Nutrition

  
Curare, like most other plants, acquires nutrients through photosynthesis. The leaves of Chondrodendron tomentosum are located all over the vine, so as the vine grows up towards the canopy, the maximum amount of sunlight is captured. The vine needs the tree because there is limited sunlight near the floor of the rainforest. More on this in the adaptations section though.
Once sugars are produced, the vine needs to distribute the food to other tissues. This is accomplished through the sieve tubes in the phloem tissue. The sugars are passed into the sieve tubes by active transport. The sugars then travel down the tubes to the other tissues in the vine.
Water travels through the vine in a different way. Water is transported through to xylem tissue and is pulled up the stem by cohesion. The cells at the top of the vine have less water, and less pressure, which results in the water near the bottom of the vine, which has higher pressure, to "climb" up the stem cell by cell. It is a very interesting transport method.

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