic, heavenly sun-space.

The focus of this ethereal space is within the hollow, which in the higher plant is always there, above the material growing-point of the stem, its presence indicated by the enveloping gesture of the young leaves. We see a spherical, spheroidal or conical form of growth – a realm not filled with substance. The ethereal focus hovers above the actual substance of the growing stem, and the sphere, which the young leaves envelop, as they expand and come away, is like he hollow of a chalice, open to the light-filled air. We see it, for example in the Dandelion in Plate XII.

In cultivated plants like the Lettuce or the Cabbage, the phenomenon of the hollow space above the tip of the stem is often very evident, especially if the plant begins to “bolt” (Fig. 60 and the Brussels Sprout in Plate III). Cultivated as these plants are, in order to develop an accumulation of nutritive leaf-substance around the vital growing-point, the hollow space has become densely crowded with young leaves. A well-grown lettuce or cabbage, with a good “heart”, presents a round and firmly filled convex ball. As soon, however, as the heart begins to move and open up in further growth, a vertical cut will reveal clearly the hollow space within, created by the very young leaves. In this space is the sun- or star-centre – the heart of the growing plant or of the shoot in question. It is a phenomenon so entirely opposite to what can be seen at the root of the plant, which grows downward into the soil .

At the tip of the upward-growing shoot is a realm which is moulded and plasticized by the planar surfaces of the leaves. It is the very gesture of these planar surfaces which announces clearly where the ethereal focus – the sun centre – is poised. To the awakened observer, the exact situation of the ethereal focus is clearly to be seen, in the spatial gesture of this hollow realm. Sometimes, especially in the early stages, the hollow space is very spherical; later on, and often from the outset, it is a conical hollow which is typical. The type of gesture is shown
in the top right-hand picture of Plate X, in Plate IX and in the “cone-space” of Plate IV. A horizontal section through a growing-point will reveal the beautiful peripheral arrangement, often in spiral form, of the leaf-primordia or of the young leaves, which together create the sun-space (Fig. 52 ).

In the more conical gesture, the hollow cone-space comes to expression in the greater Plantain (Plate V). Here, the point-at-infinity of the space will be somewhere on the vertical axis, for the axis is the line-at –infinity within of an intensive, two-dimensional space. A line-at-infinity of an ethereal space will be in the “all-relating point” of the space, just as in the physical space a line-at-infinity will be in the “all-embracing plane”.

The conical gesture is in fact the most general form in which the plants reveal the counter-spatial nature of the realm from which they grow. As we have learnt in earlier chapters, we must allow the planar aspect of formative processes to speak through the phenomena, as well as the point-wise. What speaks here so eloquently is that the leaves – planar organs held in a point, the node – create the space within which the younger organs will be formed. Looked at from the aspect of substance, the process is one of gradual densification and hardening. A woody node and tough, fully-grown leaves are secondary, not primary. Primary are the young, delicate growths, which, reaching upward with a more vertical gesture to envelop the sun-centre above the growing-point, thus forming the ethereal cone, tend out and away from this inner region towards the horizontal. It is an archetypal phenomenon revealed in multitudinous and manifold ways in the plant world. Even where at first sight this gesture would appear to be absent, a closer look will often identify it. To take two common examples: in young Rose
shoots, the leaves are folded flat, and the whole process takes place at first in a plane, which later opens up like the leaves of a book to reveal the hollow. In the Sycamore or the Begonia, only the first tiny leaves are vertical and there is a very speedy, though eloquent, opening out into a most beautiful horizontal plane, after which the leaves, as they grow older, quite often become strongly convex over the whole or most of what has now become their upper surface (Fig. 61 ). The transition from concave to convex in the development of leaves is of primal
significance in the language of plant morphology; it is an archetypal phenomenon revealed by the higher plants. In so many different ways in the different plants, the leaf, at first a concave surface, hollowed inward towards the point or line-at-infinity of an ethereal space, makes the transition through a more or less horizontal plane to a more or less convex form, which then tends to hang down below the horizontal towards the Earth. See for example the Rhododendron in Plates II and XX, or the Dock in Plate VIII.

