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Does the Barnsley Fern have anything to do with actual ferns or is it just a fun coincidence? (self.askscience)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by ivanafterall to c/askscience

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I find fractals extremely fascinating and way, way, way out of my depth. One example being the Barnsley Fern, which I find so cool. It feels a bit like someone cracked a little piece of the Matrix code.

But is there anything really significant about the fact that it looks like a fern from a botanical/mathematical perspective? Do the two connect in any real way? Can we somehow find the math genetically or learn something about the mathematical properties of other leaves, for example? How "real" is it?

If I could make an oak leaf from fractals, would it advance mathematics and/or botany or would it be equivalent to creating a cartoon using Geogebra (nice to look at, but basically meaningless)?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well, you can define the structure of a L-system pretty simply. There's probably a shared interest between ferns in having a simple set of instructions at a genetic level and mathematicians in working with mathematical structures that have descriptions simple enough for us to reason about.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Here's some good reading on L-systems, written by the guy they're named after:

http://www.algorithmicbotany.org/papers/abop/abop.pdf