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seeds
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137.5°
colour
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animation
advanced
Fine-tune the geometry and appearance.
Deeply inspired by Helmut Vogel's 1979 phyllotaxis model (A better way to construct the sunflower head, Mathematical Biosciences, 44:179–189) and the mathematics of the golden angle. The π-colouring is our own small addition to that beautiful geometry. We built this to understand how one rule gives you Fibonacci spirals for free.

bloom

A sunflower head, grown from π. Each seed sits one golden angle (137.5°) around from the last and a little farther out — the rule real sunflowers use to pack seeds without gaps. Here every seed is coloured by the next digit of π, so the spiral arms are Fibonacci’s and the colours are π’s. Nudge the divergence slider and watch the spirals lock and unlock.

keyboard
play / pauseSpace
scrub ±10 s · also drag on the canvas← →
speed up / down↑ ↓
restartR
settings panelG
site themeT