Understand how roots and leaves transport oxygen, carbon dioxide, and minerals vital to a plant's development
Understand how roots and leaves transport oxygen, carbon dioxide, and minerals vital to a plant's development
In growing plants, roots and leaves play an essential role in transporting the materials the plant needs to survive, such as carbon dioxide, water, and mineral salts.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Transcript
[Music in]
NARRATOR: Observing the living processes in animals is generally easy because the speed at which they take place is similar to that found in humans.
But you have to be more inventive to see these events in plants.
[Music out]
In order for a plant to grow, there needs to be a regular supply of materials from the environment surrounding it. In a typical land plant, oxygen and carbon dioxide enter through the leaves, while water and mineral salts enter through the root system.
But how do we know that these materials enter through the root?
Let's look at what happens when we place a busy Lizzie plant into a nontoxic dye.
We can see that the blue dye is taken up by the roots and passes into the aerial parts of the plant. How does it do this?
Substances can move into the root in several ways. The main method of movement is for free water molecules to pass from the soil into the cell through the root hair membrane. This process is known as osmosis.
Diffusion of the mineral salts occurs at the same time. If we look at this process at a molecular level, we find that the small water molecules pass easily through the selectively permeable membrane.
Facilitated diffusion occurs when important molecules pass through the membrane via special channels. In addition, active transport of other molecules might also take place in the root hair, depending on the needs of the plant.
In order for active transport to take place, energy must be consumed because the required molecules are moved across the membrane against their concentration gradient.
But the main substances to pass across the membrane are water and mineral salts.
Up to 98 percent of the water that enters some plants is passed out again through the leaves. But how does the water pass upward through the plant?
Let's see whether we can get any clues by looking at the structure of this dicotyledonous plant. What would we expect to see when the dyed root is cut?
There is a distinct area at the center of the root called the stele that has been darkened by the dye. The color is restricted to areas within the central stele known as the xylem. The stem section has a different distribution of xylem.
If we make a cut down the plant, we can see that the vascular bundles continue throughout its length. There is a continuous column of colored water in the xylem vessels of these vascular bundles. But it's uphill all the way. How does the plant get water from its roots to its leaves?
Watch what happens to the dye in these three tubes. We can see that the narrower a tube is, the higher the water can climb inside it. This is due to capillary action, a process that occurs because water molecules form strong bonds between one another.
The xylem of the plant provides fine tubes, so capillary action is one way in which the water can pass into the leaves of small plants.
Capillarity is not the only way water enters plants. Using a piece of apparatus called a manometer, the student can measure the hydrostatic pressure generated by the root when water passes into the plant by osmosis. Over a two-hour period pressure increases, forcing the blue liquid up the right-hand side of the manometer tube.
Sometimes the pressure is so great that droplets from the xylem tissues form on the tips of the leaves. This is known as guttation.
Thus, root pressure can be a useful way of forcing water upward in small plants.
But what about very tall plants like this redwood tree? The trees are taller than the column of water which could be supported in the xylem tubes by root pressure or capillarity alone. Here's a clue: the rate at which water is taken up is directly related to the rate at which water is lost from the leaves.
The process of losing water from leaves is known as transpiration. Let's look at transpiration in a plant that's easier to handle.
The begonia plant, like most land plants, has more stomata on the underside of its leaf than on the top.
The stomata control transpiration as well as the exchange of gases within the plant.
The stoma is like a pore. Two cells, called guard cells, form a pair of lips around the stoma and can open and close in response to the amount of water vapor in the plant, the light intensity, and the carbon dioxide levels.
Behind the stomata there are air spaces that are saturated with water. A continuous chain of water molecules runs from the cells of the root hairs to these air spaces in the leaf, which form a link with the stomatal pores. Evaporation of water from leaf surfaces through stomatal pores provides the momentum for the water to keep moving from root to leaf.
The cohesion of water molecules is thus vital for transpiration to take place. If the column is interrupted by drought or mechanical damage, the plant wilts and eventually dies.
The process of transpiration is the most important manner in which water reaches the leaves, but it does result in water loss, which can be a problem for the plant.
