The L - system - based plant - modeling environment L - studio 4 . 0

L-studio and the Virtual Laboratory (Vlab) are two related plant modeling packages developed at the University of Calgary, Canada. They have been distributed by this University since 1999. The packages run on Windows and Linux machines, respectively, have similar functionality, and support the exchange of models between both systems. The main difference between these systems is the user interface, which is designed to meet the different expectations of Windows or Linux users. Below we outline the most recent version of L-studio (4.0) (Fig. 1). The package consists of: (a) two L-system-based simulation programs, cpfg and lpfg; (b) a modeling environment that provides auxiliary modeling tools; (c) a library of programs for simulating environmental processes that affect plant development; (d) a set of sample models; and (e) a graphical browser for organizing and accessing models on both local and remote machines.