Sundew

Sundew or Drosera forms perfect rosettes to the ground and has red tentacles with a sticky, glittering droplet which is secreted by a gland. The flower owes its name to this. Small animals get stuck in the drop and are pushed by the moving tentacles to the leaf surface where they are digested.

Prepared slide by Lieder

© www.willemsmicroscope.com

Multipurpose symbiosis

The black alder - Alnus glutinosa - lives in symbiosis with bacteria from the actinomycetes group. These are capable of withdrawing nitrogen from the atmosphere. Through this partnership, the alder, despite its relatively high nutritional requirements, can colonize nitrogen-poor locations.

Chestnut and the Motic Panthera U

While looking through my new stock of prepared slides, I came across this specimen, a section of a petiole of the Castanea sativa. The Castanea sativa or European chestnut is widespread in Europe and Asia, meanwhile also in other temperate zones. The chestnuts are consumed since ancient times by people. The tree can become very old.

It was not necessary to take multiple photos of the object and stack it. The coupe was cut perfectly flat. The section is stained according to the Wacker 3A procedure (Acridine red -Acriflavin - Astra blue).

Iodine, indispensable

For the photo, a tiny grain of iodine was applied over an object slide with a cover slip on top. After gently melting it over a spirit flame and then solidifying, a crystal structure appears, which can be seen with the help of polarization.

Widespread

Bryum argenteum or Silver moss is perhaps the most widespread moss in the world, although in many regions it is found primarily in human settlements. It is prevalent in atmospherically polluted areas. It can be found in large cities on tarred roads, on concrete structures (e.g. between paving stones, at the bases of walls, on roofs and windowsills) on soil as well as in waste areas, but also in more natural habitats.

Black rust

Black rust is a disease that only occurs on wheat. It is caused by a fungus, Puccinia graminis. Puccinia is a genus of the order of the Rusts (Uredinales). The telia, in which the teliospores* are formed, are black. There are also other rust diseases, such as the yellow and brown rust, but the black variant is the most aggressive. The first sign that wheat has been contaminated with it, is a type of red, rusty blisters on the stem. Then the wheat grains shrivel, the stem bends, and eventually the plant dies and turns black.

Awaruite, a controversial and almost extraterrestrial mineral

Awaruite is a rare terrestrial nickel-iron alloy, with the formula Ni3Fe, which was found, in the form of nuggets, in black sands and of great specific weight in the Gorge River, on the West Coast of New Zealand.

Font: Google maps

The species was determined by W. Skey, a researcher of the New Zealand Geological Survey Office, in 1885. His analytical results indicated it was this rare alloy, with an element composition more typical of meteorites than terrestrial rocks. The samples those Skey studied, came from a collection of minerals sent by the Warden of the Jackson’s Bay District (Okahu in Māori), also on the West Coast of New Zealand.

Unfortunately, Skey and his director J. Hector did not know the exact location of the founding of these black sands. The information accompanying samples indicated that they had been brought by placer gold prospectors from Barn Bay.

They gave it the name of Awaruite after Awarua Bay (Māori name for Big Bay), where the Awarua River flows out, thinking that this was the correct locality. This mineral has never been found in that bay. All samples came from the Gorge River area, about 15 km north of Big Bay and about 20 km south of Barn Bay.

View of the Gorge River mouth, West Coast, New Zealand. © Long family, Gorge River. (Font)

Boost your resistance

At the time of the Corona crisis, many people resort to remedies to increase resistance to disease, such as vitamin C and Multi vitamin tablets. These, in this case foam tablets, contain many other substances besides the vitamins. Although the subject ‘vitamin C’ has been used many times in microscopy, it is still fun to view the crystals of these substances under the polarization microscope.

So, no sooner said than done, the tablets are now up for grabs at home anyhow. Dissolve a tablet in water, filter the solution, heat a few droplets of the solution on an object glass over a spirit burner in order to saturate it by evaporation. Let it crystallize patiently, put a cover glass on it and move it under the microscope.

A curious caterpillar in the moss

In The Netherlands there are many working groups that regularly make an inventory of the mosses present in nature. For this purpose, the natural landscape is divided into square sections of 1 x 1 km that are characterized by nationally determined coordinates. In such a section it is observed which kinds of mosses occur in it. Many mosses can be identified on the spot. Here, people often use a magnifying glass. Sometimes the determination has to be done at home with the help of a microscope. The results of such an inventory are centrally placed in the "NDFF Verspreidingsatlas" (distribution atlas): www.verspreidingsatlas.nl. This is a database that has been made possible by various nature organizations, with the aim of following the development of the mosses flora under the influence of the environment in the Netherlands.

A common pest

Rosebay willowherb or Fireweed - Chamerion angustifolium - is a very striking and widespread plant species. During flowering it is easy to recognize. The upright plants have a cluster-shaped inflorescence at the top that tapers to a point. The color of the flowers is purple or purple-red. The separate flowers in the cluster are somewhat symmetrical on both sides because the top two petals are somewhat smaller than the bottom two. The scattered leaves are narrow and lanceolate and closely resemble the leaves of Willows.