Yes, that’s a real broccoli.  It’s also an example of  fractals in nature.

 If my post “Nerdy Dance Party” totally had you scratching your head, you’re in luck!  Nova: Hunting the Hidden Dimension, a very interesting documentary about the life and work of Benoit Mandelbrot and Fractals is on Netflix Streaming right now.   If you don’t have Netflix Streaming (you should totally have Netflix Streaming, it’s awesome) you can read about Fractals on wikipedia at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal and the Mandelbrot Set here: http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Mandelbrot_set.

 Pretty cool, huh?

Edit:  Super-Dad just informed me that we were watching this episode of Nova on Hulu and that it also available (sans-commercials) on PBS.org.  Upon investigation it *is* available on Netflix, but on DVD only (maybe if I find the copy of  East Bound and Down Volume 1 that Kit lost sometime about four months ago I can get Netflix DVDs again…)