What happens when plant tissues are frozen?
957839
Usually, cellular damage and dessication.\nIce crystals forming are like tiny spears which pierce through cell membranes and cause extensive damage.   At the same time, the freezing water causes osmotic imbalance, pulling water out of the cells and shriveling them.\nSome plant tissues combat freezing by creating various organic forms of antifreeze in their cells.  \nDid you know even some amphibians do this?  Wood frogs, for example.
627189
I believe (depending on the pressure in the sealed container) that the water would just float in the shape of the container.  If the container was under pressure and the seal was broken, the water would instantly get sucked out of the container and float there.  Shaded from the sun it would freeze in that shape.  My guess.\n\n\nThis is what happens to lichens:\n\n"...Once in Earth orbit, the lid of the container opened and the samples were exposed to the space environment for nearly 15 days before the lid resealed and the capsule returned to Earth. \n\nThe lichens were subjected to the vacuum of space and to temperatures ranging from -20°C on the night side of the Earth, to 20°C on the sunlit side. They were also exposed to glaring ultraviolet radiation of the Sun...."
12337
This is a great question!  Normal thought progression would make us think that the water within the trees cells would freeze and cause the wood to rupture and split.  To guard against this, trees do something called "hardening off" once colder temperatures arrive in the fall.  \nHardening off is a process in which the plant increases the sugar and salt content of its stored water in order to lower the freezing point of the water (kind of like antifreeze in your car).\nSome plants also have the capability to actually store ice in their tissues between the cells.  Many trees that grow in very cold climates have this mechanism.
1048377
Look at chemical reactions to snowfall and extreme cold snaps.  You'll find a lot of useful information if you know how to interpret the biological data, such as how the decomposition of plants affects soil consistency.
477562
The cold temperature didn't allow the plant to perform its basic bodily functions.
1085627
Probably not until the problem of cellular damage by crystalline ice is solved. Ice crystals form inside cells and burst the cells, causing damage. While live cells like sperm can be frozen in glycerol (a thick liquid that prevents crystals from forming) it is another matter to freeze a whole body. Today, no one has frozen a whole animal and revived it from being frozen.\n\nNot only that, freezing causes massive systemic shutdowns of body systems (ie, you freeze to death) so any suspended animation method would require the ability to reanimate or to avoid death in the first place.\n\nMy guess is that suspended animation will not be by freezing but some other method.
889538
they do this to keep the wind away from the fruit to keep it from getting frost bitten.  cold wont hurt it as bad as drying out the flesh, this breaks down the cellular walls inside the pulp and destroys the final finished product
593456
It's high in latitude where plant & vegitation growth are very limited due to cold climate\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra
218041
It is quite true that soil temperatures where the living parts of the plants are during winter are not as cold as the surface temperature. That is the first fact. The second thing that comes into play is that plants produce chemicals that depress the freezing point of water and prevent ice crystals from forming and rupturing cell walls. The next factor is that many plants forms seeds or spores that are biologically inactive when conditions are not suitable for growth. This is sort of a suspended animation. It is also important to recall that plants even as large as trees have only a very small proportion of actual "living material." In a tree in winter, the cambium and rootas are "alive" The cambium goes inactive and reactivates when spring comes and the roots remain fairly dormant through winter until warming weather stimulates the cambium back to life and the roots then beginning sending sap up the tree. The question is complex as plants vary from one celled organisms to trees.
724981
I have used cryogenics to freeze lymphocytes from organ donors.  The goal in my clinical lab was to have a reference for cross-matching the donor lymphocytes (T and B cells) with the recipients blood, just in case a rejection episode occurred.\n\nRepeating the cross-match (should a rejection episode occur) allowed me to see if I made a mistake the first time around.  If I got the same negative cross-match, The surgeons would know that the rejection was not "acute", but was due to chronic rejection.  The medical approach to keep the organ recipient alive would be different for each type of rejection.\n\nBut back to your question:\n\nThe cells were preserved in a DMSO/H2O solution, and the cells and solution where placed in a special tube that would resist cracking at low temperature.  \n\nI would slowly freeze the cells over a few days to -80 degrees in a Styrofoam container.  Then I transferred the tube to a liquid nitrogen tank (I forget the temperature of liquid nitrogen, but you can google search for a quick answer, if your interested).  The cells would be good for about 10 years if stored like this.\n\nAnyway,  as I thawed the cells, I could usually depend on 50% loss of the cells (50% would die and 50% would still be viable). I knew this because I would take some of the cells and perform a "vital stain" which has a blue color to it.  If the dye was able to cross the cell membrane (making the cell blue), it indicated that the cell was dead.  If the cell membrane was able to resist the dye, it indicated that the cell membrane was intact and the cell was most likely still alive.\n\nI would say that if I froze you, and then brought you back "to life" 50% of your cells would be dead.  This surely would not be enough for you to be functional.\n\nGreat Question.  Pass on the good karma
1028782
Stomata are open when the guard cells that surround them are turgid, meaning they have absorbed water to increase their interior pressure.  When a sugar solution is placed around these guard cells artificially, it has the effect of changing the osmotic pressure, causing water to diffuse outward from the guard cells, lowering their interior pressure and causing the stomata to close.  This mimics the changes in sugar concentration in guard cells when the cells are exposed to sunlight and produce sugar by photosynthesis.  Higher sugar concentrations inside the guard cells draws water into the cells by osmosis, causing the cells to swell and thus causing the stomata to open.  All of this allows more diffusion of gases through the stomata into and from the interior of a plant leaf during the photosynthetic process.
16969
It's a solid, so it's already frozen. Heat it up enough, and it will melt.
206070
This is a wild ass guess, but maybe where it's too cold for dying plants to decompose.  Instead of mature soil, you get peat.
44946
if you gabve very cold water to a plant it might not be able to metabolise it properly
891756
Atmospheric moisture that crystallizes directly on the ground and on exposed objects. The term also refers to the occurrence of subfreezing temperatures that affect plants and crops. Frost crystals, sometimes called hoarfrost in the aggregate, form when water vapour in the atmosphere passes into the ice-crystal phase without going through the intermediate liquid phase. Frost forms under conditions that would form dew if the temperature were above freezing. In agriculture, frost refers to the freezing of the water in plant cells, which causes the cells to burst and thereby destroys the plant.\n\nA covering of ice in one of several forms produced by the freezing of supercooled water droplets on objects colder than 32°F (0°C). The partial or complete killing of vegetation, by freezing or by temperatures somewhat above freezing for certain sensitive plants, also is called frost. Air temperatures below 32°F (0°C) sometimes are reported as “degrees of frost”; thus, 10°F (?12°C) is 22 degrees of frost (this usage is confined to the Fahrenheit scale and is not applied to Celsius temperatures).
912441
In a hypertonic solution the water inside the cell leaves, causing the cell to shrivel.  Since a plant cell has a cell wall, the cytoplasm and plasma membrane will shrink away from the cell wall (called plasmolysis).  This decrease in turgor pressure means the plant will wilt.
1144744
Excellent question.  \n\nThis is due to a process called osmosis.  Osmosis is the net movement of water molecules in and out of a partially permeable membrane (a kind of barrier that only allows certain molecules to pass through), from a region of their higher concentration to a region of their lower concentration.\n\nIts pretty self-explanatory here.  Since the concentration of water is higher inside than outside of the plant, water moves out of the plant, resulting in the plant dehydrating and dying.