Lindenmayer Systems - Inferring Branching Topology

Plants and their structures have been studied for centuries. Many plants develop slowly and follow patterns through out their development. These patterns are often repetitive, or self-nested. To understand these patterns, there have been many tools and algorithms developed.

In the late 1960’s a biologist named Aristid Lindenmayer developed a type of formal language to model the growth of algae. This language would continue to be used for many years in the modeling of plants and other recursive structures. These tools were combined with turtle geometry, which allowed for repetitive sequences of drawing instructions to be built from a formal language to mimic a plants’ structure or pattern.

In 2010, an algorithm called NEST was developed by Chrisophe Godin and Pascal Ferraro to help study the branching structures of plants. This algorithm can be used as a predictor of the original plants’ branching structure. The ability to enter a Lindenmayer language and run a qualitative algorithm could be useful for comparison against real plant data. We expan of thier work, and provide a graphical interface.

Recommended citation: Oliver Lyon, Ian McQuillan, "Lindenmayer Systems - Inferring Branching Topology." University of Saskatchewan, 2019.