# Recursive Fractal Tree

**Track:** Physics, Motion & Emergence — Creative Coding — the existing 50
**Framework / surface:** p5.js
**Level:** Intermediate
**Prerequisites:** Functions & Modularity, Transformations & the Matrix Stack

**In one line:** A function that calls itself on a smaller piece — self-similar form.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Recursion is a function that solves a problem by calling itself on a smaller part, and a fractal tree is its most legible image: draw a branch, then ask each branch to draw two smaller branches, until the limbs grow too short to continue. Self-similarity—the whole echoed in every part—is the signature, the property Benoît Mandelbrot placed at the center of fractal geometry, observing that coastlines, ferns, and bronchi share this nesting across scale. The aesthetic is organic inevitability: forms that feel grown rather than placed. Small changes to branch angle or length ratio swing the result from bare winter limbs to lush, drooping canopies.