Pod People

 Day 21: I got quite a surprise when I looked through the microscope yesterday morning. I had been out in the yard gathering various items of interest, and on my way back to the house, the Sword Fern (Polystichum munitum) at the end of my carport caught my eye. I figured the spore capsules and/or spores would be too opaque to view without top lighting, but I scraped a few off with an X-acto knife and put them in the well of a concave slide. After adding a drop of water to separate them, I placed a cover slip over the well and put that slide on the bottom of the pile, fully expecting it to be a total flop when I put it under the 'scope. It turned out to be my best slide of the day, and I spent the next hour exploring the world of the Pod, although no spores were in evidence.

Without a mechanical stage, it's very difficult to get an object in the center of the field of view on the higher magnifications. First off, you need to move it counter-intuitively, i.e., a nudge on the left side moves the material to the left, not to the right as you might expect, and a nudge on the side toward you moves the material toward you rather than away. Second, the slightest tap may be enough to send your subject entirely out of the field of view, in which case you revert to a lower magnification and try centering it again. A mechanical stage overcomes this by allowing more regulated movement of the slide (I've ordered one). Fortunately, these wonderful spore capsules were large enough to be easily found again. What amazing structures!