CHANICS 



Secrets of the 

 Sacred Lotus 



For the lotus leaf, being dirt-free means 

 shunning water with a rough, waxy swface. 



By Adam Summers ~ Illustrations by Tom Moore 



\ 



TORY April 2006 



According to my wife, I can't 

 see dirt. I'm oblivious to dis- 

 order, she says, blind to dust, 

 ignorant about the positive effects of a 

 good vacuum cleaner. Truth be told, 

 more pressing things always do seem 

 to suck up my time. But in my usual 

 excuse — the endless quest to keep up 

 with the latest research — I may have 

 found the perfect rejoinder to further 

 spousal recrimination. Recently re- 

 leased in the United States, it's a won- 

 derfully clever product that mimics 

 the leaf surface of the lotus plant. And 

 it has the potential to make another 

 endless quest — the quest for a clean 

 house — a thing of the past. 



The sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) 

 has long been a symbol of purity in 

 Asian cultures, and for good reason. 

 Lotus roots are embedded in muck and 

 get many of their nutrients from the 

 soil, yet the plants seldom have much 

 noticeable grime on their surfaces. In 

 fact, if you think about it, wouldn't 

 you say most plants stay pretty clean? 

 No doubt that's a good thing, because 

 a dark smear of dirt would surely in- 

 terfere with photosynthesis. There's 

 no paucity of dirt, of course, so it 

 makes sense to suppose that the clean- 

 liness of plant leaves is related to the 

 ease with which water washes away 

 any offending particles of dirt. 



In the early 1970s Wilhelm 

 Barthlott, a botanist now at the Uni- 

 versity of Bonn in Germany, noted the 

 dirt-resistant properties of the sacred 

 lotus leaf. He and his colleagues have 

 spent the intervening three decades 

 cataloging the fine structure of leaf 

 surfaces. Alony the way, they've tried 



