I.1 "a Plant is, as it were, an Animal"

In the arbor inversa trope, the human being aspires to the form of trees, of υλη, righting their bodies both spiritually and physically to accord with the divine order. This resemblance, though, is not unidirectional. Just as early modern man is, as Marvell writes, "but an an inverted Tree," kin to vegetable life, early modern plants participate in the animalistic, mirroring and operating through human form.