Rhizosphere of Eichhornia sp.

[Leo van Griensven]

Dear All,

The longer I am  professionally involved in biological research the more I like to study the pure beauty of nature. Therefore I took up microscopy again and right away I experience lack of knowledge of what I am looking at. What I did here is take an underwater rootlet of Eichhornia sp, stain it with fluorescent stains, i.e. acridine orange and ethidium bromide and look at it using a Reichert-Jung Polyvar equipped with B1 filter. This is the result. Now the parenchymous tissue of Eichhornia shows up bright orange, any chloroplast will be red colored I think, but what organisms do we see here that grow on or infect the rootlet. Especially the curly hairs surprise me, because literature speaks about raphids consisting of Ca-oxalate, but I never saw any curly crystals.


So both pictures surprise me, not only because of beauty but also because of my lack of knowledge.

Cheers,
Leo van Griensven.