--- title: Plants deeper: roots and how they drink, hold and push — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Plants deeper: roots and how they drink, hold and push», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: When you pull up a weed and a long white root slides out of the soil, you are holding the plant's anchor, its drink --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Plants deeper: roots and how they drin… # Plants deeper: roots and how they drink, hold and push Lesson 250 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/0/) — When you pull up a weed and a long white root slides out of the soil, you are holding the plant's anchor, its drinking straw and sometimes its larder all in one. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/1/) — Roots hold the plant in the ground and take in water and minerals, growing down with gravity and towards water. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/2/) — Grow a bean in a glass jar and you will see fine white fuzz near the root tip: these root hairs give the root a huge surface for drinking, like a towel with lots of loops soaking up more water than a smooth cloth. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/3/) — Roots are slow but strong: they grow cell by cell, each cell swelling with water like a tiny balloon, and together they can lift a paving stone. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/4/) — Not everything under the ground is a root, though: a potato is a swollen stem, and its eyes are buds. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/5/) — Roots hold a plant in the ground and take in water and minerals; they grow down with gravity, towards water and away from light, and the roots of one rye plant, laid end to end, were measured at over 600 kilometres. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/6/) — Root hairs are tiny tubes near the root tip that greatly increase the surface for taking in water; each lives only a few days, and new ones keep growing near the tip. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/7/) — A carrot is a swollen root that stores food so the plant can flower in its second year, so gardeners pick it in the first year; wild carrots are white and thin, and orange carrots were bred by farmers, many in the Netherlands. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/8/) — Growing roots push slowly but very strongly, because water pressure inside many cells pushes like small balloons, and they can crack paving; most tree roots are in the top metre of soil and spread wider than the branches. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/9/) — Mangroves grow in salty mud with little oxygen, so some of their roots stick up like snorkels to get air; mangrove roots protect coasts from storm waves and are nurseries for young fish. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/11/) — A plant on a windowsill bends towards the light because a chemical messenger moves to the shady side of the shoot and makes the cells there grow longer; Darwin and his son experimented on this with grass seedlings in the 1880s. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/12/) — Clover, peas and beans have little lumps on their roots full of helpful bacteria that take nitrogen from the air and turn it into plant food, and the plant gives them sugar; farmers plant clover or beans to make the soil richer. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/13/) — Many desert plants, like cactuses, have shallow roots that spread wide to catch rain before it dries, while others grow very deep, and a mesquite root was reported over 50 metres deep. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/14/) — A potato is not a root but a swollen underground stem called a tuber, its eyes are buds that grow new shoots, and green parts of a potato are poisonous and should not be eaten. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/15/) — Dandelions have deep taproots that store food, a piece of root left in the ground can grow a whole new plant, and roasted dandelion roots were used to make a drink like coffee. - ← previous: [Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, dropping tails, ink, and do ostriches bury their heads?](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/) - next →: [Plants deeper: leaves and sunlight, how a tree is made of air](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/251-plants-deeper-leaves-and-sunlight-how-a-tree-is-made-of-air/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)