The warmth of Summer brings plenty of bugs, greenery and of course floating algae rafts on the lakes near the shore. Recently, we stopped and sampled this green slime, and gave it a good look under the microscope. We found two species of algae, and a surprisingly detailed sprinkling of duck weed - a tiny floating clover shaped plant with root tendrils that floats on the surface. Of course there were tiny water flea like animals and numerous single celled micro organisms which are nearly transparent scuttling about amongst the algae fibers. At least a dozen or more images were stacked for each image using Picolay. This focus stacking software allows a huge range of focus in each image.Here is a photo tour of what we found!

Here are a few shots with the 4x objective, yielding a magnification visually around 60x.

This first shot is some of the algae slime at low power. You can see it is not random, but contains numerous forked branches and is weaved together in a tight mat.

The petals of the Duck weed were a surprise. Look at the individual cells making up the flat single leaf of the four leaf clover like plant. On the left edge is in the background one of the root tendrils that comes off the underside. We will look more closely at that later.

Here is a sequence of images that are with the 10x objective, yielding about the same view as the 160x eyepiece.

Looking more closely at the Duck weed leaf, we can see the cells more clearly, like small round gelatinous bags of water. Look very closely and you can see the guard cells around the numerous stomata. Dont worry, Ill explain what they are coming up!

Close up of one of the root tendrils. The cells are easy to see and are elongated in the direction of the tendril. Inside is a darker group of cells in the core of the fiber.

One of the best root tendrils can be seen here.

40x Objective shots. This yields around 600x visually and here we can see TWO species of algae. One is the slender tube of cells seen rising from bottom to top. The most dominant algae is the larger strands of the Y shaped mat filaments. I dont see individual cells here in this algae.

Close up at 600x of one of the Y branches.

Another view of two species in the mix.

Root tendril at 600x.

Finally, my favorite shot! This is a close up of the surface of the Duck weed leaf. Besides the individual globe shaped cells making up most of the plant, you see the oval "lip shaped" Stomata. This is the air breathing ports for all land plants. They are holes in the surface that lead to a canal like system inside the leaf to bring in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. Each "lip" of the stomata is called a guard cell. Two are on each stomata and they open and close the openings when needed to keep the plant from drying out.