Fibonacci Numbers and Nature

This page has been split into TWO PARTS.

This, the first, looks at the Fibonacci numbers and why they appear in various "family trees" and patterns of spirals of leaves and seeds.

The second page then examines why the golden section is used by nature in some detail, including animations of growing plants.

Contents of this Page

The Things To Do icon means there is a Things to do investigation at the end of the section.

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Rabbits, Cows and Bees Family Trees

Let's look first at the Rabbit Puzzle that Fibonacci wrote about and then at two adaptations of it to make it more realistic. This introduces you to the Fibonacci Number series and the simple definition of the whole never-ending series.

Fibonacci's Rabbits

The original problem that Fibonacci investigated (in the year 1202) was about how fast rabbits could breed in ideal circumstances.

Fluffy bunnies

Suppose a newly-born pair of rabbits, one male, one female, are put in a field. Rabbits are able to mate at the age of one month so that at the end of its second month a female can produce another pair of rabbits. Suppose that our rabbits never die and that the female always produces one new pair (one male, one female) every month from the second month on. The puzzle that Fibonacci posed was...

How many pairs will there be in one year?

  1. At the end of the first month, they mate, but there is still one only 1 pair.
  2. At the end of the second month the female produces a new pair, so now there are 2 pairs of rabbits in the field.
  3. At the end of the third month, the original female produces a second pair, making 3 pairs in all in the field.
  4. At the end of the fourth month, the original female has produced yet another new pair, the female born two months ago produces her first pair also, making 5 pairs.

Fluffy bunnies family tree

The number of pairs of rabbits in the field at the start of each month is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ...

Can you see how the series is formed and how it continues? If not, look at the answer!

The first 300 Fibonacci numbers are here and some questions for you to answer.

Now can you see why this is the answer to our Rabbits problem? If not, here's why.
Another view of the Rabbit's Family Tree:

Multiples-of-Phi family tree

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The Rabbits problem is not very realistic, is it?

It seems to imply that brother and sisters mate, which, genetically, leads to problems. We can get round this by saying that the female of each pair mates with any male and produces another pair.
Another problem which again is not true to life, is that each birth is of exactly two rabbits, one male and one female.

Dudeney's Cows

The English puzzlist, Henry E Dudeney (1857 - 1930, pronounced Dude-knee) wrote several excellent books of puzzles (see after this section). In one of them he adapts Fibonacci's Rabbits to cows, making the problem more realistic in the way we observed above. He gets round the problems by noticing that really, it is only the females that are interesting - er - I mean the number of females!

He changes months into years and rabbits into bulls (male) and cows (females) in problem 175 in his book 536 puzzles and Curious Problems (1967, Souvenir press): cow!

If a cow produces its first she-calf at age two years and after that produces another single she-calf every year, how many she-calves are there after 12 years, assuming none die?
This is a better simplification of the problem and quite realistic now.

But Fibonacci does what mathematicians often do at first, simplify the problem and see what happens - and the series bearing his name does have lots of other interesting and practical applications as we see later.
So let's look at another real-life situation that is exactly modelled by Fibonacci's series - honeybees.

Puzzle books by Henry E Dudeney

Book: Amusements in Mathematics, Dover Press, 1958, 250 pages.
Still in print thanks to Dover in a very sturdy paperback format at an incredibly inexpensive price. This is a wonderful collection that I find I often dip into. There are arithmetic puzzles, geometric puzzles, chessboard [uzzles, an excellent chapter on all kinds of mazes and solving them, magic squares, river crossing puzzles, and more, all with full soutions and often extra notes! Highly recommended!

Book: 536 Puzzles and Curious Problems is now out of print, but you may be able to pick up a second hand version by clicking on this link. It is another collection like Amusements in Mathematics (above) but containing different puzzles arranged in sections: Arithmetical and Algebraic puzzles, Geometrical puzzles, Combinatorial and Topological puzzles, Game puzzles, Domino puzzles, match puzzles and "unclassified" puzzles. Full solutions and index. A real treasure.

