L-system

Rewriting system and type of formal grammar L-system trees form realistic models of natural patterns An L-system or Lindenmayer system is a parallel rewriting system and a type of formal grammar. An L-system consists of an alphabet of symbols that can be used to make strings, a collection of production rules that expand each symbol into some larger string of symbols, an initial "axiom" string from which to begin construction, and a mechanism for translating the generated strings into geometric structures. L-systems were introduced and developed in 1968 by Aristid Lindenmayer, a Hungarian theoretical biologist and botanist at the University of Utrecht. Lindenmayer used L-systems to describe the behaviour of plant cells and to model the growth processes of plant development. L-systems have also been used to model the morphology of a variety of organisms and can be used to generate self-similar fractals. Origins 'Weeds', generated using an L-system in 3D. As a biologist, Lindenmayer worked with yeast and filamentous fungi and studied the growth patterns of various types of bacteria, such as the cyanobacteria Anabaena catenula. Originally, the L-systems were devised to provide a formal