Explanation
“The proposal is not ripe yet” may counsel patience. It may also withhold a decision without specifying what remains to be learned. The image suggests that development unfolds something already present in a seed. That assumption cannot simply be imported into an educational or social undertaking. Plants are organisms, so the new profile cannot be separated from the existing organism entry by pretending that the source domains are biologically exclusive. The distinction is an analytical priority. Organism metaphors foreground a living whole, functional parts and their interdependence. The present entry foregrounds developmental time, origin, branching and conditions of cultivation. “A healthy heart for the institution” and “time for the proposal to germinate” select different questions. A diseased branch threatening a tree can select both. The reference also examines damaging transfers from plants to people. Neither cultural belonging nor a person's possible development is naturally fixed by the plant image. Cultivation itself deserves a counterquestion: who chooses the desired form, and which unexpected development counts as a welcome possibility rather than a weed?
Movement of thought
1. Identify a nonbotanical process described through roots, germination or ripening. 2. Specify the developmental pattern and time horizon being transferred. 3. Make agents, environmental conditions and presumed endpoints explicit. 4. Describe the same process without assuming spontaneous natural fulfilment. 5. Reassess the image as a limited model rather than a law of human potential.
Scientific use case
Discourse analysis could compare cultivation and ripening images in institutional proposals and reconstruct their implied agents and aims. Whether those proposals actually improve learning requires different evidence. Metaphorical description alone does not establish an outcome.
Example
An invented educational programme promises to let talents grow. Learners ask whether that means room for unforeseen development or training towards one prescribed shape. They replace the gardening promise with concrete permissions and feedback arrangements. The example illustrates a question, not an evaluated programme.
Counterexample
A growing number need not invoke a plant. Larger organisations are not therefore more mature or better. A genuine relation of origin can also be described by roots without being false; its evidence must be considered independently of the image.
Distinction
The contrast with organism metaphors is analytical, not biological. Genealogy can investigate origins without a tree, and networks can represent contacts that branching alone obscures. This entry warrants independence through those particular developmental tests, not through a second generic account of living systems.
Effect on thought and perception
Patience, environment and formative experience become salient. The same framing can naturalise a social expectation or declare alternatives immature before their reasons are heard.
Resonance
A proposal imagined as a seed encounters an environment and may develop unexpectedly. The Atlas reading values that openness without claiming that all responses must be fruitful or that meaning obeys a botanical growth law.
Etymology
The English heading is descriptive. Growth has uses considerably wider than botanical development. Naming the field with plant and specific source features prevents an invented claim that every increase instantiates the same metaphor.
Provenance
DE/EN editorially accepted on 15 October 2026. Historical context, language comparison and source status are shown separately in the full entry.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Plant and growth metaphors“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-ADD-20261015-0037. ATLAS 259, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-ADD-20261015-0037The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Guiding question
Which assumptions about time, potential and direction enter when an idea is expected to ripen or take root?
Five coordinate questions
These descriptions explain the entry. They are not yet controlled register values and generate no shared register results.
- Where can the process be observed?
- Transfers involving seeds, roots, ripening, branching and cultivation.
- What happens to the material?
- Make agents, environmental conditions and presumed endpoints explicit.
- At what level does a change occur?
- Developmental assumptions, origin and evaluation of intervention.
- What temporal structure is involved?
- Developmental time and a presumed endpoint are examined rather than naturalised.
- How can the description be tested?
- Describe the same process without assuming spontaneous natural fulfilment.
Historical context
The consulted article by Rehbock and Schneidereit treats guiding images of plants and the risks of their transfer. It mediates the selected conceptual history; the Atlas does not claim to have independently re-read all the cited philosophical originals.
Cross-language distinction and terminology
Growth, organic development and cultivation are not exact substitutes. The English entry distinguishes quantitative increase, claims about an unfolding whole and the activity of fostering particular possibilities.
Scholarly relations: explained reading links
Each relation is named and explained. These reading links are neither shared register results nor newly canonised relation edges.
- Organism and body metaphors · Comparison and distinction
The contrast with organism metaphors is analytical, not biological. Genealogy can investigate origins without a tree, and networks can represent contacts that branching alone obscures. This entry warrants independence through those particular developmental tests, not through a second generic account of living systems.
- Genealogy · Comparison and distinction
The contrast with organism metaphors is analytical, not biological. Genealogy can investigate origins without a tree, and networks can represent contacts that branching alone obscures. This entry warrants independence through those particular developmental tests, not through a second generic account of living systems.
- Language change · Comparison and distinction
The contrast with organism metaphors is analytical, not biological. Genealogy can investigate origins without a tree, and networks can represent contacts that branching alone obscures. This entry warrants independence through those particular developmental tests, not through a second generic account of living systems.
Proposed thought pathway
Which assumptions about time, potential and direction enter when an idea is expected to ripen or take root?
Plant and growth metaphors → Organism and body metaphors → Bond and chain metaphors → Plant and growth metaphors
Countertest and return
A growing number need not invoke a plant. Larger organisations are not therefore more mature or better. A genuine relation of origin can also be described by roots without being false; its evidence must be considered independently of the image.
This route is an editorial exploration, not a necessary ordering of concepts. Return: Plant and growth metaphors
Source scope and provenance
The texts are editorially accepted. Acceptance does not turn a reference article, abstract or register record into a full primary-source verification. Examples and the proposed thought sequence are independent Atlas applications.
- Theda Rehbock / Nele Schneidereit: Pflanze. In Ralf Konersmann (Hg.), Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern. Studienausgabe 2014, unveränderter Nachdruck der erweiterten 3. Auflage 2011. · Einleitung: vorstellungsleitende Funktion, begrenzte Reichweite und ideologische Gefahren
The specified article passages in the local EPUB were read.
Atlas headings, admission rationales, countertests and examples are editorial applications. No universal cross-cultural validity or exhaustive check of cited originals is claimed.