MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Another very nice, clear & clean image.
I really am becoming a fan of your simple and clean layout, pollen-grain plus plant-image.
Nicely done again my friend, I like it a lot.

Here's >a link to a pollen database< that I use to judge just how much detail I've been able to glean from light-microscopy imaging. This site includes brightfield images as taken from 'std' levels for pollen taxonomy, and SEM images that really elucidate the fine details, even of exine-wall sections....

Interesting I had some very small grains that I thought were also pollen but looking at the website that you posted it seems that they are something from the inside of a crushed pollen grain unfortunately after I found the real grains I deleted the image. They were very small only about 6 um long and 3 wide. If I find them again (I still have the slide) I will post them.



Fortunately they were still on the small laptop connected to the microscope.

Paldat now bookmarked

I had tried to resolve them with the 60x but couldn't get much better. I think I would need the 100x oil. (Ughh not going to do that not worth it for just one image). Won't be using that until we are looking at fungi again when it's worth having it on (and cleaning).

One for today. Growing wild in garden. Very large pollen grains.



Its looking a bit bedraggled now, had it sitting in a sealed pot overnight.

Excellent!
This goes with the territory my friend, the plant-parts sitting in water all over the place!
This and the earlier images have plenty of definition to see the essential features and of course size of the pollen-grain/s - no need to even think about the 100x I'd say - definitely with you there!

A small diversion. Foxglove flowers are all gone but plenty of seeds. Had a strange stack with PS (turned out all blue) but Picolay worked out fine.

Another interesting pollen that I haven't seen. It's almost oblong!
I took some tissue-samples from my garden foxgloves this summer - about 3 weeks ago, of the ovaries. These will make some nice slides in LS and TS when I get round to processing them! I didn't look at the pollen though.

Nice images again, I like what is now I think 'your pollens series' very much!

Out today in the forest.

Woooo only 4 more to go after this one. Takes a lot longer to process than to collect.

Very nice! A beautifully colourful page.
Great to see the varieties, none of which I've had in the lab (yet ).

Correction - just seen the greater clandine - I've a lot of this around my gardens. Very nice indeed.

Excellent post.

Roldorf wrote:Used Photoshop to stack and add image of flower to pollen image.
Scale, measurements and other text generated with Micam software.
Identification of flower with Plantnet app on mobile phone. Take a photo of the plant and the app offers a number of images to identify it (with my photo it was three , all the same family)

The size is very different and so is the number of spicules. Coreopsis is not native in Germany (but still may be planted in gardens, of course).

Hi iconoclastica.

You don't say which flower you think they are. I would be interested to find out what these seed merchants are selling me.
All of the pollen websites have led me to believe that they are Coreopsis lancelota and yes they were planted from seeds we bought. They are called Mädchenauge here in Germany.
http://blogs.cornell.edu/pollengrains/2 ... anceolata/

Roldorf wrote:Interesting I had some very small grains that I thought were also pollen but looking at the website that you posted it seems that they are something from the inside of a crushed pollen grain unfortunately after I found the real grains I deleted the image. They were very small only about 6 um long and 3 wide. If I find them again (I still have the slide) I will post them.



Fortunately they were still on the small laptop connected to the microscope.

Paldat now bookmarked

I was bewildered by the fact that I could not see the image in this post, or those following.

... I now realise that you have put the address between (img) and (/img) rather than between (url) and (/url)
note: I have used parentheses in place of the square brackets, to make the codes visible

Is anyone else having the same problem, or is it specific to iOS ?

MichaelG.

.

Edit: but now, for no obvious reason it all displays O.K.
... I fear it might be 'one of those days' !!

Is anyone else having the same problem, or is it specific to iOS ?

Have you tried activating Flash Player?

75RR wrote:

Is anyone else having the same problem, or is it specific to iOS ?

Have you tried activating Flash Player?

