Given that tracheids are about 80 um and vessel elements abo

Given that tracheids are about 80 um and vessel elements about 200 um in diameter, how high (in meters) can water move in xylem by capillary action alone?

Solution

Capillary action means liquids which can be drawn up in small tubes because of the high surface tension of water which infer.When the tracheids are about 80um and diameter of vessel elements are about 200um the height of water flow is said to be 38cm.Because the tracheary elements are dead when they are fully matured,so when a tree has such a measurements they happened to b difficult to function.Thus because of this reason the water reaches to such small height.