



Pine Pollen
Meiji EMZ-13TR stereomicroscope w/Sony DSC-W5
Onboard halogen illumination w/blue diffuser
Moderators: Chris S., Pau, Beatsy, rjlittlefield, ChrisR
I don't know Rik. They look as though they might as I look back over some of the images to try and compare different pollen grains, one to another. I continued on my search to try and find a bit more about them but all I get is allergy reports concerning pine pollen and other forms of pollen in general. It seems as though there is all sorts of research being done on things such as "mantis shrimp," which are extremely fascinating in my opinion ( Mantis Shrimp on TED ) but little if any research on how pollen interacts in nature, then again it could just be I am looking or searching in the wrong places. Maybe I should be more specific in my searches. By the way I know mantis shrimp are way off topic but I thought you might be interested. However this presentation has stuck in my mind, having watched it last evening and I just used it as an example of how ones passion can lead to research in various and obscure fields sometimes. I wonder if some major corporation or university would give me several million to study pollen over the next ten years or so.Did these things perhaps open up from one day to the next?
Ah, Mr.Ramos, you know me way too well!Ken Ramos wrote:By the way I know mantis shrimp are way off topic but I thought you might be interested.
In this case, new technology seems to have made the photographer's job much easier in one respect (timing), while changing it very little in another (maximum frame rate versus allowable light intensity).A Fastax WF 17 camera with extension tubes was used to take high speed ciné pictures at up to 3750 f.p.s. on Kodak 4X negative film. This was uprated in development so that an illumination could be used which did not kill the beetles. ... Speeds of 5000-6000 f.p.s. were also used, but due to the small period of time at which the camera was running at these speeds, it proved very difficult to obtain reasonable results. [The beetles...] would often jump either before or after the film was run.
Ken Ramos wrote:Funny you should mention that Charlie, I used to find them also and looked high and low for images of encysted protozoans, because I thought that, that was what they were.It was sometime much, much later that I accidentally ran across an image of pine pollen, thus identifying my mysterious and wrongly presumed encysted little animal
Close -- they're all Pinaceae, not all Pinus. The "fir" that Charlie speaks about is probably Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii. It pretty much blankets Washington State at lower elevations. At higher elevations are various "true firs" in genus Abies and "spruces" in genus Picea. Not sure I've ever heard of anything in Pinus getting called "fir", though some other stuff does get called "pine".bernhardinho wrote:Pines and firs are pretty closely related. They're all genus Pinus in the family of Pinaceae