I remembered getting my glasses for the first time and being able to see all the leaves on the tree! With this microscope, I wanted to take a deeper look at the different foliage on our campus. The bottom leaf was a holly. A closer look revealed the chloroplast and the individual cells within the leaf. The second picture is a fragment of moss, with a feathery-like edge. This made sense because moss can feel soft and feathery. Finally, the picture with small holes in it is of a wilted, dying brown leaf. The holes were fascinating to me because they could not be seen with a naked eye. I imagine this is what happens when the cells no longer reproduce and start to deteriorate. I wonder if dying tissues of other organisms also possess holes such as these.

I conducted this project as part of
Professor Pringle’s EEB321 class at Princeton University.