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

https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-environment-science-and-economy/giant-trees-have-no-trouble-pumping-water-to-top-branches/

by hhs • 19 days ago

269 121 19 days ago

news.exeter.ac.uk

nullorempty• 19 days ago

Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches

Hm, may be because they are not really "pumping" the water?

leni5362• 19 days ago

What would you call it?

cj• 19 days ago

Not that it really matters, but the article also refers to it as “drawing water to the top”. That seems more representative of reality than “pumping water from the bottom”.

gitaarik2• 19 days ago

“Trees contain lots of thin, hollow vessels and they suck water upwards by creating low pressure at the top,”

So sucking / pulling?

rolph4• 19 days ago

more like capillary action.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylem#Cohesion-tension_theory

cwmoore4• 19 days ago

They do wave in the wind, and evolution is likely capturing some of that motion for work.

HarHarVeryFunny• 18 days ago

There seems to be a lot of things that come together to make it work, but it's basically sucking not pumping. The term to google is Transpiration.

It's a bit like a siphon effect with water evaporating from the leaves creating low pressure internally which draws more water up, and the reason it's able to pull a whole column of water up is because water molecules stick together to some extent via hydrogen bonds.

Given that evaporation is what is driving it, I wonder how that works with evergreens with low evaporation - I guess it's basically a replacement system, so you only need to pull what you evaporate.

alldayhaterdude• 19 days ago

Happy for them.

lukeholder• 19 days ago

This made me laugh out loud. Thanks.

nomel2• 19 days ago

This goes against all previous research/measurements for actually tall trees (looks like they only considered up to 80m) and the fact that there are exactly zeros trees in the world taller than 130 meters [1]. Wide capillaries at the base, like stated in the article, don't seem to be related.

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/REDWOODS-How-tall-can...

fc417fc8029• 19 days ago

I agree it doesn't pass the sniff test (where are the 500 meter trees in the rainforests?) but I think it would make an excellent goal for molecularbiological and genetic engineering. We (our civilization) need to become much more skilled at that before we start editing the human germline, and we will inevitably want to edit the human germline eventually (or rather we are currently exhibiting great restraint in not doing so but I'm not sure how much longer that will last), and anyway thousand meter trees just sound like they would be really cool.

Sharlin4• 19 days ago

There are obviously other factors limiting tree growth, like compressive strength.

gre• 19 days ago

500m

500ft is taller than the max ever, not 1640 ft

oersted2• 19 days ago

Sounds cool but for such experimentation you would want relatively fast experimental iterations to get anywhere, and this would take literal ages. You can play around with growth speed of course but that’s a different question and might be in some ways opposed to achieving height.

raducu• 16 days ago

where are the 500 meter trees in the rainforests.

There could be structural reason as to why it's not possible, not pumping water *

cortesoft• 19 days ago

Couldn't both things be true? Water transport is not the limiting factor, but some other thing is?

m463• 19 days ago

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

nomel2• 19 days ago

Sequoia are still limited in height by gravity, probably due to capillary pressures. [1] If they evolved to be segmented, they could probably do it.

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/REDWOODS-How-tall-can...

efskap• 19 days ago

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.

c22• 19 days ago

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.

kulahan• 19 days ago

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

hinkley8• 19 days ago

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.

calibas• 19 days ago

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.

hinkley8• 19 days ago

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.

ryanmcbride• 19 days ago

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

RetroTechie2• 18 days ago

And leaves can absorb moisture from water droplets on their leaves. Like from rain or foggy sea winds. Why go through a transport system when the water is right where it's needed?

Alien1Being• 19 days ago

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"."

fsckboy• 19 days ago

Human barbarism is not new...

to be fair, without humans there would be nobody to declare "barbarism". At one time, all humans were barbarians, it took a certain level of cultural development before the word "barbarism" was necessary, so at that point it was "new". It remains be be shown whether cultures that call other cultures "barbaric" are actually "better".

seabrookmx• 19 days ago

I just visited this beauty[1] a few weeks ago. Not 400ft tall, but over half that and over 13ft round at the base!

