some plants, particularly those adapted to life in damp or aquatic environments, have an extreme resistance to wetting. a well-known example is the sacred lotus. this adaptation is not purely the physical and chemical effect of a waxy coating but depends largely on the microscopic shape of the surface. when a hydrophobic surface is sculpted into microscopic, regular, elevated areas, sometimes in fractal patterns, too high and too closely spaced for the surface tension of the liquid to permit any flow into the space between the plateaus, then the area of contact between liquid and solid surfaces may be reduced to a small fraction of what a continuous surface might permit. the effect is to reduce wetting of the surface substantially.