Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Transpiration
- The meaning of 'transpiration' in botanical terms
is the passage of water through a plant from the
roots through the vascular system to the
atmosphere
- In a plant, glucose and water
travels through miniature tubes
throughout the plant.
- The tube that carries the
food is called the Phloem.
- The tube that carries the
water is called the Xylem
- Both the Xylem and the
Phloem are contained in
one big tube called the
Vascular Bundle
- As water is getting
transported around
the plant through
the xylem it will
eventually reach
the leaves
- When it does some water
will be used in the process of
photosynthesis by the
chloroplasts
- However, a percentage
of the water will be lost
as it escapes through the
stomata.
- The stomata is a hole bordered by guard cells
that allows gas exchange. There are hundreds
of these on a single leaf.
- The stomata opens and
closes allowing carbon
dioxide to come in and
oxygen to come out.
- When the stomata does
open the water can escape
into the atmosphere and evaporate.
- The stomata is
visible as pores
on the leaf.
- Stomata
- Transpiration in a plant can
be measured by a potometer
- Potometer
- Plants in the desert, for
example a cactus get very little
water so they cannot afford to
lose any through transpiration.
- The way they avoid this is that through a process
of evolution, the leaves have curled up tightly
over millions of years until the leaves have
eventually become spikes.
- What this prevents is any water vapour
getting lost; as because the leaves have
curled so much there is no place for the
water vapour to escape and so it stays
in the leaf ready to be used for
photosynthesis.
- Cactus