Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

1. WATER-ORGAN—ROOT.

1090. By the two polar systems, the earth-and air-system, the cellular and tracheal system, is the development of the plant confirmed. Thereby is it in the next place a twofold organism. By the first system it has been turned towards the planet and immersed in earth and water, by the second it has been turned towards the sun and immersed in the air. The root and the fabric of the stem, or root and stem simply, have now obtained their truest significance. Each is the whole plant, each the whole organism; in the root this is only in its original purity, but in the stem it is upon a higher stage. Root is stem in water and earth; stem is root in air and light.

1091. The root has accordingly more cellular tissue, fewer tracheæ; in the stem this condition is reversed. The root resembles young plants, or such as still rank upon a lower stage, and have but few columns of tracheæ. The root has therefore no marrow or pith. It may be said that it should have no pith, because it is usually thinner than the stem and richer in sap; but it has only the latter character, from consisting for the most part merely of cellular tissue. Root is the vegetable trunk with preponderating cellular tissue. In consequence of the antagonism between root and stem, wherein even their difference consists, the one strives to produce the Chemical, the watery earth or the mucus, but the other the Electrical, the combustible air-bodies.

1092. The root, as producing mucus or infusoria, has therefore in itself the organic process of putrefaction, in so far as the origin of mucus and infusoria is a result of the putridity. It corresponds to imbibition and digestion. To this is referrible the mouldy, and as it were fetid, condition of the root. Through the process of decomposition, which it evokes in its neighbourhood, it kills its nutriment, takes possession of it, and thus originates completely, as does every first organism, out of putrefaction, out of infusoria. To the essence of the root belong therefore not merely food, but the favouring relations of decomposition, as earth and water, whereby the access of the air, as necessary to every galvanism, has not been suppressed.

1093. The earth is not merely a mechanical station for the plant, in order to give it the perpendicular direction, but it is necessary for polar excitation, whereby the decomposition is imparted. A plant placed upright in pure water, although with the roots, necessarily perishes. Darkness is at the same time the lurking-place of putrefaction, as being that which only plays its part in localities where the polarizing and dissevering influence of light is wanting.

1094. The root always passes perpendicular into the earth, on account of its greater weight due to repletion with water. In all zones therefore the root stands perpendicular to the horizon, and thus the whole plant, although this is somewhat inclined towards the sun.

1095. The developmental stages of the root pass probably parallel to the parts of the vegetable stem.

a. In respect to the tissue, there are thus cellular roots, as is probably the case in the fungi, and with the fibrils of all roots; tubular or vascular roots as in the mosses, tracheal roots in the rest.

b. In respect to the systems the bulbs are the cortical or bark-roots; the tubers the liber-roots; the fibres the woody-roots.

c. In respect to the members of the trunk, the turnip is perhaps the genuine root, the tap-root the stalk-root, the so-called aerial roots, the leaf-roots.