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Plants under the microscope

I thought you all would like to see these.
I have access to the microscopes at my university greenhouse, so I thought I'd take some pictures of plant slices just for fun. They're not too amazing, I just took the pictures with a plain old digital camera through the microscope's eyepiece, but it's clear enough to see individual cells.Today I sliced up a Venus flytrap trap and got a couple good images of the structures. I'll have to take some more pictures of other species when I get get some spare parts to chop up.

microscopeslides002.jpg

Trigger hair of Venus flytrap with iodine stain.

microscopeslides003.jpg

Base of same trigger hair.

microscopeslides004.jpg

Sessile digestive gland at the base of the trap. Stained with iodine.

microscopeslides007.jpg

Surface of the inner trap tissue, with the glands clearly showing. No stain on this slice.

microscopeslides008.jpg

Same tissue with light Toluidine Blue staining.

microscopeslides009.jpg

A random slice of tissue from the lip of the trap, stained with iodine. The V shaped area is where the cilia attached further up.
 
Oh meh gawd!.....that is amazing! :-O
 
I love looking at plants through microscopes- it's always so cool and trippy :)
 
Very cool!
 
Thanks for sharing!!!
 
What kind o microscope are you using, and that's awesome!
 
Thanks for all the replies!
Can't remember the brand name, but it was just an older light microscope with 40x, 100x, 400x, and 1000x lenses I believe. I did those pictures using 40x and 100x.
 
  • #10
Kool Whip! Sure beats trying to take closeup pictures.
 
  • #11
I dunno about that. When I was doing histology it was a lot of work preparing slides.
 
  • #12
Cool! Keep stuff like this coming!
 
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