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Thursday, June 18, 2009

How do trees really lift water to their leaves?

Ever thought about how Giant Trees towering over a hundred metres can raise water to their leaves without an obvious pumping mechanism?

It may interest you to know that the current explanations are nonsense.

Take root pressure for example. Do roots really squeeze water to the tops of trees? Or Capillary action. Can trees soak up water and release it into the atmosphere like a giant sponge, if this were the case, rising damp would ooze from the tops of walls and even tall buildings? The Cohesion tension theory as it stands sucks and relies on water leaving the leaves and this is thought to drag on a chain of water stretching right to the roots. (elaborate way of saying sucks)

Imagine standing on a desk let alone a hundred meters in the air and trying to suck water up a straw from a bottle on the ground. We can't do it so why do we expect a tree to be given different rules? It goes on to say that the huge number of leaves cause a collective pull. Well there are plenty of trees that stand at impressive heights, that are not furnished with a huge canopy of leaves and yet are able to effortlessly draw water from the soil and absorb moisture from the air. The larch being one example. But what about deciduous trees. In the Autumn the leaves fall and yet somehow in the spring the tree picks up where it left off and circulation continues inside causing the buds to form. How does this fit with the leaves having to pull water up? And then Straburger’s experiments where he killed a tree suspended vertically in a bath of picric acid. Strasburger observed circulation continuing for several weeks after the tree was completely killed ruling out living processes.


2 comments:

Sandy22 said...

Love your site and your theories. Not sure how a dead tree could still pull water up through its roots, but, doesn't even a dead body still have some automatic reactions for a time(I never experience such but my husband worked in a mortuary and I heard a few examples)? In fact, he would love to read a few of your posts but he is recovering from chemo and this is one of his down moments.

Anyway, thanks for your posts, I will be following from time to time. Oh, yes, one thought. If science does give you the answer, the answer could always be God.

Unknown said...

Hi Sandy
Thank you for your kind comment.

Hope your Husband is feeling better, Chemo can be very depressing.

Only just realised people are reading what I post :)

Will endevour to update more in the future.

Andrew