Certain varieties of aquatic floating weeds demonstrate an impressive ability to selectively absorb oil from contaminated water. These plants,which are often regarded as a nuisance, could in fact provide an extremely convenient way of cleaning up messy oil spills. Reporting their latest results in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, and scientists in Germany based at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology's Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT) together with researchers from the Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants at the University of Bonn,absorb been discovering what makes these plants so special.
Source: phys.org