How do Trees Really lift Water to their Leaves?

Dave:
You give the impression of not thinking that osmosis has any effect... and of doubting wheter it exists.

I think the abstract was coming up with a mechanism for how the Pholem can be at a positive pressure throughout it's length which is how the sugar can move through it with minimal use of energy.
employees.csbsju.edu/ssaupe/biol327/Lecture/phloem.htm

It is really neat - areas of the phloem with high sugar concentrations will draw in water from the xylem by osmosis so increasing their pressure. Areas which are using sugar have a low concentration of sugar and therefore a low osmotic pressure. Water flows away from regions of high pressure to the low pressure where the sugar is being used. This has the advantage of being able to move the sugar from where the sugar is being produced - either in the leaves most of the season, or from starch in the roots during the spring, to where it is needed.

I don't know whether I have acces to this article because I am in a university, but if you can I would defnitely read the introduction.

Dear Doctor Saupe,

I wrote to you in April 2003 in order to explain a new paradigm in water movement in trees and plants. I never did get a reply and wonder if you would care to join our discussion at the Naked Scientist forum?

I believe your knowledge in this field would benefit this discussion immensely. I do understand that your commitments and demands on your time are high.
I hope you can find the time to look us up, as I believe we have a mutual interest in understanding the true functions of transpiration and water movement in trees.

Sincerely Andrew K Fletcher




Last post on this topic:



quote:You give the impression of not thinking that osmosis has any effect... and of doubting whether it exists.



Sorry for giving the wrong impression about osmosis. I believe that the accepted interpretation of osmosis is erroneous, as did Professor H.T.Hammel. Water cannot attract water to the leaves of a tree, any more than diffusion or root pressure can cause it to flow at the observed rates evident in trees! There has to be a method of loading an unloading sucrose as Stephen Saupe Suggests in his pages. The bulk flow rates observed in trees are undeniably massive and simply cannot be addressed by osmosis, capillary action, or root pressure! Saupe points to this problem in his pages. He also states that the phloem is under a positive pressure, demonstrated by aphids. This fits with my own experiment in the saline loaded side that does indeed flow down! He also states that there must be a sink. In my theory, I have mentioned the sink as being the roots and trunk for simplicity. There are also the fruits, leaves and minor branches that continue to grow providing additional sinks as Saupe also states.

Sauppe also states:
Bidirectionality - how can phloem translocate materials in two different directions at once? It can’t, at least not within the same sieve tube. However, presumably sieve tubes within a single vascular bundle could be transporting in opposite directions assuming each is acting appropriately.

The fact is that bi-directional flow in one tube is easily observed using my model, proving beyond any shadow of doubt that it will also occur inside a tree when the resistance in other pathways becomes congested!

I wrote to Stephen Saupe in Early January 2003, sending him information about my experiments. I never did get a reply.

XIII. Why does transpiration occur?
A. Transport in plants. This is important to a small degree. Transpiration is certainly not a necessity.
B. Heat loss (latent heat of vaporization)
C. Carry nutrients in the soil to the plant
D. Perhaps plant cells need to maintain some optimal level of turgidity and this helps them do so.

And lets not forget the picric acid and copper sulphate experiments killing all living cells in the tree and yet it still flows and transpires for three weeks post death of the tree.

I am surprised that he has failed to realise the importance of transpiration, density and gravity.

I have written to Stephen Saupe again to see if he will join us.

Andrew

The probelm with osmosis is.....


arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0305/0305011.pdf

Dave:
Your link to a paper was not in any way arguing that osmosis is empirically wrong, or that the way that thermodynamacists explain osmosis or it's properties was wrong, just that the simplifications that are taught to school children are a bit dodgy - so it is still a real effect !!!

I don't see why the bulk flow rates are not possible by osmosis - the rate of osmosis may be slow per unit area - but there are a huge number of xylem and their surface area is huge - so it all adds up to a big number - unless you can do some maths to back up your argument it isn't very strong...

You didn't get my point about the Phloem - if it is all at an absolute positive pressure, if you wired one into the Xylem, theere would be flow of sugars into the xylem as the pressure is bigger there - THE WRONG WAY - so if this is the case your theory can't use the Phloem as the downward path (especially as sugars flow up or down a tree depending on the season....) - and I don't think there is anything else to use

Not at all David, if you wired a positive force generated by falling sap it would find the most direct route to the ground. The flow works totally independent to pressures! You can pressurise a tube to a hundred bar and this flow would still travel down inside the pressurised tube. It does not require any pressure to function; it generates pressures as it functions!


When I did the exhibition in London, I used a saline drip feed to enable many people to see the experiment, which was repeated well over a hundred times.

