Primarily Hallé’s book examines anthropocentric and zoo-morphic biases in botany, that plants unfold increasing their surface area for example, whereas animals do the same by a process of infolding. He finds analogues in crystallography by physicists, the mathematics of fractal branching patterns and their space filling tendencies, the architecture of corals, or tree ‘crown-shyness’ as an indication of a mechanism of awareness of self and other in plants. In Praise of Plants by Francis Hallé (1999) examines plant morphology and growth patterns and their implications further afield. Botany has shifted historically from taxonomy to gene sequencing and along the way many strands of thinking about plants have emerged in accord with other ideas.
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