I located some moss plants growing in a shady corner of my garden.  On foldscoping, I could make out these were moss protonema (i.e. juvenile moss plants). On germination spores of mosses form green filamentous leafy structures that usually lak midrib. These are called Primary protonema. These then give way to slightly big leafy structures called…

There is an evergreen, succulent plant – Pepromia growing in a pot in my courtyard. I observed safranin stained transverse sections of the stem to observe its vascular bundles arranged in a ring under the foldscope. Epidermal peel of the leaf revealed irregular cells with presence of secondary metabolites and some aqueous sap filled cells….

Thorn apple – one of the poisonous flowering plant in nightshade family was seen growing along the banks of Ghaggar river in Panchkula district of Haryana (India). It commonly grows as a weed in waste lands along roadside and railway lines. It has trumpet shaped flowers and a spiny capsular fruit with numerous seeds. The…

Botanically known as Yucca, is a plant of ethnobotanic importance. Its stiff and sword-shaped leaves  have pointed tips The bell-shaped flowers hang loosely in clusters giving it the name – Christmas bells. It is a plant cultivated in rocky gardens and xeriscapes, but otherwise found abundantly in dry wastelands. In my beautiful city Chandigarh (India),…

Foldscope unfolded sticky pollen in another plant – Duranta erecta commonly called Damyanti. Duranta erecta is a common shrub cultivated in gardens as a fence is an invasive species. It bears small blue to purple somewhat tubular flowers hanging out in terminal clusters. I split open a flower to separate stamens and carpel. The petals…