How is broccoli a fractal

Peculiarly, the reason that Romanesco looks different than its nearly genetically identical cousins — normal broccoli and cauliflower — remains something of a genomic mystery. On the other hand, Romanesco's more regular appearance is caused by the growing point making branches and flowers in an ever-changing pattern.

In Romanesco, the time and distance between new branches keeps getting longer. If you look at the very tip of a Romanesco head, you will see that the growing point is really big, easily visible with the naked eye. They studied broccoli genomes and learned that the iconic plant has retained roughly half of the genetic diversity that existed in the original broccoli cultivated by Italians centuries and centuries ago — information that could be used to change how it tastes going forward.

He added that he and his co-author, Stansell, "also found parts of the genome the organism's complete set of genetic instructions where the genetic diversity is really low. That uniformity is a sign that a gene in that part of the genome is really important for making good broccoli and other versions have been eliminated.

Interestingly, this happened through farmers breeding the vegetable, long before human beings even understood that genes existed.

The "distinctive flavor" of brassica vegetables, the cabbage and mustard family that broccoli also sits in, relates to a class of compounds called "glucosinolates," Stansell told Salon. These photos were all taken with a Nikon D70 digital camera.

The photo above of the entire Romanesco was taken with a NIKKOR AF 28—80 mm zoom lens at 44 mm note that due to the size of the image sensor in the D70, focal lengths should be multiplied by a factor of 1. Lighting was a mix of natural and overhead fluorescent light, arranged not entirely successfully to minimise shadows. The first photo below was taken with the macro lens mounted directly on the camera body with a 4 second exposure time, while the balance of the photos used a Nikon PK 14 mm extension tube between the camera and lens to permit focusing even closer than the minimum 25 cm object to image plane distance of the macro lens alone.

With the macro lens and extension tube, it's possible to focus as closely as 21 cm object to image plane, at which point the front of the lens barrel is only about 7 cm from the object. Fortunately, as photographic subjects, vegetables, even fractal ones, aren't nearly as fractious as supermodels or cows , so such long exposure times pose no difficulty as long as the camera is mounted on a sturdy tripod. All of the close-ups were lit entirely by overhead fluorescent lights. Images were postprocessed with The Gimp on Linux.

Postprocessing amounted to cropping, modest sharpening, and adjusting the colour balance to approximate the actual colour of the vegetable as perceived by the human eye under natural light. When you shoot a photo like the close-ups where the entire field of view is a uniform hue like green, the automatic white balance in the camera will shift the white point to try to adjust the picture toward the white. It's best to disable the automatic white balance entirely, but if you forget to as I did when taking these shots , it's easy enough to correct after the fact.

Yes, a Romanesco is actually the radioactive green colour shown in these pictures. The leaves are a darker blue green typical of broccoli or cauliflower. When cooked, the colour lightens to a less saturated greenish white. Every self-similar pattern in nature breaks down at some scale—at the level of molecules and atoms if not before.

The last photo shows the tiny structures near the top level spiral. As the spirals get smaller and smaller approaching the vertex, the spirals that make them up have less and less lower level detail, with the tiniest being little more than bumpy spheroids.

Learn how your comment data is processed. Written by Linda Ly. The history of Romanesco broccoli Romanesco tastes like a nuttier and crunchier version of cauliflower, and in my opinion, is more flavorful than either broccoli or cauliflower.

Read more: The Stories Behind Heirloom Seeds Several varieties of Romanesco broccoli exist, and some farmers have crossed open-seeded varieties with each other to produce hybrids that are faster growing.

Disclosure: All products on this page are independently selected. If you buy from one of my links, I may earn a commission. How to find the Fibonacci fractal in Romanesco broccoli Romanesco broccoli is an intricate work of art and a mathematical marvel.

Jake Witmer May 7, at am. Linda Ly May 7, at pm. Karen Visel Reill February 11, at am. Ronda October 19, at pm. Linda Ly October 27, at am. I love seeing the spirals in my Lemon Queen sunflowers! Thanks for reading! Linda Ly October 21, at pm. Gardening is one of the greatest forms of therapy. And what you get, the structure of this cauliflower, is the result of all those consecutive explosions.

The difference between regular cauliflowers and Romanesco is that each individual failed flower is visible in the final Romanesco. This is because Romanesco shoots produce more buds at an accelerating rate which lifts the growing tip away from the centre of the growing cauliflower, creating the familiar array of conical shapes that characterise the Romanesco.