Visual models of plant development

Abstract

In these notes we survey applications of L-systems to the modeling of plants, with an emphasis on the results obtained since the comprehensive presentation of this area in The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. The new developments include:

• extensions to the L-system formalism that increase its expressive power as needed for practical biological applications,
• introduction of programming constructs that enhance the use of L-systems as a language for describing developmental algorithms and as input for simulation programs, and
• new biological applications of L-systems.

Keywords: L-system, fractal, plant, modeling, simulation, realistic image synthesis, emergence, artificial life.

Reference

Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, Mark Hammel, Jim Hanan, and Radomir Mech. Visual models of plant development. In G. Rozenberg and A. Salomaa, editors, Handbook of formal languages. Springer- Verlag, 1996. To appear.