Shot Alive

There are many cases of Fibonacci spirals in nature: sunflowers and other flowers, pine cones and pine needles on pine trees, perhaps half of all plants use this method of arranging branches, leaves, stems, flowers, seeds or whatever they want to arrange.

In the picture above you can see the spirals each way in the palm tree old fond stumps. It so happens that in all plants that have these spirals, the number of spirals is always one of these numbers: 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 ... a series known as the Fibonacci series in which each number is the sum of the previous two: 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8 etc.

In a small pine tree branch there might be 3 spirals one way and 5 the other. When the branch has grown (some years later, don't sit there waiting for this to happen) there will be 5 spirals one way and 8 the other. The thing is that you will never catch a tree in the act of adding extra spirals. So how does it do it?

The answer is provided in the pictures below, so don't look until you try to work it out yourself.

The first picture shows 3 and 5 spirals with green and red respectively. The second shows 5 and 8 spirals with red and blue. They are the same tree. When the tree is thinner we see the 3 and 5 more easily, but as it expands the 5 and 8 are more easily seen. It is all a question of which is the closest way for the eye and brain to make the connection.

So the answer to the question about how it does it is that it doesn't. We do it with how we connect the dots.

See also Fibonacci Phi Ratio and Intelligent Design.