Bubble hairs of Chenopodium II

[Gerd]

This is a leaf of Chenopodium album (white goosefoot, lamb's quarters, lambsquarters).
The upper picture shows the surface of a young leaf at incident illumination. All over the surface
you can see bubble hairs.



The members of the chenopodiaceae are salt-tolerant plants.
These plants can survive on soils, where the Na - Ion concentration is much higher than the K - Ion concentration.
Na Ions are plant-toxic, so the plants have to drop the Na out. These bubble hairs just do that.
There is a special gland area in the bubble hair stem, in which this happens.
Special thanks to Dr. Kramer, University of Darmstadt, for these special informations !
The lower picture shows a thin section through a leaf in darkfield:



More informations about Chenopodium you can find here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenopodium_album
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/plan ... enalbu.htm
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/WEEDS/lambsquarters.html

Thanks,
Gerd

[rjlittlefield]

Gerd,

This is very interesting stuff, but I'm having trouble finding more information about the bubble hairs. (Google is failing me! )

In your gorgeous pictures, most of the bubbles look smooth & turgid, but there are a few irregular shapes that look like the shells of burst bubbles.

I can imagine that these things work by excreting a concentrated salt solution into the bubble, which just gets bigger and bigger until the membrane breaks.

I can also imagine that this is a complete fantasy and they work some entirely different way that I haven't thought of.

Can you provide a few more details, or link to an article that explains?

Thanks very much!
--Rik

[salden]

Beautiful Gerd. I need to sit down at my scope again, if time will ever allow it

[gpmatthews]

Fascinating image. I haven't tried it, but try Googling "glandular trichomes" - we had to do these in pharmacognosy back in the days when I was studying pharmacy. Also had to draw a number of different types. I never encountered these, though, but I guess they're not pharmaceutically important...

[rjlittlefield]

Well, "glandular trichomes" definitely gets something, but I'm far from sure it's related to these things that Gerd has shown us. In most of the hits, I can't match up either text or pictures with what Gerd shows, and combining "glandular trichomes" with "sodium" or "halophilic" or "salt" produces mostly spurious hits.

I did find one paper at http://www.kier.kyoto-u.ac.jp/DP/DP552.pdf that combines these words, but it contains the following sentence that I find particularly confusing:

There are two types of glandular trichomes (salt glands) found by us in Salsola species that contradict the literature data concerns the absence of salts glands in chenopods (Carolin 1983).

I'm only casually curious about this stuff, but I will greatly appreciate anything that clears up my confusion!

In any event, I'd still like to know about the burst (?) bubbles. Is that really what they are, and if so, do they burst as a matter of course or did something go wrong with just a few of them?

Thanks much,
--Rik

[Gerd]

Rik,
thanks for your positive comments. Finding further informations for botany stuff in general
is not easy via the www. For a start, i was looking in my library, but i only found two hits:
one in the Textbook of Botany for Universities by Eduard Strasburger and another
in Mikrokosmos, Elsevier, Germany - journal of microscopy. Only poor details were found.

Concerning the wrinkled bubbles, i found, that these bubbles simply dryed up in the growing process
of the plant or when the weather keeps dry for a longer time.

The bubbles do not live as long as the plant itself, they only occur on young leaves, older leaves
are bubble free.

For further details i asked Dr. Kramer of the University of Darmstadt. In the late sixties there
was some research on the bubbles concerning the salt excretion. So if i wanted to read more,
i have to go to a university library and be a bookworm for a while.
That's the story about these tiny, little bubbles.
Gerd

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

I don't usually hang out in the micro forum--I don't have the patience for this kind of work, haven't used a microscope since I was a youngster. But I had to mention the title given this shot, Bubble Hairs of Chenopium II (or whatever it was) reminded me of the title of an episode of Star Trek!

Congratulations Gerd, and pardon my intrusion!

[salden]

Congrats Gerd and looking good on the front cover.

[Ken Ramos]

Indeed your image looks great on the front page Gerd, excellent work and thank you for your participation. Congratulations!