Inhibiscus

Inhibition theory of Flower Growth

The inhibiscus is a new type of abstract flower. Its name combines two words: hibiscus and inhibition. An inhibiscus is a very beautiful flower, often used as a motif for Hawaii shirts. Inhibition is a biological mechanism which regulates the levels of growth hormones in plants and therefore also phyllotaxis, that is, how plants produce spirals and spiral arms, often Fibonacci-numbered. In my quest to understand phyllotaxis I found that one can turn the mathematical models of Marzec and the simulation models of Douady inside out because the inverse of a golden spiral is a golden spiral again. The inhibiscus is made of polar plots of inhibition levels of individual primordia and a contour representing the sum of the latter. The valleys in the contour predict the next primordium to be born. The biological mechanism at work in a plant's meristem, for the first time, appears as another flower. The main mathematical tool is circle inversion. The inhibiscus is a new intuition for the phenomenon that a golden flower continues its growth while re-using the same golden divergence angle.