The stomata have to open to allow the plant to take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and to expel oxygen during respiration. Water vapor is lost during these times.
Therefore, losing water from leaves is an inevitable result of gaseous exchange. It also explains why plants have evolved with most of their stomata on the cooler, less-exposed underside of their leaves.
But many plants, like this oak tree, are deciduous and lose their leaves in winter. How do plants respire when they have shed their leaves? Careful observation shows that the twigs have small openings, called lenticels, through which gases can still be exchanged.
However, large plants like trees also have another problem.
Besides the water having to travel further, the structure of the stem had to be modified because more support is required. The xylem is strengthened by the formation of woody tissue.
In conifers, these take the form of tracheids, long cells that are strengthened by lignin. The ends of the tracheids are interlocking, increasing the support. Large bordered pits and the loss of cell contents also helps in the movement of the water up the tree.
In the angiosperm trees, the xylem has developed vessels. Vessels are columns of cells where interlinking cell membranes have broken down. This makes them more efficient in passing water up to the leaves.
Moving water from roots to leaves is a problem that terrestrial plants have had to overcome. But there is an advantage for the plant that grows its leaves on stems and high branches; light can reach the leaves more easily, which is important for photosynthesis.
[Music in]
Photosynthesis is an energy-storing process that is important to animals as well as plants. Free energy from sunlight is captured and stored as sugars and starches in plant tissues and can be handed down the food chain. The way the leaves are arranged on stems ensures that the plant takes maximum [music out] advantage of the available light.
The key to photosynthesis is the chloroplast. There are large numbers of chloroplasts found in the middle tissue of the leaf. In low light they are distributed fairly evenly, but bright light causes them to move to a less exposed position.
If we look at the internal structure of a chloroplast, we find that it is highly organized.
Within the chloroplast there are closely packed thylakoid membranes. At intervals, the membranes are piled into a stack called the grana. The membranes and grana are surrounded by a jellylike material called the stroma. The most noticeable characteristic of chloroplasts is their green color. The color comes from a pigment called chlorophyll, which is concentrated in the grana.
We can show that without the chlorophyll, photosynthesis does not take place. First, we boil the leaf to fix it, then we put it into alcohol. Boiling the leaf in alcohol removes the chlorophyll. A few drops of iodine soon reveals a blue-black color, which indicates where starch is present in the leaf. We can see that starch is only produced in the parts of the leaf that were green, that is, where chlorophyll was present.
Chemical analysis of chloroplasts shows that chlorophyll and a series of other compounds are organized on the thylakoid membranes in a systematic way.
When light strikes the thylakoid membranes, chlorophyll and other associated pigments are oxidized, which causes the release of electrons.
The electron flow initiated by this input of light energy is coupled with the formation of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. The reaction is known as the light reaction of photosynthesis.
Because electrons are being lost from the chlorophyll, they have to be replaced. The plant does this by splitting water molecules and using electrons from hydrogen, leaving oxygen as a waste product. When water plants like elodea are photosynthesizing, it is easy to see the bubbles of waste oxygen being released.
ATP molecules are energy storing molecules. They provide the energy that enables the plant to combine carbon dioxide with other compounds to make sugars. This activity occurs in the stroma of the chloroplast and does not require light. It is therefore known as the dark reaction of photosynthesis.
The sugars produced by the dark reaction of photosynthesis provide the materials for growth and repair and are the basis from which other materials are constructed.
[Music]
Growth demands not only carbohydrates like starch and sugar but also the formation of proteins and lipids for the development of new tissues, the storage of materials for future growth, and the repair of tissues that have been damaged. But how are useful materials carried to these growing, storage, and damaged tissues?
When we look at the xylem, that brings the water to the leaves, we can also see there are other cells within the stem that are not stained by the blue dye. Some of these form the phloem.
The sections of both these stems have phloem present even though the distribution of the vascular bundles is completely different. On the left is a monocotyledonous plant and on the right is a dicotyledonous plant.
Phloem tissue seen here between the areas of xylem extends all the way to the root. But what does it do?
