The algorithmic beauty of plants
by Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, Aristid Lindenmayer · first published 1990
72% recommend28% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Foundational, freely available text on L-systems, showing how simple grammars generate lifelike plants and fractal patterns. Suits procedural-generation and graphics hobbyists wanting examples and the math behind them.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Develops and analyzes simple, self-similar mathematical models for plant development and morphology.
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Somewhat varied but I think some of these may fit your criteria. Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong Communicating Sequential Processes by Hoare The algorithmic beauty of plants by Prusinkiewicz, Lindenmayer Network Performance Analysis Using the J Programming Language by Alan Holt Relational Programming in miniKanren by William Byrd Exercises in Programming Style by Cristina…
on “Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?” ↗…supposed to do here. Here's a version in Go instead: https://github.com/deosjr/GenGeo/blob/master/gen/lindenmayer... Which renders into: https://github.com/deosjr/GenGeo/blob/83c77f9433e569b30f71b3... (see Algorithmic Beauty of Plants for way more examples)
on “L-System Simulations” ↗"The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" is an awesome book on L-systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Algorithmic_Beauty_of_Plan...
on “Evolving Lindenmayer Systems” ↗Excited to see a chapter on L-systems. I just discovered these recently and was amazed at the beautiful results from simple grammars. For anyone else interested, there's a free PDF book all about the subject. It's "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/abop/abop.pdf
on “Procedural Content Generation in Games” ↗Great resource. If you're into it, make sure to check out the "The Algorithmic Beauty of..." series of books. There are three: - The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants - this is the original one. Fascinating read - one of the authors creates a rule system (L-system, now fairly well known in the procedural generation world) that allows for the generation of plant like…
on “On Generative Algorithms” ↗For anyone interested to look more in-depth on the subject, there's an entire book dedicated to it called Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. The math is really cool! http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop
on “Simulated Growing Plants” ↗A great, if dated, start is The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. PDF at http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop
on “John Baez: Green Mathematics” ↗Hey, Cory here. I'm a (relatively new) member of that lab. I think the coolest thing on the site is the book The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. The PDF is available in the publications section. TreeSketch is also interesting. There's a fairly approachable paper about it there too. Unfortunately, keeping up with regular maintenance for an…
on “A Moss Girl’s Guide to Japanese Moss Viewing” ↗Very neat! For a deeper appreciation, check out "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants": http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop
on “Cbonsai: Grow bonsai trees in your terminal” ↗This is a really cool resource for people who want to learn about how to render L-Systems, I wasn't aware they had been keeping up to date with the programs on there but I'll have to take a look for sure. L-studio goes all the way back to 1998. http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" is the seminal resource on lindenmayer systems, written by Aristid Lindenmay
on “Algorithmic Botany, Biological Modelling and Visualization Software” ↗Yeah! It's not exactly "algorithms based on biological ideas", more like formal systems that mimic certain morphological aspects of plant life, but well worth a look: "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop (It's mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but I feel it's worth "surfacing" here on it's own.)
on “Ask HN: Which algorithms based on biological ideas do you know?” ↗The Computational Beauty of Nature is such a cool book! There is also ABOP - the Algorithmic Beauty of Plants http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop which has been a huge inspiration for this project.
on “Show HN: Fractal Garden – An Exhibition of Mathematical Beauty” ↗Another excellent source on this topic is a book I cited in the code comments called "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" by Prusinkiewicz and Lindenmayer, available online here: http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop
on “Turing's sunflower” ↗I recommend the book "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" by Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz and Aristid Lindenmayer (Springer-Verlag, 1990) if you want to explore the mathematical systems behind plants like this. It covers Lindenmayer systems (L-systems) in detail, of which phyllotaxis is only a part. I happen to have a first edition, but it is these days available as a free PDF: http://algorithmicbotan
on “Stunning Photographs of Fractals in Nature” ↗Awesome! I've had a lot of fun last year building my own "virtual botanical laboratory" in JavaScript (see https://heerdebeer.org/Software/virtual_botanical_laboratory...). It is based on the book "The algorithmic beauty of plants" by Prusinkiewicz & Lindenmayer (1990). Quite an interesting read. You can find that book on-line as a PDF here: http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop ) It took me
on “Drawing fractals in the browser with L-systems and ES6” ↗