A tree can be meters tall, pull water from the soil, and keep its leaves supplied with sugars made in sunlight, all while staying rooted in one place. That sounds straightforward until you ask how resources move through a body that cannot walk to food or drink, and how that body stays upright as it keeps growing. Plants solve these problems with a body plan built from repeated modules and with tissue systems that divide labor across surfaces, interiors, and transport pipes.
Take a look at the major organs and the main resource flows through them.
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Once a plant is anchored, three demands become unavoidable.
Prediction check: If a plant can only build one long tube that connects roots to leaves, which direction would you expect most flow to go?
A. Only upward
B. Only downward
C. Both, depending on the substance
Commit to one option before continuing.
Water and dissolved minerals mainly move upward from roots to leaves, while sugars produced in leaves often move to stems, roots, and fruits. So plants need tissues that move different materials in different directions, plus outer tissues that manage exchange with the environment and inner tissues that keep the body standing as it lengthens.
The plant body is organized into two organ systems.
Look at where growth zones and repeating stem units sit in the body plan.