Garden leaf

Apr 30, 2015 • 9:51 PM UTC

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140x Magnification

Microorganisms

Alice Dai

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This is part of a veggie plant that was growing in my backyard garden (called “A” 菜 in Chinese…I don’t know the translation!). I made sure to get a part of the leave’s midrib so I could observe its veinous structure. The midrib is much less pigmented due to its structural and transportation purposes when compared to the chloroplasts (the green parts) where photosynthetic tasks are delegated. Also note the little “dots” on the leaf that house the photosystems that capture sunlight photons and transfer them to NADPH and ATP in a series, called the light reaction. It would be really cool to see the stomatal and guard cells of this leaf more up close using a high-mag lens. You can kind of see them here, but the structures of the guard cell aren’t very clear.
Alice