Science

This is what I am doing this summer:


This started out as a little ziplock of dirt.

I picked out and washed off the roots, cleared the root cells in potassium hydroxide, stained the fungi with blue ink, mounted them on a little slide and voilà -- science!

The blue squiggly stuff is where arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi has colonized the root cell. This pic is from a California native, purple needle grass (Nasella pulchra).

The rest of this summer, or at least most of July will be spent tallying up just how much of the root has been colonized by these bad boys. And also some kind of greenhouse experiment.