To find out, let's remove the stem layer containing the phloem but not the xylem. We find that over a few hours, the concentration of sugar above the cut is greater than the concentration below the cut.
This evidence suggests that the phloem carries the complex organic products of photosynthesis in solution.
The structure of the phloem is very distinctive. The sieve tubes are as fine as a human hair. At intervals, the sieve tubes are interrupted by sieve plates. The sieve plates, stained red here, have pores of even smaller diameter. The narrowness of the tubes and the existence of plates help to produce pressure differences between different areas of the phloem and to stimulate a vast movement of materials from one place to another.
This is known as mass flow. The sucrose produced in the leaf cells is actively transported into the phloem cells. This causes water to flow after it by osmosis, increasing the turgor of the cell. As the cells of the phloem form columns, the sugars are pulled through them to the regions where the turgor is less. These are areas where the sugars are being removed and used by the cells either for storage and growth or for energy.
[Music in]
It is easy to tell when animals are breathing. Not only can you see their sides moving, but you can also hear them. The process of breaking down their food to release energy is, however, less easy to see.
[Music out]
The same is true of plants. How can we tell if respiration is taking place?
Putting a plant into the dark means that photosynthesis cannot take place. But even in the dark, gas is produced by the plant. In this experiment, we can see that the lime water, which is normally clear, turns milky after a short period of time. This indicates that the gas being produced by the plant in the dark is carbon dioxide.
Does the plant take up oxygen when it is in the dark? In this experiment, any carbon dioxide produced will be absorbed by the calcium oxide in this small beaker. The plant is placed under a bell jar and sealed with water. Any change in water level will therefore show what is happening to the oxygen.
After a period of time, we can see that the water begins to creep slowly up the inside of the jar, which must mean that oxygen is being taken up by the plant.
The release of carbon dioxide and the taking up of oxygen shows that plants respire in the dark. But do plants also respire in the light, during photosynthesis?
There seems little doubt that they do, though proving it is more difficult. We know that in the higher plants, if the available oxygen is severely reduced when it is in the dark, the plant will begin to die within a few hours. But if oxygen is produced during photosynthesis the plant can continue its existence for longer. After a period in the dark, unable to photosynthesize, the plant visibly wilts, while the plant left in the light is still growing normally.
[Music in]
Growth in plants reflects the way in which they interact with the environment.
[Music out]
If we place a strong light at one side of this fuchsia plant, the plant will grow towards it. This is called a phototrophic response. But what controls such a response?
If the tip of the plant is protected from the light using a small cap, the plant will continue to grow upward. This suggests that there is something at the tip of the plant that controls the direction of growth.
If we place this fuchsia plant on its side, it quickly recovers its orientation and grows upward. But is the plant responding to light or to gravity?
These pea seeds are germinating in the dark, yet the roots are growing down and the shoots are growing up. The roots and shoots must be responding to gravity, but in different ways. The roots are said to be positively geotrophic and the shoots negatively geotrophic.
It is probable that all of these growth responses are due in some part to the auxin indoleacetic acid, or IAA. One theory states that a light-sensing mechanism in the tip of the fuchsia plant promotes the active transport of IAA molecules to the shaded part of the stem. This action produces cell growth and elongation in this area. The result is a curvature, which orientates the plant towards the light.
A gravity-sensing mechanism in the shoot tip triggers a similar migration of IAA molecules, producing growth in the stem, which orientates the plant from a horizontal position back to a vertical position.
The growth substance IAA also appears to have a role in maintaining apical dominance. By removing the growing tip, which controls auxin distribution and therefore apical dominance, lateral buds can grow.
Other growth substances have been identified in plants, including gibberellic acid, which causes extension in the length of the internodes of the plants.
An important hormone in deciduous plants is abscisic acid, which controls leaf fall, thereby protecting the plant from adverse seasonal conditions.
[Music in]
To grow and flourish, plants have a similar set of requirements as animals. They need a source of food to provide the building blocks for growth, respiratory gases to enable that food to be broken down and used, and water to sustain metabolic activity.
