Page 27 - Black Range Naturalist, Vol. 1, No. 2
P. 27

 Nature’s Form and Pattern - as Inspiration for Art and Science
By Nichole Trushell
Step into nature and look closely at a flower. Look at the plant’s leaves. You will find lovely, intricate patterns. Count the flower parts. Monocot flowers, like wild onions (photo below), have parts based in threes, most dicot flowers, like
wild four o’ clocks (photo below), have parts in fives. Look carefully and you will find other patterns -- there are spirals in leaf arrangements, sunflower heads and fern fiddleheads unfurling. Fascinatingly, sunflowers, ferns, seashells, big horn sheep horns and pine cones have the same type of spiral. There is mathematics afoot.
  Monocot Flower of the New Mexico Onion, Allium rhizomatum
Dicot Flower of Sweet Four O’Clock, Mirabilis longiflora
The more one looks, the more captivating this becomes; there is a particular mathematical framework and structural efficiency in the beauty we see in nature. One mathematical key to this form and pattern is found in what is called the Fibonacci sequence. This sequence is generated like this: start with 0+1=1, then 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, and so on. That is, compute each successive member in the sequence by adding the last two. The numerical sequence you derive is this: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610 and continuing on. These numbers were recognized by Italian 

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