I put "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones in my iPod. I changed the name to say "Kaitlyn's Song". Kaitlyn is my 18-month old daughter, and right now, I feel like we are gearing up for the extended dance mix of the terrible twos. She's into everything and climbing on everything in the house. But I love her little personality.
This picture is...maybe I should make everyone guess.
Anyway, I put it in because of the beautiful colors. Here's an interesting note: It's a refractile pattern but the rainbow isn't "in order", is it?
2 comments:
hemm...i think its a plant stem...? or a cloth fiber.
Hi GP:
Very close: it is plant material, but it is a piece of a leaf, viewed under polarized light.
This is a single-cell structure called an idioblast, and it is full of needle-like crystals (called raphides) of calcium oxalate.
Just like humans form kidney stones (also calcium oxalate), plants take up calcium and turn the excess into crystals. Sometimes they localize them in leaves, which then fall off--it is thought to be a primitive, rudimentary excretory system.
This isn't a typical refractile pattern because it is the sum total of the interference patterns of dozens of raphide crystals--if it had just been one crystal, the pattern would have been as expected.
Good guess, though! I bet you could tell by the thickened cell walls.
Mike
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