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Living and Dried Leaves
Feb 20, 2021 15:00:57   #
Don Schaeffer Loc: Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL8KJBq1TU0
I usually divide my time between looking at the
artificial mud puddle and examining plant samples.
This time I wanted to see if I could distinguish
between the cell structure of living leaves
and that of dried leaves. What I found was (except for color)
the difference appears to lie under the surface layer of cells.
Please note that the label for the dried leaves accidentally
came a little late in the sequence.

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Feb 21, 2021 10:53:08   #
JBRIII
 
Don Schaeffer wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL8KJBq1TU0
I usually divide my time between looking at the
artificial mud puddle and examining plant samples.
This time I wanted to see if I could distinguish
between the cell structure of living leaves
and that of dried leaves. What I found was (except for color)
the difference appears to lie under the surface layer of cells.
Please note that the label for the dried leaves accidentally
came a little late in the sequence.


Cell walls are made up of lignocellulose, neither of which easily/rapidly disappears under such circumstances, otherwise no wood would be around. Leaves can actually still metabolize the soluble goodies in the cells for quite sometime after being removed from a plant. The best hay, for example, would be made by cutting the hay, gathering immediately and drying at 60 C in a forced air oven. No problem if money/profit were not a problem. Also, surface reflection might result in little apparent differences in what one sees photography. It would be interesting to see what you might find if you took photos using light transmitted thru the leaves, might just be a combination of inner and outer layers or show changes not apparent due to surface reflection. I worked in compositional area and spectroscopy of hays, but never photography of such.

This work is interesting and thought provoking to me. Makes me think about what else might be done. Afterall, photography is really broad band spectroscopy. Comparison of UV versus visible might be interesting for example.

Thanks;
Jim

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Feb 21, 2021 11:28:35   #
Don Schaeffer Loc: Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
 
Thanks Jim. The dissection of the leaves is several cell levels thick. I try to focus up and down through the various cell layers as if it were a composite.

I thought I found that there were changes inside the leaf when it dried. The smooth cell structure in the layers below the surface was replaced with more rigid cell walls and circular growths began to appear. Does this seem credible to you?

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Feb 21, 2021 14:29:23   #
JBRIII
 
Don Schaeffer wrote:
Thanks Jim. The dissection of the leaves is several cell levels thick. I try to focus up and down through the various cell layers as if it were a composite.

I thought I found that there were changes inside the leaf when it dried. The smooth cell structure in the layers below the surface was replaced with more rigid cell walls and circular growths began to appear. Does this seem credible to you?


Probably gotten myself into too deep here. Really need a cell biologist. I can think of many things that could be happening, but really just guessing. For example, outer cells would be more protective in nature, covered with waxy cuticle, etc. Leaves in general have less lignocellulose than stems as they are not structural in nature. Drying changes many things, think dried versus cooked spagetti, so increase in rigidity easy to see. Drying also changes spectral response. For example, glucose and sucrose look very different as dried crystals in the visible, but in water they look very similar. So as leaves dry, I can see where all sorts of things physically, chemically and spectrally could occur.
For example, take a green coke bottle, grind it up and it looks white due to scattering. But put it in carbon tetrachloride and it looks green again.
I'm not sure anything above helps you, but those are my thoughts.

There are many things like this I see in retirement which are interesting, but:
1. Even searching the literature is very expensive when one pays out of ones own pocket for articles at $25 or more.
2. Don't have access to instruments to study things. Even being a researcher, it still absolutely floors me how expensive research is. I would estimate each peer reviewed article where I worked cost on average at least $100,000.

One of my questions, which may be known, is how cactus can change. Cactus have no vascular system like many plants which why it is easy to graft one onto another so easily. But i they get big, they develop trucks like trees for support (Galapogus prickly pear for example). Some large prickly pears look like trees with cactus on top. Inside one finds rod like structure. They probably have lignin like trees, but I personally don't know if that is true.

Good luck with your work;
Jim

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Feb 21, 2021 15:37:57   #
Don Schaeffer Loc: Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
 
Dear Jim. My work is play. I have no time for real work.

Reply
Feb 21, 2021 22:56:16   #
JBRIII
 
Don Schaeffer wrote:
Dear Jim. My work is play. I have no time for real work.


Dear Don;

During retirement seminars people often asked what are we going to do with all the time, the answer from many retires was I don't know how I ever found the time to work before. If you have any imagination, which you obviously do, it truly becomes a good question. No time for all the things one wishes to do.

Have fun;
Jim

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Feb 22, 2021 06:44:36   #
Don Schaeffer Loc: Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
 
Thanks Jim.

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