Christmas Cactus Pollen And Playing With Light

Jan 03, 2025 • 4:14 PM UTC

Rock Hill, SC, USA

140x Magnification

Plants

Holly Stuart (Foldscope Team)

Education Specialist at Foldscope Instruments

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My Christmas cactus bloomed for the new year!

That meant I had pollen to look at with my Foldscope ! But, I didn't just stop with one picture! For those of you who know me, read my blogs, and see my posts both here and on social media, you know that I love to experiment with light. The type of light you choose for microscopy can completely change the feeling, emotion, and intent of the image! Here are some examples of what I mean.

This image was captured using a Foldscope 2.0 at 140X magnification. The lighting comes from a lightbox.

These were also taken with a Foldscope 2.0 at 140X on a lightbox, but I used the 5X zoom on my phone to provide more detail.

(Is it just me or do they look like freeze dried wasabi peas??!!)

For the next image, I kept the lighting the same, but increased the magnification to 340X.

I then used the 5X zoom on my phone to get the highest level of detail (still using the lightbox for lighting).

Here is where it gets fun! I kept the magnification at 340X plus 5X zoom with my phone, but I switched up the lighting and went to the LED light module. The tan background was a lucky shot I captured as I was playing around with shifting the LED module back and forth behind the Foldscope 2.0!

I then went to my original Foldscope (140X) with the LED light module and played with darkfield lighting. The pollen grains look completely different! I love how they begin to glow against the black background!

Once again, I used the 5X zoom to get even more detail with the darkfield lighting. These images really make the pollen grains look like drops of gold!

I hope that this post inspires you to go out there and play with lighting on all of your samples. You never know what the right lighting conditions might reveal! Happy Foldscoping!