In applications dealing with plant growth modeling, increasing attenti
on is being devoted to the topological structure of plants. Different
models, based on tree-graphs, have been introduced to represent plants
. These models assume that the scale of description is fixed. However,
this hypothesis is too restrictive for new modeling applications that
aim to tackle analysis or simulation of plant growth at different tim
e and space scales. In order to make such multiscale descriptions avai
lable to computer applications, we have defined a general methodology
for measuring and representing multiscale plant topological structures
. This paper discusses the design of a model of plant topological stru
ctures and sketches out its general formal properties. The model suppo
rts multiscale, attributed and time-varying descriptions of plants. It
is intended to be used for plant analysis methodologies and plant gro
wth simulations. (C) 1998 Academic Press Limited.