botanyshitposts:

botanyshitposts:

hey i almost forgot, i used the herbarium’s photography setup to take Super High Res Images of those really cool bisected Stylites specimens! i still need to process the images to a more accessible format (theyre photoshop files right now) but it’s crazy, you can see the primitive vascular trace up the middle and what looks like a couple similarly primitive different woody tissues. i need to read up more on isoetale anatomy to be able to tell whats what, but its pretty goddamn cool just seeing the inside a bit closer. 

these are lower quality bc theyre screenshots but this is prob my fave image. look at the weird little pore structures right below the leaves- i can’t tell if those are like, sieve tubes or xylem bc the corm/rhizome woody thing is technically a modified stem and the pores taper off into the line down the center of the plant that i’m assuming is the main vascular trace so like maybe, but like at the same time these plants literally evolved before roots were a thing (those ‘roots’ that u see are not roots, but in fact modified leaves bc they never learned how to make modern roots with root hairs and specialized root tissues, thats how fucking old they are) so like can we even compare the anatomy of this to a modern plant in any capacity? what is even happening here? what the hell is this? i love it