A family of fern-like ternary complex trees

Abstract

A ternary complex tree related to the golden ratio is used to show how the theory of complex trees works. We use the topological set of this tree to obtain a parametric family of trees in one complex variable. Even though some real ferns and leaves are reminiscent to elements of our family of study, here we only consider the underlying mathematics. We provide aesthetically appealing examples and a map of the unstable set $\mathcal{M}$ for this family. Moreover we show that some elements found in the boundary of the unstable set $\mathcal{M}$ possess interesting algebraic properties, and we explain how to compute the Hausdorff dimension and the shortest path of self-similar sets described by trees found outside the interior of the unstable set $\mathcal{M}$.