Now here is an interesting question: does the common pine cone exhibit a fractal structure? We do know that there are Fibonacci numbers associated with a pine cone in terms of the number of ‘spirals’, and equivalently, the nuber of segments in each spiral. We have already noted the connection between Fibonacci numbers and the equiangular spiral with other spiral fractals such as the nautilus. Of course in the pine cone, the spirals are really 3-dimensional helices (singular ‘helix’).
We do observe some fractal self-similarity appearing here: in moving from one helical strip to the next there is a natural translation and shrinkage of the segments. However the chunky nature of the pine cone means that there are only a few such transformations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conifer_cone
Photo: Paul Scott
