Pond lily leaves relay surface oxygen through air-filled cells to buried roots

Evidence

Pond lily leaves get their light and air at the surface, but are attached at the bottom of the lake to a living rhizome as thick as your wrist and as long as your arm. The rhizome inhabits the anaerobic depths of the pond, but without oxygen it will perish. So the aerenchyma forms a convoluted chain of air-filled cells, a conduit between the surface and the depths so that oxygen can slowly diffuse to the buried rhizome. If I pushed the leaves aside I could see them resting below. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 344

Categorization

• XREF: The surface-to-depth oxygen conduit metaphor parallels the mother-exile-to-rooted-identity bond this chapter explores; also echoes ch19 nutrient cycling. — connects to: Oxygen flows from young lily leaves to old through shared air networks — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 350; Cattail leaves under water respire through air-filled aerenchyma tissue — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 821; Tamarack and bald cypress drop needles to deliver oxygen to bog roots — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods: Seeing More in…, 858

Broader Connections

• Oxygen flows from young lily leaves to old through shared air networks #corroborates (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 350
• Cattail leaves under water respire through air-filled aerenchyma tissue #corroborates (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 821
• Tamarack and bald cypress drop needles to deliver oxygen to bog roots #expands (0.75) — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods, 858