Figures
A leaf's venation pattern
Image of a Miconia sp. leaf, from Ilha Grande, Brazil. Some features shared by all angiosperm leaves can be observed. One is the hierarchy of the veins, signed by their radii and originating in the successive formation of veins during the growth. Another feature is the abundance of closed loops: the leaf blade is divided by the venation array into small polygonal surfaces. A model based on the existence of mechanical instabilities leads very naturally to this kind of pattern (see Laguna et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000055).
Image Credit: Image by M. F. LagunaCitation: (2008) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 4(4) April 2008. PLoS Comput Biol 4(4): ev04.i04. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v04.i04
Published: April 25, 2008
Copyright: © 2008 Laguna et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Image of a Miconia sp. leaf, from Ilha Grande, Brazil. Some features shared by all angiosperm leaves can be observed. One is the hierarchy of the veins, signed by their radii and originating in the successive formation of veins during the growth. Another feature is the abundance of closed loops: the leaf blade is divided by the venation array into small polygonal surfaces. A model based on the existence of mechanical instabilities leads very naturally to this kind of pattern (see Laguna et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000055).
Image Credit: Image by M. F. Laguna