This is the fleshy meat of a succulent plant. We can clearly see the cell walls that retain the water and hold the green dots observed in the image. The green dots are chloroplasts, which are green structures which contain the pigment chlorophyll. They absorb light energy which is then used in photosynthesis to make sugars.

Afterwards, I was really curious to see what I would observe if I took dry slivers of the succulent’s “leaf”. These slivers previously held fleshy meat, but were now brown and dry. With this close-up, I can observe that there are no longer any green chloroplasts, as the leaf no longer is part of the plant and doesn’t receive nutrients nor water from the main plant. Also, I see empty pockets in between the orange-yellow lumps, which I predict are places that were previously saturated with water.

I further wanted to check out the epidermis of a leaf, which is the outermost cell layer of the plant body. This was one of the most fascinating things that I can seen; the epidermis also held sections of cell walls, meaning that the side is also lined with cell bodies.

The samples were obtained from a common household succulent plant that are part of my collection of succulents in my room at Caltech. I took the samples in my room on May 29, 2019 at 8:45 AM.

To get the fleshy meat of a succulent plant, I tore off a piece of a leaf from the plant and used tweezers to pull out some meat from the leaf. The meat was transferred to a slide before placing a slip over it.

To get the dry slivers of the succulent’s “leaf”, I took a dead leaf on the ground of the pot’s soil and used tweezers to pull out some sheets of dry leaf. The sheets were transferred to a slide before placing a slip over it.

To get the epidermis of a leaf, I used the same piece of leaf from the first sample and used tweezers to tear off the outermost sheet that covered the leaf. This sheet is likely used to hold and retain water for the succulent. The sheet was transferred to a slide before placing a slip over it. #caltechbi1