Friday 8 October 2010

This vegetable universe

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.
William Blake

There are some broccoli plants growing in the garden. They're looking a bit tired and pigeon-pecked, so I'm not sure whether they'll actually produce any florets. If they do, though, they'll be something special, because they're not ordinary broccoli but Romanesco broccoli, like the one above. With its spiral florets made up of self-similar spiral patterns on a smaller scale, this striking vegetable looks like a 3D fractal pattern generated by computer.

Step forward Aleksandar Rodić, with a 3D computer rendition of Romanesco broccoli .

For more striking examples of natural forms with fractal or Fibonacci sequence patterns check this article out. I particularly liked the Mandelbulb-like sea urchin.

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