Book: The Canterbury Puzzles, Dover 2002, 256 pages. More puzzles (not in the previous books) the first section with some characters from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and other sections on the Monks of Riddlewell, the squire's Christmas party, the Professors puzzles and so on and all with full solutions of course!

Honeybees and Family trees

There are over 30,000 species of bees and in most of them the bees live solitary lives. The one most of us know best is the honeybee and it, unusually, lives in a colony called a hive and they have an unusual Family Tree. In fact, there are many unusual features of honeybees and in this section we will show how the Fibonacci numbers count a honeybee's ancestors (in this section a "bee" will mean a "honeybee").
First, some unusual facts about honeybees such as: not all of them have two parents!
bee iconIn a colony of honeybees there is one special female called the queen.
bee icon There are many worker bees who are female too but unlike the queen bee, they produce no eggs.
bee icon There are some drone bees who are male and do no work.
Males are produced by the queen's unfertilized eggs, so male bees only have a mother but no father!
bee icon All the females are produced when the queen has mated with a male and so have two parents. Females usually end up as worker bees but some are fed with a special substance called royal jelly which makes them grow into queens ready to go off to start a new colony when the bees form a swarm and leave their home (a hive) in search of a place to build a new nest.
Bee Tree Key

So female bees have 2 parents, a male and a female whereas male bees have just one parent, a female.

Here we follow the convention of Family Trees that parents appear above their children, so the latest generations are at the bottom and the higher up we go, the older people are. Such trees show all the ancestors (predecessors, forebears, antecedents) of the person at the bottom of the diagram. We would get quite a different tree if we listed all the descendants (progeny, offspring) of a person as we did in the rabbit problem, where we showed all the descendants of the original pair.

Bee Tree Let's look at the family tree of a male drone bee.

  1. He had 1 parent, a female.
  2. He has 2 grand-parents, since his mother had two parents, a male and a female.
  3. He has 3 great-grand-parents: his grand-mother had two parents but his grand-father had only one.
  4. How many great-great-grand parents did he have?

Again we see the Fibonacci numbers :

                                       great-     great,great   gt,gt,gt
                           grand-      grand-     grand         grand
Number of       parents:   parents:    parents:   parents:      parents:
of a MALE bee:    1           2           3          5             8
of a FEMALE bee:  2           3           5          8            13
  
Article: The Fibonacci Sequence as it appears in Nature by S.L.Basin in Fibonacci Quarterly, vol 1 (1963), pages 53 - 57.

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/ Things to do /

  1. Make a diagram of your own family tree. Ask your parents and grandparents and older relatives as each will be able to tell you about particular parts of your family tree that other's didn't know. It can be quite fun trying to see how far back you can go. If you have them put old photographs of relatives on a big chart of your Tree (or use photocopies of the photographs if your relatives want to keep the originals). If you like, include the year and place of birth and death and also the dates of any marriages.
  2. A brother or sister is the name for someone who has the same two parents as yourself. What is a half-brother and half-sister?
    Describe a cousin but use simpler words such as brother, sister, parent, child?
    Do the same for nephew and niece. What is a second cousin? What do we mean by a brother-in-law, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, etc? Grand- and great- refer to relatives or your parents. Thus a grand-father is a father of a parent of yours and great-aunt or grand-aunt is the name given to an aunt of your parent's.

    Make a diagram of Family Tree Names so that "Me" is at the bottom and "Mum" and "Dad" are above you. Mark in "brother", "sister", "uncle", "nephew" and as many other names of (kinds of) relatives that you know. It doesn't matter if you have no brothers or sisters or nephews as the diagram is meant to show the relationships and their names.
    [If you have a friend who speaks a foreign language, ask them what words they use for these relationships.]

