Where does water in trees go during the winter?
By Mike Albers DNT-Forest Health Unit We are all familiar with what happens when we leave a bottle of water in our car and the temperature hits -40 or what happens when we forget to put antifreeze in our car radiator. Ice forms, it ruptures the bottle or radiator and the liquid squirts all over and then freezes where it landed. When water freezes, it expands creating a tremendous amount of pressure, more than enough to rupture glass, plastic and even metal containers. Why doesn’t the same thing happen to trees? Trees contain a great deal of water. And we know it can get very cold here. The water in a tree may weigh two to three times more then the weight of the wood. The moisture content of the sapwood of most trees is about 69 to 89%. Why don’t cells rupture or tree trunks split when temperatures drop below freezing? The answer is that these things would happen if trees did not “harden off “for winter. Trees harden off in response to autumn conditions of cooler temperatures and shorte
