In my early fieldwork, I couldn't believe a 'string of water' could hold under tension from leaves to roots without breaking—it seemed too fragile a column for tall trees. I favored root pressure as the main force. But my own experiments with a potometer on a sal tree in the Hazaribagh heat showed me that transpiration pull was real; the water moved up even when I negated root pressure. It humbled me. So, the cohesion-tension theory is correct, but yaar, it takes a stubborn man watching a plant drink on a hot day to truly believe it.
#tcm#evidence
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