Maple samaras represent just one way that seeds use the wind to disperse farther. A dandelion’s parachute-like float relies on the seed’s light weight and high drag .

After studying the maple seeds, the students incorporated some natural design aspects into their new creation - the world's smallest controllable single-winged rotorcraft.

In nature, maple disperse to new growth sites with the help of flying wings in their samara, or dry fruit. The wings help the seed to rotate as it falls, allowing it to glide in a gentle breeze.

Researchers from Tampere University, Finland, and the University of Pittsburgh, USA, have developed a tiny robot replicating the aerial dance of falling maple seeds. In the future, this robot could be ...

The spinning flight of a maple samara. In a February 2025 study, my colleagues and I filmed raindrops as they crashed into autorotating samaras. The samaras shed drops by shattering them, ...

Spinning maple seeds can shed raindrops in the blink of an eye to regain their helicopter-like flight.

These seeds rotate like maple samaras, but the wing also rolls around the axis that runs across its wingspan as it does so. ADVERTISEMENT Not only do we plan to compare their flight performance ...