Read a study that said a mature oak tree can transpire over 40,000 gallons of water a year. Found it in an old forestry journal at the library.

3 comments

3 Comments

Yeah that's wild but it tracks. I was reading about redwoods pulling up hundreds of gallons a day from the fog. It makes you look at a whole forest and just see this massive, silent water pump moving water into the air. What other tree stats have you found that blew your mind?

nathan_kim1d ago

Redwoods are amazing, but the fog drip thing gets overplayed. A lot of that water just runs down the bark and soaks into the ground right around the same tree. The real shock for me was learning how aspen groves can be one huge plant connected by roots. A single system in Utah weighs over 13 million pounds. That's a different kind of scale.

anna71723h ago

Wait, does that mean the whole aspen grove shares water and nutrients through those roots too?