Jan Baptista van Helmont (1580-1644) ... grew a willow tree in a weighed amount of soil. After five years, he discovered that the willow tree weighed about 74 kg more than it did at the start. As the weight of the soil had hardly changed, van Helmont concluded that plant growth cannot only be due to minerals from the soil. He thought that the extra plant material had come from the water alone. Now know it is from carbon dioxide also
