Study says giant trees have 'no trouble' pumping water up 70 metres. A commenter notes they aren't pumping at all

What the Borneo canopy study found

The University of Exeter and Cardiff study, *Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches* (published in Science), challenges the long-standing assumption that extreme height impairs a tree's water transport and makes its crown drought-vulnerable. Studying trees from 7 to 71 metres tall in Malaysian Borneo — where some species exceed 80 m — the team found the tallest trees showed no height-related growth loss even during the 2023–2024 El Niño drought. The proposed mechanism: low-pressure suction through hollow vessels that widen toward the ground, paired with leaves adapted to tolerate greater water stress. It matters for carbon accounting, too — the tallest 1% of trees store more than half of a forest's above-ground carbon.

The thread edits the headline

Commenters mostly liked the science and disliked the framing. The tidiest correction was a point of physics:

"Hm, may be because they are not really 'pumping' the water?" — a commenter on the passive-tension mechanism

Transpiration pulls water up by tension; there's no pump. Others flagged the study's ceiling against the known limit:

"This goes against all previous research/measurements for actually tall trees (looks like they only considered up to 80m) and the fact that there are exactly zero trees in the world taller than 130 meters" — a commenter on the height limit the study skirts

And a reminder that the tallest trees don't only drink from the roots up — coastal fog supplies a real share of their water. The neat closing irony came from the record books: the tallest tree ever recorded, the Nooksack Giant, is partly disputed precisely because it exceeded the theoretical hydraulic limit this study is busy questioning — and we cut it down before anyone could measure how it managed.