Foldscope on a farm
Jul 05, 2024 • 4:27 AM UTC
Petaluma, CA 94952, USA
140x Magnification
Plants
Ben Foster
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I thought it would be fun to write a short summary of some things I’ve observed using a Foldscope at my family’s farm as the harvest season approaches.
We primarily raise dairy cattle on the farm, but we also have a small orchard and garden in addition to some sheep, donkeys, and chickens. Within the orchard, we mostly grow plums, apples, pears, and nectarines. Below are some photos comparing the leaves and skins of each fruit.
Here is a nectarine tree:
We primarily raise dairy cattle on the farm, but we also have a small orchard and garden in addition to some sheep, donkeys, and chickens. Within the orchard, we mostly grow plums, apples, pears, and nectarines. Below are some photos comparing the leaves and skins of each fruit.
Here is a nectarine tree:
Here is the leaf at 50x:
and here it is at 340x:
And here's a photo of an unripe nectarine
Scraping a tiny patch of the skin off, we find an incredible structure of coloration at 50x:
It's fascinating how the color is distributed over the cells (340x)
Next we'll walk over to an apple tree:
Here's a small piece of apple skin at 50x (unfortunately out of focus):
Here it is at 340x:
The speckling of red pigments is much finer on the apple than the nectarine.
Next we'll look at a pear.
Next we'll look at a pear.
The leaves of the pear tree are pretty comparable to that of a nectarine. Here's a fragment at 50,140,340x:
The chlorophyll is incredibly vibrant.
We also image the pear itself. It was harder to get a thin section of the skin, so the image quality is worse:
(50x)
We also image the pear itself. It was harder to get a thin section of the skin, so the image quality is worse:
(50x)
And here it is at 140x
And lastly we'll look at a plum. This tree produces so many plums each year that we need to support its branches to save them from snapping
Here's the skin of a plum at 50x:
and here it is at 340x:
Overall, I was pretty surprised at how colorless the plum is relative to the pear. To the eye, they seem like pretty similar shades of green, but I guess the plum skin is far more translucent than the pear skin.
It would be very neat to image a nectarine or apple skin across its development and see how the coloration develops and spreads. I'm reluctant to do that only because cutting the skin can expose the plant to diseases, and the nectarines are too delicious to sacrifice to science.
In the next post, I'll show some things in the garden and perhaps in future I can show some animal hairs or things that live in our lake.
It would be very neat to image a nectarine or apple skin across its development and see how the coloration develops and spreads. I'm reluctant to do that only because cutting the skin can expose the plant to diseases, and the nectarines are too delicious to sacrifice to science.
In the next post, I'll show some things in the garden and perhaps in future I can show some animal hairs or things that live in our lake.
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