Transportation of water in plants

How does a plant transport water?

Plants all need water to live. Water is one of the 3 things that plants need for photosynthesis (CO2, water sunlight) and so the uptake of enough of it is very vital for survival. Plants are evolved for the uptake of enough water for survival, whether it be huge leaves and root structures like a large tree, or the conservation of water in desert plants E.G Cacti. Which are adapted to drought conditions

Uptake of Water
the regions just behind the growing tips of the root are covered in thousands of tiny little root hairs, these are the main sites of absorption by the roots, because the hairs greatly increase the surface area of a root system, improving the rate of photosynthesis substantially.

Where is water absorbed?

Water is absorbed mainly from the soil, as well as the nutrients, and is mainly absorbed into the root xylem, and there are 2 types of absorption : active and passive. You would water a plant and the water would fall mainly onto the soil, where it would then be absorbed into the xylem and transported throughout the necessary regions of the plant.

How is water absorbed

The water is mainly absorbed through the root hairs,

as they are thin-walled outgrowths of the epidermal layers. The cell wall of the root hair is permeable to both water and minerals, but its cell membrane and the membrane around the vacuole form semipermeable membranes, and so the water is absorbed through osmosis. Root hair cells become more turgid and their osmotic pressure falls. The surrounding cells have higher osmotic pressure, and so diffusion occurs from root hairs to the surrounding cells.

The Xylem
The xylem is a long, pipe-like

system in a plant, which acts as a water carrier which transports water around the main vessels of the plants. The xylem is always dead, and the inner walls have deteriorated, whereas the outer walls have hardened into a rigid wall, meaning it is equivalent to a pipeline (hollow and rigid) It is 1 of the 2 tissues in a plant that carry the substances it needs to live.

Problems
Taller plants, for example the giant redwoods in California, have the issue of having to transport the water from the roots 200 meters from the root system, to the top of the plant at the capillary level. They have adapted in the xylem to evaporate water through the stomates, creating a negative water vapour pressure. After this has happened water is pulled into the leaf from the xylem, which replaces the water that has evaporated from the leaf. The pulling of water repeats all the way throughout the tree, meaning that the water is transported to the top of the tree.

Sources
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-large-trees-such-a http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/standard/biology/world_of_plants/making_foo d/revision/1/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylem http://www.gardenvisit.com/garden/sheilam_cactus_garde n http://ap-bio-patricksteed.wikispaces.com/Four+Plant+Divisions,+Phloem+vs.+ Xylem