Plants aren’t something I know very much about, but I remember the concept of turgor pressure from my GCSEs. Plant cells absorb water a different way to the cells in our bodies because they contain ‘vacuoles’ which our cells don’t have. Plant cells also have cell walls, and as the vacuole absorbs more and more water, it presses against the cell wall and creates turgor pressure. This pressure keeps the plant upright – or ‘turgid’. This is how plants stand up and why they wilt without enough water.
This video shows my tomato plant on a very hot day, after I’ve watered it. I’ve noticed that it is able to rapidly recover its turgidity and ‘unwilt’ in a short time, once I’ve watered it of course. I made this timelapse yesterday, after another hot day here in the UK. It was set to capture a frame taken every 3 seconds and it’s played back at 24 fps.
[Read more about turgor pressure here]
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