Plant-water relations

Cellular water relations

The typical mature, vacuolate plant cell constitutes a tiny osmotic system, and this idea is central to any concept of cellular water dynamics. Although the cell walls of most living plant cells are quite freely permeable to water and solutes, the cytoplasmic layer that lines the cell wall is more permeable to some substances than to others.

If a plant cell in a flaccid condition—one in which the cell sap exerts no pressure against the encompassing cytoplasm and cell wall—is immersed in pure water, inward osmosis of water into the cell sap ensues. This gain of water results in the exertion of a turgor pressure against the protoplasm, which in turn is transmitted to the cell wall. This pressure also prevails throughout the mass of solution within the cell. If the cell wall is elastic, some expansion in the volume of the cell occurs as a result of this pressure, although in many kinds of cells this is relatively small.

If a turgid or partially turgid plant cell is immersed in a solution with a greater osmotic pressure than the cell sap, a gradual shrinkage in the volume of the cell ensues; the amount of shrinkage depends upon the kind of cell and its initial degree of turgidity. When the lower limit of cell wall elasticity is reached and there is continued loss of water from the cell sap, the protoplasmic layer begins to recede from the inner surface of the cell wall. Retreat of the protoplasm from the cell wall often continues until it has shrunk toward the center of the cell, the space between the protoplasm and the cell wall becoming occupied by the bathing solution. This phenomenon is called plasmolysis. See Osmoregulatory mechanisms

In some kinds of plant cells movement of water occurs principally by the process of imbibition rather than osmosis. The swelling of dry seeds when immersed in water is a familiar example of this process.

Stomatal mechanism

Various gases diffuse into and out of physiologically active plants. Those gases of greatest physiological significance are carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor. The great bulk of the gaseous exchanges between a plant and its environment occurs through tiny pores in the epidermis that are called stomates. Although stomates occur on many aerial parts of plants, they are most characteristic of, and occur in greatest abundance in, leaves. See Epidermis (plant), Leaf

Transpiration process

The term transpiration is used to designate the process whereby water vapor is lost from plants. Although basically an evaporation process, transpiration is complicated by other physical and physiological conditions prevailing in the plant. Whereas loss of water vapor can occur from any part of the plant which is exposed to the atmosphere, the great bulk of all transpiration occurs from the leaves. There are two kinds of foliar transpiration: (1) stomatal transpiration, in which water vapor loss occurs through the stomates, and (2) cuticular transpiration, which occurs directly from the outside surface of epidermal walls through the cuticle. In most species 90% or more of all foliar transpiration is of the stomatal type.

Transpiration is a necessary consequence of the relation of water to the anatomy of the plant, and especially to the anatomy of the leaves. Terrestrial green plants are dependent upon atmospheric carbon dioxide for their survival. In terrestrial vascular plants the principal carbon dioxide–absorbing surfaces are the moist mesophyll cells walls which bound the intercellular spaces in leaves. Ingress of carbon dioxide into these spaces occurs mostly by diffusion through open stomates. When the stomates are open, outward diffusion of water vapor unavoidably occurs, and such stomatal transpiration accounts for most of the water vapor loss from plants. Although transpiration is thus, in effect, an incidental phenomenon, it frequently has marked indirect effects on other physiological processes which occur in the plant because of its effects on the internal water relations of the plant.

Water translocation

In terrestrial rooted plants practically all of the water which enters a plant is absorbed from the soil by the roots. The water thus absorbed is translocated to all parts of the plant. The mechanism of the “ascent of sap” (all translocated water contains at least traces of solutes) in plants, especially tall trees, was one of the first processes to excite the interest of plant physiologists.

The upward movement of water in plants occurs in the xylem, which, in the larger roots, trunks, and branches of trees and shrubs, is identical with the wood. In the trunks or larger branches of most kinds of trees, however, sap movement is restricted to a few of the outermost annual layers of wood. See Xylem

Root pressure is generally considered to be one of the mechanisms of upward transport of water in plants. While it is undoubtedly true that root pressure does account for some upward movement of water in certain species of plants at some seasons, various considerations indicate that it can be only a secondary mechanism of water transport.

Upward translocation of water (actually a very dilute sap) is engendered by an increase in the negativity of water potential in the cells of apical organs of plants. Such increases in the negativity of water potentials occur most commonly in the mesophyll cells of leaves as a result of transpiration.

Water absorption

The successively smaller branches of the root system of any plant terminate ultimately in the root tips, of which there may be thousands and often millions on a single plant. Most absorption of water occurs in the root tip regions, and especially in the root hair zone. Older portions of most roots become covered with cutinized or suberized layers through which only very limited quantities of water can pass. See Root (botany)

Whenever the water potential in the peripheral root cells is less than that of the soil water, movement of water from the soil into the root cells occurs. There is some evidence that, under conditions of marked internal water stress, the tension generated in the xylem ducts will be propagated across the root to the peripheral cells. If this occurs, water potentials of greater negativity could develop in peripheral root cells than would otherwise be possible. The absorption mechanism would operate in fundamentally the same way whether or not the water in the root cells passed into a state of tension. The process just described, often called passive absorption, accounts for most of the absorption of water by terrestrial plants.

The phenomenon of root pressure represents another mechanism of the absorption of water. This mechanism is localized in the roots and is often called active absorption. Water absorption of this type only occurs when the rate of transpiration is low and the soil is relatively moist. Although the xylem sap is a relatively dilute solution, its osmotic pressure is usually great enough to engender a more negative water potential than usually exists in the soil water when the soil is relatively moist. A gradient of water potentials can thus be established, increasing in negativity across the epidermis, cortex, and other root tissues, along which the water can move laterally from the soil to the xylem. See Plant mineral nutrition