BRASSICA+OLEACEA+AND+FRACTALS

=CROPS - BRASSICA OLEACEA=

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Brassica oleracea is the species of plant that includes many common foods as cultivars, including cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, savoy, kohlrabi and kai-lan. In its uncultivated form, it is known as wild cabbage. It is native to coastal southern and western Europe. Wild B. oleracea is a tall biennal plant, forming a stout rosette of large leaves in the first year, the leaves being fleshier and thicker than those of other species of Brassica, adaptations to store water and nutrients in its difficult growing environment. In its second year, the stored nutrients are used to produce a flower spike 1 to 2 metres (3–7 ft) tall bearing numerous yellow flowers.

Cultivation and uses
B. oleracea has become established as an important human food crop plant, used because of its large food reserves, which are stored over the winter in its leaves. It is rich in essential nutrients including vitamin C. A diet rich in cruciferous vegetables is linked to a reduced risk of several human cancers. Although it is believed to have been cultivated for several thousand years, its history as a domesticated plant is not clear before Greek and Roman times, when it was a well-established garden vegetable.Theophrastus mentions three kinds of rhaphanos (ῤάφανος): a curly-leaved, a smooth-leaved, and a wild-type. He reports the antipathy of the cabbage and the grape vine, for the ancients believed cabbages grown near grapes would impart their flavour to the wine. It has been bred into a wide range of cultivars, including cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, brussels sprouts, collards, and kale, some of which are hardly recognisable as being members of the same genus, let alone species. The historical genus of Crucifera, meaning "cross-bearing," may be the only unifying feature beyond taste.

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 * WORLDWIDE PRODUCTION OF BROCCOLI AND COLIFLOWER**

=**History**= With the advent of agriculture and the domestication of wild crop plants, the peoples of the Mediterranean began cultivating wild cabbage. Through artificial selection for various phenotype traits the emergence of variations of the plant with drastic differences in looks took only a few thousand years. Preference for leaves, terminal bud, lateral bud, stem and inflorescence evolved the wild cabbage into the many forms we know today.

Cultivar - Broccoli
There are three commonly grown types of broccoli. The most familiar is Calabrese broccoli, often referred to simply as "broccoli", named after Calabria in Italy. It has large (10 to 20 cm) green heads and thick stalks. It is a cool season annual crop. Sprouting broccoli has a larger number of heads with many thin stalks. Purple cauliflower is a type of broccoli sold in southern Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. It has a head shaped like cauliflower, but consisting of tiny flower buds. It sometimes, but not always, has a purple cast to the tips of the flower buds.

=Major producers of broccoli=

In 2013, global production of broccoli (combined for production reports with cauliflower was 22.3 million tonnes, with China and India together accounting for 76% of the total. Secondary producers, each having about 0.5 million tonnes annually, were Spain, Mexico and Italy

== = = =Cultivation= Broccoli is a cool-weather crop that does poorly in hot summer weather. Broccoli grows best when exposed to an average daily temperature between 18 and 23 °C (64 and 73 °F). When the cluster of flowers, also referred to as a "head" of broccoli, appear in the center of the plant, the cluster is green. Garden pruners or shears are used to cut the head about an inch from the tip. Broccoli should be harvested before the flowers on the head bloom bright yellow. While the heading broccoli variety performs poorly in hot weather, mainly due to insect infestation, the sprouting variety is more resistant, though attention must be paid to sucking insects (such as aphids), caterpillars and whiteflies. Spraying of bacillus thuringiensiscan control caterpillar attacks, while a citronella vase may ward off whiteflies. =Pests= Mostly introduced by accident, "cabbage worms", the larvae of Pieris rapae, the small white butterfly are a common pest in broccoli

=Romanesco Broccoli and Mathemathics= Put mathematics and broccoli together and you have the two most hated things of childhood. And that’s exactly what the Romanesco Broccoli is all about. But now, with this lesson, we are able to appreciate the intricacy of this rare vegetable. The broccoli takes the form of a fractal – a complex geometrical shape that looks almost the same at every scale factor. So each broccoli is made up of smaller florets that mimic the fractal shape to perfection, which in turn are made of even smaller florets of similar shape… and this goes on and on to the tiniest florets. If you break off a floret from the main head, it looks like a mini-version of the broccoli with its own mini florets. No matter which part of the fractal you zoom into, it will look like an identical version of the bigger picture. It’s fascinating to think that something like this naturally occurs in nature, let alone on a vegetable. A detailed pattern that goes on repeating itself is rare and certainly a thing of beauty. The Romanesco Broccoli is nothing short of a mathematical marvel, reminiscent of the Fibonacci series – a sequence of consecutive numbers that add up to the next number. Like: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. So how can a broccoli imitate a series of numbers? Simple. On closer inspection, the Romanesco is revealed to have a spiral starting from the center point. All the smaller florets are arranged around this spiral. In essence, this is the Fibonacci spiral – a series of arcs with radii that follow the Fibonacci sequence. If you count the number of spirals in each direction, they will always be consecutive Fibonacci numbers. A math lesson on a vegetable – isn’t that amazing?

=FIBONACCI (click on the link to get more information)= = = =Fractal Food - Self-Similarity on the Supermarket Shelf=

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= = =What are Fractals?=

A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of Chaos. Geometrically, they exist in between our familiar dimensions. Fractal patterns are extremely familiar, since nature is full of fractals. For instance: trees, rivers, coastlines, mountains, clouds, seashells, hurricanes, etc. Abstract fractals – such as the Mandelbrot Set – can be generated by a computer calculating a simple equation over and over..

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 * HAVE FUN PLAYNG WITH FRACTALS - GIVE A TRY TO THE ANIMATION**

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