Thread: capillary action underwater?

how can there be capillary action in underwater plants, since there is no evaporation taking place? or is there another method underwater plants use to transport stuff?

Originally Posted by zach

how can there be capillary action in underwater plants, since there is no evaporation taking place?

Capillary action works on the basis of surface tension, so I'm not sure if it comes into play in aquatic plants, though I'll freely admit to knowing very little about plants! I would have thought capillary action would not be needed in many aquatic plants since they tend not to be vascularised. Seaweeds and plants of the moss family just take in water by diffusion through their surfaces. Root systems are purely for anchorage. As to vascularised aquatic plants, I do not know.

Originally Posted by zach

or is there another method underwater plants use to transport stuff?

Well so long as there's some sort of solute gradient present inside the plant you can get water movement by osmosis.

I don't think evaporation has a lot to do with capillary action. Like the other person I don't think underwater plants would need much capillary action anyways since they could just diffuse water over their surface membranes. I think it would be plausible that underwater plants could have some capillary action going but i don't know a lot about plants, they are an organism so their internal workings would be separate from the aquatic environment possibly allowing for capillary action?