I've been playing-around hand-sectioning some of the very small stems of a Bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea) plant standing in a large pot in my garden. These stems although very small, about 2mm diameter, are very tough and quite hard to cut through. I used a single-sided razor with the stem pieces held down by my thumb. The blade I aligned with the back of my thumb to move back the teeniest bit as successive sections were taken.
The potted Bamboo,
The equipment is simple enough.
The Safranin (red stain mainly for lignin - the hard reinforcing substance that supports plants) is a powder and for 5g (enough to make at least 500ml of stain!) is very inexpensive. This stain will stain just about any plant material and is simply mixed with water. I buy mine via e-bay from 'scuddlebut'....
The mountant is a temporary one - months not days though. It's alcohol-based so specimens are best mounted from alcohol into this mountant. This little jar lasts years, and is very cheap from Brunel Microscopes - I think it's 'proper' name is 'Euparal'...
After cutting some sections and placing them into some water, pick-up each section with a tweezer or froceps and dip into 1% Safranin for about 5 seconds, then put into water to remove excess stain. Then into 50% alcohol for about 30 minutes before placing into 95% alcohol for another 30 minutes before mounting.
Here's a nice section perfectly good enough to show the stem structure - in this case the stem of this Bamboo shows all the typical characters of a monocotyledonous plant, and a whole lot more....
This is a temporary-mount as described, with coverslip,
Here's a 4x objective, 2-image stitch, in brightfield,
Here at 10x,
This is at 4x with the use of the 'DF' darkfield stop of the phase contrast condenser in my BX40,
This is with the condenser set to the 'Ph3' setting, normally used for a high-power (above 40x) phase-contrast objective. Used as here with a normal BF 4x objective, the phase-stop of the condenser gives a quite godd darkfield,
This is at 20x, fiber details begin to emerge....
and,
At 40x,
and,
60x, no wonder this is a tough stem to cut - fibers everywhere beneath the epidermis as well as surrounding the scattered vascular bundles seen in earlier images!
Here's the 10x objective and the DF setting of the condenser,
10x phase contrast objective with phase contrast condenser, not a very good phase result. Phase isn't known for being much use for sections that are stained, or more crucially, as thick as these. Phase performs as intended with thin and unstained or transparent tissue.
I though some may like to see what may be easily, cheaply and quickly achieved with a razor, some stain, alcohol and quick & easy mountant.