The Plant Corner; Monkey See, Monkey Do

The Nepenthes plant has inspired a Harvard researcher to create a super slippery material. Don't try this at home. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Nepenthes edwardsiana, aka ''tropical pitcher plant'' or ''monkey cups,'' is a carnivorous plant genus that comprises some 130 species. The greatest diversity of the genus is found on Borneo and Sumatra. The ''monkey cups'' moniker derives from people seeing monkeys drinking rainwater from this ''killer,'' which produces a syrupy fluid that drowns the prey (insects and even small vertebrates). The ''trap'' of the plant has an extremely slippery waxy coating that makes escape nearly impossible.

Inspired by the plant's slippery trap, Joanna Aizenberg and colleagues at Harvard report creating a ''omniphobic'' (literally ''hates everything'') material that repels ''simple liquids such as water and hydrocarbons, complex fluids such as crude oil, blood and even solids.'' The researchers describe the process as ''impregnating a porous network of Teflon nanofibers (gray) with a water- and oil-repellent lubricating liquid.''

Source: Bioinspired self-repairing slippery surfaces with stable omniphobicity. Tak-Sing Wong, Sung Hoon Kang, et al. Nature, 22 September 2011.

www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7365/full/nature10447.html