Trees under the microscope

[daltontrees]

a few pictures from when I did my foundation degree

Oak transverse

Acer transverse

Scots pine radial

scotspine transverse

 

Excellent! Did you make the slides yourself?

 

The first two seem to illustratet the difference between ring porous and diffuse porous quite well. I was planning to put a couple of examples up to illustrate this, might still do so in a format that allows me to annotate them.

Edited December 14, 2013 by daltontrees

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

oh I cant wait to join in on this party!

 

I imagine a new way, where everyone has a scope and gets into the knitty gritty of it all, imagine one day every arb rather than the odd one or two from each generation starts discovering!

[David Humphries]

Have only ever flicked through this one at the library at Alice Holt, but looks to be a useful reference to aid wood identification at micro level.

 

Microscopic Wood Anatomy by Fritz Hans Schweingruber

 

 

Image from the NHBC website.

[daltontrees]

Schweingruber is the man, although I wouldn't fancy having his surname and it translated into english.

 

I had great plans over Christmas to fill this thread up with useful and inspiring stuff, but it never happened. It's surprising how lists of things to do expand to fill and exceed available time a.k.a. the Schweingruber paradox.

 

For teh meantime here's another bit of explanation about microscopes. Last thing I mentioned was the difference between reflected light and transmitted light microscopy. Reflected light just means looking at things very very close up using light bouncing off them. Transmitted light means looking through things, usually cut so thin that even something like wood will let some light pass through it.

 

Here's one of my transmitted light microscopes. It is a fancy one for looking at rock thin sections (yes, if you slice rocks thinly enough you can see through them, honestly!). but all,the basics are there for looking at plants in transmitted light. i.e. (i) a built-in light source at the bottom, mains powered (older microscopes may have a pivoting mirror instead so you can use house lights or a window as a light source) (b) a condenser that concentrates the light upwards through a hole in the © stage on which the slide is put and held in place by spring clamps (d) an objective lens that is very powerful in gatering light from a tiny field of view very close to the slide (this microscope has 4 objectives that can be swivelled into place according to how much magnification you want) (e) a focusing knob that moves the stage up and down to get the slide in focus and (f) an eyepiece lens that makes the image suitable for viewing by the human eye and also magnifies the image and additional 10 times (this one has 2 eyepieces, the equivalent of binoculars instead of a telescope).

 

Thgis one cost about £400 new but it has many features you wouldn't need on a biological microscope. Anyone could pick up a cheap second hand student microscope on eBay for £40 that would more than do the job.

[daltontrees]

Fairly random picture of mine from one of my slides, can't remember what it is, not woody but showing what can be achieved with a half-decent microscope (the one pictured in my previous post) and a camera held to the eyepiece.

[Gary Prentice]

Any recommendations as to websites for preparing slides etc

[sean]

This thread is for any interesting pictures, discussion, techniques etc. for discovering more about trees by examining them under the microscope. I will kick off with a few random pictures of my own. First is the cross section of a conifer needle. If I find the slide again I will confirm the species. Please look in from time to time even if you are not participating. If nothing else the pictures can be very pretty.

 

These are brilliant......the first looks like it could be a mad painting of an Oak Crown or a cloud with people congretating underneath it..........or maybe thats just me.

[Gary Prentice]

Well I finally got this USB thing up and running, but I'm disappointed. The magnification is terrible, anything above 20X and the object is too close to focus.

 

The capture element is in video -huh- and I can't seem to find a photo option. What hasn't helped is the lack of a user manual with it, but it can't be that hard, can it?

[daltontrees]

I'm sorry to hear that it's not working. Did you buy it second-hand? What make and model is it? It really shouldn't be hard to operate, when I got mine I didn't even look at the manual, just plugged it in and put the mini CD in and it worked right away. Mine has a video function too but I just use it as a CCTV till i line up the right shot for a still.

[daltontrees]

Any recommendations as to websites for preparing slides etc

 

I was hoping someone would help me with this too. When I get a moment I plan to put some pictures up of a simple slide being produced from non-woody material using an improvised microtome. But my own wood ones have been a bit poor, I could do with advice.