  3. What is the name for the wife of a parent's brother?
    Do you use a different name for the sister of your parent's?
    In law these two are sometimes distinguished because one is a blood relative of yours and the other is not, just a relative through marriage.
    Which do you think is the blood relative and which the relation because of marriage?
  4. How many parents does everyone have?
    So how many grand-parents will you have to make spaces for in your Family tree?
    Each of them also had two parents so how many great-grand-parents of yours will there be in your Tree?
    ..and how many great-great-grandparents?
    What is the pattern in this series of numbers?
    If you go back one generation to your parents, and two to your grand-parents, how many entries will there be 5 generations ago in your Tree? and how many 10 generations ago?

    The Family Tree of humans involves a different sequence to the Fibonacci Numbers. What is this sequence called?

  5. :-) Looking at your answers to the previous question, your friend Dee Duckshun says to you:
    • You have 2 parents.
    • They each have two parents, so that's 4 grand-parents you've got.
    • They also had two parents each making 8 great-grand-parents in total ...
    • ... and 16 great-great-grand-parents ...
    • ... and so on.
    • So the farther back you go in your Family Tree the more people there are.
    • It is the same for the Family Tree of everyone alive in the world today.
    • It shows that the farther back in time we go, the more people there must have been.
    • So it is a logical deduction that the population of the world must be getting smaller and smaller as time goes on!
    Is there an error in Dee's argument? If so, what is it? Ask your maths teacher or a parent if you are not sure of the answer!

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Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Number

If we take the ratio of two successive numbers in Fibonacci's series, (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ..) and we divide each by the number before it, we will find the following series of numbers:

1/1 = 1,   2/1 = 2,   3/2 = 1·5,   5/3 = 1·666...,   8/5 = 1·6,   13/8 = 1·625,   21/13 = 1·61538...

It is easier to see what is happening if we plot the ratios on a graph:

fibratio.gif

The ratio seems to be settling down to a particular value, which we call the golden ratio or the golden number. It has a value of approximately 1·618034 , although we shall find an even more accurate value on a later page [this link opens a new window] .

/ Things to do /

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The golden ratio 1·618034 is also called the golden section or the golden mean or just the golden number. It is often represented by a greek letter Phi phi. The closely related value which we write as phi with a small "p" is just the decimal part of Phi, namely 0·618034.

Fibonacci Rectangles and Shell Spirals

fibspiral fibspiral We can make another picture showing the Fibonacci numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,.. if we start with two small squares of size 1 next to each other. On top of both of these draw a square of size 2 (=1+1).

We can now draw a new square - touching both a unit square and the latest square of side 2 - so having sides 3 units long; and then another touching both the 2-square and the 3-square (which has sides of 5 units). We can continue adding squares around the picture, each new square having a side which is as long as the sum of the latest two square's sides. This set of rectangles whose sides are two successive Fibonacci numbers in length and which are composed of squares with sides which are Fibonacci numbers, we will call the Fibonacci Rectangles.

fibspiral2.GIF Here is a spiral drawn in the squares, a quarter of a circle in each square. The spiral is not a true mathematical spiral (since it is made up of fragments which are parts of circles and does not go on getting smaller and smaller) but it is a good approximation to a kind of spiral that does appear often in nature. Such spirals are seen in the shape of shells of snails and sea shells and, as we see later, in the arrangment of seeds on flowering plants too. The spiral-in-the-squares makes a line from the centre of the spiral increase by a factor of the golden number in each square. So points on the spiral are 1.618 times as far from the centre after a quarter-turn. In a whole turn the points on a radius out from the center are 1.6184 = 6.854 times further out than when the curve last crossed the same radial line.
Here is a cross-section of a Nautilus sea shell. It shows the spiral curve of the shell and the internal chambers that the animal using it adds on as it grows. The chambers provide boyancy in the water. Click on the picture to enlarge it in a new window. Draw a line from the center out in any direction and find two places where the shell crosses it so that the shell spiral has gone round just once between them. The outer crossing point will be 1.618 times as far from the centre showing that the shell has grown by a factor of the golden ratio in one turn. Baril - Nautilus
Nautilus
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Here are some more images for you to measure. They are all of poster available from AllPosters.com if you wanted one for your study wall or classroom or to go with a science project. Click on the pictures to enlarge them in a new window.
Alan Majchrowicz - Sliced Nautilus Shell
Sliced Nautilus Shell
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Alan Majchrowicz - Nautilus Shell
Nautilus Shell
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Deborah Schenck - Nautilus
Nautilus
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The curve of this shell is called Equiangular or Logarithmic spirals and are common in nature, though the 'growth factor' may not always be the golden ratio.

