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We and the Plant People: Nitrogen

These materials are nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus. Nitrogen is the most important, and this the plant gets chiefly through the roots.

Nitrogen is found in the earth combined with hydrogen and other substances. The protoplasm tears to pieces these nitrogenous substances which the roots suck up, and so enables the plant to take the nitrogen.

The other two substances which the protoplasm needs, sulphur and phosphorus, the plant gets partly from the air and partly from the earth.

Sulphuric acid exists in very small quantities in the air and goes in through the stomata, attracted, no doubt, by the protoplasm inside. But other sulphurous and phosphorous compounds are taken up by the roots.

So we see protoplasm is complicated. It contains carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus united in a very complicated way.

Although protoplasm itself is made only of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus, it can make use of a great many other things.