Asklemmy

This is also why trees are so fucking crazy to think about. It is impossible to pump water up a hose more than ~32 feet. Like it’s literally physically impossible to stick a pump at the top of a tall building and suck water straight up a pipe. You need a complicated series of pumps and one-way valves to pump it up in stages. Because you’re not really “sucking” the water up the pipe. You’re just lowering the pressure in the pipe, and atmospheric pressure pushes the water upwards to fill the low pressure. After 32 feet tall, the top of the hose/pipe will be a perfect vacuum, atmospheric pressure won’t be able to push liquid water upwards any farther, and the water will just begin cold-boiling in the top of the pipe as the liquid water turns into gas (steam) to fill the vacuum.

But tall trees can move water all the way to their leaves by using only passive capillary action, and suction created by water evaporating out of their leaves. The capillary action is created by tiny straw-like fibers that run all the way up the tree and are bunched together really tightly. Due to surface tension, water is able to “climb” the capillaries as the surface tension fills as much surface area as possible. Then at the top of the tree, as the water evaporates out of the leaves, it draws up fresh water to fill the void.

But that means the bottom of the tree should need to support the pressure of all of the water above it. But it doesn’t, because the surface tension holds the water stable inside of the trunk.