Reference

Book: The Curves of Life Theodore A Cook, Dover books, 1979, ISBN 0 486 23701 X.
A Dover reprint of a classic 1914 book.

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Fibonacci Numbers, the Golden Section and Plants

sneezewort.GIF

One plant in particular shows the Fibonacci numbers in the number of "growing points" that it has. Suppose that when a plant puts out a new shoot, that shoot has to grow two months before it is strong enough to support branching. If it branches every month after that at the growing point, we get the picture shown here.

A plant that grows very much like this is the "sneezewort": Achillea ptarmica.

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Petals on flowers

On many plants, the number of petals is a Fibonacci number:
buttercups have 5 petals; lilies and iris have 3 petals; some delphiniums have 8; corn marigolds have 13 petals; some asters have 21 whereas daisies can be found with 34, 55 or even 89 petals.
The links here are to various flower and plant catalogues:

fuchsia has 4 sepals
Fuchsia
5 petals on a pink
Pinks
lily
Lily
Mike Bentley - Four Daisies
Daisies
available as a
poster at AllPosters.com
3 petals: lily, iris
      Often lilies have 6 petals formed from two sets of 3 as shown above:
4 petals Very few plants show 4 petals (or sepals) but some, such as the fuchsia above, do. 4 is not a Fibonacci number! We return to this point near the bottom of this page.
5 petals: buttercup, wild rose, larkspur, columbine (aquilegia), pinks (shown above)
      The humble buttercup has been bred into a multi-petalled form.
8 petals: delphiniums
13 petals: ragwort, corn marigold, cineraria, some daisies
21 petals: aster, black-eyed susan, chicory
34 petals: plantain, pyrethrum
55, 89 petals: michaelmas daisies, the asteraceae family.
Some species are very precise about the number of petals they have - eg buttercups, but others have petals that are very near those above, with the average being a Fibonacci number.

Here is a passion flower (passiflora incarnata) from the back and front:
passion flower from back passion flower from front
Back view:
the 3 sepals that protected the bud are outermost,
then 5 outer green petals followed by an inner layer of 5 more paler green petals
Front view:
the two sets of 5 green petals are outermost,
with an array of purple-and-white stamens (how many?);
in the centre are 5 greenish stamens (T-shaped) and
uppermost in the centre are 3 deep brown carpels and style branches)

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Seed heads

13 ridges on a poppy seed head This poppy seed head has 13 ridges on top. Coneflower side view

 

Fibonacci numbers can also be seen in the arrangement of seeds on flower heads. The picture here is Tim Stone's beautiful photograph of a Coneflower, used here by kind permission of Tim. The part of the flower in the picture is about 2 cm across. It is a member of the daisy family with the scientific name Echinacea purpura and native to the Illinois prairie where he lives.

You can have a look at some more of Tim's wonderful photographs on the web.
Coneflower

 

You can see that the orange "petals" seem to form spirals curving both to the left and to the right. At the edge of the picture, if you count those spiralling to the right as you go outwards, there are 55 spirals. A little further towards the centre and you can count 34 spirals. How many spirals go the other way at these places? You will see that the pair of numbers (counting spirals in curing left and curving right) are neighbours in the Fibonacci series. Click on the picture on the right to see it in more detail in a separate window.

sunflower seed head

On the left is a real sunflower with 89 and 55 spirals at the edge.
Jeff Milstein - Sunflower
Sunflower
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Here are some more wonderful pictures from All Posters (which you can buy for your classroom or wall at home). Click on each to enlarge it in a new window. Sunflower Sunflower
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AllPosters.com
spirals

The same happens in many seed and flower heads in nature. The reason seems to be that this arrangement forms an optimal packing of the seeds so that, no matter how large the seed head, they are uniformly packed at any stage, all the seeds being the same size, no crowding in the centre and not too sparse at the edges.

