THE STATE OF WATER IN DUCTS AND TRACHEIDS

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Abstract
Interruptions of the continuous water mass in a living organism by wounding or by amputation may lead to misconceptions of the water relations and water movements within the mass. Also, attempted imitations of the vascular structures of land plants by glass or other materials of very different water relations than cellulose and cellulose derivatives may be no less misleading. On the other hand, application of warmth and of cold to the outside of uninjured and otherwise undisturbed plants should throw light on the condition actually prevailing within the plant at the time of application. The use of liquid air, condensing and freezing the water within a zone lem wide, results, when the stein or branch is full of water, in plugging the vascular elements; when there is a water deficit, no such plugging takes place, but the water does not move. Wilting, therefore, takes place. When such frozen pieces of branch or stem are cut off and subjected to compressed air pressure, air can be blown through such woods as buckeye when the water is most needed by the leaves and moving most rapidly through the vascular system. This indicates that the water, at these times, is not in the form of solid columns, but of hollow columns of liquid water, as films on and in the walls, and filled with water vapor.

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