On 1pm, May 3rd, 2019, I collected some pollen samples of some flowers (which I found out are heirloom hollyhocks later) outside the Chandler Cafe at Caltech (1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA, USA). I ground the pollens carefully, put them onto a glass slide, topped the sample with a glass cover, and properly mounted the slide into my foldscope. Below are the pictures of the pollen sample that I took with my cellphone.
Figure 1-1: Foldscope photo of pollen sample of heirloom hollyhocks at Caltech
Figure 1-2: Foldscope photo of pollen sample of heirloom hollyhocks at Caltech
Figure 1-3: Foldscope photo of pollen sample of heirloom hollyhocks at Caltech
The image displays what cells the pollen of heirloom hollyhocks outside the Chandler Cafe at Caltech contains, and there are many cells in the sample. It seems that there are a large number of granule within one pollen sample.
By taking pictures of the flowers that I took the pollen out of and google image searching what the flowers are, I found out that these flowers are in fact heirloom hollyhocks. Hollyhocks, also known as alcea, is a genus of about 60 species of flowering plants in the mallow family Malvaceae, and they are native to Asia and Europe.
Here are some interesting questions about the picture: Approximately, how many granule there are within one pollen? How large is a cell in the photo? How many cells there are in the pollen sample? In order to solve the questions, we shall read the scale from the Foldscope and compare the scale with the observation to get the estimations. With the help of these questions, we can know more about the nature of pollens and heirloom hollyhocks.
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