A breathtakingly illustrated look at botanical spirals and the scientists who puzzled over them
Charles Darwin was driven to distraction by plant spirals, growing so exasperated that he once begged a friend to explain the mystery “if you wish to save me from a miserable death.” The legendary naturalist was hardly alone in feeling tormented by these patterns. Plant spirals captured the gaze of Leonardo da Vinci and became Alan Turing’s final obsession. This book tells the stories of the physicists, mathematicians, and biologists who found themselves magnetically drawn to Fibonacci spirals in plants, seeking an answer to why these beautiful and seductive patterns occur in botanical forms as diverse as pine cones, cabbages, and sunflowers.
Do Plants Know Math? takes you down through the centuries to explore how great minds have been captivated and mystified by Fibonacci patterns in nature. It presents a powerful new geometrical solution, little known outside of scientific circles, that sheds light on why regular and irregular spiral patterns occur. Along the way, the book discusses related plant geometries such as fractals and the fascinating way that leaves are folded inside of buds. Your neurons will crackle as you begin to see the connections. This book will inspire you to look at botanical patterns—and the natural world itself—with new eyes.
Featuring hundreds of gorgeous color images, Do Plants Know Math? includes a dozen creative hands-on activities and even spiral-plant recipes, encouraging readers to explore and celebrate these beguiling patterns for themselves.
betsy –
I found this to be a fascinating book. It’s also beautifully presented, with great photos and diagrams.
Greenthumb –
I confess that when I first started the book, I feared the material on plant patterns would be too technical.Instead I found myself riveted, drawn in by the spirals. The writing has a lightness of touch that makes the science of “phyllotaxis” accessible to gardeners like me .The photos and diagrams are beautiful – and the captions really get you to look at the plant patterns. More than once sent a shiver up my spine. If you liked “Hidden Life of Trees” by Wohleben and “The Botany of Desire” by Michael Pollan, you might like this one too.
K. Woods –
The book is GORGEOUS.
I am still reading.
There is so much here. First I just started to read. But as I read I have to stop. Make a Fibonacci flower. Do it again. Go down a rabbit hole with my very old Spirograph. Paint something with asters. Plan a quilt. Go outside and look at flowers. Go inside for a magnifying glass. Go outside again and look at seed heads.
Imma spend some time with this book.
If you love plants or history or (gasp) MATH, or love learning you will also love this book.
Lo –
As a layperson in love with nature, art and patterns, I was drawn to the enticing title of this volume. And entice it does! I know from before that proportions of beauty can be expressed mathematically. In the case of plant spirals, it shows how this works: the mesmerizing design of pine cones, pineapples and exquisite flowers can be modelled by something called the Fibonacci sequence.
This book brings me into the beguiling world of scientists, using entertaining story-telling interspersed with breath-taking imagery and clarifying illustrations. It lays out the history of an obsession: to unravel the mystery of plant spiral development (phyllotaxis). When as a reader, I find myself flummoxed by some mathematical formula, I’m rescued by a witty poem using the Fibonacci sequence, fun try-your-hand exercises and mouth-watering recipes, helping a curious novice find another entry into the mystery of spirals.
Ultimately, Do Plants Know Math? is a moving account of the human longing for the holy grail, our desire for a final answer as to WHY. The beauty of its message is that formulas won’t do. The ultimate marvel is the unending adaptability and complexity of plant spiral development; its refusal to be unequivocally explained. That, it seems, is exactly the message we humans need.
Paul H. –
There are so many things I loved about this book. The production values are excellent: it’s the perfect size, the quality of the paper and illustrations is excellent, the layout and formatting are easy on the eyes. But it’s the richness of the content the really blows me away. For virtually any reader with a curiosity about botany, math, physics, history of science, and the process of scientific inquiry, this book will provide delights on every page. I learned so much and felt so amazed in every chapter: it was like taking a very satisfying journey with expert guides who did not patronize but patiently explained the intricacies of this fascinating topic. There is poetry, there is humor, there is exceptional expertise and cross-disciplinary synergy. I particularly appreciated how the text accompanying nearly every visual graphic posed questions that drew the reader in, inviting closer inspection and reflection. I’m not sure that I had ever encountered that in a science book of this nature. The authors deserve rich praise for this triumph of a book. Buy it to treat yourself, or as a gift to an intellectually curious friend, or both!