Sunflowers show complex Fibonacci sequences

By John BohannonMay. 17, 2016 , 7:15 PM

Mathematical biologists love sunflowers. The giant flowers are one of the most
obvious—as well as the prettiest—demonstrations of a hidden mathematical rule
shaping the patterns of life: the Fibonacci sequence, a set in which each number is the
sum of the previous two (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, ...),
found in everything from pineapples to pine cones. In this case, the telltale sign is the
number of different seed spirals on the sunflower's face. Count the clockwise and
counterclockwise spirals that reach the outer edge, and you'll usually find a pair of
numbers from the sequence: 34 and 55, or 55 and 89, or—with very large sunflowers—
89 and 144. Although the math may be beautiful, plant biologists have not worked out a
mechanistic model that fully explains how the sunflower seed patterns arise. The
problem is that plants don't always show perfect Fibonacci numbers—real life is
messy—and data on real sunflower diversity is scarce. So the Museum of Science and
Industry in Manchester, U.K., crowdsourced the problem. Over the past 4 years,
members of the public have been growing their own sunflowers and submitting
photographs and counts of the spiral patterns. After verifying the counts from 657
flowers, a more realistic picture of sunflowers is emerging. A study published today
in Royal Society Open Science reports that nearly one in five of the flowers had
either non-Fibonacci spiraling patterns or patterns more complicated than has
ever been reported, including near-Fibonacci sequences and other mathematical
patterns that compete and clash across the flower's face. The possibility of capturing
sunflower development with math just got more realistic—and more complicated.
The spiraling shapes in cauliflower, artichoke, and sunflower florets (above) share a remarkable feature:
The numbers of clockwise and counterclockwise spirals are consecutive Fibonacci numbers—the
sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and so on, so that each number is the sum of the last two. What's more, those
spirals pack florets as tight as can be, maximizing their ability to gather sunlight for the plant. But how
do plants like sunflowers create such perfect floret arrangements, and what does it have to do with
Fibonacci numbers? A plant hormone called auxin, which spurs the growth of leaves, flowers, and other
plant organs, is the key: Florets grow where auxin flows. Using a mathematical model that describes
how auxin and certain proteins interact to transport each other around inside plants, researchers could
predict where the hormone would accumulate. Simulations of that model reproduced patterns exactly
matching real "Fibonacci spirals" in sunflowers, the team reports this month in Physical Review Letters.
Based on their results, the researchers suggest that such patterns might be more universal in nature
than previously thought, so keep an e
One might at first tend to think that the growth of plants and animals, because of their elaborate forms,
are ruled by highly complex laws. However, this is surprisingly not always true: many aspects of the
growth of plants and animals may be described by remarkably simple mathematical laws. An obvious
example of this are the seashells and snails, as we show here: with a very simple model it is possible to
describe and generate any of the many types of seashells that one may find classified in a good seashell
bookguide. The fact that the animal which lives at the open edge of the shell places new shell material
always in that edge, and faster on one side than the other, makes the shell to grow in a spiral. The rates
at which shell material is secreted at different points of the open edge are presumably determined by the
anatomy of the animal. And, surprisingly, even fairly small changes in such rates can have quite
tremendous effects on the overall shape of the shell, which is in the origin of the existence of a great
diversity of shells.