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This isn’t directly answering your question but kind of related – it’s a fun a fun fact I learned when I visited the redwoods in Northern California. I had always thought trees get their water from their roots in the ground but the reason that redwoods get so tall is they also absorb water from the mist in the air.
Another fun fact about redwoods, when they fall down, the branches sticking up can grow into new trees. About 80% of them that you see today are clones and grew that way as opposed to from seeds. You can trace the dna back to a single seed as long as 30,000 years ago for some.
Trees are made of carbon and they get essentially all of this carbon (C) from the air they breathe in and then they breathe out oxygen (O) which is how we breathe.
This might seem odd, but we actually do the essentially the same but in reverse. If you have ever heard that you breathe in O and breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2). This is a mix of C and O and actually comes from the food you break down and the fats that you burn. So trees gain mass from breathing in C in the same way that we lose it as we breathe out C, humans have almost the same reactions as plants but in reverse.
As to how they move their mass around, trees mostly breath through their green leaves and then the carbon is transported around the tree through different cells. This is why trees don’t grow in winter when they lose their leaves, but spark up again in spring.
Trees are mostly made out of air and water.
6 CO2 + 12 H2O + photons → C6H12O6 + 6 O2 + 6 H2O
Trees take in CO2, water and light. The use photosynthesis to create glucose and oxygen. The oxygen is released into the air. The sugar is used for the tree to grow.
They don’t use the dirt much to grow. They only take small amount of minerals from the dirt.
> Where do they get the mass to grow tall?
Not from the dirt! The vast majority of the mass which makes up plants including trees comes from the air and water.
Cellulose, the main structure of the tree, is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The carbon and oxygen can come from the air, while water of course contains the hydrogen and more oxygen.
> How do they move it up their trunk?
Water moves up the trunk of the tree via capillary action, water’s surface tension, and something called “transpiration”. Basically water evaporates from the bottom of leaves and this acts to pull water into the leaves from the trunk, and by extension all the way from the roots.
Trees pull water up their roots, and that water carries all the vital nutrients they need to grow and thrive. Combining that with photosynthesis bringing in all the energy they need, plants and trees have it pretty good. All that root action brings up nutrients and chemicals that have been deposited by dead and decaying animals and plants.
All that mass is kind of like our human skin. All the outer layers are dead, and the new/forming layers gently push them out from the core.
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