Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet, captured the essence of turgor pressure when he wrote, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age.” The poet refers to a life force that surges in our bloodstreams and pumps oxygen via our circulatory systems allowing human beings to metabolize sugars for energy. A chemical process that ends in Dylan’s leeching lips of time. But how do plants feel about turgor pressure, if they could feel at all? Osmosis passes through the semi-permeable membrane of a cell wall and moves from a low to higher solute or particle concentration seeking to equalize the two. This creates pressure as water enters the cell wall which gives plants their stand-up structure. Up, up, water rises. Pressure from fluid pushing against the cell wall is called turgor pressure and directs the motion and direction of a plant, depending on how water pressure builds inside the cell. It’s what makes a gladiola stand tall, corn as high an elephant’s eye, and a tree forever exerting itself vertically. Cell volume expansion is the order of the day, a sort of growth economy in nature and when there’s not enough water, everything goes bust. Lettuce leaves slump, grapes on the vine wither. And returning to the words of the poet who speaks of the inevitable human march toward death, “And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose / My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.”