Thanks Carlos, Here's another mosaic of a single floweret, cut through one of the developing stamens. The first image is the entire flower, using the 10/0.4 objective, then a detail mosaic of the stamen using 10/0.4 and finally details of the stem with the 40/1.3 UPlanFl with DIC. You can see both t...

Really beautiful. Now I want to try sectioning a Camellia bud.

David

Superb autofluorescence shot. Was this with continuous illumination and EFCS or do you have flash hooked to your epi illuminator?

David

That is an unusual looking ciliate. Thanks for posting the video, I would like to find one someday.

David

Thanks Carlos and Sebba and Charlie, Here's another shot from one of the Safranin O/Alcian Blue/Orange G stained sections. You can see what I am pretty sure are pollen grains inside a sac which has cutinized (red staining) cells surrounding it. I think this sample will be better using more histochem...

Really nice fluorescence shots. Do you use any special methods for your sections or are these manual sections?

David

Every spring the bigleaf maples here in the Northwest send out large sprays of flowers. I've always wanted to cross-section one of the flower buds before it opened, and for one of my first forays into plant histology I finally fixed a flower bud last spring in Formalin-Alcohol-Acetic (Lillie's formu...

Quite a beautiful shot, and all of us know how difficult it is to get a stacked shot of one of those beasties...just when you think its static it lazily moves one (just ONE, to torment you...) tentacle or pseudopod or axopod, you name it...kind of like giving you the finger and you have to restack. ...

Sweet. From an artifact to art....

David

This is correct, 2-propanol will let you infiltrate with paraffin, but typically its used with a histological microwave oven. I've never tried it with a regular paraffin oven, and no histology lab I've ever worked in has used it outside of a microwave so I am not familiar with using it as a conventi...

You must have very good paraffin in Europe...I have used the modified paraplast mixtures (plus and extra) and found them to be superior to homebrew mixtures. I've also had lots of experience with home use of Steedman's wax (polyester wax) and paraffin/butyl methacrylate mixtures as well as glycol me...

That is a spectacular example of TIR. May I use it to show my junior engineers? TIR phenomena also feature in some photolithography applications. What a beautiful illustration. And a really "high-Q" little TIR slab too, that's the nice thing about TIR, its virtually lossless, in fact if you were to ...

Superb cross-section shots of the ascospores. Are these sections or really thin, well-made squash preparations?

David

Great stomata(e)!

David

Mike,

You've just saved yourself countless hours of annoyance...your embedding and sectioning will be vastly better than trying beeswax and harder paraffin homebrew mixes.

David