Lotus leaves have become an icon for superhydrophobicity and self-cleaning surfaces, and have led to the concept of the 'Lotus effect'. Although many other plants have superhydrophobic surfaces with almost similar contact angles, the lotus shows better stability and perfection of its water repellency. Here, we compare the relevant properties such as the micro- and nano-structure, the chemical c...

Plant surfaces covered with crystalline epicuticular waxes are known to be anti-adhesive, hardly wettable and preventing insect attachment. But there are insects that are capable of gluing their eggs to these surfaces by means of proteinaceous secretions. In this study, we analysed the bonding region between the eggs of Crioceris asparagi and the plant surface of Asparagus officinalis using lig...

The slippery zone in pitchers of the carnivorous plant Nepenthes alata bears scattered prominent lunate cells and displays continuous epicuticular crystalline wax coverage. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of the surface anisotropy, caused by the shape of lunate cells, on insect attachment ability. Traction tests with ladybird beetles Coccinella septempunctata were performed i...

Structural changes in the cuticle could be partially responsible for the differences in uptake of infiltrated Ca in apple fruit. We examined the relationship between the surface structure of epicuticular wax of ‘Golden Delicious’ apple and Ca uptake by the fruit. Apples were nontreated or pressure infiltrated with distilled water, or with 0.14 or 0.27 mol·L CaCl2 solutions 2 weeks before optimu...

C and dC values were measured for individual long-chain n-alkanes (C24ÿ33) from Santa Monica Basin sediments. The data were then simulated using a three-component mixing model designed to represent the contributions of di€erent sources. The three selected end members were petroleum, modern plant wax, and shale-derived alkanes. The model was optimized to ®t the data and to determine the fraction...

The uptake of organic chemicals by plants is considered of great significance as it impacts their environmental transport and fate and threatens crop growth and food safety. Herein, the dependence of the uptake, penetration, and distribution of sixteen polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on the morphology and micro-structures of cuticular waxes on leaf surfaces was investigated. Plant surfa...

The cuticle is a hydrophobic lipid layer covering the epidermal cells of terrestrial plants. Although many genes involved in Arabidopsis cuticle development have been identified, the transcriptional regulation of these genes is largely unknown. Previously, we demonstrated that AtCFL1 negatively regulates cuticle development by interacting with the HD-ZIP IV transcription factor HDG1. Here, we r...

All-atom potential energy models of solid n-alkanes are important in understanding wax formation. Numerical results for molecular conformation computations using the multi-scale terrain/funneling method of Lucia and co-workers [Lucia, A., DiMaggio, P. A., & Depa, P. (2004a). A geometric terrain methodology for global optimization. Journal of Global Optimization, 29, 297; Lucia, A., DiMaggio, P....