Anyway, re-visiting these slides to assess their condition after nearly two years as far as I can remember - coupled with the fact that I've been away for the last week and these images are taken with my 5mp Toupcam eyepiece camera using my trusty 'portable' SM-LUX while I was away from the lab and the Orthoplan - and the fact that I just love slide-surfing!
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These are TS of Daffodil leaflets from about Feb 2016 I think. I was looking at them and considering how nice the vascular bundles of the leaflets have sectioned.
The 'bundle sheath' cells that surround the vessels, both those going 'along' the leaf and those traversing the leaf are easily seen around the veins and veinlets in these sections. These sheath cells support, to some small extent, the bundles through the more open tissue and are a way for substances (water and dissolved minerals maybe) from the roots to move from the xylem out into the leaf cells and so-called 'phloem loading' of sugars produced by the chloroplasts to move into the phloem and so be distributed, used or stored elsewhere in the plant's tissues and organs.
Anyway, details aside, the veins and their surrounding bundle sheath cells are seen in transverse section and the lateral veinlets that are 'sideways' across the axis of the leaf have, together with some bundle sheath cells above and below, been caught in longitudinal section (that is LS of the veinlets, the leaf section is in all cases TS).
Nice colours too, so I though I'd post them up for your perusal.
Here are a few sections freshly floated onto slides, still of course in the sectioning wax. The boomerang-shaped sections are the daffodil leaf sections seen in the following images, Here are a couple of bundles and their sheaths caught in TS, In closer the xylem, phloem and bundle sheath cells are clearly discernible, Here's a lateral vascular bundle (leaf vein) and sheath caught in LS within the TS of the leaf section, The last image is a funny shape as I had to rotate it as image is from part of the section that is in one of the 'arms' of the 'boomerang-shaped' leaf sections and so not originally horizontal....
Hope you like them, great fun just to slide-surf some evenings - I always find something new or a better view or image of something seen many times before - great fun and very satisfying. Such complexity as seen within plants never fails to teach me something wonderful every time I take the time to look and see through the trusty Orthoplan's glassy eyes!
John B.
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