Plant Cuttings

This site has a long-established tradition of interest in the English language. But, and just as oranges are not the only fruit (Denise Imwold), English is not the only language on Earth. Whilst I don’t intend to showcase every one of the planet’s thousands of languages (Julian Northbrook), this post will look at a few Japanese words that have a link – even if somewhat tenuous(!) – with plants.

Origami

Figure 1. Examples of bloom patterns in different folded states, from Zhongyuan Wang et al. (2025)

Origami (Nick Robinson) is the Japanese art of paper-folding. Its botanical relevance for this post is that “Engineers have developed a class of origami structures that unfold in one smooth motion to create flower-like shapes [P Cuttings’ emphasis] [Ed. – see image above], which could have applications in space”* (Alex Wilkins). The applications envisaged by the team that discovered these ‘bloom pattern’ structures – Zhongyuan Wang et al. (2025) – include “As well as improving how we design and deploy antennas, optical devices for satellites and other space equipment, these new origami bloom patterns also have more down-to-earth applications. They could be used to create portable, stackable structures for temporary shelters, pop-up architecture, or even parts of robotics that need to expand or contract” (Paul Arnold). All of this inspired by flowers; blooming marvellous! [Ed. – and is a good example of biomimetics (Julian FV Vincent et al., 2006; Bharat Bhushan, 2009)].

For more on this, err, unfolding story, see Paul Arnold, Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Sanjana Gajbhiye, Molly Glick, Brendan Ruberry, Ella Feldman, here, here, here, Jamie Leventhal, Adrien, Kyryll Maksymov.

And for more on the relevance of origami as a biological influence in design, and applicability of engineering solutions inspired by origami, see the reviews by Hadi Ebrahimi Fakhari et al. (2024), and Tran Vy Khanh Vo et al. (2025).

Kirigami

Fig. 5: Kirigami-inspired parachutes in realistic conditions: a, Water bottle mounted on a kirigami-inspired parachute attached to a drone. b, Parachute elongating as the drone pulls it up to its dropping altitude of 60 m. c, Snapshot of a kirigami-inspired parachute during free fall in realistic conditions. Scale bars, 250 mm (a, c); 500 mm (b), from Danick Lamoureux et al. (2025).

Kirigami (Charlene Lewis) is the Japanese art of folding and cutting paper. Introducing the work that was inspired by this technique, the press release (Lucas Downey) from the researchers’ home institution, Polytechnique Montréal, tells us that “Kirigami is a technique that modifies the mechanical properties of a sheet of material by making precise folds and cuts to it. Children use it to make snowflakes out of paper, and engineers have used it to create extensible structures, flexible medical devices and deployable spatial structures. However, kirigami techniques have never been applied to parachute production” (quoted from here).

As suggested by that statement, using kirigami principles, Danick Lamoureux et al. (2025)’s innovation is the creation of a parachute. Appropriately called a ‘kiri-chute’ (Pierre-Thomas Brun), these structures look little like conventional parachutes because much of the material has been cut away to leave a sort of lattice or net-like structure, and they work ‘upside-down’ [see panel c in the figure above] compared to a more traditional parachute (which resembles the cap of an ‘umbrellate’ mushroom, the fruiting body of a fungus that resembles an umbrella [Ed. – But which resembles even more closely, the veil of Phallus indusiatus, the bridal veil stinkhorn]).

Nevertheless, kiri-chutes have a number of advantages over regular parachutes, probably the most important of which is that they can land on their target on the ground with “unprecedented accuracy” (Mihal Andrei). More remains to be done before kiri-chutes can be produced and deployed in the real world, but already it is claimed that “This technology could be useful for purposes ranging from parcel delivery to exploration of other planets. However, the researchers say the most likely application they’re looking at is humanitarian aid: deliveries of water, food, and medicine” (Mihal Andrei). Considering the number of places around the world where such humanitarian aid is needed, full-scale production and use of kiri-chutes can’t come soon enough.