To do this I needed to set up an artificial bladder, which was on a T junction as you suggest, but at the bottom end of the tubes, to act as a sump for the saline pulses which eventually reached the lowest point. This worked remarkably well, enabling the pulses of saline solution to replace the clean water in 2x connected bladder wash bags, representing the kidneys on either side of a Catheter bag which had a convenient drain tap right at the bottom acting as the ultimate sump, and representing the bladder in human physiology which of course enabled us to empty it. This worked perfectly except for the formation of gas bubbles in the upward flowing side.

Some very large bubbles collected at the upper part of the somewhat complicated tubes, which looked a little like a tubular maze. The interesting thing with the bubbles is that the flow continued around the outside of the bubbles and it did not stop the flow.

Another interesting observation for people at the exhibition was that if the drip bag was allowed to flow a little more profusely, the large bubbles at the top of the experiment began to travel down with the saline flow, some of these bubbles measured 10 millimetres long in a 4 mill bore soft walled tube. One other point was that the bladder bag on the saline free side of the nighttime catheter bag emptied as the negative pressure caused by the downward flow pulled clean water into the system. Now the thing about this experiment is it was a closed loop system, and that the saline flow had to be the principle cause of the negative pressures and positive pressures generated. Pressure from the drip feed did not make any difference because there was a convenient method of isolating it.

But the gist of this reply is, that gravity will drive this circulation, and your T junction will not alter its course, because it is not pressure dependent, and is not trying to overcome gravity as with the embraced cohesion theory. This flow system actually requires gravity and therefore negates your previous energy equation, which after all still relates to gravity as being a force to overcome.

Dave:
Regardless of what Chris may say about your bladder theories, you didn't understand what I meant:

The Phloem is at a positive pressure - this means that even at the top of the tree the phloem has a pressure greater than atmospheric.

We have established that the top of the xylem must have a negative absolute pressure of several atmospheres.

The reason your syphon works is that because the saline is more dense than pure water it pulls down slightly harder than the water side, so the pressure at the top on the downward side is a few mBar lower than at the top on the upward side, so water flows towards the upward side.

Now in a tree you have a Phloem at a pressure greater than an atmosphere and the xylem at a pressure of minus up to 10 atmospheres - there is no way you can make water flow into the xylem if they were attached to one another. you can't get water to flow against a 10 atmophere pressure difference without something else going on as it is a fluid and fluids flow from high pressure to low pressure... (if they are at the same height - which they are)

You can make osmosis produce this sort of pressure difference, but unless you are injecting mercury into the phloem, not how you are suggesting.

Anthony:
Andrew, thanks for your reply, given your enthusiasm I would have been surprised if you hadn't already tried to publish. First of all, being published means lots of hard work, lots of time and inveitably rejections. Some of what is published shouldn't be and some of what should, isn't, editors try and do the best they can, the main advantage for the editors is that they always have much more than they can publish. The editors' main concern, with good reason, is the reputation of their journal, and the best way to loose that reputation is to publish bad science.

By extension, if I'm not surprised you've tried to publish, given the fact you haven't published, I suppose I am also not surprised you haven't. People in the arts have the same arrogance of people in the science. We think ours is the discipline that concentrates on logic, they think theirs is the one which concentrates on communication. I've found much of what you said very difficult to follow and given the fact that this argument has now reached about 40,000 words, the length of a short PhD thesis, it doesn't get any easier. So now you see why I made my offer. People say scientists speak a different language, I'm offering my services, and that of this forum, as translator.

All but one of the publications in which you have so far tried to publish are wholely inappriopriate for this work. New Phytologist was a good start, and I refer you to the list which I first posted. But you simply MUST read and understand what other people in the field have done first. Furthermore, you must not see it as potential plagarism. The sad truth is that ideas are very rarely new, and I'm sure your ideas are no different. What counts is working the idea, with a little proof, into something that someone else can have an idea with. That counts for you and me as much as it did for Einstein.

Science is now conducted by professional scientists, it's the 21st century. The time of the "Gentleman Scientist" is behind us, it's a concept I have some affection for, but will never be re-instated. The era of the Gentleman Scientist was one full of great cataloguers and makers of lists and trees in biology, geology and paleontology. Great observers who could see the connections between things. The physicists were developing the basis of modern science in laboritories, and by the end of Rutherford's time it was essentialy dead. Rutherford had PhD students and worked in a university after-all. Take no offence at this, but you are essentially a "living fossil." As such, you can be poorly adapted for the world at large.

