TREES ARE MADE OF CLOUDS!
August 22, 2008, 11:57 pm
Filed under: Global Warming | Tags: biology, Carbon, carbon dioxide, clouds, ecology, Global Warming, soil, trees, van Helmont, wye oak
My wife and I were recently discussing the weight of the Wye Oak. It turns out it weighed over 30 tons1. I knew all of that mass had to come from somewhere, and thinking that most of the mass of the tree came from the surrounding soil, I was wondering if there was a huge depression around the tree as the tree “ate up” the soil as it grew. My wife corrected me and pointed out that most of a tree’s mass comes not from the soil, but from the atmosphere.

About 400 years ago a Flemish guy named Jan Baptista van Helmont also wondered where a tree’s mass came from. So he planted a small tree in 200 pounds of soil. The tree gained 164 pounds, but the soil only lost two ounces!

It turns out that most of a tree’s mass is carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. It gets the carbon from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oxygen and hydrogen from water. So in terms of my twisted logic:

The vast majority of a tree’s mass comes from the air (carbon dioxide) and water (rain).
Clouds are made of air and rain.
Therefore, trees are made of clouds!
So what does this have to do with you? Well, go plant a tree in your back yard. It will pull some of the carbon dioxide out of the air. Tired of raking leaves? Hire a neighborhood kid to rake the leaves for you. Don’t cut the tree down; it’s not worth the carbon (and financial) cost! And don’t throw dirt in the air. It might combine with a passing cloud and instantly turn into a tree.

I don't know. Anything rain picks up as it's falling is just going to be particulate, doubt it's enough to replenish anything.

Clearly. However, the mass of the tree doesn't come directly from the rain, it comes through the roots into the tree from the soil, and the tree is a lot more than just water.

In response to the OP:

Can't the same be said for all living things?

Carbon-based life is the standard here on Earth, and life requires water, so . . .

But we eat things that do. Where does your carbon come from, Lex? Those trees that are made of air?

The tree doesn't suck up much soil as part of its mass. It's 99% from water and the air.

On the contrary, it sucks up a great deal. It just doesn't result in much of a net reduction because it is being replenished from other sources.

In 1649, Jan Baptista Van Helmont did the first biological experiment in which the ingredients were measured accurately and all changes noted precisely. Van Helmont began by transplanting the shoot of a young willow tree into a large bucket of soil. He weighed the willow and then the soil separately. If the willow tree formed its tissues by absorbing the nutrients from the soil then the soil should lose weight as the plant grew. Van Helmont carefully kept the soil covered so that absolutely nothing could interfere with his experiment.

Naturally, Van Helmont had to water the willow tree or else it wouldn’t grow. He concluded that the water he was adding helped carry the nutrients to the tree and then simply evaporated into the air.

For five years, Van Helmont waited patiently, watching the tree grow until finally he removed it from the pot, shook off all the soil and and weighed the plant. In five years the willow tree had added 164 pounds to its original weight. Then, for the second part of the experiment, Van Helmont dried and weighed the soil. Had it lost 164 pounds to the weight of the tree? No. It had only lost 2 ounces!

Naturally, Van Helmont had to water the willow tree or else it wouldn’t grow. He concluded that the water he was adding helped carry the nutrients to the tree and then simply evaporated into the air.

I think you're wrong.

http://www.saskschools.ca/~pvsd/vsfproj ... plants.htm

I'd like to know how you think this thing got even close to pure water with the technology available in 1649.

I'd also be interested to know what you think fertilizer is doing.

DE - it doesn't need to be pure water, nor was obtaining pure water difficult in 1649. I doubt he bothered, as he did not need to.

Fertilizer adds specific nutrients. Less than 4% of the mass of the tree.

He didn't? Then the mass of the soil should have changed, yes?



I'm finding all this very difficult to buy from the standpoint of Conservation of Matter.

If a particular tree weighs, say, 1 ton, that's 80 pounds of stuff other than carbon and water, not 2 ounces.

If they take no nourishment from the earth, wouldn't the roots displace a lot of earth and push it up into a hillock surrounding the tree? Since the root system is frequently as large as the canopy the tree creates above, that would be a substantial amount of earth displaced.