Plant leaves exhibit a great diversity of forms that can be grouped into two types: simple leaves with a single blade, and compound leaves with multiple units called leaflets. A major question for ...

A Japanese plant species with a peculiar leaf pattern recently revealed unexpected insight into how almost all plants control their leaf arrangement. Leaves can be enjoyed for their shade, autumn ...

Pick up a leaf and it is hard not to notice the pattern made by the veins. For years, biologists, mathematicians and even poets and philosophers have tried to decipher the rules and regulations behind ...

Research by Assistant Professor Jacob S. Suissa at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is revealing complexity in how ferns have evolved. Instead of the vascular structure inside fern stems ...

The major veins of Chinese money plant leaves form what's called a Voronoi diagram. It might be caused by a plant-growth hormone that emanates in waves from developing leaves' pores ...

Next time you go outside, take a minute to look at your local leaf arrangements. You’ll probably notice a few different patterns. In basil plants, each leaf is about 90 degrees — a quarter-turn — from ...

New University of Arizona research indicates that leaf vein patterns correlate with functions such as carbon intake and water use – knowledge that could help scientists better understand the complex ...

Steve Nix is a member of the Society of American Foresters and a former forest resources analyst for the state of Alabama. Leaf shapes play an important role in tree identification, providing key ...

Leaves can be enjoyed for their shade, autumn colors, or taste, and the arrangement of leaves on a plant is a practical way to identify a species. However, the details of how plants control their leaf ...