Generalising about things in English

Question

I have come across the following sentence in the article noted below:

A growing plant requires water and minerals. The plant must also have sunlight. The minerals must include nitrates and the water must not be salty.

Generally, the author tries to elaborate on the aspect of using the definite article once the object is mentioned for another time in the given text. Yet, isn't this ambiguous in this sentence? To generalise, we usually use an indefinite/definite article with a singular noun, or its plural form if possible. According to this, we can assume that "a growing plant" refers to just a one of all growing plants, and "the plant" to the example of which I am speaking and/or "the plant" as a whole group of living things that grow in earth. However, "the plant" can also mean that I have stopped generalising, and I have only one, specific plant in mind that requires water and minerals.

Would it be better, then, to stay with the use of the indefinite article in the second sentence? Or, at least, using the plural form of the noun?

A growing plant requires water and minerals. A plant/Plants must also have sunlight. The minerals must include nitrates and the water must not be salty.

I have read about the remark that we cannot use "the" to generalise about all plants because it is rather used to smaller sub-groups like types of plants, animals or inventiones.

Taking that into account, should we consider that the authour tries to say that only one, specific plant requires water and minerals? If yes, why is there such a sentence on Britannica:

Land plants face severe environmental threats or difficulties, such as desiccation, drastic changes in temperature, support, nutrient availability to each of the cells of the plant, regulation of gas exchange between the plant and the atmosphere, and successful reproduction.

Is "the plant" here also specific and not generic? I guess the meaning imples that the authour is talking about all land plants, therefore the reference should be generic.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and remarks about this sentence.

Master, Peter, Teaching the English Article System, English Teaching Forum Anthology, 1989, vol. IV, pp. 208-215.

Answer 1

It’s pretty obvious that the writer intends these statements as generics having to do with growing plants. Whether they could have been written more adroitly, in the context of the whole work, I don’t know.

The problem with the first attempted rewrite is that it fails to limit plants to those that are growing, but that is what the author has explicitly done in his own work. But switching to “the plant” communicates that the author is talking about all growing plants.

The effort to derive patterns or even standard practices from that which has been written suggests that the resulting “rules” didn’t exist when the material was being written, or at least was not consulted. The question of what’s generic is different from whether it’s a good idea to switch generic forms, or whether one leads to another.

But see also John Lawler on generics, at Generics: money VS some money

Answer 2

The does not have to refer to a specific instance. It can refer to the class as a whole, here, to any and every growing plant, via a class paradigm, an abstraction of the class.

Tennis shoes and football shoes are designed for different surfaces. The flat-soled tennis shoe is meant to slide on clay or grass, whereas the football shoe has cleats to grip the turf.

The indefinite article can refer to the entire class by singling out a class instance and allowing it to stand metonymically for the entire class, as an exemplar.

A football shoe has cleats which help the player's foot grip the turf.