The spirals are patterns that the eye sees, "curvier" spirals appearing near the centre, flatter spirals (and more of them) appearing the farther out we go.

So the number of spirals we see, in either direction, is different for larger flower heads than for small. On a large flower head, we see more spirals further out than we do near the centre. The numbers of spirals in each direction are (almost always) neighbouring Fibonacci numbers! Click on these links for some more diagrams of 500, 1000 and 5000 seeds.

120 seeds Click on the image on the right for a Quicktime animation of 120 seeds appearing from a single central growing point. Each new seed is just phi (0·618) of a turn from the last one (or, equivalently, there are Phi (1·618) seeds per turn). The animation shows that, no matter how big the seed head gets, the seeds are always equally spaced. At all stages the Fibonacci Spirals can be seen.

The same pattern shown by these dots (seeds) is followed if the dots then develop into leaves or branches or petals. Each dot only moves out directly from the central stem in a straight line.

This process models what happens in nature when the "growing tip" produces seeds in a spiral fashion. The only active area is the growing tip - the seeds only get bigger once they have appeared.

[This animation was produced by Maple. If there are N seeds in one frame, then the newest seed appears nearest the central dot, at 0·618 of a turn from the angle at which the last appeared. A seed which is i frames "old" still keeps its original angle from the exact centre but will have moved out to a distance which is the square-root of i.]

Note that you will not always find the Fibonacci numbers in the number of petals or spirals on seed heads etc., although they often come close to the Fibonacci numbers.

/ Things to do /

  1. Why not grow your own sunflower from seed?
    I was surprised how easy they are to grow when the one pictured above just appeared in a bowl of bulbs on my patio at home in the North of England. Perhaps it got there from a bird-seed mix I put out last year? Bird-seed mix often has sunflower seeds in it, so you can pick a few out and put them in a pot. Sow them between April and June and keep them warm.
    Alternatively, there are now a dazzling array of colours and shapes of sunflowers to try. A good source for your seed is: WWW: Nicky's Seeds who supplies the whole range of flower and vegetable seed including sunflower seed in the UK.
  2. Have a look at the online catalogue at Nicky's Seeds where there are lots of pictures of each of the flowers.
    1. Which plants show Fibonacci spirals on their flowers?
    2. Can you find an example of flowers with 5, 8, 13 or 21 petals?
    3. Are there flowers shown with other numbers of petals which are not Fibonacci numbers?

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Pine cones

pinecone

Pine cones show the Fibonacci Spirals clearly. Here is a picture of an ordinary pinecone seen from its base where the stalk connects it to the tree.

Can you see the two sets of spirals?
How many are there in each set?

Use these buttons to check your answer (the lines are drawn connecting the centres of each segment of the pinecone):



Here is another pine cone. It is not only smaller, but has a different spiral arrangement.
Use the buttons to help count the number of spirals in each direction] on this pinecone.

Show only the pinecone
Show the segment edges
Show the outline only
Show one set of spiral
Show the other set of spirals

pinecone

/ Things to do /

  1. Collect some pine cones for yourself and count the spirals in both directions.
    A tip: Soak the cones in water so that they close up to make counting the spirals easier. Are all the cones identical in that the steep spiral (the one with most spiral arms) goes in the same direction?
  2. What about a pineapple? Can you spot the same spiral pattern? How many spirals are there in each direction?

