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Why do plants need transport systems?
Some small or primitive plants, such as mosses, absorb all
the nutrients they need directly from their environment.
Larger plants do not have a
large enough surface area to
take in what they need. Like
most multicellular animals,
they have developed
specialized tissues for
transporting water and
nutrients to all their cells.

Plants that have specialized

transport systems are known
as vascular plants.

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Transporting water and nutrients

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Plant transport tissues

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Plant anatomy

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Parts of a plant transport system

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What is transpiration?
Transpiration is the loss of water from the leaves of a plant.
Most of this occurs from the underside of a leaf, where there
are many stomata in the epidermis.
Most plants control their water
intake by opening and closing
their stomata. This happens
when water levels change in
the guard cells around each
stoma. This occurs either
passively by osmosis, or by
active transport of solutes.

Transpiration rates also vary naturally in response to

environmental factors such as temperature and humidity.

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What is water potential?
Water tends to move from areas of high water concentration
to areas of low water concentration. This is osmosis.

Water also tends to move

from areas of high
hydrostatic pressure to
areas of low hydrostatic
pressure. It is also affected
by gravity and electrostatic
forces, such as those that
cause surface tension.

The collective term for the tendency of water to move due

to any of these effects is water potential.

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Cohesion–tension theory
Water is a polar molecule, meaning that
its positive and negative charges are not
evenly distributed. The oxygen atom has
a slight negative charge, while the two
hydrogen atoms are slightly positive.

This means that, in the xylem, water

molecules spontaneously arrange so that
positive and negatively charged poles lie
next to each other.

This causes the molecules to cohere, or

stick together, so that as some leave a
plant by transpiration, others are pulled up
behind them.

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Transpiration rates

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Factors affecting transpiration

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The transpiration stream

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Conserving water

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What is root pressure?
Water is usually drawn up a plant by the tension resulting
from transpiration and cohesion between water molecules.

In some situations, such

as 100% humidity, a
plant is unable to
transpire. Instead, water
can be transported by
positive pressure from
below. This is known as
root pressure.
Solutes are actively transported into the roots of the plant,
causing water to enter by osmosis. This increases the
hydrostatic pressure in the root, forcing water up the stem.

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The transpiration stream

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What is translocation?
Translocation is the movement
of nutrients around a plant. The
term includes the movement of
minerals, which can be dissolved
in water and transported in the
xylem, but usually refers to the
transport of sugars, amino acids,
and other organic molecules in
the phloem.
Translocation can occur in either
direction in the phloem – it is
bidirectional. It is an active
process, requiring energy, unlike
water transport in the xylem.

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The pressure flow hypothesis
The most widely accepted explanation of sap movement
in plants is the pressure flow hypothesis.
According to the theory, sap moves through phloem vessels
due to differences in hydrostatic pressure. This is a similar
effect to root pressure.

Evidence for this effect

includes the excretion of sap,
or honeydew, by an aphid
when it taps a phloem vessel
to feed. The sap is forced
through the aphid’s body,
demonstrating that the sap in
the phloem is under pressure.

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Translocation of sugars

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Understanding translocation

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Glossary

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What’s the keyword?

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Multiple-choice quiz

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