Shauna's Blog

I think that I shall never see...

Originally at http://www.shaunagm.net/blog/2012/04/i-think-that-i-shall-never-see/

The other day I was cutting up cauliflower for soup. It looked rather a lot like this:

Cauliflower Tree

I turned to the other people in the room and said, “Look it’s a brain! A braaaaaaain!”

I was thinking specifically of the cerebellum which, when cut sagittally, looks like this:

Of course, what both a cauliflower and a cerebellum look like, when cut right, is this:

The term for this type of structure, dendritic, comes from the greek word for tree, dendron. Anyone passingly familiar with neuroscience will recognize the term dendrite:

But the most gorgeous natural dendritic structure I’ve seen recently are these rivers in California:

Any dendrites I’ve missed?