The Unseen World of Plants

Modern technologies have expanded our view of the plant world. With magnification as high as 200,000x, scanning electron microscopes can transform the view of a grain of pollen from a simple speck to a highly-detailed textured form. Images produced this way reveal the unseen world of plants and with a bit of colourization become stunning 'botanical art'.

Another fascinating view of the hidden world of plants comes through time-lapse photography. With a few exceptions, the movement of plants is so slow that they appear motionless. A series of images captured at set intervals over a period of days viewed in succession reveals the motion of plants. The resulting videos show the action of flowers following the sun, vines clasping on supports and seeds germinating.

Links:

• Eye of Science website of a photographer and biologist team, who produce images with scientific accuracy and aesthetic beauty


• MicroAngela a gallery of colourized images from electron microscopes at the University of Hawaii


• Welcome to the World of Scanning Electron Microscopy from Iowa State University, includes pages about scanning electron microscope technology and a gallery of images submitted by students


• Scanning Electron Microscope from the Boston Museum of Science with a good description of the technology and an image gallery


• Plants-In-Motion time-lapse photography movies of plants (Movies are in QuickTime format. It can take a little time to download them. Make sure the movies are fully downloaded before you start them.

Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:56 PM on March 2, 2005

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