Plant Life: Xylem Experiment

1) Take Celery or Napa Cabbage (largest you can

find) and slice a stalk halfway up the middle.
2) Place two clear containers close together. Add a
few drops of food coloring in two different colors to
the jars.
3) Add water to the jars to fill to about 1.5 inches
deep.
4) Wait about 8 hours and observe the difference!

Plants use little tubes to transport water from where
they have it (the ground, usually) to where they need it
(in their leaves, where it is "breathed out" through little
pores called stomata.
These tubes are called xylem -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylem. When we place the bottom
of the cut stem in dyed water, the leaf continues to
breathe out water through the stomata, and that acts
like sucking pressure on the straw-like tubes of the
xylem, so the dyed water is drawn up through the leaf.
On the way, it colors the xylem tubes and you can see
how they network through the leaf. Pretty!
There is another set of tubes called phloem that carry
sugars and other food from the leaves (where they are
made from the energy of sunlight) to all other parts of
the plant that need it.