In On the Nature of Th ings , Lucretius speculates on the necessity of plant development: Branching trees simply do not “leap” from the turf, rather, the branching patterns of shoots and roots develop over time, “slowly increas[sing] from [their] lawful seed” ( Leonard, 2015 ). Over 2000 years ago, the essence of the plant phenotype was written in a poem; plants are four-dimensional beings, bra...
