Water supply, climate. and location
What factors (besides photosynthesis) determine how tall trees will grow?
What factors (besides photosynthesis) determine how tall trees will grow?
What factors (besides photosynthesis) determine how tall trees will grow?
competition.
Not quite. Imagine you have a glass capillary tube, like the ones used to take blood samples from a finger/thumb.
So, how long can the tube be and still support an unbroken vertical column of water? How thin can it be?
I don't believe gravity will limit the length/height because capillary action is due to charged molecules attracting, and, well, the Coulomb potential is much stronger than gravity (about 10^35 times). There is no "pumping" action, it's all capillary, and is driven by evaporation through the stomata when they open at night.
Cavitation doesn't happen in a capillary tube, because the ratio of the polarity of the traveling fluid to its mass is much larger than for a wide tube, as in a large bore pipe, so pumping is required to overcome a low ratio. The polarity of water has no effect in that case, in fact nonpolar fluids need to be actively pumped for the same reason.
Because water molecules have a polarity and so does the wall of the tube, Coulomb attraction overcomes gravity in a thin tube. A large bore glass tube isn't a capillary tube for water, because it has a low ratio as described above.
What factors (besides photosynthesis) determine how tall trees will grow?