The Foliage

Some weeks back I clicked this picture with a cellcam while waiting at my daughter's skating classes. This plant had an interesting arrangement of foliage. Younger leaves were coming into their own from below the dark shaded older ones at the top even as the youngest lot could be seen emerging further down. 

An analogy had struck me as soon as I saw the pattern in those leaves. I am trying to put that vision pictorially here.