Flower of Capsella bursa-pastoris under the Microscope 🔬

Capsella bursa-pastoris, a.k.a Shepherd’s Purse. This is for @linnyplant, something pretty under the microscope for once. Lol. It is not a rose petal but close enough. This is a pre-prepared slide which appears to have been stained pink. It did help to see the cell membranes on the petals, but it made it hard to see many of the other parts of the flower.

Shepherd’s purse, the common name for this plant comes from the supposed likeness of its seed pod to a type of 16th century purse suspended from a cord worn round the waist of shepherds and country people. Source

Funny how the things are named after something else that looks like it. Makes you wonder sometimes which came first when you don’t know the history of it.

But when you look at the image of the purse like shaped pod, it looks more like little hearts. But if we were to use the 16th century type purse, I would probably say it looks more like that instead.

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I had actually checked out the slide before searching up what it is I am looking at. Upon searching up for a full image of the plant, it reminded me of a weed with the way the leaves at the base appear. But guess what, it is a common weed. Hahaha. Although it is a weed, it is used in some Japanese and Korea dishes.

Oh that reminds me of a Korean variety show I watched where an older lady was picking weeds in someone’s garden. She was telling her partner that these are edible, so she started picking them. The owner was surprised, stating she had though they were just weeds and didn’t know you could eat them. Now I know which weed they were referring to.

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Here is the sample I checked out.

As you can see, with everything stained pink, it made some parts harder to see. Although this is also the case because the sample is little thick. Where the flower was cut in half then mounted onto the slide.

Here I tried to adjust the iris diaphragm so we can see some details better. It didn't seem to help much.

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Overall with the staining, it helped to see the cell membranes of the petal better. Including the vein. Other than that, you can't really see much detail. What I might do next time, is gather a small flower sample and cut it open. But instead of mounting it, I will view it with an overhead light instead. Like how I did it with the insect bodies.

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Unless cited, all other images and gifs belong to @supersoju

References:
Capsella bursa-pastoris
Capsella bursa-pastoris – SHEPHERD'S-PURSE