Page 48 - Photosynthesis: The Green Miracle

Marsh plants have tissues known as aerenchyma (small picture at top) in those
parts of their bodies that remain underwater, and these enable them to obtain
oxygen. Sections filled with air in this tissue are able to expand.

As we have seen, these plants could not survive without the air
pockets in their roots and the systems that carry oxygen down to them

from the outside. It is not possible for any plant to develop a tissue that
widens air pockets by itself. Neither is it possible for such a structure to
develop gradually and by chance. A plant living in marshes or periodical-
ly flooded by water has no time to wait for chance phenomena to devel-
op, over the course of millions of years, a system that will carry oxygen
down to the plant’s roots. That is because it cannot survive and reproduce
in the absence of that system! This means that this plant’s oxygen-carry-
ing and storage system must have existed, fully formed and perfect, from
the moment the plant itself was first created.

This can take place only as the result of a magnificent, flawlessly
planned and executed creation, not through blind coincidences.

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