On growing pine cones and other Fibonacci fruits- McCulloch's localized algorithm

Abstract

A central interest in mathematical biology is to find localized rules for growing objects having global characteristics that can be simply characterized within different reference frames. W.S. McCulloch, a few years before his death, developed (but never published) a local set of rules for growing any of the many kinds of fruits in which the numbers of clockwise and counterclockwise spirals of scales, florets, or what have you, are successive Fibonacci numbers. This article explains these rules by applying them to a five- and eight-spiral pine cone. © 1971.