Water Transport

Yes. And think about all the water that has to be lifted from its roots to the leaves.

Through transpiration – the evaporation of water from the leaves – trees may lose hundreds of liters of water a day. The plant needs to extract that amount from the soil, or it will suffer dehydration.

Yes, in the wood there are zillions of microscopic conduits. Together they form a complex network which is amazingly efficient and reliable in supplying the entire plant with water.

That’s what’s so remarkable – plants don’t have pumps. Instead they use the tension generated by transpiration. That’s ingenious – so plants move the water to the canopy without needing to spend any energy themselves. On the other hand, this transport system limits the maximum height of trees. As soon as the tension gets too high, the water column breaks and so-called embolisms occurs.