Spiral Arrangement

ANNIE BESANT: Building of the Cosmos
“Here again these axes appear and the same suggestion of geometrical form on which the vegetable world is to be built. When we study the vegetable world we go still further. Take for instance a twig of a tree; note and study the arrangement of the leaves on it. You will find that the leaves are arranged in a spiral. The spiral, coming forth once more as the generating force, directs the arrangement of the leaves; sometimes very simple, sometimes very complicated. Take a very simple case like that of the apple tree – which is very familiar to us in England – where the spiral is what we call 2/5; in this the spiral has a double turn, and there are five leaves, which are placed on the points, so to speak, of the spiral, until you have to begin again when five are complete. You will find, if you take a bit of string and twist it twice round the stem or twig of the tree, that on this spiral you have, touched five leaves which are arranged at equal intervals on the string. If you take another kind of plant you will find a different arrangement, but still the spiral; another plant will have another and different arrangement, but still the spiral; so that when the plant is sending out its leaves, it is always working under this law of spiral arrangement, and there is this geometrical rule which governs the apparently irregular sending forth of leaves and flowers.”