Plant structure is tremendously various: there is no rule without several exceptions. (For a fascinating look at the varieties of plant form, see Bell’s Plant Form.) PlantStudio attempts to simulate and draw a wide variety of herbaceousLVPPOU plants, but any attempt to do this must leave out some variation. These are the types of plant structures this version of PlantStudio does and does not draw well.

Plant features this version of PlantStudio draws well

▪        Plants that can stand up on their own. This includes many wildflowers, garden plants, ornamental plants, etc. Within this restriction plants can have varying degrees of stem stiffness.

▪        Separate primary (female/hermaphroditic) and secondary (male) inflorescences and flowers on one plant, such as corn and cucumber. These inflorescences and flowers have separate growth and timing parameters to get as close as possible to the different floral structures.

▪        Dioecious plants, that is, plants that are either wholly male or wholly female/hermaphroditic (such as asparagus) can be produced by creating two separate plants, one with primary flowers only and one with secondary flowers only.

▪        Primary flowers with up to five rows of petals, sepals, pistils and stamens. Secondary flowers with one row of petals, sepals, and stamens.

▪        Fruits. You can choose the timing and shape of fruit growth and design the fruit shapes yourself.

▪        Bolting. Many plants form rosettes in the first year and bolt in the second year, such as radishes and many wildflowers. You can specify when and how strongly bolting occurs.

▪        Special phyllotactic angles (the angle between successive leaves). The default angle (137.5 degrees) is the most common, but there are exceptions. 

▪        Enlarged axillary buds such as in Brussels sprouts. 

▪        Sympodial branching (where each apical meristem dies, and an axillary meristem creates the next stem and leaves) such as in tomatoes. Most plants have monopodial branching (where apical meristems are the primary creators of new stems and leaves).

▪        A variety of branching patterns. You can control branching (and therefore plant shape) with an index of overall branching, a check on secondary branching (and tertiary, etc), and an index of apical dominance.

▪        A variety of plant growth patterns. Fine control over the allocation of plant biomass and the timing of growth lets you manage how the plant grows and is shaped.

▪        Compound leaves in pinnate or palmate shapes, and leaf stipules.

▪        The most common inflorescence types. The parameter-driven approach (rather than picking a type from a list) helps you to customize the inflorescence to look most like the plant you want. You can also manipulate the timing of flower appearances and the arrangement of flower appearance (bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom).

▪        Showing the top of the root for plants such as carrots and beets. 

Plant features this version of PlantStudio does not draw well

▪        Droopy, clinging, vining, or hanging plants. PlantStudio does not simulate the effects of gravity, so it works best for plants that stand up mostly on their own. You can create plants with some curviness in their stems, but PlantStudio has no realistic model of weight-bearing stems. For example, a plant such as a columbine doesn’t look very good in PlantStudio because PlantStudio doesn’t simulate how the flowers droop and nod.

▪        Thorns, adventitious roots, whorled leaves, variably-shaped leaves, vegetative propagation (runners), and other less-common plant structures. 

▪        Flowers with parts that can’t easily be represented by rotating a 3D object around in a circle (such as orchids).

▪        Many less-common types of inflorescence architecture.

▪        Runners, prop roots and other less-common root systems.

▪        Leaves and flowers with multiple colors such as coleus and some violets.

▪        True leaf veining patterns. With care you can create 3D objects in PlantStudio that mimic somewhat the vein pattern on a leaf, but PlantStudio makes no attempt to actually model or draw leaf veins.

▪        Monocotyledonous plants (monocots). In PlantStudio, monocots are handled simply by displaying one seedling leaf, but in reality monocot growth is quite different from dicot growth. And monocot leaf growth is not drawn correctly. Meristems in the leaves of monocots are found at the leaf bases, while dicot leaves have meristems at their furthest edges. PlantStudio models leaf growth on dicot leaves.

▪        Trees. PlantStudio does not simulate the secondary growth that increases the girth of trees, nor does it handle multiple-season growth. You can produce a plant that looks something like a tree, but it will not grow like a tree and will probably take a very long time to draw.


We hope to address at least some of these limitations in a future version of PlantStudio. If you have a particular plant structure you would like to see in the next version of PlantStudio, send us your botanical wish list – we would like to know what you want to see.

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