block-census
Drawn at its defaults, in what the wrecked orbit inherits. It takes no options at all, so every essay calling it gets this exact drawing.
Called by 7 essays
the blast radius of changing it
Two-ranked, by two different routes
The rule produces a two-ranked stem at a coarse rise, where 180° is the only thing available, and that has been in the bifurcation diagram since the beginning. It also produces one at a fine rise, at a rise whose own answer is the golden angle, if a single organ is removed. The diagram cannot show the second, and the reason it cannot is how it is drawn.
The claims, measuredA period the grid invented
A wrecked stem was reported as settling into a repeating block of three angles — 219.84°, 220.31°, 220.78° — which is the smaller of its two spiral counts and would have confirmed a standing prediction. Those three numbers are three consecutive samples of the azimuth grid. There is no block; there is a constant the grid cannot write down, and the routine that found the block was working perfectly.
Stems and conesTwo accounts of one number
A stem that never recovers from an ablation settles into a repeating block whose length was the smaller of its two spiral counts, at both arrangements it had been measured at. Two different explanations predicted exactly that and could not be told apart. Swept across four rises on the ordinary branch the premise itself fails: at one arrangement the block is the larger number, at another both appear, and the rule that seemed to be there was two measurements.
Stems and conesA stem on the other branch
Every arrangement this collection had cut an organ out of carried Fibonacci counts, which is why two rival explanations of the block a wrecked stem settles into had never disagreed. A stem seeded on the Lucas lattice carries four and seven at the same rise, under the same rule. Cut, it settles on seven — the larger number, and not a Fibonacci one.
Stems and conesWhat a cut costs a whorl
A bijugate pattern is an ordinary lattice seen twice over, so the account that says a wrecked stem's repeating block is the repeat unit of the lattice underneath has a specific prediction here: three and five. It gets six and ten. And the thing a single missing organ does destroy on a whorled stem is the one property its counts cannot see.
Where the angle comes fromThe block is the count it was cut from
A stem that never recovers from an ablation settles into a repeating block of eight angles precessing by 22.7°. Eight was also the smaller parastichy number of the lattice that was cut, which left two possibilities and no way to choose between them. Cut a stem one rung coarser and the block is five.
Where the angle comes fromThe stem that changed hands
A stem that never recovers from an ablation is supposed to end up somewhere worse than it started — a repeating block of angles, a pattern with the wrong counts in it. At the coarsest arrangement it ends up somewhere that is not worse at all: at 220.3125°, which is 360° minus the divergence it was cut from. The lattice is intact and its handedness is reversed.