Researchers have incorporated electronic circuitry into the tissues of a rose.

Magnus Berggren at Linköping University in Norrköping, Sweden, and his colleagues submerged the cut end of a rose stem into a water-based solution of PEDOT, a conducting polymer that is used in printable electronics. Capillary action pulled the polymer up into the rose's vascular tissue, where it came out of solution and self-assembled into wires, some as long as 10 centimetres. By attaching gold probes coated with PEDOT to the wires, the researchers made individual transistors and demonstrated a simple digital circuit. The transistors' electrical performance was on a par with that of conventional printed PEDOT circuits.

The technology could eventually be used to record or regulate plant physiology, the authors say.

Sci. Adv. 1, e1501136 (2015)