Plant skins enlarged

I was down with a cold lately, along with a couple midterms, so appologies for crappy posting. Since I don't have time or energy to write anything thoughtful at the moment, I'll shower ye with some random pics from my collection:



Liverwort leaf surface -- one cell layer thick, round cells



Bladderwort (aquatic plant) with permanently closed stomata -- relics of the plant's terrestrial ancestors.


Arabidopsis leaf; UV fluorescence: DAPI (binds to DNA and stains blue) and chlorophyll (red) autofluorescence. Those two huge things are... drugged up mutant stomata! The tissue was overstained and too old, thereby sucking for science, but it made some pretty nice desktop wallpaper material!

And just because I love how UV imaging makes everything seem surreal :



It's almost a bit nebulous, isn't it?

Not digitally altered in any way -- looked just like that in the eyepiece!


Sigh. I am married to microscopy... can't help it!