The role of continued fractions in phyllotaxis

DOI10.1006/JABR.1997.7272MaRDI QIDQ1271019zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Irving Adler

Publication date 16 December 1999

Published in Journal of Algebra (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1006/jabr.1997.7272

zbMATH Keywords

historyphyllotaxis

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Continued fractions (11A55) Developmental biology, pattern formation (92C15) Plant biology (92C80)

Review text

Phyllotaxis is the study of the arrangement of botanical units such as leaves, scales, and florets around a stem. From the very beginning of the scientific study of this subject the numbers observed in phyllotaxis were seen to be connected to simple continued fractions. The reason for this connection, however, was not immediately understood. Because of this, one leading botanist (J. Sachs) rejected it outright as meaningless playing with numbers, and one well-known mathematician (P. G. Tait) was trapped into an erroneous argument leading to a false conclusion. It was not until 1974 that the real connection between continued fractions and the numbers significant in phyllotaxis was finally clarified in a few rigorously established theorems about cylindrical point-lattices. But first it was necessary to clarify the concepts that arise in phyllotaxis. This is the subject of Section 9. It was also necessary to seek out the underlying geometric meaning of a simple continued fraction. This is taken up in Section 12. The rest of this paper traces the history of the connection between phyllotaxis and continued fractions from the time it was first observed to the time it was finally understood.

Recommendations

• Planar lattices and continued fractions. A contribution to understanding phyllotaxis. III
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4208143
• Golden division of the circle. A contribution to understanding phyllotaxis. II
• Growth in plants: a study in number
• Phyllotaxis: the mathematical description and modelling of leaf patterns

Cites work

• Phyllotaxis
• The role of intermediate convergents in Tait's explanation for phyllotaxis

Cited in

(6)

• Contact pressure models for spiral phyllotaxis and their computer simulation
• On geodesics of phyllotaxis
• Number sequences and phyllotaxis
• Planar lattices and continued fractions. A contribution to understanding phyllotaxis. III
• Golden division of the circle. A contribution to understanding phyllotaxis. II
• Rational and irrational angles in phyllotaxis

This page was built for publication: The role of continued fractions in phyllotaxis

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q1271019)