Hi iNaturalist community!
I’ve been scouring early morning plant observations in search for evidence for guttation. Guttation in plants occurs at night when its stomata are closed, but the plant keeps the sap flow moving by using special glands that don’t close. It’s often seen in herbaceous plants that occur in areas with high soil moisture, but it’s a widespread phenomenon. You can see it as water droplets form in conspicuous non-random places, such as leaf teeth on the leaf margin. Here are some examples of leaves displaying evidence of guttation.
My question is: have you ever observed this phenomenon? It would be especially visible in the early morning, when the light is too low for regular photosynthesis - transpiration, and the plant needs another way to keep sap flow moving. I’ve created a “Guttation” observation field to record it.
No, I haven’t! I’ll have to be on the lookout for it though!
incredible! I’ve never seen any animals making use of guttation as a source of water
The photo is a little unclear, the spider may be blocking the droplet which could be underneath it and the mouth parts, if visible, are too blurry. It would be pretty cool if it was in fact drinking though, but I’m not sure if it is.
I see it most frequently after a drenching rain soaks the soil down to the root tips, developing high root pressure combined with a very humid atmosphere and therefore little to no transpiration. Many of our woodland plants will start oozing out droplets of water along the edge of the leaves, and I’ve even seen an entire lawn do this (droplets forming on the tip of each grass blade). It makes for very cool photos but I can’t find mine right now. I doubt I ever posted the lawn pictures on iNat (since it’s cultivated).
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