Pick up a pinecone and count the spiral rows of scales. You may find eight spirals winding up to the left and 13 spirals winding up to the right, or 13 left and 21 right spirals, or other pairs of numbers. The striking fact is that these pairs of numbers are adjacent numbers in the famous Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.. Here, each term is the sum of the previous two terms. The phenomenon is well known and called phyllotaxis. Many are the efforts of biologists to understand why pinecones, sunflowers, and many other plants exhibit this remarkable pattern. Organisms do the strangest things, but all these odd things need not reflect selection or historical accident. Some of the best efforts to understand phyllotaxis appeal to a form of self-organization. Paul Green, at Stanford, has argued persuasively that the Fibonacci series is just what one would expects as the simplest self-repeating pattern that can be generated by the particular growth processes in the growing tips of the tissues that form sunflowers, pinecones, and so forth. Like a snowflake and its sixfold symmetry, the pinecone and its phyllotaxis may be part of order for free. Stuart A. Kauffman
About This Quote

The pine cone and the sunflower have a remarkable relationship. They show a pattern that is quite interesting and there has been a great deal of research into the theory that the patterns are not random at all but have a purpose. Not only do they demonstrate eight spirals going up from one side and thirteen going up from the other but they have an equal number of spirals going left and right as well. In this there is a very interesting mathematical pattern at play.

In fact, the pattern is based on the Fibonacci series which means that if you take each number based on the Fibonacci series it becomes either 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 or some other pair of numbers that are adjacent Fibonacci numbers. The vast majority of plants exhibit this pattern in their growth which makes it almost certain that it has some kind of use to them. It has also been suggested that this pattern acts to attract pollinators to the plant so they can help it reproduce by pollination rather than relying on seeds.

Source: At Home In The Universe: The Search For The Laws Of Selforganization And Complexity

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