Leaf - 2 (11x) by Can Tunçer, on Flickr
Tradescantia's leaf photographed with backlight. I put one Jansjö LED light on the front and one on the back. I'm not an expert. However, the small spots that may be cells of the leaf.
Camera: Canon 6D
Lens: Nikon CF Plan 10x 0.30 WD 16.5
Magnification: 11x
Light: 2 x Ikea Jansö
Focus Stack: 80 Shots
Automated Rail: WeMacro (10 um)
Tabletop Setup: flic.kr/s/aHskRJsutG
Leaf - 2 (11x)
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
Re: Leaf - 2 (11x)
Can,Sharks wrote:I'm not an expert. However, the small spots that may be cells of the leaf.
What you have is an excellent image of the plant's stomata (plural for "stoma")--the pores used by the plant for gas exchange. Stomata vary widely in size among plant species, and the ones you show are large as these structures go--around 40-55 microns wide by 70-115 microns long, in your picture. If you had set out to illustrate stomata, you could hardly have chosen a better plant. As a parallel, one of the example images in the Wikipedia entry for "Stoma" is, like yours, a Tradescantia species.
At least a few of us in this community have been looking for a good plant candidate for photographing stomata. I suspect that now we will all be taking a close look at the Tradescantia genus.
Great work!
--Chris S.