http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/fibslide/jbfibslide.htm on 30 september 2009 The following comprises a set of slides on "Fibonacci Numbers in Nature".

In the commentary, it is presumed that the student is familiar with the sequence. [If not, visit Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Section for a wealth of information.] Click on any slide below to access an enlargement suitable for downloading. Enlargements have a horizontal dimension 800 dpi and/or a vertical dimension 600 dpi. Click on the various animation buttons to access an animation of related slides.

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Probably most of us have never taken the time to examine very carefully the number or arrangement of petals on a flower. If we were to do so, several things would become apparent. First, we would find that the number of petals on a flower is often one of the Fibonacci numbers. One-petalled ... white calla lily

and two-petalled flowers are not common. euphorbia

Three petals are more common. trillium

There are hundreds of species, both wild and cultivated, with five petals. columbine

Eight-petalled flowers are not so common as fivepetalled, but there are quite a number of well-known species with eight. bloodroot

Thirteen, ... black-eyed susan

twenty-one and thirty-four petals are also quite common. The outer ring of ray florets in the daisy family illustrate the Fibonacci sequence extremely well. Daisies with 13, 21, 34, 55 or 89 petals are quite common. shasta daisy with 21 petals

Ordinary field daisies have 34 petals ... a fact to be taken in consideration when playing "she loves me, she loves me not". In saying that daisies have 34 petals, one is generalizing about the species - but any individual member of the species may deviate from this general pattern. There is more likelihood of a possible under development than overdevelopment, so that 33 is more common than 35.

The association of Fibonacci numbers and plants is not restricted to numbers of petals. Here we have a schematic diagram of a simple plant, the sneezewort. New shoots commonly grow out at an axil, a point where a leaf springs from the main stem of a plant. If we draw horizontal lines through the axils, we can detect obvious stages of development in the plant. The main stem produces branch shoots at the beginning of each stage. Branch shoots rest during their first two stages, then produce new branch shoots at the beginning of each subsequent stage. The same law applies to all branches.

Since this pattern of development mirrors the growth of the rabbits in Fibonacci's classic problem, it is not surprising then that the number of branches at any stage of development is a Fibonacci number.

Furthermore, the number of leaves in any stage will also be a Fibonacci number.

The type of growth exhibited by the sneezewort occurs also in simple tree growth, each stage of development lasting one year.

The schematic diagrams of the sneezewort and tree have been presented as though the plants were flat. This illustrates the development which leads to Fibonacci numbers, but it suppresses the characteristic of a majority of plants that successive leaves or shoots spiral around the main stem as successive stages develop. Suppose we fix our attention on some leaf on the bottom of a stem on which there is a single leaf at any one point.

If we number that leaf "0" ...

and count the leaves up the stem until we come to the one which is directly above the starting one, the number we get is generally a term of the Fibonacci sequence.

Again as we work up the stem, let us count the number of times we revolve about it.

This number, too, is generally a term of the sequence.

The arrangement of leaves can then be expressed as a ratio. The number of leaves in our sample plant is "8", ...

and the number of revolutions "5".

Our plant is said to have phyllotaxis 5/8. Each species is characterized by its own phyllotaxis. Almost always the ratios encountered are ratios of consecutive or alternate terms of the Fibonacci sequence.

With the scale patterns of pinecones, the seed patterns of sunflowers and even the bumps on pineapples we have something rather different.

The seed-bearing scales of a pinecone are really modified leaves, crowded together and in contact with a short stem. Here we do not find phyllotaxis as it occurs with true leaves and suchlike. However, we can detect two prominent arrangements of ascending spirals growing outward from the point where it is attached to the branch.

In the pinecone pictured, eight spirals can be seen to be ascending up the cone in a clockwise direction ...

while thirteen spirals ascend more steeply in a counterclockwise direction.

In the close-packed arrangement of tiny florets in the core of a daisy blossom, ...

we can see the phenomenon in almost twodimensional form.

The eye sees twenty-one counterclockwise ...

and thirty-four logarithmic or equiangular spirals. In any daisy, the combination of counterclockwise and clockwise spirals generally consists of successive terms of the Fibonacci sequence.

Pineapple scales are also patterned into spirals and, ...

because they are roughly hexagonal in shape, three distinct sets of spirals may be observed.

One set of 5 spirals ascends at a shallow angle to the right, ...

a second set of 8 spirals ascends more steeply to the left, ...

and the third set of 13 spirals ascends very steeply to the right.

The Fibonacci number patterns encountered herein occur so frequently in nature that we often hear the phenomenon referred to as a "law of nature". Not all four-petalled flowers are so rare as the four-leaf clover is reputed to be and deviations, sometimes even large ones, from Fibonacci patterns have been found. If this is at all disturbing to the modern botanist, it is not at all so to the Fibonacci devotee, for whom the whole phenomenon, if not a "law", is at least a fascinating prevalent tendency! Jill Britton Home Page 07-May-2005
Copyright Jill Britton

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 icon means there is a Thingsto do investigation at the end of the section. Rabbits, Cows and Bees Family Trees Fibonacci's Rabbits.. Dudeney's Cows Honeybees and Family Trees Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Number Fibonacci Rectangles and Shell Spirals Fibonacci numbers, the Golden Section and plants Petals on flowers Seed heads Pine cones Leaf arrangements Leaves per turn Leaf arrangements of some common plants Vegetables and Fruit Fibonacci Fingers? Always Fibonacci? A quote from Coxeter on Phyllotaxis Navigating through this site References and Links 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ..More..

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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.

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.

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:

Both diagrams above represent the same information. Rabbits have been numbered to enable comparisons and to count them, as follows: All the rabbits born in the same month are of the same generation and are on the same level in the tree. The rabbits have been uniquely numbered so that in the same generation the new rabbits are numbered in the order of their parent's number. Thus 5, 6 and 7 are the children of 0, 1 and 2 respectively. The rabbits labelled with a Fibonacci number are the children of the original rabbit (0) at the top of the tree. There are a Fibonacci number of new rabbits in each generation, marked with a dot. There are a Fibonacci number of rabbits in total from the top down to any single generation. There are many other interesting mathematical properties of this tree that are explored in later pages at this site.

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

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): 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

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 puzzles, an excellent chapter on all kinds of mazes and solving them, magic squares, river crossing puzzles, and more, all with full solutions and often extra notes! Highly recommended!

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. 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! In a colony of honeybees there is one special female called the queen.