We're lucky to have a handful of big Doug Firs, Sitka Spruce, and Western Red Cedars left on Vancouver Island.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lonely_Doug

chasil• 19 days ago

Kurzgesagt has two videos on trees addressing this and other questions.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSch_NgZpQs

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pHJIhxZEoxg

Minor49er• 18 days ago

I'd be careful suggesting Kurzgesagt because they push propaganda for large corporations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHMoNGqQTI

throwuxiytayq• 18 days ago

Is this confirmed/factual? Their reddit response to the controversy definitely gave me second thoughts

pkghost2• 19 days ago

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)

theendisney5• 19 days ago

I regretably didnt save it but there was a truly hilarious topic on usenet sci.physics long long ago. If we've gathered enough evidence against something or if the thing goes against accepted consensus you are forbidden from doing further research and new evidence is no longer allowed. The topic then invited others to list such topics. The list grew to hundreds of entries and people couldnt resist getting angry reading their personal trigger words despite there being many more silly things on it.

Yours shall be filed under homeopathy :)

fc417fc8029• 19 days ago

Be careful with that dismissal. The concept of an exclusion zone itself appears to be legitimate. More generally, there's lots of strange and surprising effects that crop up on the molecular level at interfaces in solution. However not all mechanistic explanations for such behavior are shall we say "widely accepted".

And then there's homeopathy which is a largely unrelated and entirely nonsensical thing.

jzer0cool• 19 days ago

Any truth to whether water pumped by tree (branches) is potable?

karim794• 19 days ago

I grow marijuana and chillies from time to time. I got good at it. I will say that plants are malleable in untold ways and so I find this article to be unsurprising.

Plants will do what they need to do in the end. I've done stuff like co2 bombing, and increasing nutrients to the point to where I get a whole new ecosystem of insects and an entirely new situation.

It is such fascinating stuff that it's actually the life I want to live. I'm a computer scientist but now I yearn for the botanical sciences.

I highly recommend checking out defoliation strategies and low-stress training methods for anyone interested. Plants are not dumb creatures. The results you can get from them are astonishing and the science of what plants actually are becomes more profound by the day.

card_zero6• 19 days ago

There is apparently such a thing as "Computational Botany", where you model virtual plants.

BobaFloutist• 18 days ago

I suppose that would make "Botanical Computation" the use of plants to perform calculations.

mountainriver• 19 days ago

With a lot of software getting eaten up I’m increasingly interested in biology. Seems like one of the later frontiers that could have massive benefits, and AI is really well suited to help us understand it.

karim794• 19 days ago

True and also, the actual physical contact and results are absolute magic. Maybe we need to create a "computer scientists for botony" forum. I think that has legs.

Botany is great because the results are basically what I'd call magic. It's such beauty (and horror on occasion).

The marriage of CS and botany seems like a match made in heaven and just from writing these comments I've convinced myself that it's probably the most practical way to go forward in life.

globular-toast• 19 days ago

Have you considered computational biology? They are always looking for people. Knuth said a while back that biology has tons of open and useful problems left to be solved.

kuerbel• 19 days ago

I'm studying for a bachelor's degree in horticulture part-time through a distance-learning university. If you're more interested in growing plants, I'd say horticulture is a better fit than botany. If you're more interested in understanding how plants work, botany is probably the better choice. That said, you'll still learn a lot of botany in a horticulture degree as well obviously

karim794• 19 days ago

Thank you sir. I actually got my CS from distance learning and somehow the combination of growing things and monitoring everything using CS just grabs me. I would work on any farm anywhere with appropriate agency.

pvaldes• 19 days ago

Botany comprises all, but most people see it as a synonym of plant classification.

Horticulture is about growing plants and multiplying it, often with flower power overtones and moon myths that vastly underestimate its importance.

Veganism is often mistaken as a synonym of "botany loving people", but is just a religious movement started by a priest, and centered around the random ideas that:

1) Plants occupy a lower rank of importance among life beings because they lack a single particular type of sensor that only the cool animals have, and...

