Phyllotaxis: A Systemic Study in Plant Morphogenesis

About this book

Phyllotaxis, the study of the patterns exhibited by leaves and other organs of plants, raises some of the deepest questions of plant morphogenesis. What principles of biological organisation produce these dynamical geometric systems? The constant occurrence of the Fibonacci sequence in such systems is a phenomenon that has fascinated botanists and mathematicians for centuries. In this book the many facets of phyllotaxis are dealt with in an integrated manner for the first time. The author describes a unified concept of phyllotaxis based on experimental, anatomical, cellular, physiological and paleontological observations. The book provides a framework for formal analyses of botanical data and emphasises the relevance of the phyllotactic paradigm in the study of other structures, such as crystals and proteins. First published in 1994.

Contents

Prologue; Part I. Pattern Recognition: 1. The centric representation; 2. The fundamental theorem, and applications; 3. Hierarchical control in phyllotaxis; 4. Allometry-type model in phyllotaxis; 5. Practical pattern recognition; Part II. Pattern Generation: A Key To Phyllotaxis: 6. An interpretive model; 7. Testing the interpretive model; 8. The interpretive model and whorled patterns; 9. Convergences between models; Part III. Origins of Phyllotactic Patterns: 10. Exotic phyllotaxis; 11. Morphogenetical parallelism and autoevolutionism; 12. The challenge redefined; Part IV. Complements: 1. Glossary; 2. Answers to problems; 3. Questions; 4. General properties of phyllotactic lattices; 5. Williams and Brittain's model; 6. Interpretation of Fujita's frequency diagrams in phyllotaxis; 7. L-systems, Perron-Frobenius theory, and the growth of filamentous organisms; 8. Meinhardt and Gierer's theory of pre-pattern formation; 9. Hyperbolic transformations of the cylindrical lattice; Handbook of authors; Indexes.

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