Do Plants Know Math?: Unwinding the Story of Plant Spirals, from Leonardo da Vinci to Now

by Stéphane Douady, Nancy Pick, Christophe Gole

A breathtakingly illustrated look at botanical spirals and the scientists who puzzled over them -- winner of the 2025 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers in Popular Science and Mathematics.

Charles Darwin was driven to distraction by plant spirals, growing so exasperated that he once begged a friend to explain the mystery “if you wish to save me from a miserable death.” The legendary naturalist was hardly alone in feeling tormented by these patterns. Plant spirals captured the gaze of Leonardo da Vinci and became Alan Turing’s final obsession. This book tells the stories of the physicists, mathematicians, and biologists who found themselves magnetically drawn to Fibonacci spirals in plants, seeking an answer to why these beautiful and seductive patterns occur in botanical forms as diverse as pine cones, cabbages, and sunflowers.

Do Plants Know Math? takes you down through the centuries to explore how great minds have been captivated and mystified by Fibonacci patterns in nature. It presents a powerful new geometrical solution, little known outside of scientific circles, that sheds light on why regular and irregular spiral patterns occur. Along the way, the book discusses related plant geometries such as fractals and the fascinating way that leaves are folded inside of buds. Your neurons will crackle as you begin to see the connections. The book will inspire you to look at botanical patterns—and the natural world itself—with new eyes.

Featuring hundreds of gorgeous color images, Do Plants Know Math? includes a dozen creative hands-on activities and even spiral-plant recipes, encouraging readers to explore and celebrate these beguiling patterns for themselves.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mathematics, Nature, Biology

352 pages, Hardcover

Published September 24, 2024

Reviews

[Paul Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many things I love about this book. The production values are excellent: it's the perfect size, the quality of the paper and illustrations is excellent, the layout and formatting are easy on the eyes. But it's the richness of the content the really blows me away. For virtually any reader with a curiosity about botany, math, physics, history of science, and the process of scientific inquiry, this book will provide delights on every page. I learned so much and felt so amazed in every chapter: it was like taking a very satisfying journey with expert guides who did not patronize but patiently explained the intricacies of this fascinating topic. There is poetry, there is humor, there is exceptional expertise and cross-disciplinary synergy. I particularly appreciated how the text accompanying nearly every visual graphic posed questions that drew the reader in, inviting closer inspection and reflection. I'm not sure that I had ever encountered that before in a science book. The authors deserve rich praise for this triumph of a book. Buy it to treat yourself, or as a gift to an intellectually curious friend, or both!

[Richard Montgomery · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book! It explores the history, natural history,
and -new and surprising - the dynamics underlying phyllotaxis. Why do the Fibonacci numbers arise in the arrangement of leaves as plants grow?

[taylor · Rating 1 out of 5]

My favorite book of last year was about plants. I was hopeful for this read , at the intersection of math and botany. Could not finish, sorry the story told with zero organization.
Could have been a great blog post with more thought.

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Requires a little patience —but the reward is understanding the genesis of pattern and beauty. Very satisfying.

[Wing · Rating 5 out of 5]

As this is mainly a history of the science of phyllotaxis, the reader should not take the conjectures in early chapters too seriously. It should become pretty obvious, very quickly, that while one can marvel at the acute observations of pioneering scientists, their speculations were, understandably, incorrect on the whole. Turing, a true polymath, was the first to take a serious crack at the question: why does Fibonacci phyllotaxis occur? Ultimately, however, it was two of the authors of this book who finally solved the mystery. An impatient reader can skip straight to page 280, where the solution is summarized in two sentences—but that would spoil all the fun of this entrancing roller-coaster biomathematics trip. And no, plants don’t know math. They don’t need to, yet they still offer us the pleasure of admiring the beauty of our universe.

[Ryan Gross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before reading this, I always felt like the golden ratio could just show up whenever it wanted, no explanation needed. It’s so fundamental that you don’t ask where it came from or how it got here beyond the circular connection to the Fibonacci sequence, or calling it some kind of “divine proportionality” (it’s original name)

This book does a good job of starting from the beginning, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered the ratio’s connection to plants growth and spirals. Eventually the 4 authors hit hard on the “why” and finish with some awesome tangents on folding plant origami and spiral plant recipes that were such rewards for getting through the denser (but also awesome!) sections on fractals.

Now the golden ratio doesn’t seem so mystical, and it’s not even that ubiquitous, in the plant world it’s more ideal than real tbh. Corn is the true enigma. 🌽

[Willem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ik loev dit boek. Zo creatief en goed geschreven.

[Dan Downing · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle undersells the material since we first look at Ancient Egyptians and other folk who had intellectual intents. And the question asked by the title is a bit awkward. Plants do not know mathematics; they express their reality in ways that can be mathematically analyzed. But I quibble.
The book is a monumental extravaganza of beauty, science and the book makers art.

The internet brought us 'interactive' devices galore. We have an interactive book here since the authors have provided us with puzzles, questions and projects, thus taking 'interactive' beyond the process between book and reader which always entails some interactivity. The central idea is spirals, which are pointed out to be helices but for ease of use, the term spiral is used. The central math is the Fibonacci sequence that has confounded people for years as they read into it occult and spiritual meanings. Here, the landslide of photos and drawings illustrates wonder and beauty.

The authors represent different disciplines: physics, botany, mathematics, and writing. Together they have given us a delightful book that inspires, teaches history and stimulates curiosity.

One lesson beyond plants and math we find here: why destroying our present technological society will be scientifically disastrous. Time and time again we see in these pages where a discovery is made only to be lost. Time, war, religious persecution, general ignorance, superstition and mere mortality contribute, but mainly the difficulty of disseminating information and researching what has already been discovered causes insight to be lost. The World Wide Web with computer storage and retrieval of information lets us find what has been discovered. We can then use it and build on it. If that capability is lost a dark age will descend. DaVinci described atherosclerosis and the function of the aortic valve. His work was lost for centuries as the authors point out that was a tragedy. Let us hope the forces of darkness and ignorance will not sweep our world; let us work to preserve our knowledge and freedoms lest the only reservoir of mathematical lore will be in the plants.

Highly Recommended

[Mairead · Rating 3 out of 5]

Makes me think