A few weeks ago, my post touched on the amazing way that trees move water from the soil to their leaves, in long continuous strands pulled under tension between the soil and the atmosphere.
Well, the wonderful vlogging team at Veritasium have put together a FANTASTIC video describing the process in clear and entertaining terms. In particular, they do a great job of describing the concept of negative pressure in liquids, noting how the water is “super-sucked” (analogous to super-cooled) and that with the introduction of any gas-phase water, it will spontaneously boil inside the plant! In fact, this is what happens when lightning strikes a tree, causing it to blow off it’s entire outside layer! They also highlight how most of the water (90%) is simply lost to the atmosphere as part of the exchange process that brings CO2 into the leaves for photosynthesis, which is how trees help make rain.
The only fact they fail to mention is that all of that water is actually transporting essential nutrients from the soil (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc.) to all parts of the plant. Plants make their sugars, and even most of their woody bodies, from light and air, which never fails to amaze me. But they still need mineral nutrients from the soil or they cannot survive. The solutes in the xylem sap are also used to create concentration gradients that help move the sugary products of photosynthesis around to all of the plant’s cells.
Still a beautiful piece of scientific communication! Thanks Veritasium!
biogeocoenosis 