As the abstract I posted shows, water transport in trees is very much the territory of the modern scientist. Modern science is built on layers of concepts each the foundatation for the next, that's why it takes six to eight years, undergraduate/PhD, to produce one modern scientist. Increasingly scientists have to draw on knowledge from different fields to progress. The abstract I posted for example, drawing on advanced thermodynamics, mathematics and computing to solve a simple biology problem. It is not easy, it is very, very difficult.

Everyone in this forum is trying to help but you are at a considerable evolutionary disadvantage. It remains possible for the Gentleman Scientist to publish, but you simply must research others work and communicate in the right way. It's our rules now. Alternatively you can withdraw from competition, which is ultimately the safer thing to do.

I remain true to my original offer, and make a second. If you are minded to look into other people's publications in the area, I will give you a list of journal articles that may get you started.

Anthony

Thanks for your reply

I have taken much of what you have said on the chin. Your defence of editors and Journals in an ideal world would be acceptable. I have a huge amount of correspondences from these and many more journals, which I intend to publish for all to see, so that everyone can make up their own minds about why these people have the audacity to place such controls on science. But there is a huge swing right now towards a different kind of journal, and this has revived my spirit somewhat. Whenever there is a new discovery in Science of significant importance, History tells us that it is seldom the establishments that deliver it. In fact it is usually the “fossils” that provide us with solid foundations.

I am surprised that you suspect I have not read other peoples papers. I have! I also have a great deal of respect for Professor H.T.Hammel, Professor Michel Cabanac, Pete Scholander, Galileo, Evangelista Torricelli, Eduard Strasburger, Is there really any point in regurgitating old papers, which will place demands upon the permitted space in our publication. Other than a briefer mention than those set out in the links provided below? I do realise that other theory’s have to be shown to be weaker than this one, but how much time, effort and space has to be devoted to this?

For an excellent history of the ascent of sap, read the following.
www.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=4&id=98


www.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=4&id=99
A recent synthesis of the main features of the CTT and the electrical analogy used for modeling water transport in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum has led to a new approach to plant and tree water relations: the hydraulic architecture approach. This approach considers a plant, and especially a tree, as a hydraulic system. All hydraulic systems (dams, irrigation systems for crops or houses, the human blood vascular system) are composed of the same basic elements: a driving force, pipes, reservoirs and regulating systems. So described, the hydraulic architecture is a powerful tool to study the hydraulic characteristics of the conducting tissues under a whole range of natural conditions. Important questions subject to study with the hydraulic architecture approach include:


I repeat: Anyone that has ever witnessed these simple experiments looks in awe and instantaneously accepts that this is exactly how trees lift water at bulk flow rates.
Anthony, I have to ask you to repeat at least the scaled down versions of these experiments, in order that it will clarify the text to the point that you will totally understand what it is we are dealing with here. A trip to the local aquarium retailer will provide you with the required tubes, junctions and T junctions, used to aerate fish tanks. While you may believe that you understand how this flow works at the moment, it is only when you see it work that the full implications of this discovery hits home.

You are sure that my theory is no different to what has been done before? Have you seen another?

How can you say this when every single paper has been trying to understand how everything living is struggling against gravity and trying to overcome gravity?
My theory embraces gravity as the power source that drives the fluids of all things living, As far as I know, no one has a theory that identifies how gravity causes water to flow vertically and effortlessly.

Science is now conducted by professional scientists, it's the 21st century. The time of the "Gentleman Scientist" is behind us, it's a concept I have some affection for, but will never be re-instated.

There is more than one way this statement can be interpreted. I believe that the professionalism of scientists has compromised science causing a considerable degree of stagnation in pure science. Everyone either is accepting what they read as fact or too afraid of rocking the boats for fear of being ostracised.

I believe you are quite wrong about this bubble of the closed shop being impregnable to outsiders. I believe someone may just come along with a pin and pop it, kicking science so far off its pedestal that a new breed of scientists will again emerge and science will again grow in leaps and bounds. I first heard this from a doctor on an Open University Programme who sated that Science is on a pedestal and that it is all B*******. Another scientist added that once it has been kicked off its pedestal, he hopes it will not fall so far as to become irreparably damaged, meaning I take it as losing all of its credibility. I think the programme was "The trouble with science"

Truth has an uncanny knack of turning round and biting us all in the butt, so telling it as it is, rather than as it isn’t sounds like a good standpoint.

I am not scared of a fight, and I can assure you that I don’t abide by Queensbury rules and have despatched a few hardened boxers from the ring on my travels. But I do consider myself as a fair and honest person. And maybe even a gentleman in the sense that you have implied it. As for a fossil, I see myself as a new generation of people who dare to disbelieve what is written and question everything and everyone, taking absolutely nothing for granted.

