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Storage - Storage or holding is an important function of trees for their survival as well as their associates. Trees load, store and use - water and essential elements. The food - energy containing substances such as starch are manufactured then stored and then used when needed. Some trees store fats and oils as their energy reserve. When water enters the symplast-containing tree it enters as free water. Then it is stored in the apoplast as bound water. Bound to the cellulose walls in the S2 layer. This is a reserve for the symplast when it needs it. Much like post-it notes. When free water is not available such as when there are no leaves on the trees and the temperature goes above 40 degrees F. Then bound water is released from storage and used. Trees also store, hold as a reserve, water for flora and fauna during dryer times such as summer drought. This is one of many unique functions of symplastless fallen trees. Yes, when a symplastless tree falls and soil contact is made, for a portion of its life, as a fallen tree, it serves as a storehouse for water, providing animals and plants with needed moisture at those dryer times (so called drought). Coarse woody debris is a term, used for identifying large portions of fallen trees, such as trunks. Trees, which maintain a symplast, load essential elements dissolved in water. Then they store these essential elements for future use by the symplast. The CWD, provided by large mature fallen trees, are a storehouse for essential elements for other trees, plants and animals, associates. Batteries store energy. Trees are like big batteries. Besides transforming sunlight energy into a form for the use of the symplast and storing energy as insoluble starch and oils in living cells of branches, trunks, and woody roots for use by the symplast, the wood itself is a form of stored energy for other organisms because cellulose is made up of long twisting chains of glucose - sugar. This continues as the CWD, that large fallen trees produce, and are a store house for nutrients providing energy for soil and other organisms. Starch is stored behind buds during the end of the growing season. Buds that do not have starch stored at the base from the previous year, most likely will not open. Water from the soil does not open the buds. The new transport and loading system is not formed yet. The buds open when the starch at the base is transformed back to glucose by amylase. The conversion of starch to sugar in early spring may so increase the osmotic pressure that bound water is freed and the turgor pressure plus the new available sugar could start the transport system. Plane trees store an abundance of starch in broad rays. The current developing growth increment of trees does not store starch until the end of the growth period. Woody roots on most trees do not have a pith. Woody roots usually store more energy reserves than stems. Stored energy is required for development of new leaves. See "defense” and , “reproduction”.