Links and References

WWW: Ohio State University Professor Susan Goldstine
has a page with really good pinecone pictures showing the actual order of the open "petals" of the cone numbered down the cone.
Article: Fibonacci Statistics in Conifers A Brousseau , The Fibonacci Quarterly vol 7 (1969) pages 525 - 532
You will occasionally find pine cones that do not have a Fibonacci number of spirals in one or both directions. Sometimes this is due to deformities produced by disease or pests but soetimes the cones look normal too. This article reports on a study of this question and others in a large collection of Californian pine cones of different kinds. The author also found that there were as many with the steep spiral (the one with more arms) going to the left as to the right.
Article: Pineapples and Fibonacci Numbers P B Onderdonk The Fibonacci Quarterly vol 8 (1970), pages 507, 508.

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Leaf arrangements

sunflower stalk Also, many plants show the Fibonacci numbers in the arrangements of the leaves around their stems. If we look down on a plant, the leaves are often arranged so that leaves above do not hide leaves below. This means that each gets a good share of the sunlight and catches the most rain to channel down to the roots as it runs down the leaf to the stem.
Here's a computer-generated image, based on an African violet type of plant, whereas this has lots of leaves.

Leaves per turn

The Fibonacci numbers occur when counting both the number of times we go around the stem, going from leaf to leaf, as well as counting the leaves we meet until we encounter a leaf directly above the starting one.

If we count in the other direction, we get a different number of turns for the same number of leaves.

The number of turns in each direction and the number of leaves met are three consecutive Fibonacci numbers!

For example, in the top plant in the picture above, we have 3 clockwise rotations before we meet a leaf directly above the first, passing 5 leaves on the way. If we go anti-clockwise, we need only 2 turns. Notice that 2, 3 and 5 are consecutive Fibonacci numbers.
For the lower plant in the picture, we have 5 clockwise rotations passing 8 leaves, or just 3 rotations in the anti-clockwise direction. This time 3, 5 and 8 are consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.
We can write this as, for the top plant, 3/5 clockwise rotations per leaf ( or 2/5 for the anticlockwise direction). For the second plant it is 5/8 of a turn per leaf (or 3/8).


The sunflower here when viewed from the top shows the same pattern. It is the same plant whose side view is above. Starting at the leaf marked "X", we find the next lower leaf turning clockwise. Numbering the leaves produces the patterns shown.
sunflower leaves
You will see that the third leaf and fifth leaves are next nearest below our starting leaf but the next nearest below it is the 8th then the 13th. How many turns did it take to reach each leaf?
Leaf
number
turns
clockwise
3 1
5 2
8 3
The pattern continues with Fibonacci numbers in each column!

Leaf arrangements of some common plants

One estimate is that 90 percent of all plants exhibit this pattern of leaves involving the Fibonacci numbers.

Some common trees with their Fibonacci leaf arrangement numbers are:

1/2 elm, linden, lime, grasses
1/3 beech, hazel, grasses, blackberry
2/5 oak, cherry, apple, holly, plum, common groundsel
3/8 poplar, rose, pear, willow
5/13 pussy willow, almond

where t/n means each leaf is t/n of a turn after the last leaf or that there is there are t turns for n leaves.

Cactus's spines often show the same spirals as we have already seen on pine cones, petals and leaf arrangements, but they are much more clearly visible. Charles Dills has noted that the Fibonacci numbers occur in Bromeliads and his Home page has links to lots of pictures.

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Vegetables and Fruit

cauliflower

Here is a picture of an ordinary cauliflower. Note how it is almost a pentagon in outline. Looking carefully, you can see a centre point, where the florets are smallest. Look again, and you will see the florets are organized in spirals around this centre in both directions.

How many spirals are there in each direction?

These buttons will show the spirals more clearly for you to count (lines are drawn between the florets):




Romanesque Brocilli

Romanesque Brocolli/Cauliflower (or Romanesco) looks and tastes like a cross between brocolli and cauliflower. Each floret is peaked and is am identical but smaller version of the whole thing and this makes the spirals easy to see.

How many spirals are there in each direction?

These buttons will show the spirals more clearly for you to count (lines are drawn between the florets):




Here are some investigations to discover the Fibonacci numbers for yourself in vegetables and fruit.

