Taking a second look at that sunflower

  • October 25, 2016
Categories
Mucking About With Things Spitting Images

First, for the sake of comparison, here’s what the edge of one of the green bracts ringing the back of the sunflower’s head looked like through my 60x-100x-magnification clip-on microscope:

The edge of one of the green bracts behind the sunflower's flower-looking parts.

Now here are two bract-edge photos taken with my 200x-500x USB scope (it’s a Measurement eScope DP-M07) at 500x magnification:

A photo of the edge of one of the green bracts taken with a slightly more powerful scope. Another photo of the edge of one of the green bracts taken with a slightly more powerful scope.

I didn’t get around to looking at the bract surface farther from the edge with the clip-on microscope, but here’s a photo taken with the USB microscope:

A photo of the bract surface taken with the USB scope.

As for the immature disk florets that comprise the sunflower’s center, below is one of the clip-on scope photos which I’ve already posted. It’s followed by one of the higher-magnification images taken using the 200x-500x-magnification USB scope:

Immature disk florets viewed through the clip-on scope. Immature disk florets viewed through the USB microscope. Under the illumination of the clip-on scope’s single LED, they were shiny and black. They’re still shiny when seen through the USB microscope but seem pinkish beneath the glare of its ring of eight LEDs.