Plant Water Transport: Xylem Simulator Community
Questions, answers and tips from people who use the Plant Water Transport: Xylem Simulator. Follow water from root to leaf through the xylem, and see how transpiration, root pressure and vessel width set the water's speed and pressure..
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From the tool guide: common questions about Plant Water Transport: Xylem Simulator
The items below are not posts by community members. They come from the written guide for this tool and are here to get a conversation started. Use “Ask a follow-up” to open a thread about any of them.
What pulls water up a 100-metre-tall tree with no pump?
Transpiration at the leaves creates tension that is transmitted down an unbroken column of water held together by cohesion - the cohesion-tension theory.
From the tool guide Ask a follow-upWhy don't trees just evolve very wide xylem vessels for maximum flow?
Wider vessels are more likely to develop or trap air bubbles (embolism) that can block the whole column, so many trees favour narrower, safer vessels and rely more on strong transpirational tension.
From the tool guide Ask a follow-upKey ideas
- Cohesion-tension theory: water evaporating from the leaf pulls the whole connected water column up the xylem under tension, held together by cohesion between water molecules.
- At night, with stomata shut, root pressure alone can push water upward, sometimes causing droplets called guttation.
- The Hagen-Poiseuille law says flow speed rises with the square of the vessel radius and volume flow with the fourth power, so slightly wider vessels move dramatically more water.
- Very wide vessels move more water but are more vulnerable to air-bubble embolism breaking the column.
Things to try
- Try the night preset and see root pressure take over as the driving force.
- Try the hot midday preset and watch the tension climb.
- Narrow the vessel radius and see how sharply the ascent velocity drops.
- Try the narrow-vessel challenge: reach the target speed with a 30 micron radius or less.
Where this is used
Foresters and plant physiologists use cohesion-tension theory to explain how trees move water without pumps, and it also explains why droughts can cause fatal embolism in tree xylem.
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