Eli5: Why plants don’t grow on ice?
In: Biology
Plants, like all living things we know of, require water within them to move the chemicals that compose life around. Life is a complex ongoing chemical reaction and liquid water lets all those chemicals interact.
Ice is solid water. If ice is around then the ambient temperature is below freezing, and if it isn’t below freezing ice won’t stick around for long. Plants are not very good at producing body heat so their internal temperature tends to be the same as ambient temperature, meaning a plant growing on ice would have the water within it being frozen. It couldn’t draw water up by its roots because it is solid. The water couldn’t flow up through the stem because it would be solid. The leaves couldn’t convert sunlight, water, and air into sugars because the water is solid.
To make an analogy it is sort of like asking why a business doesn’t work if you encased all the employees in epoxy. The whole “can’t move around” bit is really important.
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