Radial water transport

From: "Gartner, Barbara" <Barbara.Gartner@orst.edu>
Subject: Radial water transport
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 10:47:11 -0700

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I've been working in the area of radial water transport lately, and I wondered if anyone else has been thinking about this, and what your ideas might be.  In conifers, it is rare to have pitting on the tangential face of tracheids, except sometimes a bit in the latewood.  How do you think water gets from one growth ring to the next, and from one layer of tracheids to the subsequently developed layer within that same growth ring?  Is there any evidence that water is transported in rays, ray tracheids, or radial interstitial spaces?

We know from sapflow experiments that there *is* water transport in inner growth rings, and given that the foliage is attached to the outer growth rings there *must* be radial water movement.  I wonder if all the movement is through diffusion through cell walls.

Thanks for any ideas,
Barb

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Barbara L. Gartner                barbara.gartner@orst.edu
Dept. of Wood Sci. & Engineering  voice:  541-737-4213
Oregon State University           fax:    541-737-3385
Corvallis, OR 97331
http://woodscience.oregonstate.edu/faculty/gartner/gartner.htm

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