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Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

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Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#31

Post by hinkley »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #27
hinkley wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stories that the moss on trees in temperate rainforests allow the tree to pull water from their branches instead of the ground, increasing their max height. For a while there were people poaching the moss that facilitated this, which is a problem because it grows only inches per year.

God that's sad. We really can't have anything nice.

It’s harder to remove the moss from high up in the tree and there are more risks in doing so. I was never clear on how prevalent this shittery was.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#32

Post by hinkley »

m463 wrote: post #16

on the other hand, many giant trees get the water out of the air via fog: Coalescence of coastal fog accounts for a considerable part of the trees' water needs.[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens#Fog_and_f... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens

There’s also a theory that the moss on these trees is mutualism instead of simply epiphytic. The moss holds moisture, which can be accessed by the tree.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#33

Post by [deleted] »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #26
pulvinar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick for trees is capillaries, which change the equation. The 10 meter limit only applies to larger columns. With capillaries there's a high negative tension that allows evaporation from leaves to pull the xylem sap up 100 meters or more. There's no free lunch here. The Sun drives the evaporation, and if the tree were in a closed system with no solar input, the humidity would eventually get high enough to stop i…

>if the tree were in a closed system with no solar input ... that would be the least of the tree's problems.

[deleted]

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#34

Post by c22 »

efskap wrote: post #30
m463 wrote: post #16

on the other hand, many giant trees get the water out of the air via fog: Coalescence of coastal fog accounts for a considerable part of the trees' water needs.[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens#Fog_and_f... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens

Similarly, it blows my mind that all trees are made of air, specifically the carbon in it. I used to think that the biomass must come from the soil, but reality is more interesting.

Kind of like how the vast majority of weight loss in animals happens via exhaling.

Weirder still is the realization that all the air is just trapped light.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#35

Post by [deleted] »

efskap wrote: post #30
m463 wrote: post #16

on the other hand, many giant trees get the water out of the air via fog: Coalescence of coastal fog accounts for a considerable part of the trees' water needs.[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens#Fog_and_f... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens

Similarly, it blows my mind that all trees are made of air, specifically the carbon in it. I used to think that the biomass must come from the soil, but reality is more interesting.

[deleted]

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#36

Post by Alien1Being »

calibas wrote: post #23

The largest tree on record is rejected in part because it's over the theoretical limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nooksack_Giant Too bad we cut it down, along with almost every other giant Douglas-fir.

Human barbarism is not new...

"The placard recorded that the Nooksack tree produced 96,345 board feet (227.348 cubic meters) of the "finest quality" lumber.

The New York Times regarded the tree in a March 7, 1897 issue as the "most magnificent fir tree ever beheld by human eyes" and called its destruction a "truly pitiable tale" and a "crime".

The Morning Times of February 28, 1897 claimed that the wood, sawed into one-inch strips, would reach from "Whatcom [the tree's location] to China"."

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#38

Post by kulahan »

efskap wrote: post #30
m463 wrote: post #16

on the other hand, many giant trees get the water out of the air via fog: Coalescence of coastal fog accounts for a considerable part of the trees' water needs.[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens#Fog_and_f... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens

Similarly, it blows my mind that all trees are made of air, specifically the carbon in it. I used to think that the biomass must come from the soil, but reality is more interesting.

It's also kind of weird to think that soil, really, is just ground up "stuff" that used to be trees, plants, rocks, etc.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#39

Post by kijin »

c22 wrote: post #34
efskap wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, it blows my mind that all trees are made of air, specifically the carbon in it. I used to think that the biomass must come from the soil, but reality is more interesting.

Kind of like how the vast majority of weight loss in animals happens via exhaling. Weirder still is the realization that all the air is just trapped light.

Actually, all matter is just trapped energy.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#40

Post by pkghost »

Folks still sleeping on structured water.

While admittedly contested and only reproduced by a few labs outside Gerald Pollack's at University of Washington, there is a solid case that it could play a role in transporting water and sap to the tops of trees. At least, it's involved in the motion induced in hydrophilic tubes when there is sufficient ambient radiant energy (uv/infrared).

Relevant papers:

"Exclusion-zone water inside and outside of plant xylem vessels." 2024 Scientific Reports. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-62983-3

"Surface-induced flow: a natural microscopic engine using infrared energy as fuel." 202 Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aba0941

"Long-range forces extending from polymer-gel surfaces." 2003 Phys. Rev. E. https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.68.031408

Pollack's site: https://www.pollacklab.org/

Some critiques of Pollack's theory:

Schurr, J.M. (2013). Phenomena associated with gel–water interfaces: analyses and alternatives to the long-range ordered water hypothesis. J. Phys. Chem. B, 117(25), 7653–7674. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp302589y Elton, D.C., Spencer, P.D., Riches, J.D. & Williams, E.D. (2020). Exclusion zone phenomena in water — a critical review of experimental findings and theories. Int. J. Mol. Sci., 21(14), 5041. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21145041 (open access; the most thorough critical review) Elton, D.C. & Spencer, P.D. (2021). Pathological water science — four examples and what they have in common. In Water in Biomechanical and Related Systems (Biologically-Inspired Systems, vol. 17), pp. 155–170. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67227-0_8 (preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.07287)

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