Looking for unopened sporangia – (these are the structures that contain spores and can be found on ferns and other plants) – I found them at the end of my holiday in a tropical country. The climate there allows development of sporangi allthrough the year. Ferns were abundant over there, and I was able to find many different variants. Back home it was fun to observe them with a fluorescence microscope.
Many differences in size, colour of radiated light, size of sori and how populated on the leafs. E.g. the sporangi in photo 6 were exclusively covering the outer edge of the soft finger shaped leafs.
Photo 1 to 3 show a not yet identified plant with long flat yucca-ish leafs. The sporangia were on the backside in a square pattern.
Photo 1 and 2 with (approximately) 7x objective and respectively the green and blue filter block. (merged from 2 stacks) Photo 3 the same but with 9x objective. The remaining pictures were also taken with the 9x. Photo 4 and 5 are from one of the ferns, you can see some sporangia cracked open. Photo 6 as previously mentioned, radiation colour more purple and blue. Excitation for all was ultraviolet.
Picture 7 was actually taken before 6, I think it shows a bit more detail (e.g. detail of the spores kept inside).
7.
The next challenge was to work with higher
magnification. Lomo manufactured a standard set of M27 epi objectives
with 9x, 21x, 40x and 95x magnification. Besides that there’s the “old”
set of M27 epi objectives that are longer and haven’t got the
magnification engraved, but the Na and the focal length. Because somehow
the 21x objective did not provide the expected detail, I switched over
to the F 8,2 / Na 0,37 objective. Based on the Na the expected
magnification would be 18x, when compared with a calibration slide it
appears to be 22,5x. This was better than the 21x objective, see below
picture
For picture 10 I’ve tested my 95x/1,0 (oil
immersion) objective with spores. Fortunately the spore in the picture
did not move around in the drop of oil. UV excitation and green filter
block. The first picture I’ve taken with that objective!
Picture 11 shows a “garden fern” growing as street decoration. The sori
of this one are like crusts that crack open from one end when the
sporangi need to be released. As you see, also these were empty, however
interesting autofluorescence.
