How water gets to top of redwood trees National Park Service Sequoias  the largest living organisms Q: How is a giant redwood able to get water all the way from the roots to the top of the tree? A: It's certainly a long way up  as much as 100 meters (300 feet), as tall as a 30-story building. A tree releases as much as 160 gallons of water in a day through its leaves and, by necessity, moves that water up from its roots. How does the redwood manage? Redwoods have a system of interconnected wood cells for carrying water. The hollow, short, thin cells are stacked intricately to form an incredibly tall column, extending from the roots through the branches and stems to the leaves. The cells are dead wood that function as pipes with pitted openings along the sides of the pipe for water to pass between adjacent cells. The small cells rarely exceed a quarter of an inch in length (5 millimeters) and are only about 30 microns in diameter (about three times the diameter of a red blood cell). Redwoods must form a continuous column of water within this pipe in order to move water through the pipe. We believe redwoods form the column when the tree is a newly germinated seedling. The tree maintains the water column intact throughout its life time. Consider the wind and how it tosses trees around. Only the millions of small compartments that enclose the water keep the water column whole. A single pipe would not work. Two forces move the water: a push and a pull. Roots do most of the pushing but capillary action (the tendency of water to rise in a thin tube by flowing up the walls of the tube) kicks in a small pressure. The push can support a column of water about three yards high (two to three meters). The pull takes over from there. The driving engine behind the pull is the evaporation of water and the attraction between water molecules. The molecules have both a positive and a negatively charged part and, therefore, stick together with a strong force  experimentally determined to be 25 to 30 times the pressure of the atmosphere at sea level. That's enough to crush a World War II submarine at 1000 feet below the surface. A redwood tree routinely maintains a negative pressure of 14 atmospheres at the top of the water column (with one atmosphere at the base) and the column withstands this pressure without breaking. This is how it happens: Water evaporating from the leaves starts the suction pull. A water molecule evaporates from a leaf and pulls on the molecules around it as it departs. This creates a small suction in the water column and pulls water from adjacent water-conducting leaf cells. These molecules, in turn, attract those around them. The chain continues to the ground and moves water from the roots to the tree top just as a pump brings water to the surface from a well. The Sun's energy, which evaporates the water from the leaf surface in the first place, is the pump's engine. (Answered by April Holladay, science correspondent, April 18, 2001) Further surfing Scientific American: How large trees pump water up

Scientific American: More on how trees pump water

Shades of Green  Bark, roots, leaves