The Science of Trees

It occurred to me that the best way to learn to draw is to observe the things you want to draw. I once recently tried to draw a tree for one of my fanciful drawings, and it looked like a kindergartener had drawn it. So I started studying trees whenever I went on a walk or, yes, sometimes while I drove (would not recommend it), and today I drew a tree that looked like a 15-year-old might have drawn it! That's an improvement of 10 years after only a few days of observation! Since it is nearing spring and the flowers are blooming, I drew one of those with pink blossoms that you see lining a lot of sidewalks and driveways these days.

Trees can be classified into 4 different types: Trees with branches that:

a) have a positive slope
b) have zero slope
c) have a negative slope, or
d) start out with a fairly large positive slope but almost immediately level off like a log graph.

Sometimes, the ones with positive slopes have branches that slope way downward- this is due to the heaviness of the leaves I think, especially in evergreen (pine?) trees, making them look like they're having a bad hair day. The tree can have either a single or multiple main branches coming from the main node (this is where I start wishing I could draw on my blog). Main branches then have mini-branches bifulcating from them at varying points with the same type of sloping, and then those mini-branches also have mini^2-branches bifulcating from them at varying points (with the same type of sloping), and on and on. Trees are actually quite fractal!*

This fractal-ness of trees got me thinking about neurons and how much they looked like trees- with their branches, nodes, and bifulcations- and this in turn made me think that maybe it's true that the universe is a giant Russian nesting doll: microcosm within microcosm within microcosm of the same basic pattern. I don't think there is anything mystical about this idea. What works for a tree works for a brain, and what works for planets works for atoms, why not. And anyway, we always like to describe new phenomena through analogy to what we already know, so that when we first saw neurons, we explained their appearance by saying they looked like the branches of trees. In fact, I think the only way we can learn new things is through metaphor, or mapping from the known to the unknown through analogy. To see what I mean, try explaining a concept to someone who just doesn't get it. You'll find that comprehension will dawn once you start using the phrase "It's like..." or "It's kinda like when..." a lot. The best teachers make use of (good) analogies. This is where I bow down to the Analogy Queen and confess that I don't really hate analogies- quite the opposite actually:) Now I'm branching...point being,

There is a forest inside your head!

*Fractals are created by taking a pattern and repeating it over and over again in smaller and smaller sizes, so that if you focus on any smaller part of the resulting picture, its pattern looks exactly like the pattern of the resulting picture except at a smaller scale.