When a plant or a tree grows, the matter must be taken from somewhere. Why does not the ground sink around it?

Question

When a plant or a tree grows, the matter must be taken from somewhere. Why does not the ground sink around it?

Answer 1

It GROWS pushing the ground thats why the ground is hard around it  

Answer 2

This was addressed some 350 years ago by the scientist Van Helmont. He describes the experiment:

I took an earthen pot and in it placed 200 pounds of earth which had been dried out in an oven.  This I moistened with rain water, and in it planted a shoot of willow which weighed five pounds.  When five years had passed the tree which grew from it weighed 169 pounds and about three ounces.  The earthen pot was wetted whenever it was necessary with rain or distilled water only.  It was very large, and was sunk  in the ground, and had a tin plated iron lid with many holes punched in it, which covered the edge of the pot to keep air-borne dust from mixing with the earth.  I did not keep track of the weight of the leaves which fell in each of the four autumns.  Finally, I dried out the earth in the pot once more, and found the same 200 pounds, less about 2 ounces.  Thus, 164 pounds of wood, bark, and roots had arisen from water alone."    

In fact much of the increase is also due to the uptake and incorporation of carbon dioxide, but the basic idea still stands: very little of the plant's mass is derived from the soil itself

Answer 3

Trees and other plants make there structures from sugars.  The sugars are synthesized from Carbon Dioxide, taken from the air, and Water.  They do not build up there internal structures from the soil, although they do take a small amount of minerals from the soil; that is why people add fertilizer.  

Answer 4

it is taken from the air, carbon dioxide to be exact. hence why a trees matter is nearly all carbon. has nothing to do with the soil.