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comment by briandmyers
briandmyers  ·  4442 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Feynman: The trees come out of the air.

Love Feynman.

Another thing most people don't know about plants - they don't 'drink' (i.e. consume) very much water at all; mostly they use it to create a thin layer of water within their leaves (which simply slowly evaporates). They have to do this, because they can't extract carbon dioxide directly from the air itself - they can only extract carbon dioxide that has dissolved in to that thin layer of water. Most people's notion of how plants 'consume' soil and water to grow is completely wrong.