Foliar water uptake as a source of hydrogen and oxygen in plant biomass

Abstract

Introductory biology lessons around the world typically teach that plants absorb water through their roots, but, unfortunately, absorption of water through leaves and subsequent transport and use of this water for biomass formation remains a field limited mostly to specialists. Recent studies have identified foliar water uptake as a significant but still unquantified net water source for terrestrial plants. The growing interest in the development of a new model that includes foliar uptake of liquid water to explain hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in leaf water and tree rings requires a method for distinguishing between these two water sources. I therefore devised a method utilizing two different heavy waters (HDO and H218O) to simultaneously label both foliar-uptake water and root-uptake water and quantify their relative contributions to plant biomass. Using this new method, I here present evidence that, in the case of well-watered Cryptomeria japonica, hydrogen and oxygen incorporated into new leaf cellulose in the rainy season derives mostly from foliar-uptake water, while that of new root cellulose derives mostly from root-uptake water, and new branch xylem is somewhere in between. Abandoning the assumption that these elements are supplied from soil water alone may have vast implications in fields ranging from isotope dendroclimatology, silviculture, to biogeochemistry.