How A Tree Gets Its Water....Pearls On A String!

Pearls On A String, no.3 is posted now in my shop, MissouriBendStudio.  That little bird is just calling out to the universe with all of his tiny being, isn't he?  I just want to share with you a little moment of revelation for me. I'm reading a pretty fascinating book that I bought not long ago, A Splintered History of Wood, by Spike Carlsen, and in the early part of the book he talks about trees and their amazing ability to pull water from the ground.  Here's how it happens...in theory.

"...for while water isn't sucked up the tree, it is literally pulled up the tree.  When the minute pores, or stomates, in leaves are open, water evaporates from the leaf.  Each water molecule is part of a continuous unbroken column of water traveling through vessels, or tracheids, reaching all the way to the roots.  The water molecules adhere to one another through cohesion; each time a water molecule evaporates from a leaf, it pulls the entire chain of water molecules up behind it.  At the roots, a molecule of water is pulled out of the soil to fill the gap in the chain.  In other words, the roots, trunk, and leaves form a continuous system that connects the soil below to the air above."

The universe is made of pearls on a string...