Physiology: The Science of the BodyMartin, Ernest G.
Science
Physiology: The Science of the Body
Martin, Ernest G.
Physiology
The green parts of plants are the only places where sugar is made. We
eat a certain amount of green food in lettuce and asparagus and similar
vegetables, but for the most part the sugar or starch we eat comes from
parts of plants that are not green. There is evidently a transportation
from the point of manufacture to points of storage. The means of
transport is in the sap; since starch is not soluble in water, it must
be changed back into sugar. This is done, and then, by the movement of
sap the dissolved sugar is carried to the points of storage, roots in
such vegetables as beets, underground stems in potatoes, above ground
stems in sugar cane, fruits or seeds in orchard and grain crops. In such
of these as are sweet, the sugar itself is held in storage; in most
kinds it is changed back into starch. Where the storage is in the form
of starch the vegetable ordinarily keeps better than when sugar is the
substance on deposit.
A few kinds of plants--olives, peanuts, and cocoanuts, for
example--convert the sugar into oil and store their surplus material in
that form. The chemical elements in oils and fats are the same as in
starch and sugar, although the proportions are not the same. Weight for
weight oil has more than twice the energy value of sugar; in making a
given amount of peanut oil the peanut vine used up more than twice the
amount of starch or sugar; but since energy value is what counts rather
than bulk the plant is just as well off, and perhaps better on account
of the smaller bulk occupied by the stored material. One of the very
interesting examples of oil storage is found in the very tiny plants,
called diatoms, which abound in the water of the ocean. Each tiny diatom
stores within itself an even more tiny drop of oil. Although by
themselves single oil drops would make no impression, if enough of them
could be brought into one place a respectable accumulation of oil would
result. This is precisely what the geologists tell us has happened in
past ages; the bodies of diatoms have accumulated through thousands of
years, and finally the oil accumulations have been covered over with
sediment of one kind or another. When we tap through the sediment we
strike into the “oil sand,” which contains this residue of the diatoms,
and an oil well results.
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