E. Kowalski’s blog

Comments on mathematics, mostly.

Fractal cabbage

with 9 comments

Back in the days when fractals where the most fashionable thing, I had heard of fractal cabbages, and seen pictures of them. However, they are typically not available in French or American stores, so I didn’t see a real one until noticing that they are very common in Swiss supermarkets. Here’s a picture of one, but I should say that pictures do not quite convey the actual feel of seeing and handling this vegetable (not to mention eating it — and it is indeed quite tasty). The diameter (of horizontal cross-sections) of the specimen displayed here is between 10 and 15 centimeters, and the height is slightly larger.

Written by Kowalski

January 14th, 2009 at 9:27 am

Posted in Mathematics

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9 Responses to 'Fractal cabbage'

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  1. [...] Speaking of maths, fractal cabbages. [...]

    Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e50v3

    14 Jan 09 at 15:28

  2. Just to defend my country’s honor, these are sold at the farm market here in Madison…

    JSE

    14 Jan 09 at 22:41

  3. I agree, they look beautiful and taste really good. I first had them in Grenoble.

    Grétar

    17 Jan 09 at 1:50

  4. Here is another mention of fractalic vegtables:

    http://asymptotia.com/2008/02/10/a-delicious-fractal/

    Gil Kalai

    17 Jan 09 at 16:58

  5. Thanks for the reference! (I have to admit I didn’t do any measurement of the structure of the vegetable…) Amusingly, there was none in the store where I usually buy them this morning…

    Kowalski

    17 Jan 09 at 17:48

  6. [...] Joining us for lunch, we have E. Kowalski’s very accessible overview of what we have to do to get to Twin Primes .Oh yeah, lunch. To feed off the starving graduate student horde, he has also prepared fractal cabbages. [...]

    Welcome to Carnival of Mathematics 48 = 6!!! « Concrete Nonsense

    30 Jan 09 at 19:58

  7. [...] favorite posts include Foxmath’s post about a strange iterated sequence involving pi and this amazing picture of a fractal cabbage. Also near and dear to my heart is Mark Dominus’s post on monads and closure [...]

    Carnival of Math #48, and Monday Math Madness #25 « The Math Less Traveled

    1 Feb 09 at 2:24

  8. I would like to know the Hausdorff dimension of this cabbage.

    Mark Dominus

    1 Feb 09 at 21:03

  9. I think in culinary circles they go by the name “Romanesque Broccoli”. Very pleasing on the eye, the mind, and the tongue!

    Richard Elwes

    2 Feb 09 at 0:03

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