Drag reduction, from bending to pruning

Most plants and benthic organisms have evolved efficient reconfiguration mechanisms to resist flow-induced loads. These mechanisms can be divided into bending, in which plants reduce their sail area through elastic deformation, and pruning, in which the loads are decreased through partial breakage of the structure. In this letter, we show by using idealized models that these two mechanisms or, in fact, any combination of the two, yield comparable relative reduction in the drag experienced by terrestrial and aquatic vegetation.