Plants are natural feats of engineering and botany a playground of physical phenomena. In this talk, we'll take a walk on the wild side and encounter ripe fruit, a gigantic leaf and an explosive cucumber. I'll describe the bioballistics of seed dispersal, the structural economy of a vasculature network and the cloaking effect of a peel. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate that poking a plant is an effective way of testing its mechanical properties.