The stomata - tiny openings or pores – allow ... Ms Armit: That's the waxy cuticle. It's on the surface of the leaf and its main job is to prevent water loss as the plant needs this water.

Because of these properties, the majority of plant gas exchange occurs through stomata. Consequently, composition of cuticle and fast guard cell signaling are thought to be the major factors limiting ...

But our research, published in New Phytologist, found that as temperatures rise, plants lose more water through their cuticle—the waxy layer on their leaves, which cannot close—than through ...

My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that a medium-sized leaf exposed to 50 °C could lose about one-third of a teaspoon of water per day through the cuticle. Scaled up to entire forests ...