Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/830/en

With the swelling of the seed, and with the appropriate warming of the soil, breakdown processes set in within the nutrient tissue. First to begin is the growth of the seminal roots — three in wheat, four in oats. In the seedling stage these are still unoccupied by root hairs; they are outgrowths of cells of the root epidermis. For this reason weeds are most easily uprooted by harrow and weeder harrow when they are not yet visible. Only with the greening of the first leaves — and with it the stimulation of the plant's own metabolism — do the seminal roots enter into close relationship with the soil through the root hairs. The conducting pathways of the *phloem* (assimilates) and *xylem* (water, salts) take shape. The root hairs — now densely packed, up to 100 per mm of root length, grown together with particles of clay and humus — occupy, at some distance from the root tip, initially the entire length of the seminal roots during this juvenile stage. If one draws an oat plant — or in autumn a rye plant — in the one-leaf stage carefully out of the soil, crumbs of earth cling to the root like sausages. Only with its roots striving vertically into the depths, branching as they go, and with the shoot striving vertically upward toward the sun, does the plant leave its moon-like watery germinal stage behind and become the image of the relationship between the earth and the presently working cosmos.