Throughout development, plant meristems regularly produce organs in defined spiral, opposite, or whorl patterns. Cauliflowers present an unusual organ arrangement with a multitude of spirals nested over a wide range of scales. How such a fractal, self-similar organization emerges from developmental mechanisms has remained elusive. Combining experimental analyses in an Arabidopsis thaliana cauliflower-like mutant with modeling, we found that curd self-similarity arises because the meristems fail to form flowers but keep the “memory” of their transient passage in a floral state. Additional mutations affecting meristem growth can induce the production of conical structures reminiscent of the conspicuous fractal Romanesco shape. This study reveals how fractal-like forms may emerge from the combination of key, defined perturbations of floral developmental programs and growth dynamics.
I tried growing a romanesco and it ended up looking almost exactly like a cauliflower. Then I let it grow more and it lost its densely packed look - it looked like a cluster of flowers. Then aphids destroyed it completely.
Three of my favourite things!: reaction-diffusion, fractals, and cruciferous vegetables!
I thought that they could have had a better go at describing the mechanism (or even how any of the models worked). The actual Nature paper is of course behind a paywall, so i've only read the abstract so far.
