In 1968 Aristid Lindenmayer introduced a model of plant development to the world. His "L-system" is a formal grammar, a language to describe branching growth.

This "creature" is the expression of a statement in such a language. It was grown from a single point by a process of recursive substitution over a period of about a day. The drawing technique is very much like "turtle graphics", where a point is given instructions about where to move and what colour to draw by the L-system.

This image is in JPEG format and is 8000x8000 pixels.