I saw a pretty fun series of videos explaining why this is.
Viewing Fibonacci spiral structures in plants shows that as the structure grows from the meristem of the plant, each new growth is offset by the golden angle from the previous growth, rotating in a manner that many revolutions will show spiral formations in Fibonacci numbers.
French physicists Douady and Couder performed some experiments by periodically dropping magnetic fluid onto some oil and observing how they moved from that center point. Drop them slowly enough and they’d alternate sides, by repelling each other. But drop them close enough to where the repulsion happened against multiple droplets and they’d tend to stabilize at rotating around, with the golden angle.
So the simple algorithm of growing away from the previous growth is easy to encode genetically, and creates spiral structures with minimal overlap with prior growths. So Fibonacci spirals arise with the simplest of growth instructions coded into the genetics.
Also, it’s how you pack the most seeds into a round space, leaving the smallest gaps.
Saw a video where a guy showed dot spirals at different intervals, and he basically started at zero and went up by decimals, and literally every ratio except for the golden proportion had some number and type of spokes. The only times the dots converge uniformly are at the golden ratios (cause there are actually two golden ratios since you can flip the numerator and denominator).
It was kinda trippy to watch, but also beautiful in its own way…
Annnnnnnnd it’s a berry.
Is it just another kind of tree?