Animals and plants are both living organisms. Plants respire and excrete waste products just like animals. They move in response to stimuli, and they reproduce. But plants obtain their nutrients in a different way than animals and, because of this, seem to be quite different life forms.
[Music out]
NARRATOR: Observing the living processes in animals is generally easy because the speed at which they take place is similar to that found in humans.
But you have to be more inventive to see these events in plants.
[Music out]
In order for a plant to grow, there needs to be a regular supply of materials from the environment surrounding it. In a typical land plant, oxygen and carbon dioxide enter through the leaves, while water and mineral salts enter through the root system.
But how do we know that these materials enter through the root?
Let's look at what happens when we place a busy Lizzie plant into a nontoxic dye.
We can see that the blue dye is taken up by the roots and passes into the aerial parts of the plant. How does it do this?
Substances can move into the root in several ways. The main method of movement is for free water molecules to pass from the soil into the cell through the root hair membrane. This process is known as osmosis.
Diffusion of the mineral salts occurs at the same time. If we look at this process at a molecular level, we find that the small water molecules pass easily through the selectively permeable membrane.
Facilitated diffusion occurs when important molecules pass through the membrane via special channels. In addition, active transport of other molecules might also take place in the root hair, depending on the needs of the plant.
In order for active transport to take place, energy must be consumed because the required molecules are moved across the membrane against their concentration gradient.
But the main substances to pass across the membrane are water and mineral salts.
Up to 98 percent of the water that enters some plants is passed out again through the leaves. But how does the water pass upward through the plant?
Let's see whether we can get any clues by looking at the structure of this dicotyledonous plant. What would we expect to see when the dyed root is cut?
There is a distinct area at the center of the root called the stele that has been darkened by the dye. The color is restricted to areas within the central stele known as the xylem. The stem section has a different distribution of xylem.
If we make a cut down the plant, we can see that the vascular bundles continue throughout its length. There is a continuous column of colored water in the xylem vessels of these vascular bundles. But it's uphill all the way. How does the plant get water from its roots to its leaves?
Watch what happens to the dye in these three tubes. We can see that the narrower a tube is, the higher the water can climb inside it. This is due to capillary action, a process that occurs because water molecules form strong bonds between one another.
The xylem of the plant provides fine tubes, so capillary action is one way in which the water can pass into the leaves of small plants.
Capillarity is not the only way water enters plants. Using a piece of apparatus called a manometer, the student can measure the hydrostatic pressure generated by the root when water passes into the plant by osmosis. Over a two-hour period pressure increases, forcing the blue liquid up the right-hand side of the manometer tube.
Sometimes the pressure is so great that droplets from the xylem tissues form on the tips of the leaves. This is known as guttation.
Thus, root pressure can be a useful way of forcing water upward in small plants.
But what about very tall plants like this redwood tree? The trees are taller than the column of water which could be supported in the xylem tubes by root pressure or capillarity alone. Here's a clue: the rate at which water is taken up is directly related to the rate at which water is lost from the leaves.
The process of losing water from leaves is known as transpiration. Let's look at transpiration in a plant that's easier to handle.
The begonia plant, like most land plants, has more stomata on the underside of its leaf than on the top.
The stomata control transpiration as well as the exchange of gases within the plant.
The stoma is like a pore. Two cells, called guard cells, form a pair of lips around the stoma and can open and close in response to the amount of water vapor in the plant, the light intensity, and the carbon dioxide levels.
Behind the stomata there are air spaces that are saturated with water. A continuous chain of water molecules runs from the cells of the root hairs to these air spaces in the leaf, which form a link with the stomatal pores. Evaporation of water from leaf surfaces through stomatal pores provides the momentum for the water to keep moving from root to leaf.
The cohesion of water molecules is thus vital for transpiration to take place. If the column is interrupted by drought or mechanical damage, the plant wilts and eventually dies.
The process of transpiration is the most important manner in which water reaches the leaves, but it does result in water loss, which can be a problem for the plant.
The stomata have to open to allow the plant to take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and to expel oxygen during respiration. Water vapor is lost during these times.