It is in the delicate and gentle interplay between concave and convex surfaces that the plants reveal, through their green leaves, their essentially ethereal nature. The green leaf in full balance between the extremes of unfoldment often reveals in the most breath-taking way in spring and early summer, the buoyant levity or Leichte of the ethereal planes. The Sycamore and the Beech, for example, each do this to perfection, but in quite different ways. The Hazel twig in Plate I shows the typical transition from concave to planar surface. In the
Rhododendron in Plate II the transition from concave to convex is revealed by the leaves of the nodes of successive years; we see a record of the development of the branch through three years, and within the delicate, yellow-green cone of young leaves is to be found the flower-bud of the coming year. The leaves of the two lower nodes will have formed just such a cone in previous years, and in their turn will have opened out through the horizontal, becoming convex, much tougher and of a dark green colour, as they turn their upper surfaces with a strong convex gesture towards the rays of the outer sun. Below, in the dark recesses of the woody parts of the bush, it will be possible to find the old brown leaves of still earlier years, hanging on, before loosening their hold and falling to the ground.

The characteristic gesture is to be seen in manifold variety in the growing shoots of the plants. The growing tip is always hidden amid the tiny budding leaves, which as they grow reach up above it as if with protecting hands to guard a hidden treasure. Yet it is an empty space they hold between them. Perhaps, as in Silphium Fig. 11, they are ranged around it in pairs – see also Hydrangea and Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) in Figs. 1 and 2 – perhaps in whorls as in the Woodruff (Asperula odorata) in Fig. 7, perhaps a single leaf with its concave inner surface
tends this hollow space as in Blackberry (Rubus fruticosus) in Fig. 6. However it may be, the concave hollowing of the inner surface of the younger leaves around the space above the growing-point is characteristic. Each single shoot holds out its planar surfaces as though to receive its portion of the light.

With further growth the leaves expand; between them other, younger buds grow to take their place, while they with increasing maturity open out more and more towards the horizontal. There, plane upon plane, they are outspread high above the surface of the earth, organs to receive the light and air, abounding with the buoyant life of springtime.

Even the slender grasses envelop a space in the centre of their growth around which their leaves are at first wrapped and folded and then open out. From it, later-on, the flower and the seed will spring; the golden ear of corn has such a birthplace. The lower part of each leaf (the petiole) forms a sheath close around the stem, and around the petioles of other leaves, each creating the sheath, within which the next one arises. It is from this “infinitude within” – the heart of the grass-halm – that the ear of corn springs, which can be found in rudimentary
form , by peeling off the outer layers at a very early stage of the plant’s growth (Fig. 62).

Even an individual leaf, once it has opened out and expanded into a visible form in space, usually retains for the whole of its life some aspect of the hollow ethereal space out of which it was born. There is usually a slight hollow at least along the mid-rib. Many typical, fully developed leaves reveal the interplay of concave and convex in the saddle-form; the surface, when followed from one leaf-edge to the other, remains concave, while the mid-rib may curve backward from petiole to leaf-tip in a strongly convex gesture. This saddle or paraboloidal-form is typical of many leaves as they grow older; prime examples are the leaves of apples and pears .

The very surface of the leaf itself, in its delicate and varied balance between concave and convex is thus a clear indication of its organic role in the rhythmic system of the threefold plant, poised between the extreme forms of root and flower.

Let us look again at the Greater Plantain (Plantago major) in Plate V. Its young leaves enclose a conical hollow. Sheltered in the space in the centre of the plant, each leaf reveals this enveloping gesture. The conical spaces which are enveloped by the very young leaves are deep and vertical and tend toward the central axis of the plant. Low down at the base of each leaf-stem or petiole is the bud from which the flower-bearing stem springs, growing vertically upward towards the light. Usually the young flowering stem begins by nestling in the hollow groove
on the inner side of the petiole. It is as though the whole leaf were formed so as to shelter a flower-bearing stem and give it a space in which to grow. With each successive leaf, springing from within the heart of the plant, this enveloping gesture is repeated, but as the leaves grow older and larger, they gradually lose their hollow form and the space disappears. The leaves open outward and become flat or convex until at last they lie on the ground and die.

