This is hands down my new favorite vegetable. It's called Romanesco broccoli and I'd seen pictures of it online (it's also mentioned in Benoit Mandelbrot's TED talk here) but never in person until tonight. Isn't it just gorgeous though? It approximates a fractal in that it is a pattern that repeats itself infinitely...or well, as far as the physical limits of broccoli allow, that is. If you were to cut off one of the little florets, it would look like a copy of the whole thing, but smaller. Also of interest is that the little buds are arranged in logarithmic spirals, and like pinecones, counting the number of spirals going one way and then going the other way results in adjacent Fibonacci numbers.
Seriously, can we just admire how intricate and awesome this broccoli is?!
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