Growth and Form in Biology: Generation of the Plant Morphology by Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking Based on a Pressure Field

Considering the role of mechanical forces playing in the morphogenetic pattern formation, we propose a second-order differential equation for the growth and form of plants based on the turgor pressure field at the organ and cellular level. The solutions can well describe various kinds of morphological features of flowers under certain hypotheses. The plant morphology is considered as the spontaneous symmetry breaking of a circular growing boundary, while the employed hypotheses are subjected to further experimental confirmation.