Wow, fantastic results! Did you stain the sections?NikonUser wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 12:42 pmA further, final, comment on hand sectioning plant material; (originally posted on MicrobeHunter).
I have been trying several techniques to get cross-sections of plant stems including 'hand' cutting with the double razor blade, using a hand microtome fitted to a bench with the plant held by a foam plug and with the plant embedded in paraffin wax and using a cutting aid.
All techniques gave inconsistent results but the simplest method, by far, was the double razor blade. The simplicity allowed one to make dozens of sections in a very short time; usually one or two of the sections were suitable for further processing.
[my inconsistent, generally poor, results using the bench microtome and cutting aid was most likely due to not having the plant stem anchored firmly in the barrel of the microtome; the quality of the cutting aid and blade hold (from Germany) was excellent]
We bought some fresh carrots, all the way from California, which still had the greenery attached. I cut up a green stem and placed in 99% alcohol for 3 days. Cut with the double blade. Got quite a few decent complete sections. One partial section, last image, was about 1 cell thick!
Thanks for sharing, now I need to go find razor blades!