Some plants, such as succulents, have managed to grow very
plump leaves. For that to happen, according to a new study in Current Biology,
plants had to evolve 3-D arrangements of their leaf veins in order to maintain
adequately efficient hydraulics for photosynthesis.
A garden variety leaf is a broad, flat structure, but if the
garden happens to be somewhere arid, it probably includes succulent plants with
plump leaves full of precious water. Fat leaves did not emerge in the plant
world easily. A new Brown University study published in Current Biology reports
that to sustain efficient photosynthesis, they required a fundamental
remodeling of leaf vein structure: the addition of a third dimension.