/ Things to do /

  1. Take a look at a cauliflower next time you're preparing one:
    1. First look at it:
      • Count the number of florets in the spirals on your cauliflower. The number in one direction and in the other will be Fibonacci numbers, as we've seen here. Do you get the same numbers as in the picture?
      • Take a closer look at a single floret (break one off near the base of your cauliflower). It is a mini cauliflower with its own little florets all arranged in spirals around a centre.
        If you can, count the spirals in both directions. How many are there?
    2. Then, when cutting off the florets, try this:
      • start at the bottom and take off the largest floret, cutting it off parallel to the main "stem".
      • Find the next on up the stem. It'll be about 0·618 of a turn round (in one direction). Cut it off in the same way.
      • Repeat, as far as you like and..
      • Now look at the stem. Where the florets are rather like a pinecone or pineapple. The florets were arranged in spirals up the stem. Counting them again shows the Fibonacci numbers.
  2. Try the same thing for broccoli.
  3. lettuce Chinese leaves and lettuce are similar but there is no proper stem for the leaves. Instead, carefully take off the leaves, from the outermost first, noticing that they overlap and there is usually only one that is the outermost each time. You should be able to find some Fibonacci number connections.
  4. Look for the Fibonacci numbers in fruit.
    1. What about a banana? Count how many "flat" surfaces it is made from - is it 3 or perhaps 5? When you've peeled it, cut it in half (as if breaking it in half, not lengthwise) and look again. Surprise! There's a Fibonacci number.
    2. What about an apple? Instead of cutting it from the stalk to the opposite end (where the flower was), ie from "North pole" to "South pole", try cutting it along the "Equator". Surprise! there's your Fibonacci number!
    3. Try a Sharon fruit.
    4. Where else can you find the Fibonacci numbers in fruit and vegetables? Why not email me with your results and the best ones will be put on the Web here (or linked to your own web page).

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ..More.. Calculator

Fibonacci Fingers?

Look at your own hand:

hand You have ...

Is this just a coincidence or not?????

However, if you measure the lengths of the bones in your finger (best seen by slightly bending the finger) does it look as if the ratio of the longest bone in a finger to the middle bone is Phi?
What about the ratio of the middle bone to the shortest bone (at the end of the finger) - Phi again?
Can you find any ratios in the lengths of the fingers that looks like Phi? ---or does it look as if it could be any other similar ratio also?

Why not measure your friends' hands and gather some statistics?

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ..More.. Calculator

A quote from Coxeter on Phyllotaxis

Finally, note that, although the Fibonacci numbers and golden section seem to appear in many situations in nature, they are not the only such numbers. H S M Coxeter, in his Introduction to Geometry (1961, Wiley, page 172) - see the references at the foot of this page - has the following important quote:

it should be frankly admitted that in some plants the numbers do not belong to the sequence of f's [Fibonacci numbers] but to the sequence of g's [Lucas numbers] or even to the still more anomalous sequences

3,1,4,5,9,... or 5,2,7,9,16,...

Thus we must face the fact that phyllotaxis is really not a universal law but only a fascinatingly prevalent tendency.

He cites A H Church's The relation of phyllotaxis to mechanical laws, Williams and Norgate, London, 1904, plates XXV and IX as examples of the Lucas and the latter two sequences and plates V, VII, XIII and VI as examples of the Fibonacci numbers on sunflowers.

Navigating through this Fibonacci and Phi site

The Lucas numbers are formed in the same way as the Fibonacci numbers - by adding the latest two to get the next, but instead of starting at 0 and 1 [Fibonacci numbers] the Lucas number series starts with 2 and 1. The other two sequences Coxeter mentions above have other pairs of starting values but then proceed with the exactly the same rule as the Fibonacci numbers. These series are the General Fibonacci series.

An interesting fact is that for all series that are formed from adding the latest two numbers to get the next starting from any two values (bigger than zero), the ratio of successive terms will always tend to Phi!

