Yesterday,  whilst I was strolling in my city , I found some spiderwort species growing vigorously nearby and instantly

This is what I saw:  epidermal cells and beautiful stomata amongst them. To my surprise, some (four?) subsidiary cells sorround the two guard cells that  make an stomata, a fact I did not know before this observation.

I hope you can distinguish the vast array of chloroplasts inside the guard cells. Nevertheless, I decided to try with the high magnification lens and see what I was so lucky to watch!

The guard cells bulge and control the aperture between them (in black).

I wanted to better distinguish each cell using a blue food dye, but it was not useful.

Finally, I decided to try a very thin “loaf” of one leaf in my Foldscope, and saw this absolutely amazing  scaffolding of cells .

This arrangement lets them  funtion as living factories of the mollecules of life. In this orchestra of  cells, stomata act as carbon dioxide sinks. A lot to think about this!

Happy new year and thanks for reading!

Cristina Bosch