Illustration from Darwin’s “On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants”, accompanying the “irritability theory” that Pettigrew denounced.
Featured on PDR in the essay The Spiralist
Why do helical seashells resemble spiralling galaxies and the human heart? Kevin Dann leads us into the gyre of James Bell Pettigrew’s Design in Nature (1908), a provocative and forgotten exploration of the world’s archetypal whorl.
Also appearing in the essay…
A Caught Tendril of Bryonia dioica, Spirally Contracted in Reversed Directions
Artist
Date
1875
From
On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants
