High style of a maple flower

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 4:28 pm

"In the Spring, a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of...umm..."

Tell me again, what did you say that thing was?!

Well, it's an object of lust, of course! With a bit of anthropomorphism, and only if you happen to be maple pollen.

This is in fact the end of one style of a maple flower, shot very "up close and personal".

You can see a whole flower HERE.

What you're looking at in the image above is less than 1 mm of the very tip of one of those brush-like styles curving up from the flower.

Pretty bizarre structure, eh?

I'm intrigued by those alternating clear and red sections that we can see in the silhouetted fingers. (There must be a technical term for those things. Anybody know what it is?)

From this one picture, it looks like the red and clear might be some sort of immiscible fluids. But I tried watching at 200X whilst I squashed a style between two microscope slides, and it seemed that while there are red and clear fluids, they are completely miscible and are kept separated by some sort of membrane. I have no idea what the red is or what purpose it might serve.

Hope you find this interesting, and I will greatly appreciate any other info you can add!

--Rik

Technical Details: Canon 300D camera, Nikon CF N Plan Achro 10X NA 0.30 objective at 15.6X, 250 mm away from the sensor. Electronic flash, 83 frames in 0.030" (0.00036" average step). Subject size as shown, 0.95 mm square. Stacked with Zerene Stacker, PMax and DMap combined by retouching.

Edit: to mention Zerene Stacker, which had not gone public at the time this post was originally made.

Bruce Williams · Post by **Bruce Williams** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:15 pm

You've done a great job with this subject Rik. I would never have guessed what it was - you've produced something extraordinary from something relatively ordinary.

Bruce

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:29 pm

Looks like some sort of chewy sweet to me! Fantastic!

Is that orangey vertical thing sticking up one of the red/clear tubes which has dried up? Or is it a sort of mini 'stem' structure to this part of the flower?

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 6:15 pm

Thanks Bruce -- yes, these maple flowers look completely different up close than you'd expect them to!

Laurie, perhaps you're imagining an accretion of gummy worms?

About that orange thing, I'm not completely sure, but I think it's a bit of debris stuck to the backside of the style. I don't see any consistent structure like that at the style tips, but lots of the styles have similar looking fibers at various places. With some care, they can be teased away. I don't know what they are. They look somewhat like hairs from the bracts that surround the flower clusters. I didn't try to clean the styles before shooting them, just shopped around for a section that was oriented to make a decent composition.

You know, I just realized that I've been writing "style" and I actually meant "stigma" -- the receptive part of the pistil.

Oh well, I'll let the mistake stand. Not sure what I'd do with "stigma" in a title, anyway.

--Rik

Graham46 · Post by **Graham46** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 6:32 am

Beautiful image Rik! Very interesting flower, and Im very impressed at the result of the stack

Aynia · Post by **Aynia** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 7:15 am

Highly unusual. .. and great first pic too (missed that one before).

Fantastic stuff.

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:06 am

Excellent shot Rik!

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:31 pm

Gummy worms, that was exactly what I was thinking! They can stick together in a lump like that if I remember correctly...

Shame Ken doesn't make it over here much, bet he'd like those!

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 11:56 am

Mmmmmmmmmmmm, Gummy Worms!!

Planapo · Post by **Planapo** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:48 am

Very interesting and well documented, Rik!

I'm intrigued by those alternating clear and red sections that we can see in the silhouetted fingers. (There must be a technical term for those things. Anybody know what it is?)

I know of the term "papillate stigma" that is in use. I'd presume, that your maple flower here has such one.
So, I think you could call these gummy-worm-like structures papillae (sing. papilla).

--Betty

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:00 am

Planapo wrote: So, I think you could call these gummy-worm-like structures papillae (sing. papilla).

--Betty

Papilla,oh papilla we love you sooo...
(You said sing papilla!;))

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 7:59 am

Cyclops wrote: Papilla,oh papilla we love you sooo...
(You said sing papilla!;))

Planapo wrote: So, I think you could call these gummy-worm-like structures papillae (sing. papilla).

--Betty

Thanks, Betty! That sounds like some word I knew a long time ago but couldn't remember. (Too many words, too many words...!

)

Any ideas about the red fluid?

--Rik

Planapo · Post by **Planapo** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 12:40 pm

Rik wrote:

Any ideas about the red fluid?

Not really, but I've found this article which could contain some further information:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q53 ... bf4d5&pi=2

(As it is an older article, I first have to check if it is as hard copy in our library, and hence can't look into the pdf right now.)

--Betty