So Phi (1.618...) and her sister phi (0.618...) are constants common to all varieties of Fibonacci series and they have lots of interesting properties of their own too. The links above will take you to further pages on this site for you to explore. You can also just follow the links below in the Where To next? section at the bottom on each page and this will go through the pages in order. Or you can browse through the pages that take your interest from the complete collection and brief descriptions on the home page. There are pages on Who was Fibonacci?, the golden section (phi) in the arts: architecture, music, pictures etc as well as two pages of puzzles.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ..More.. Calculator

References and Links

Key
Book: means the reference is to a book (and any link will take you to more information about the book and an on-line site from which you can purchase it);
Article: means the reference is to an article in a magazine or a paper in a scientific periodical.
WWW: indicates a link to another web site.

Excellent books which cover similar material to that which you have found on this page are produced by Trudi Garland and Mark Wahl:

Book: Mathematical Mystery Tour by Mark Wahl, 1989, is full of many mathematical investigations, illustrations, diagrams, tricks, facts, notes as well as guides for teachers using the material. It is a great resource for your own investigations.

Books by Trudi Garland:
Book: Fascinating Fibonaccis by Trudi Hammel Garland.
This is a really excellent book - suitable for all, and especially good for teachers seeking more material to use in class.

Trudy is a teacher in California and has some more information on her book. (You can even Buy it online now!)
She also has published several posters, including one on the golden section suitable for a classroom or your study room wall.
You should also look at her other Fibonacci book too:
Book: Fibonacci Fun: Fascinating Activities with Intriguing Numbers Trudi Hammel Garland - a book for teachers.

Article: Sex ratio and sex allocation in sweat bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) D Yanega, in Journal of Kansas Entomology Society, volume 69 Supplement, 1966, pages 98-115.
Because of the imbalance in the family tree of honeybees, the ratio of male honeybees to females is not 1-to-1. This was noticed by Doug Yanega of the Entomology Research Museum at the University of California. In the article above, he correctly deduced that the number of females to males in the honeybee community will be around the golden-ratio Phi = 1.618033.. .
Article: On the Trail of the California Pine, Brother Alfred Brousseau, Fibonacci Quarterly, vol 6, 1968, pages 69 - 76;
on the authors summer expedition to collect examples of all the pines in California and count the number of spirals in both directions, all of which were neighbouring Fibonacci numbers.
Article: Why Fibonacci Sequence for Palm Leaf Spirals? in The Fibonacci Quarterly vol 9 (1971), pages 227 - 244.
Article: Fibonacci System in Aroids in The Fibonacci Quarterly vol 9 (1971), pages 253 - 263. The Aroids are a family of plants that include the Dieffenbachias, Monsteras and Philodendrons.

WWW links on Phyllotaxis, the Fibonacci Numbers and Nature

WWW: Phyllotaxis - An interactive site for the mathematical study of plant pattern formation by Pau Atela or Chris Golé of the Mathematics Dept at Smith College, Massachusetts.
is an excellent site, beautifully designed with lots of pictures and buttons to push for an interactive learning experience! A must-see site!
WWW: Alan Turing
one of the Fathers of modern computing (who lived here in Guildford during his early school years) was interested in many aspects of computers and Artificial Intelligence (AI) well before the electronic stored-program computer was developed enough to materialize some of his ideas. One of his interests (see his Collected Works) was Morphogenesis, the study of the growing shapes of animals and plants.
Book:The book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges is an enjoyable and readable account of his life and work on computing as well as his contributions to solving the German war-time code which used a machine called "Enigma".
Unfortunately this book is now out of print, but click on the book-title link and Amazon.com will see if they can find a copy for you with no obligation.
WWW: The most irrational number
One of the American Maths Society (AMS) web site's What's New in Mathematics regular monthly columns. This one is on the Golden Section and Fibonacci Spirals in plants.
WWW: Phyllotaxis
An interactive site for the mathematical study of plant pattern formation for university biology students at Smith College. Has a useful gallery of pictures showing the Fibonacci spirals in various plants.

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