How do trees pump water?

Trees absorb large quantities of water from the soil and transport it to the leaves where it supports cellular processes and photosynthesis, but most of the water pumped to the leaves evaporates into the air in a process called transpiration. How trees can pump vast amounts of water up to 30 meter high has been the subject of scientific inquiry since the 1890’s. This animation will delve into transpiration, water cohesion and adhesion, and the cohesion-tension theory of water transport. The video will also describe the recent results from a study on passive water transport in a synthetic tree.

For further reading:

https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelve...

https://www.quora.com/How-do-trees-ca...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylem

Shi, W., Dalrymple, R.M., McKenny, C.J. et al. Passive water ascent in a tall, scalable synthetic tree. Sci Rep 10, 230 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-57...

S Bittner, M Janott, D Ritter, et al. Functional-structural water flow model reveals differences between diffuse- and ring-porous tree species. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, vol 158-159 (2012), pp 80-89.