Here's a simple recipe for preparing a morel; cut out a tiny piece of the mushroom, place it in a drop of PBS or water and squash the heck out of it with a coverglass (carefully). Although it doesn't have the uniformity of a paraffin or methacrylate section, and the microanatomy is a bit, well, distorted, its a fast way to see what you're eating. Note the immature spores in the ascus in the upper middle portion of the picture. One oblique and one phase contrast shot so you can see the different structures brought out by the 2 illumination conditions. Optical conditions:
12 V Halogen (Koehler)
Pl Apo 40X / 0.75
Periplan GW HP 10X relay
5 Mpxl DX4350 Kodak camera
--David
