The Wonders of Respiration

Some years ago I read about a relaxation-inducing breathing technique, something one can use if a stressful situation is causing one to breathe in short, fluttery breaths like a frightened squirrel on one of those spinning bird-feeders, not in slow, relaxed breaths like a calm and controlled adult human being. The technique was called something like 'Breathing the Universe'.

The basic idea is that the person performing the technique observes their out-breath, and ignores their in-breath.  They basically just wait until their lungs naturally fill with air again all by themselves.  According to the technique's inventor, we are part of a living, conscious universe and the universe conducts our in-breath, so we don't have to.  When we consciously breathe out, the universe will automatically breathe in with and for us and thus we relax and unite with nature as we breathe out and, through us, it breathes in, like an enormous oxygen exchange apparatus of which we are a tiny part.

Yes, yes, we breathe.  This is no secret, you say.  How does all this relate to plants? Well, I thought about this connection last week as we were studying transpiration (essentially, sweating) and respiration (essentially, breathing) in plants.  It's true, plants breathe and sweat, just like us.  See all those tiny droplets on the strawberry leaf in my raised veggie bed?  You always thought this was dew (falling as condensation from the sky), didn't you? Me, too.  It's not. Each drop corresponds to the end of a leaf vein which corresponds to the end of a root. The plant has dragged moisture out of the soil through its roots, pulled it up its stem and, in the morning, gently purged the excess as this stunning little diamond necklace hanging from the leaves.  Soon the droplets will evaporate into the air where they will become one with the universe, or at least with the air in my backyard, and later fall back to the soil where they will be pulled in by the roots, travel through the stem and be set free by the leaves once again.  

And, about the 'respiration' part.  Plants breathe.  Oxygen.  Just like you and me.  They also breathe carbon dioxide, as we all know, but in much tinier concentrations than we imagine.  Luckily, even though they don't take in all that much of our CO2 relative to the amount each of us exudes in one form or another, they graciously release quite a bit of oxygen for us to breathe due to the large amount of real estate occupied by their collective aggregation of leaves.  They breathe oxygen into their leaves, and even into their roots, which is why we unintentionally drown many of them by lovingly overwatering, thus eliminating oxygen at their roots.  This is also why we are told to 'aerate' our lawns, to re-introduce oxygen back to the roots of the grass we have so happily trampled into a concrete block.

While studying all of this breathing and sweating of plants it occured to me that we as a species are as utterly and completely entwined and enmeshed with nature's breath as my strawberry plant is.  Whether we want to acknowledge it or not.