Divine patterns in nature – I took this shot while walking in the neighborhood yesterday. Mother Nature is a Master of Design.
The intricate spiral patterns displayed in cacti and other plants often encode the famous Fibonacci sequence of numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, … , in which each element is the sum of the two preceding numbers.
The round head of a cactus is covered with small bumps, each containing one pointy spike, or “sticker.” For some cacti, you can start at the center and “connect the dots” from each sticker to the nearest neighbor to create a spiral pattern containing 3, 5, or 8 branches. These are three consecutive numbers from the Fibonacci sequence. Other cacti, sunflowers, and pinecones display this or other triples of Fibonacci numbers.