Microscopic ID please
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I’m hoping someone can ID this clear clumpy stuff on my seed spools? It is on all of my spools that I’ve checked so far, and it doesn’t appear to be affecting my sporophytes.
My thought is that it’s the leftover gametophytes after reproducing (today is day 14 post gametophyte-painting), but I can’t recall having seen this stuff in such abundance before. Could it be from painting the spools instead of a natural spore release (this is my second year working with direct seeding of gametophytes)?
40x magnification
@elizabeth_savage19 Hi Elizabeth, are you able to send a more magnified picture of the clumps - even better, make a wet mount slide at high magnification? It may be bacterial and gametophyte cells do become transparent when they die.
@elizabeth_savage19 This fenomenon is fairly common when painting gametophytes on spools. It's usually a combination of dead fertilized/unfertilized gametophytes with some bacteria that live off of the dead cells. As long as the sporophytes keep growing bigger they will form a more symbiotic relationship. Hope my advice helps, cheers!
@elizabeth_savage19 I agree with the other comments. It looks like bacteria to me. We often see bacteria on our spools during the season. I'm glad to see the sporophytes look healthy despite it!