Dead Pachira aquatica leaf
Nov 05, 2020 • 8:25 AM UTC
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elliotly
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I conducted this project as part of Professor Pringle’s EEB321 class at Princeton University. Upon assembling my Foldscope, I was immediately eager to look at one of the many potted plants in my house up close. While scouring my house for a worthy candidate, I found that one of them — a Pachira aquatica — had a small, thumbnail-sized dry leaf still attached to its stem. It was remarkably smaller than all the other leaves (which were about the length of my palm), which prompted me to take a closer look at it — it also looked like it had been dead for a long time, while the rest of the plant looked fine. I wondered why it hadn’t seemed to reach its full size and what had caused it to shrivel up.
Looking closer at it, I got to take a good look at the dead plant tissue , featuring empty, dry cells with darker parts (probably the remnants of veins.) It was a straw like golden color. There were remarkably few dots or impurities — just a couple of black dots I observed that could’ve been organisms or detritus. I found the pattern of these veins very interesting. They don’t run straight down the leaf but almost fence in microscopic sections of the leaf in hexagons and squares.
The plant was still alive so I wonder what caused this leaf to shrivel up, but I couldn’t seem to find an obvious answer here; I didn’t see any small bugs moving or anything eating the leaf. I wonder if it could’ve simply dried up. This would also look quite different if it were a dead leaf from a plant outside rather than a potted plant, I would guess — the leaf didn’t seem to be affected by any organisms and was exceptionally intact.
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