Why is water so helpful to plants?

Question

Is there something in water that makes plants grow better, and not in other liquids?

Why is every living thing able to grow in water?

Thanks, all help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Life on Earth has evolved to use water.  So in some ways, it's just because water happened to be abundant on Earth (which is because water is pretty simple; two H's, one O, which are elements relatively low on the periodic table).

However, water has many properties that make it great in supporting life; these are all a results of it's polarity, which leads it to its other properties:

-high heat capacity and heat of vaporization (great for thermoregulation)

-floats when frozen, instead of sinking (so water bodies don't freeze solid)

-"universal" solvent (great for a general liquid medium)

-neutral pH

-a critical reactant in many metabolic processes, including photosynthesis

As for plants, water is critically important because it is essential for photosynthesis.  It acts as a major reactant - the electron donor, via the Hill reaction.

Answer 2

From what I learned from first year university is that plants need water to help carry nutrients around their system i.e. from soil to the sink (i.e. leaf where photosynthesis occurs). Photosynthesis is fundamentally important for a plant's health and growth. Hence, without water the plant cannot survive.

Furthermore, plants need water to hold their structure rigidly (through theoretical process (?) such as cohesion) to prevent them from wilting.

Edit: Didn't see the other parts of the question. I'm going to have a guess to why organisms can survive in water. Water has oxygen. In terms of fish, it's something to do with hypertonic and their kidney functions and something else that gives them the ability to survive depending whether they live in saltwater or freshwater.

I hope this answers your question. :)