SUMMER 2000 MYSTERY IMAGE The summer was full of wonderful guesses. Let's see what this image is. ... and what was it? How about a cross-section of a stem and seven small leaves (microphylls) from an Australian Beefwood (Casuarina cunninghamiana). A special Ultraviolet (UV) light was used to reveal the different colors under a microscope. Items under a UV-lamp fluoresce and do not look the same color as under daylight. The red fluorescence is from chlorophyll in the very small pentagon shaped leaves. The blue fluorescence is from secondary metabolites in the vascular (central) and epidermal (outer) tissue. This beefwood appears to have needles when looking with the unaided eye, which are not found in this taxonomic group. Investigating with a UV microscope, revealed that instead of a single needle this is a stem with seven small leaves. Not everything is as it appears to our eye. Many thanks to Gregory Johnson for another great image. For those of you that are curious, here are some numbers from our list of guesses. We did have one person (an expert in forest genetics) that did correctly identify this image.
Some of the creative single answers are listed below.
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