Lily: Pollen and Cross-section of Stigma

Jul 17, 2019 • 10:53 AM UTC

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140x Magnification

Microorganisms

MananSuri

My name is Manan. I am a student from New Delhi, India. I like to explore the world around me, and foldscope acts like a gateway for me to delve into the microcosmos. Always open to learning new things, meeting new people and and having new memories.

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I bought a bouquet of lilies for my mother on her birthday, and a day later, its anthers started dehiscing.
I made a slide of the pollen, and viewed it the next morning. The pollen grains appear to have a very good resolution, and the pattern on the exine is quite visible.

Pollen Grains under foldscope, also magnified using the phone camera.

I was then interested in finding out the size of the pollen, since they seemed to have swollen since my last observation.

The pollen seemed to have a size of 90 microns. I used the 0.5mm grid available in the deluxe kit.

A picture of the slide itself. I cut a few cross-sections of the stigma, and I could see that they had irregular sizes. The nucleus was quite prominent in all these observations.

cross-section of the stigma under 0.5mm grid.

It seems like the parts of the slides which had pollen grain had stained yellow naturally, but other parts like these seemed to not have been. Its great seeing the little things around us become so vivid and detailed under the foldscope.
Manan