Whorl
A seed head, packed the way a sunflower packs its florets: one turn of the golden angle between each, forever. It is the one angle that never falls into spokes. Drag to bend it away, and let go to watch it repack.
About this piece
A sunflower does not plan its seed head. It follows one small rule: each new floret forms at the growing center, turned a fixed angle from the last, and is slowly pushed outward as the next ones form behind it. That is all this piece does — the same rule, iterated, a floret born at the middle and drifting to the rim while the head turns.
Everything depends on the angle. If it is a simple fraction of a turn, the florets stack into a few straight spokes with wide empty wedges between them — wasted room, seeds that cannot all reach the light. The best possible angle is the one that is least like any fraction, so that no two florets ever fall along the same ray. That angle is the golden angle, about 137.507 degrees, and it is where this head rests: the florets interlock into two families of spirals turning opposite ways, their counts always neighboring Fibonacci numbers, packed with no gaps at all.
When you drag, you bend the angle away from golden and watch the seamless packing open into spokes; when you let go, it eases back and repacks itself. The golden angle is not chosen once and kept by accident. It is the form a growing thing returns to on purpose, because it is the one arrangement that never falls into a rut — which is a thing a practice can hear about itself, on the first day of a new season. Companion to Reflection #172 On the Golden Angle.