Therefore, losing water from leaves is an inevitable result of gaseous exchange. It also explains why plants have evolved with most of their stomata on the cooler, less-exposed underside of their leaves.
But many plants, like this oak tree, are deciduous and lose their leaves in winter. How do plants respire when they have shed their leaves? Careful observation shows that the twigs have small openings, called lenticels, through which gases can still be exchanged.
However, large plants like trees also have another problem.
Besides the water having to travel further, the structure of the stem had to be modified because more support is required. The xylem is strengthened by the formation of woody tissue.
In conifers, these take the form of tracheids, long cells that are strengthened by lignin. The ends of the tracheids are interlocking, increasing the support. Large bordered pits and the loss of cell contents also helps in the movement of the water up the tree.
In the angiosperm trees, the xylem has developed vessels. Vessels are columns of cells where interlinking cell membranes have broken down. This makes them more efficient in passing water up to the leaves.
Moving water from roots to leaves is a problem that terrestrial plants have had to overcome. But there is an advantage for the plant that grows its leaves on stems and high branches; light can reach the leaves more easily, which is important for photosynthesis.
[Music in]
Photosynthesis is an energy-storing process that is important to animals as well as plants. Free energy from sunlight is captured and stored as sugars and starches in plant tissues and can be handed down the food chain. The way the leaves are arranged on stems ensures that the plant takes maximum [music out] advantage of the available light.
The key to photosynthesis is the chloroplast. There are large numbers of chloroplasts found in the middle tissue of the leaf. In low light they are distributed fairly evenly, but bright light causes them to move to a less exposed position.
If we look at the internal structure of a chloroplast, we find that it is highly organized.
Within the chloroplast there are closely packed thylakoid membranes. At intervals, the membranes are piled into a stack called the grana. The membranes and grana are surrounded by a jellylike material called the stroma. The most noticeable characteristic of chloroplasts is their green color. The color comes from a pigment called chlorophyll, which is concentrated in the grana.
We can show that without the chlorophyll, photosynthesis does not take place. First, we boil the leaf to fix it, then we put it into alcohol. Boiling the leaf in alcohol removes the chlorophyll. A few drops of iodine soon reveals a blue-black color, which indicates where starch is present in the leaf. We can see that starch is only produced in the parts of the leaf that were green, that is, where chlorophyll was present.
Chemical analysis of chloroplasts shows that chlorophyll and a series of other compounds are organized on the thylakoid membranes in a systematic way.
When light strikes the thylakoid membranes, chlorophyll and other associated pigments are oxidized, which causes the release of electrons.
The electron flow initiated by this input of light energy is coupled with the formation of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. The reaction is known as the light reaction of photosynthesis.
Because electrons are being lost from the chlorophyll, they have to be replaced. The plant does this by splitting water molecules and using electrons from hydrogen, leaving oxygen as a waste product. When water plants like elodea are photosynthesizing, it is easy to see the bubbles of waste oxygen being released.
ATP molecules are energy storing molecules. They provide the energy that enables the plant to combine carbon dioxide with other compounds to make sugars. This activity occurs in the stroma of the chloroplast and does not require light. It is therefore known as the dark reaction of photosynthesis.
The sugars produced by the dark reaction of photosynthesis provide the materials for growth and repair and are the basis from which other materials are constructed.
[Music]
Growth demands not only carbohydrates like starch and sugar but also the formation of proteins and lipids for the development of new tissues, the storage of materials for future growth, and the repair of tissues that have been damaged. But how are useful materials carried to these growing, storage, and damaged tissues?
When we look at the xylem, that brings the water to the leaves, we can also see there are other cells within the stem that are not stained by the blue dye. Some of these form the phloem.
The sections of both these stems have phloem present even though the distribution of the vascular bundles is completely different. On the left is a monocotyledonous plant and on the right is a dicotyledonous plant.
Phloem tissue seen here between the areas of xylem extends all the way to the root. But what does it do?
To find out, let's remove the stem layer containing the phloem but not the xylem. We find that over a few hours, the concentration of sugar above the cut is greater than the concentration below the cut.
This evidence suggests that the phloem carries the complex organic products of photosynthesis in solution.
The structure of the phloem is very distinctive. The sieve tubes are as fine as a human hair. At intervals, the sieve tubes are interrupted by sieve plates. The sieve plates, stained red here, have pores of even smaller diameter. The narrowness of the tubes and the existence of plates help to produce pressure differences between different areas of the phloem and to stimulate a vast movement of materials from one place to another.
This is known as mass flow. The sucrose produced in the leaf cells is actively transported into the phloem cells. This causes water to flow after it by osmosis, increasing the turgor of the cell. As the cells of the phloem form columns, the sugars are pulled through them to the regions where the turgor is less. These are areas where the sugars are being removed and used by the cells either for storage and growth or for energy.
[Music in]
It is easy to tell when animals are breathing. Not only can you see their sides moving, but you can also hear them. The process of breaking down their food to release energy is, however, less easy to see.
[Music out]
The same is true of plants. How can we tell if respiration is taking place?
Putting a plant into the dark means that photosynthesis cannot take place. But even in the dark, gas is produced by the plant. In this experiment, we can see that the lime water, which is normally clear, turns milky after a short period of time. This indicates that the gas being produced by the plant in the dark is carbon dioxide.
Does the plant take up oxygen when it is in the dark? In this experiment, any carbon dioxide produced will be absorbed by the calcium oxide in this small beaker. The plant is placed under a bell jar and sealed with water. Any change in water level will therefore show what is happening to the oxygen.
After a period of time, we can see that the water begins to creep slowly up the inside of the jar, which must mean that oxygen is being taken up by the plant.
The release of carbon dioxide and the taking up of oxygen shows that plants respire in the dark. But do plants also respire in the light, during photosynthesis?
There seems little doubt that they do, though proving it is more difficult. We know that in the higher plants, if the available oxygen is severely reduced when it is in the dark, the plant will begin to die within a few hours. But if oxygen is produced during photosynthesis the plant can continue its existence for longer. After a period in the dark, unable to photosynthesize, the plant visibly wilts, while the plant left in the light is still growing normally.
[Music in]
Growth in plants reflects the way in which they interact with the environment.
[Music out]
If we place a strong light at one side of this fuchsia plant, the plant will grow towards it. This is called a phototrophic response. But what controls such a response?
If the tip of the plant is protected from the light using a small cap, the plant will continue to grow upward. This suggests that there is something at the tip of the plant that controls the direction of growth.
If we place this fuchsia plant on its side, it quickly recovers its orientation and grows upward. But is the plant responding to light or to gravity?
These pea seeds are germinating in the dark, yet the roots are growing down and the shoots are growing up. The roots and shoots must be responding to gravity, but in different ways. The roots are said to be positively geotrophic and the shoots negatively geotrophic.
It is probable that all of these growth responses are due in some part to the auxin indoleacetic acid, or IAA. One theory states that a light-sensing mechanism in the tip of the fuchsia plant promotes the active transport of IAA molecules to the shaded part of the stem. This action produces cell growth and elongation in this area. The result is a curvature, which orientates the plant towards the light.
A gravity-sensing mechanism in the shoot tip triggers a similar migration of IAA molecules, producing growth in the stem, which orientates the plant from a horizontal position back to a vertical position.
The growth substance IAA also appears to have a role in maintaining apical dominance. By removing the growing tip, which controls auxin distribution and therefore apical dominance, lateral buds can grow.
Other growth substances have been identified in plants, including gibberellic acid, which causes extension in the length of the internodes of the plants.
An important hormone in deciduous plants is abscisic acid, which controls leaf fall, thereby protecting the plant from adverse seasonal conditions.
[Music in]
To grow and flourish, plants have a similar set of requirements as animals. They need a source of food to provide the building blocks for growth, respiratory gases to enable that food to be broken down and used, and water to sustain metabolic activity.
Animals and plants are both living organisms. Plants respire and excrete waste products just like animals. They move in response to stimuli, and they reproduce. But plants obtain their nutrients in a different way than animals and, because of this, seem to be quite different life forms.
[Music out]