LINDENMEYER L-SYSTEM LANGUAGE
Language tools have been used to describe the growth of plants. Plants develop from seeds in
stages and their development follows general rules about when and where new growth buds from
the plant, the shape of flowers etc. Astrid Lindenmayer coded this information into a grammar
consiting of encoded rules and produced a compiler program that interpreted ‘sentences’
written using the grammar (rules) and vocabulary (options that the rules permit).
Plants were described in this language which was read, parsed and ‘understood’ by the compiler
to extract the sentence structure. The compiler then translated this plant description or
‘specification’ into another language - the language of a graphics program that drew the plant.
SIMULATION VIDEO
By describing not just the adult plant but
it entire development it is possible to
simulate the growth of plants. This has
been widely used in animated movies.
Astrid Lindenmaeyer also described the
environment as another system which
behaved according to rules and coupled
the plant and environment models to
simulate plant growth in an environment.
EnGen Institute 1992-2018
I N
S T I T U
T E
TOTAL SUSTAINABILITY
GENERATIVE ENGINEERING OF ENGINEERED ENVIRONMENTS FOR LIFE SUPPORT
SIMULATING PLANT GROWTH
