A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between thing, interbeing, intermezzo…The middle is by no means an average; on the contrary, it is where things pick up speed. Between things does not designate a localizable relation direction, a transversal movement that sweeps on and the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle.
The rhizome itself assume very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension in all directions to concretion into bulb and tubers. When rats swarm over each other.
The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a tracing. The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp, it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome. What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real.
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
In Botany:
An elongated, usually horizontal, subterranean stem which sends out roots and leafy shoots at intervals along its length.
-Oxford English Dictionary
