Plants do count! Pinecones, Pineapples and Fibonacci

Also part 2 and part 3

Burra - thanks for posting those - it was WONDERFUL.

And now I'm going out to add glitter glue spirals and rolly-eyes to all my plants.....

That young lady is a genius ! I watched all three parts and my OCD is finally cured .

Thanks for posting these gems.

The Fibonacci numbers (and 'Golden Ratio') have intrigued me for decades.
Their first recordings come from around 200 BC, in India, so it is certainly something that has intrigued mankind for a very long time. The square root of 5 plays a significant roll, as expressed in the included attachment.

There are quite a few good books that document the relationship of the Fibonacci sequence to plants in their natural state.
If you are interested, I can dig a few out and post the ISBN numbers.

Hth
Kevin

What really interested me in these videos wasn't just the relationship, but that they'd figured out a mechanism for how the relationship was formed, and it something so apparently unrelated, ie the concentration of hormones as the individual 'bits' of the plant were forming and moving away from the meristem. At a given concentration, fibonacci numbers just appeared spontaneously. And, more to the point, if the concentration was slightly different, then numbers from a different number-sequence would appear, even on the same plant. Also, the way that it seems that way the leaves are arranged on a stem is controlled the same way.

Most herbicides are hormonal in effect. I wonder if there's any evidence of herbicide use effecting the patterns that form on plants?

Edit - I've finally found a pdf of an article about Phyllotaxis, Fibonacci and Hormone Gradients

It's a bit technical, but I think I can read it...

Also, for anyone not in the mood for numbers or long words, this video is just beautiful - Nature by Numbers

Here's a still from the video...

Here is a cool .gif of an MRI of an unopened banana flower. You can see the Fibonacci sequence pretty well, IMO.