Diary of a weekend gardener

The inner beauty of plants

There's not much to photograph in the garden - the last two weeks have been wet, windy and gloomy. But as it happens our college session this week was spent peering through the microscopes at plant stems, leaves and roots. On a hunch, I got my camera out and pointed it down the microscope lens. To my amazement, some of them came out quite well and are wierdly beautiful. Here's the best of them:

Phloem (thick walled red cells), xylem (thin wall red cells) and cambium (green cells in between) in a helianthus stem

Vascular bundle (phloem and xylem cells) in a monocotyledon stem

Dicotyledon root section

posted by Sue Beesley @ 2:49 pm