João Felipe Toni

Eleven participants from grade 12 were present for the in-depth course, "Goethe Garden", at the Rudolf Steiner School in Wetzikon. Two topics were worked on: the development and the evolution of plants.

Our starting point was the sunflower. When we look at a sunflower, we have the impression that it is a real flower, but for a trained botanist it is actually a pseudo flower (Pseudanthium). "What, a fake flower?" asked a student. Yes, the "flower" of the sunflower consists of a row of tiny flowers (i.e. an inflorescence) whose arrangement gives the impression of a single large flower. "But why does the sunflower form as an apparent flower?" asked another student. With this question, we were able to elaborate a thread of thought and experience that led the students to visualise the effect of the two fundamental processes described by Goethe: metamorphosis and specification. One of the main reasons for this is the high degree of complexity (synorganisation) of flowers, which allows for high efficiency in pollination and seed dispersal. The sunflowers belong to the largest family of flowering plants in the world, the composite plants, with about 24,000 species. In second place are the orchids with about 20,000 species and in third place the legumes or beans with 18,000 species. The total number of species for these three huge families alone is about 62,000, which corresponds to about 25 % of all flowering plant species on earth. All these plant families show simultaneously, on the one hand, a strong tendency to metamorphose and, on the other hand, a tendency to preserve their diagnostic features, their specificity. They show a high degree of synorganisation. This means that several organs – such as tubular and ray florets – join together to express a superordinate gestalt principle, such as the sunflower blossom. Studying the metamorphosis of the sunflower, the students were able to recognise this fundamental principle of synorganisation and thus understand what Goethe called the subordination of parts. At the same time, we settled on the reference point of comparison, the type, so that we could take a short trip to the variations in flower morphologies over the millennia of evolution of life on earth. Starting from the most complex in transition to the least complex organisations, the students learned about the most important evolutionary novelties among botanical families (basal angiosperms, rosids and asterids) and the importance of pollinators for the appearance of these new traits.