The Frustule Foundry

form symmetry order pore rows pore size elongation (pennate)

A foundry for glass houses. Every plate is a valve view: one half of a diatom's silica shell, engraved as in a 19th-century atlas. The eight siblings below share the seed and differ by small mutations; click one to cast it large.

LIT centric valves are radially symmetric, pennate valves bilaterally symmetric, often with a central raphe slit; pores (areolae) sit in rows (striae) between ribs. ANALOGY the parameters are a design toy, not a taxonomic key. Self-check: the pore count equals rows × symmetry order (centric) and the pattern is mirror-symmetric (pennate). ← SaPpH{{i}}on

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