The young Beetroot plant (Beta maritima) shows this gesture beautifully (Fig. 14). Here again the form is of a cone opening upward; the leaves surround the as yet invisible central axis of the plant. The younger the leaves, the more vertical is their posture; but they will open and spread out until at last they die upon the surface of the soil and give their substance to the Earth. Below is a form of quite another character, the rounded, swollen beet, with its tapering root. This part, about which we shall have more to say later on, is of an earthy nature, packed
with material substance.

It is essential to be clear about the true nature of “cone-space” into which the Greater Plantain has been drawn. We are taking it as an ideal thought-form to describe the negative space according to the laws of which the plant shoot appears in positive space. Let us describe once more this family of cones in a point (Plate IV) .

The geometrical picture of a family of circular cones in a point must be seen as a negative space-form, and not as though it is three- dimensional in positive space. The cones are ideal forms. The accurate geometrical description of them, we have said, is that they are intensive one-dimensional forms within the intensive two-dimensional space of the point which bears them. ²⁰Although these cones
are not to be thought of mathematically as three-dimensional forms, yet the interesting fact is that their gesture of form may be recognized throughout the plant kingdom in its developing vegetative organs. The cones portray a process taking place in ethereal space; they represent an ethereal space-formation. These cones must be thought of as being formed planewise ; they are enveloped plastically by all their tangent planes, which are held in the one point and stretch away to infinity on all sides. The cones open upward and downward to infinity. Held in one point, they are “concentric” between the vertical line (pink) and the horizontal plane (green), which must also be thought of as extending on all sides to the infinitely distant horizon. As the cones open out, one after the other, they spring never endingly from the inner axis; they widen, becoming ever flatter and at last disappear into the horizontal middle plane.

This family of “concentric cones” (or better said, “co-planar cones” ) is in the exact geometrical sense polar to the family of pointwise circles in Plate X (red, top left). Just as the circles move inward toward their central point and outward towards the infinite circle, which is the infinitely distant line of their plane, so the cones open out towards the horizontal plane and close in towards their vertical axis, which in ethereal space plays the part of an ” infinitude within”. The concentration of the red circles in Plate X towards their centre, which we think of
as a contraction, corresponds to the opening out of the hollow cone-forms. If we think of the contraction of the circles towards their central point as picturing a process in physical space, then we must think of the opening of the planewise cones towards their middle plane as picturing a process of contraction taking place in counterspace and vice versa. In Plate IV, the positive-space circles have been drawn in green on the horizontal plane of the cone-space. If the circles are radial, filled pointwise from their centre outward, the cones are peripheral,
empty and hollow inward towards their innermost axis.

A most beautiful plant to study, when we try to familiarize ourselves with this method of observation, which opens up a whole new approach to plant morphology, is the Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) as depicted in Plate XII, and in all its forms. A dandelion seedling, which has germinated with freedom of space, perhaps in cultivated soil, often shows with remarkable clarity a conical or a bowl-shaped form. Every leaf contributes to the moulding of a perfect bowl or hollow cone, which simply opens out as the plant develops, until one day a green flower-bud appears, nestling at the bottom close to and maybe even below the surface of the ground, so deeply hollow is the green bowl in which it appears. In the ensuing development, the bud is raised o n its lengthening stalk and presently the golden yellow flower opens like a sun poised above the hollow. The plant in Plate XII reveals clearly the ethereal space enveloped by the leaves within which the flowers appear. Below, pressing down into the dark earth, is the very different form of the root. At the point between root and shoot, as in the case of
the Plantain in Plate V and of the Beetroot in Fig. 14, the plant is drawn together as if into a primal node (the hypocotyl). Below this the roots radiate downward, tough and substantial, with a hard core – the most material part of the growing plant. More often than not, the Dandelion reveals its ethereal space in a conical gesture.

In Plate VI the cone-space is revealed in another aspect; instead of discrete cones following one-another between the vertical infinitude within and the horizontal plane, we see a whole surface – a spiralling cone – which, if pictured in its entirety, opens out continuously from the vertical axis to the horizontal plane.⁵⁶Many plants unfold their young shoots with the spiralling gesture of an unfolding sheath; it is typical of many monocotyledons. In Plate VII, the Canna (Canna indica ) is drawn to illustrate this kind of unfoldment; the two plates should be seen in conjunction with one another.