2) Plants are safe to eat, because they were designed by god for us

None of those ideas are validated by real facts. As people grows in the cozy comfort of their religious group they lose the capability to see the whole picture and turn into food zombies that move and hate just by inertia. You can show science here for weeks and weeks without finding a sign of intelligent life.

---------------

Many people stop here and will never heard about:

Geobotany. Be afraid, very afraid. This is what a cabal of Da Vincy code linguists would do in the dark to bring pain to the world.

Most people will be put off by it in seconds, by the strange words and tedious lists, but there is an unexpected reward at the end when all pieces fall in place. You will never see the wildlife in the same way.

And plant physiology, that is like a really good sci-fi book.

Very complicated, defiant, dealing with really futuristic problems, and with more "hit the coin" moments that Mario. Who would imagine that the future of the humanity is linked with the capability to huge organisms to do physical work that makes the stronger animal look like crap

itomato• 19 days ago

one time, while communing with Nature, I looked up at the transpiring coastal tree line flexing in the wind and I uttered, "pumps."

My hunch is that torsion, flex and their effect on the capillary structures are at play, but I haven't been able to step away from CS myself.

CyberDildonics• 18 days ago

Anyone who sees that a giant trees leaves aren't dried out should find it unsurprising.

luxuryballs• 19 days ago

I’m glad to find the trees are doing well, even the big ones, that managed to grow big... ???

cwmoore4• 19 days ago

“The root cause is nailed down (not a theory anymore)…” —Claude

accidentallfact• 19 days ago

I don't get why it is believed that trees can't pump water above a certain limit, all it should take is a system of valves, something that plants already have for other purposes. It certainly isn't lumuted by trees literally sucking water up as that would limit them to a height that can be easily exceeded by the majority of trees.

It seems that trees just don't grow that tall anymore. Even common trees such as the spruce seem to be able to reach 100m, they just kind of don't.

One possibility is the depletion of nutrients. But what I think is to blame is the lack of elephants. They constantly ruined young trees and the lucky few that survived then grew huge. Perhaps the redwoods were actually created by the natives, who removed young trees, and kept the old trees standing.

tryagainian2• 19 days ago

Also, wasn’t the 250 ppm atmospheric CO2 concentration prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution a historic low as far a geological-time goes?

I suppose that’s not particularly relevant for more recent old growth tall trees that seem to have got by fine in a colder Earth.

But it’s easy to imagine a warmer, wetter, Earth with higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations being more conducive to taller tree growth.

On the other hand, I probably don’t really know what I’m talking about, not my area of expertise.

bnegreve• 19 days ago

all it should take is a system of valves,

That would work, but it's not how to works apparently. According to this veritasium video, it's because of "negative pressure" aka tension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BickMFHAZR0

I recommend watching, I think it's one of the best veritasium Dereck has ever produced.

huijzer• 19 days ago

Another paper for the “Obviously” category. Otherwise the leafs at the top would be brown. But I did a PhD myself and our papers were exactly the same. Noone wants to rock the boat. Professors just want to get to their pension without problems. And people will cite things that are in line with their own stuff. So there you have it. Just proving the obvious time and time and time again.

kank0de• 19 days ago

plants are very brave, both metaphorically and physically.

yubblegum• 18 days ago

Rather tenacious and unrelenting than brave. Many of them wear war paint, employ chemical warfare, and dress up in scary getups to scare away potential enemies/predators. Effective for sure, but "brave"?

stymaar• 19 days ago

These vessels have evolved intricate adaptations that can maintain the water in liquid form, even under the extreme low pressures

This sentence undersells the phenomenon quite a bit: the “extreme low pressure” is in fact several bars of negative pressure and the challenge of maintaining water in liquid form is avoiding cavitation.

I was exposed to the physics of trees though the entrance exam to École Polytechnique (France's best University) and it's been carved in my mind since then: http://alainrobichon.free.fr/Concours/X_PC_PH1_01.pdf

AFAIK students are still being given this masterpiece for practice even though it's now 25 years old.

Arodex• 18 days ago

... May we have the solution to the questions, also? I went through the concours too but I am very rusty.

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

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