STANKO D. 2018. Characteristics of vessel tissues in connection with resistance to drought: bachelor thesis. Zvolen: Technical University in Zvolen. Faculty of Forestry. 2018. 43s.The function of xylem tissues in plants is mainly to transport water and solutes from roots to upper parts of plants. The transport processes are essential for survival of plants and they are influenced by many factors which may possibly interrupt continuous flow. That is the reason for building up different protection mechanisms in order to prevent the water flow from being interrupted or recover the abrupt transport. Those processes are complicated and we are far from their complete understanding. It is typical for higher plants to have many leaves, which must be supplied by water. That is why trees need wide and long vessels so it is possible to transport lot of water relatively quickly. However, with higher vessel diameters and longer transport path, there is also higher risk of water flow disruption occurrence (creation of embolism). This work is focussed on description of basic principles of water transport through xylem and on functional mechanisms enabling safety of water transport in vascular plants.