Phyllotaxis as a Physical Self-Organized Growth Process

Phyllotaxis as a Physical Self-Organized Growth Process, Stephane Douady and Yves Couder's 1992 paper in Physical Review Letters, one of physics' most selective journals, reports their now classic experiment: magnetized droplets released into a rotating dish of silicone oil, repelled from one another, spontaneously settle into the same golden-angle spacing that Vogel's 1979 mathematical model predicts for plant growth. Its strength is that it is a real, replicated physical demonstration that the pattern can emerge from simple self organization. Its limit is that it is a physical analogy, not a study of an actual living plant; pair it with a botanical source for phyllotaxis in plants themselves.