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POPSThe Mathematical Lives of Plants The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand. ... Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers? For the first time, scientists have found convincing biochemical mechanisms responsible for the interlocking spiral growth patterns seen in many plants. (The Romanesco broccoli plant is a striking example.) The video of the experiment with magnetized liquid iron droplets demonstrates how the geometry of such growth could occur in nature.
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POPS Fibonacci Numbers and Nature Fibonacci Series is a set of numbers at which, each new number is obtained adding the previous one to the last number. Thus: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34..... and so on. The string of these numbers and their distribution is not just a matter of mathematics. We see the structure and order of Fibonacci Series at plants' leaves, breeding of rabbits, honeybee colonies, shell spirals, horns of mammals, petals of flowers and elsewhere. This site is a good reference source for the relation between Fibonacci numbers and nature.
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