Patterns in the Tree Tops
Some meandering thoughts on order in nature
The cat (her name is Miss) and I sit by the window staring at the tree outside. She’s watching the magpie. I’m watching the branches and how they form intricate patterns against the grey winter sky.
Branches are for the effective distribution of nutrients throughout the tree. The recent history of a tree can be told in its branches as you can tell where buds have died off, and where others have survived. An oak tree branch is strong and grows almost at right angles from the tree. You’ll see that the buds on the lower side, where there is less light, tend to have died off, whereas the ones on the upper side divide off. In some instances, though, the branch will not follow the pattern you might expect, but will branch out in an unusual direction in search of space or nutrients. The oak’s branches always remind me of frilly petticoats; its large stern splits into smaller and smaller bobbly twigs, and I can imagine its lace-like leaves as dancers twirling their skirts about.
I’ve bought myself a little book on something called ‘Li’ – dynamic form in nature. Li is presented as the Chinese concept of organic patterns. These patterns, rather like platonic forms, can be found throughout nature and seem to form building blocks throughout the natural world. Nothing is dead, but dynamic patterns are embodied in all living things, as well as in human relationships. The book states, “Physicists have long abandoned older notions of a static material substantiality in favour of a view that regards substance as the product of energetic forces that are ceaselessly at work in the universe”.
This reminds me somewhat of the days when I used to teach geometry. Plato had this idea of form as you probably know, absolute shapes that were beyond the here and now and which all things were based on. This is problematic for me, one reason being that it seems to create the idea of static perfection as the ideal, what one should aim to achieve. Nature is dynamic, forever changing. This is why I like the sound of Li; the patterns are forever changing. I have tried using geometry in my drawings of nature, but I found it makes them look too static. These days I seek that sense of life and vitality that some artists manage to achieve in their work.
Yet there are building blocks that appear over and over again in nature: the hexagon that the bees use to build their honeycomb, the spiral that the fern unravels from and which the snail lives in, the chameleon’s curled tail…
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