Researchers have identified a natural geometric pattern known as a Voronoi diagram in the leaves of the Chinese money plant. The discovery reveals how the plant organizes its pores and veins using principles common in city planning and network design.
A team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory mapped the tiny pores and looping veins in Pilea peperomioides leaves. They found that the structures naturally divide space around central points in the same way Voronoi diagrams do in mathematics and computer science. Associate Professor Saket Navlakha led the work with former graduate student Cici Zheng and collaborator Przemysław Prusinkiewicz.
