Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/512/en

An enormous increase in insect life is offered by a rich variety of forms among wild woody plants in hedgerows, but above all in standard-tree plantings in fruit growing. A fifty- to sixty-year-old standard apple tree harbours in trunk, branches, foliage and blossom upwards of a thousand insect species. Such a wide-spreading tree crown or a species-rich hedge constitutes an accumulation of astral substance: "Of that which passes as astral richness through the trees, the fully formed insect lives and weaves." It is the insect world above all that, with its astral-soul being, mediates toward the etheric-living of the plant world. It takes its nourishment from the plants and in return pollinates them, or protects them from sudden mass outbreaks of pest insects — for example through the parasitisation of aphid colonies by ichneumon wasps.