Are houseplants geometry whizzes?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
A beehive. A city map. Cell phone towers. These all share a geometry called a Voronoi diagram. This is where boundaries sit exactly halfway between points. Know where else it shows up? The Chinese Money Plant!
The plant’s veins were studied by CiCi Zheng at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and team at the University of Calgary.
Findings? A plant chemical spreads from each leaf pore — like ripples in a pond. Where ripples meet, veins form a perfect Voronoi diagram. This happens every time. The same geometry used in city maps and cell towers — nature invented it first.
Huh. Leaf math. Who knew?
Zheng, C. X., Palit, S., Venezia, M., Blum, E., Pedmale, U. V., Jackson, D., Scarpella, E., Prusinkiewicz, P., & Navlakha, S. (2026). Reticulate leaf venation in Pilea peperomioides is a Voronoi diagram. Nature Communications, 17(1), 71768. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71768-3