Silver Rain-Daisy

Silver Daisy.

There was a brief lull in this week’s rain, during which the sun briefly came out.  I loved the silvery effect and the texture of  the raindrops on this daisy.

The individual florets in the head of a daisy grow in two spirals extending out from the center. The clockwise spiral has 21 arms; the counter-clockwise has 34. These are two adjacent Fibonacci numbers.

The ratio between them approximates to the Golden Mean, a ratio found extensively in nature from the growth of plants, animals & shells, to galaxies.  The natural harmonies forming the musical scale are based on this ratio, as are the ratios in the structure of the atom.  The ancient Greeks based the proportion of famous buildings such as the Parthenon on the Golden Mean – we humans just seem to find this ratio inherently pleasing!  Perhaps because our own bodies are built to this ratio too.

Isn’t it amazing that the whole of nature, the entire Universe, seems to grow according to this one ratio, in many many different forms?

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