While engaging a pathologist on this same subject but in a different model if you get my drift, she said; “My god you have just dissected a body in front of me reassembled it and explained how it all works perfectly, and not even had to cut open a single cadaver.

Everyone in this forum is trying to help but you are at a considerable evolutionary disadvantage. It remains possible for the Gentleman Scientist to publish, but you simply must research others work and communicate in the right way. It's our rules now. Alternatively you can withdraw from competition, which is ultimately the safer thing to do.

And I really do appreciate being granted an opportunity to share my findings with people here!

:It's our rules now

Interpreted, as I don’t appear to abide by the rules?

remain true to my original offer, and make a second. If you are minded to look into other people's publications in the area, I will give you a list of journal articles that may get you started.

Withdraw from competition? Bahh, never knew how to be a quitter, but I can see that you are steering me into a rather complicated paper, which I believe may be the wrong way to go. I think it should be kept simple so that even a scientist can understand it. Present company excluded from that remark of course, and I really could use some help with this.

One last point, almost a week ago I set up a 2 metre vertical loop of tubing filled with boiled water with the two open ends submerged in two bottles of water to test the stability of gas free water. It has remained unaffected and is still intact. I will try to leave it for three weeks as Strasburger did with his tree experiment in picric acid to see if the constant tension causes cavitation without any added salt to the one side as in the Brixham experiment.

Regards Andrew

Dave:
I think that a gentleman scientist can still do useful work, but this is very dependent on the area. In subjects that are studying the way the world is such as parts of zoology, geology, medcine and especially psycology there is a lot still to do - and anyone can find a new rock, animal or herb, however if you are in an area that has been intensely studied, the pickings are a lot poorer.

I would also say that the gentleman scientist is more likely to find an interesting experiment or new observation than come up with new theries of how the world works (again depending on the subject) as in parts of physics just understanding the evidence that you have to explain with your theory takes many years of work, let alone understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the present theories.

So essentially you are better off looking for new butterflies or rocks than rewriting quantumn physics.

I also think you are hugely underestimating the awkwardness of many scientists, a lot of them are really not the kind of people to fit in and take part in a conspiracy. Making lots of scientists do the same thing is a bit like hearding cats...

As to your experiments Andrew I can easily explain them by conventional physics apart from a couple of observations.

The not syphoning above a certain height.
and
The water retreating up the tubes when you remove them from the bottles.

I don't think that your explanations explain these any better than mine could so I am interested.

Have you made any form of systematic study of these phenomena? What height does the tube stop syphoning conventionally? does the water retreat up the tubes if the tube is shorter, or under less tension, or was layed out at an angle rather than vertically?

So essentially you are better off looking for new butterflies or rocks than rewriting quantum physics?

No thanks; I have no desire to go chasing butterflies, any-more than I underestimate scientists.

As to your experiments Andrew I can easily explain them by conventional physics apart from a couple of observations.

The point really is the original thoughts, which led to the experiments, and is now leading to a paper compiled in such a way that it is beautifully simple, yet addresses all of the known idiosyncrasies inherent in the current theories.
To say that you feel that you can explain them by conventional physics is comforting, as I would expect this new paradigm to be understood by physicists and biologists. After all, the children and teachers in the schools I have demonstrated the experiments in, had no difficulty understanding this logic, any-more than the 3 thousand visitors to The London International Inventions fair did in 1997.

What I do find surprising is that no one here appears to have conducted the experiments for themselves in order to give a qualified account of their own observations. If it is the money, I will send the £3.00 so that you can purchase the tubing and T junctions. This is even more confusing when one would think that with so many young enquiring minds someone at least would want to see water flowing up a tube for themselves.

Have you made any form of systematic study of these phenomena? What height does the tube stop syphoning conventionally? does the water retreat up the tubes if the tube is shorter, or under less tension, or was laid out at an angle rather than vertically?

Not sure about what you mean by a systematic study. I have tried removing the tubes at lower than the thirty three feet limit and find that water flows out of the tube from one side only, lifting the entire contents up one side and out of the other. This was demonstrated to the children at High Week Primary school in Newton Abbot, Devon. They had difficulty understanding why water only flowed out of on end when the tubes were lifted.

I have tested the tube at an angle, a loop, partly horizontal and partly vertical, in an intricate multi directional set up, and it works the same. I.E. a flow and return is observed! But this is hardly surprising when this same flow is attributed to driving the Atlantic Conveyor system (Gulf Stream) where there are no tubes whatsoever. Like I said before, it has no respect for where it flows. But flow it must!