{"id":445481,"date":"2026-05-12T19:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T19:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/445481\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T19:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T19:50:14","slug":"natures-algorithm-found-in-chinese-money-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/445481\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Nature\u2019s algorithm\u2019 found in Chinese money plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Pilea<\/p>\n

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image:\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Chinese money plant, seen here against the backdrop of Cold Spring Harbor, is helping CSHL biologists uncover the mathematical formulas underlying nature itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

view more\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Credit: Nick Wurm\/CSHL<\/p>\n

Look up at the clouds. What do you see? A sailboat? A seahorse? Your great-aunt Rosemary? As humans, we\u2019re prone to seeing patterns where they don\u2019t actually exist. This behavior is so common there\u2019s a name for it: apophenia. But sometimes, those patterns really do exist. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor\u00a0Saket Navlakha<\/a>\u00a0specializes in finding them.<\/p>\n

Voronoi diagrams are geometric patterns used to divide space into regions. Each region contains a given central point. For example, when dividing a town into school districts (regions), a Voronoi diagram guarantees that all students living within a district are closer to that district\u2019s school (central point) than to any other school. \u201cVoronoi diagrams have been used for centuries in a variety of applications ranging from city planning to network design,\u201d Navlakha says.<\/p>\n

Voronoi-like patterns are common in nature\u2014giraffe stripes, for example. However, the keyword there is \u201clike.\u201d The difference between textbook Voronoi patterns and what we see in nature is that the latter usually lacks visible \u201cschools.\u201d Now, Navlakha and former graduate student\u00a0Cici Zheng<\/a>\u00a0have found an exception in\u00a0Pilea peperomioides, the Chinese money plant.<\/p>\n

Chinese money plants are perennials native to China\u2019s Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. You may have received one as a housewarming gift from great-aunt Rosemary. Its round, flat leaves feature prominent pores called hydathodes, surrounded by looping reticulate veins that transport water and nutrients to and from the leaf. By mapping Chinese money plants\u2019 pores and veins, Navlakha and Zheng discovered a naturally occurring Voronoi pattern.<\/p>\n

The team then turned to world-renowned scientist Przemys\u0142aw Prusinkiewicz, who has studied vein patterning for decades. Together, they worked out the \u201cnatural algorithm\u201d used to form looping veins around central pores in Chinese money plants\u2019 leaves.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as humans have to solve problems to survive, the same goes for other organisms,\u201d says Zheng, now a postdoc at the Allen Institute. \u201cBut unlike humans, plants cannot explicitly measure distances! Instead, they rely on local biological interactions to achieve the same Voronoi solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think of these algorithms in nature as an explanation for how organisms will behave and as a way to try to make sense of the world,\u201d Navlakha says. \u201cThis example is a nice merger of classical geometry, modern plant biology, and computer science.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s remarkable how mathematical yet another aspect of plant form and patterning turns out to be,\u201d Prusinkiewicz adds. \u201cFor decades, the question of how reticulate veins form has remained open, and finally we have a plausible answer\u201d in Chinese money plants\u2019 Voronoi patterns.<\/p>\n

Navlakha and Zheng hope exploring this phenomenon can help tell us how plants work out complex problems in nature. Understanding that may provide a new framework for making sense of the math underlying evolution, development, and life itself.<\/p>\n

Journal<\/p>\n

Nature Communications<\/p>\n

Article Title<\/p>\n

Reticulate leaf venation in Pilea peperomioides is a Voronoi diagram<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"image:\u00a0 The Chinese money plant, seen here against the backdrop of Cold Spring Harbor, is helping CSHL biologists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82],"class_list":["post-445481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}