Thanks for the thought, but Flash is not possible under iOS
Steve Jobs had a big falling-out with Adobe
https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

... and anyway:

Edit: but now, for no obvious reason it all displays O.K.

MichaelG.

Probably best to start a new thread for this

75RR wrote:Probably best to start a new thread for this

No need [see my quoted edit]
... But I'm happy to delete my posts on the subject, if you wish.

MichaelG.

Roldorf wrote:Hi iconoclastica.

You don't say which flower you think they are. I would be interested to find out what these seed merchants are selling me.
All of the pollen websites have led me to believe that they are Coreopsis lancelota and yes they were planted from seeds we bought. They are called Mädchenauge here in Germany.
http://blogs.cornell.edu/pollengrains/2 ... anceolata/

Hmm, they seem to be consistent with Coreopsis.lanceolata?
The size is right I think at about 25-28µ....
The images you have of the grains are not enough to make an ID on their own; possibly for a solid ID it may in fact be better to switch attention towards the plant's characters? A more targeted set of images of the grains would help, including a focus halfway down the grain, to give the 'equatorial' view. A case where single images would be better maybe. The spiny nature and indeed size of the grain is very common in the Asteraceae/Compositae family.

If you have any images of the plant whence they came, that would very likely enable an ID or a very close approximation....

Hi John the image in the top right corner was taken from the window box that they were in, so is of the flower that the pollen came from. Just going out to take a photo now.........



No sooner said than done.

Maybe they are selling me 'duff' seeds.

Problem was it was one of the first pollen samples that I made and I think I pressed a little too hard on the cover plate and squashed them.

Just collected some cornflower blooms today will have a look at them later.

Hi MichaelG

I have those days too, only not just on the 'Odd occasion' but most of the time.

Next one from yesterday. I know that the image of the flower looks like I made a cup of tea from it, but it's very hot here.

As a side story to the last pollen image:-
When I tried to stack the images with Photoshop they were out of alignment and wouldn't stack properly. I then tried the Auto Align Layers but it didn't work (PS4).
I then tried with Picolay using the Auto-align positions and resize function and it produced the results you see.
Unfortunately I have just checked the size of the pollen from the original image and there is a difference, from original 27.2 um to 31.4, so will have to see why that happened.

So one up for Picolay and one down too.

This one is rather interesting, you learn something new everyday. I couldn't find any pollen at all and I don't know why so I thought I would post what I did find, maybe someone can tell me why.
Originally from Northeast Asia and now obviously found throughout Europe.

Some more info on the last post. The image it seems is of the flower head, still don't know why I don't see any pollen.

http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflor ... p?tid=4103.

Aha! This is a small 'weed' in the U.K. that has the common name 'Pineapple weed' - on account I suppose of the appearance of it's flower-head. It must be realised though that the 'flower head' is made up of dozens of tiny florets (small flowers) - hence the Family name Compositae (the 'old name' for the Asteraceae) - composite flowers....

Each of those tiny florets will have it's own pollen and truly tiny anthers to release it when the time's right. The specimen you have isn't ready to release pollen - the florets are yet to mature, open and release pollen. The pollen is in there - but to find it you'll need to squash the flower-head and remove a few individual florets - then squash them up in a little water to release their grains, then of course wet-mount the resultant mush to examine for pollen - it'll be there!
Better when the anthers have released their mature and dry pollen - then a simple tap over a slide will yield hundreds of grains. Just an immature flower-head, the pollen's simply still in the anthers of the teeny florets....

These grow out of the slate-chippings where our cars are parked - but I don't think there are any there at this time - I sprayed weed-killer over the chippings a few weeks back... I'll have a look to see if I can find some....

Thanks John I will wait until they ripen a bit more. No problems finding them they grow all over here.

Another interesting plant, amazing the things that grow wild.

The last one from my field trip yesterday and for today.

I have to say that the pollen grains are not the same as on the many websites that I have looked at, but are around the same size. The flower and leaves are however the same. I wonder? Image is not stacked.