Arborist Consulting Expert Explains Where Trees Come From
When we look at a tree, most of us assume that the material that makes up its great bulk comes from out of the ground. However, trees only draw water and small quantities of minerals from the ground. The rest of their bulk is taken right out of thin air. You could say they dine on the carbon dioxide in the air. And wash it down (up?) with water from the ground.
Wood is mostly cellulose which is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The carbon comes from carbon dioxide. Through the process of photosynthesis, the tree with the help of sunlight; splits the carbon dioxide molecule apart into carbon and oxygen. It releases the oxygen into the air and uses the carbon to form cellulose. The hydrogen and oxygen components of cellulose comes from water.
It does seem improbable that a large tree weighing thousands of pounds gets all of that bulk from nothing but air and water. However, when you think about it a bit; you realize that those thousands of pounds of wood above the ground could not have come from the ground (other than the water). Because it would have left a hole in the ground; where the thousands of pounds of soil would have come from.
Water and Air
The amount of the tree\’s mass that comes from the air is roughly 50%. The other 50% comes out of the ground as water. If you think about it; even the water that is taken from the ground ultimately comes from the atmosphere as rain. So in that sense, all of the tree\’s bulk except for the minuscule mineral amounts, come from the air.
If you burn a tree in a very hot incinerator, most of that bulk is released back into the air as carbon (bound with oxygen as carbon dioxide) and water vapor, and you are left with just a small amount of ash. In addition; the extra heat you get from the burning wood is the very same sun energy that was used to split the carbon dioxide apart years ago during the tree\’s photosynthesis.
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