{"id":395831,"date":"2026-08-02T20:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T20:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/395831\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T20:43:09","slug":"san-antonio-botanical-garden-embraces-math-on-saturday-to-celebrate-infinity-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/395831\/","title":{"rendered":"San Antonio Botanical Garden embraces math on Saturday to ‘Celebrate Infinity Day’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for TPR Today<\/a>, Texas Public Radio’s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.<\/p>\n

The San Antonio Botanical Garden<\/a> is one of six Gardens participating in “Infinite Sums,” an innovative, national project which could change how many of us view nature.<\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019ve noticed how the growth habits of some plants have recurring mathematical shapes. The Botanical Garden\u2019s Katie Erickson says they\u2019re everywhere, and a Saturday event they refer to as “Infinity Day” <\/a>shows those who come to that event where those mathematical shapes are.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we’re doing is we’re looking at plants and nature through a lens of math. Our next celebration is all about infinity, and it happens on August 8,\u201d Erickson noted.<\/p>\n

There are thousands of examples in nature. A green cauliflower called Romanesco Cauliflower is one which repeats an incredibly intricate design throughout the plan.<\/p>\n

\"Romanesco<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, exactly, and in that cauliflower that you’re talking about, you can see kind of a fractal pattern and never ending, or what could be a never ending or an infinite pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event starts at 9 a.m. and goes to 1p.m., allowing attendees to avoid being outside during the hottest part of the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will get to learn about ancient cycads and ferns and plant propagation, even build little, tiny terrariums that kind of hold an infinite cycle of an ecosystem inside itself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While this focus on math in a Botanical Garden might seem a little odd, Erickson says there\u2019s one activity which she enjoys perhaps the most.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my favorite activities that I’m looking forward to hosting on August 8 is Eric Addis,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is a sound artist, and he is producing a piece called\u00a0‘The Garden of Infinite Music.’\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the sounds he finds, but the plants that are the sound\u2019s origin.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’ll be using electronic sensor pads attached to living plants and translating the bioelectrical signatures into a live musical experience,\u201d Erickson said.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s event isn\u2019t a stand-alone one. It\u2019s one event in a series called “Math in Bloom.”<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first celebration in this series was Pi Day back in March, and our last one will be Fibonacci Day in November,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd at our first celebration, we had a lot of people out with Pi Day shirts or Pi shirts and math shirts, and just really excited to know that we were exploring math through nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio’s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-395831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}