OK, but where’s the botanical angle? Tucked away in this comment, “once deployed, … ‘kiri-chutes’ resemble the feathery bristles of dandelions and other wind-dispersed seeds, echoing solutions that nature developed long ago” (Pierre-Thomas Brun).

For more on this, err, down-to-earth story, see Mark Chiang, here, here, Emily, Aamir Khollam, Sam Jarman, here, Danick Lamoureux et al., Imma Perfetto, Pierre-Thomas Brun, Dan Fox, here, Mihai Andrei.

Shinrin-yoku

As with most spoken-today languages, the Japanese language continues to evolve. As evidence for that, if they don’t have a word for something, they are not averse to creating one. Take shinrin-yoku, for example.

Because this term relates to an ancient practice – acknowledgement of the beneficial effect(s) of exposure to trees and forests, e.g., almost 2000 years ago, according to Pliny the Elder, “the smell of the forest where pitch and resin are collected [therefore coniferous forests] is extremely salutary to the phthicists [Ed. – I have been unable to find out what this word means…] and to those who, after a long illness, have difficulty recovering” (quoted from here) – you might imagine that the Japanese word shinrin-yoku will have been around forever. It means ‘forest bathing’ (in English) and encapsulates the suite of benefits that humans can gain from being immersed in a forest setting. Some of those claimed benefits – that can be experienced after only a couple of hours of mindful exploration in a forest – include reduced blood pressure, lower cortisol (stress hormone) levels, and improved concentration and memory [see also Bum Jin Park et al., 2010].

However, although the forest-sensory-immersion notion [a form of sylvotherapy (Sabrina Millot)] had no doubt been known for many years in Japan, the Japanese didn’t have their own word for it until 1982 (Phoebe) when the phrase shinrin-yoku was coined. For more on this phenomenon, readers might like to mindfully explore Forest bathing: How trees can help you find health and happiness by Dr. Qing Li [Ed. – for Mr Cuttings’ review of the book, see here]

Finally, and somewhat surprisingly [Ed. – but pleasingly circular as it relates to the outer space aspirations of this post’s first-mentioned item, and nicely rounds-off this post], the Japanese word for their wooden satellite is LignoSat (Swaminathan Natarajan, Andrea Lloyd), a name that appears to owe more to Latin and English than Japanese…

* And for origami lilac flower-inspired engineering innovation [“Inspired by the morphological organization of lilac inflorescences, where myriad small florets coalesce into a tightly integrated, quasi- cylindrical cluster, we explore a modular assembly strategy based on origami units”] – but on this occasion of a more terrestrial-based kind, see Yichen Wang et al. (2025).

REFERENCES

Bharat Bhushan, 2009. Biomimetics: lessons from nature–an overview. Phil Trans R Soc A 367(1893): 1445–1486; http://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2009.0011

Hadi Ebrahimi Fakhari et al., 2024. Origami: A biological influence in design. Biomimetics (Basel) 9(10): 600; doi: 10.3390/biomimetics9100600

Danick Lamoureux et al., 2025. Kirigami-inspired parachutes with programmable reconfiguration. Nature 646: 88–94; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09515-9

Bum Jin Park et al., 2010. The physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere or forest bathing): evidence from field experiments in 24 forests across Japan. Environ Health Prev Med 15(1): 18-26; doi: 10.1007/s12199-009-0086-9

Julian FV Vincent et al., 2006. Biomimetics: its practice and theory. JR Soc Interface 3(9): 3471–3482; http://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2006.0127

Tran Vy Khanh Vo et al., 2025. Morph and function: Exploring origami-inspired structures in versatile robotics systems. Micromachines 16(9): 1047; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi16091047

Yichen Wang et al., 2025. Origami-inspired deployable spatial structures with terrain adaptability. Engineering Structures Volume 345, Part A: 121412; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2025.121412

Zhongyuan Wang et al., 2025. Bloom patterns: radially expansive, developable and flat-foldable origami. Proc R Soc A 481(2320): 20250299; http://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2025.0299