The World’s Two Most Beautiful Vegetables

I guess after yesterday’s veggie post, I gotta keep the edible theme going.

Below you will find 12 pics; 6 of them feature the Romanesco Broccoli and the other 6 showcase the infamous Purple Cauliflower.

Romanesco Broccoli

The romanesco broccoli is known for it’s beautiful fractal pattern. As far as I know this is the only vegetable to sport a fractal but if there are others I would really Love to know what they are or any additional information.

  1. Romanesco Broccoli1
  2. Romanesco Broccoli2
  3. Romanesco Broccoli
  4. Romanesco Broccoli4
  5. Romanesco Broccoli5
  6. Romanesco Broccoli6

Purple Cauliflower

The purple cauliflower gets it’s beautiful purple color from an antioxidant group called anthocyanin. You can find these same antioxidants in red wine, or blood oranges. Sometimes you can even find them at the party in my tummy. (Just kidding… sorta)

  1. Purple Cauliflower1
  2. Purple Cauliflower2
  3. Purple Cauliflower3
  4. Purple Cauliflower4
  5. Purple Cauliflower5
  6. Purple Cauliflower6

26 thoughts on “The World’s Two Most Beautiful Vegetables”

  1. Actually, all broccoli/cauliflower has a fractal base, it’s just that the repeating base is usually a lot plainer than this. Have a close look the next time you have “normal” broccoli, it’s *really* cool (if you’re a geek like me 🙂

  2. nat –
    Sunflower ( and pine cone) patterns are based on the golden mean – tau – a noble number that fractal patterns are often based upon. They’re fractals too, just not expanded out further like the broccoli.

  3. Ok, now this is the coolest thing I’ve seen in quite a while – nice pics. Gotta wonder how that tastes in a curry or with cheese sauce.

    In case you’re more interested in what Steamboat said, wiki Fibonacci series… Golden ratio: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21… basically F(n+2) = F(n+1) + F(n) It’s a pretty fun series. Look up bessel functions while you’re at it – you see those every single day.

    Sorry, used parenthesis to denote subscripts… looks a bit odd, doesn’t it?

    In fact, if you dig around enough, it seems outright hard to find something that *doesn’t* follow some sort of fractal or geometric pattern.

    Anyway, thanks much!

    (lastly, Steamboat, that is also a fun website you’ve got – can you e:mail me with the story on that cat?)

  4. Whoa. How could I forget to mention ol’ Fibonacci’s stuff?

    {It sucks to not be able to easily depict mathematics in comments. Yes?}

    Thanks for sayin’ about the site. it’s fun to do.

    The cat? The photo? That’s just a photo I snatched off the web somewhere a while back.

    But the cat is seriously in trouble (and knows it) – wouldn’t you agree?

    I grab photos. MY “My Pictures” file has/had hundreds before I recently purged out a bunch.

    Whenever I see any photo or drawing or whatever on the net that is interesting, I grab it. Then I delete it about a year later. Since I’ve been blogging, I’ve found them to be quite handy.

  5. I hereby apologize for hijacking this thread, but this will be the last such transgression or you may flog me with ethernet cables soaked in whiteboard cleaner…

    And yes, just try sometime to show a convolution of a garden-variety third-order function with a bessel function and depict it in a comment block. Yegads. (BTW, I just pulled that illustrative example out of my… wellnevermind… I just made that example up for theatrical flair.)

    Yes, that is a cat in dire straights. Makes me think of something someone (can’t recall) said that levitation was indeed possible – make a huge array of pieces of buttered toast strapped to the backs of cats and run the fastest levitating monorail the world has ever seen.

    I mean, just picture it. Gobsmacked is the word that fits here, I think.

    – c

  6. Geez Mother Nature does it again! amazing! Shame we can’t access those vegetables out here in Bahrain? I’ll just have to admire their beauty and save tasting them for another year or so!

  7. spectacular veggies. You could also check out “bright lights” swiss chard. Too colorful to eat. I never liked chard that much, but I have to grow that every year for the spendor it brings to the garden

  8. I would’ve thought all plants were fractals. Wasn’t the whole point of fractals to predict organic patterns?

    That broccoli is beautiful though, I’d never even heard of it. Good job narrowing it down to two vegetables, I would’ve had trouble picking just two. Vegetables in general are things of beauty.

  9. AND, if you put lemon juice, or some other tasty acid, on your purple cauliflower it turns fluorescent PINK!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *