New podcast episode
In this second episode about the plant nasturtium you will discover
– Why nasturtium has nothing to do with Nasturtium officinale
– Why nasturtium makes your nose twist
– How nasturtium got its Latin name Tropaeolum majus
– How plants develop from an embryo in the seed.
– What the endosperm in a seed is and why it’s important for plants and as a food source for humans.
– How we look inside a plant using sections and what one can see there.
My interview guest is botanist Melissa Roach from Canada, one of my partners at Flora-L Design.
Listen to the podcast and dive into the images below for a full immersion into the botany of a nasturtium seed and seedling. You can also find and subscribe to the Flora and Friends podcast on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast and Deezer .
The nasturtium seed is surrounded by a hard seed coat that protects the embryo inside. The embryo is a miniature of the plant that emerges from the seed when it germinates. We talk more about the properties of the seed at about 8:30min into the podcast episode. See below how it looks like a miniature brain, in the background you see the seed magnified under the stereomicroscope.
In the section that Judith took through the nasturtium seed, you can clearly see its content. The cells with the blue boundary and the crystal looking texture inside are storage cells. Storage cells are also called endosperm. They provide nutrients to the seed during the germination phase and are also a nutrient rich source of food for us humans.
Inside the fragile seedling’s stem
When germinating the seed, a seedling emerged that became very fragile and long on the windowsill.
In the more violet microscopy image below you can see section through the nasturtium seedling’s hypocotyl. The hypocotyl is the tissue between the leaves and the root. You could also say it is the stem of the seedling. From the outside towards the inside of the section you discover epidermis, cortex, vascular bundles and pith cells. Melissa describes the function of these cells for the plant in the podcast.
At about 13 min from the start of the podcast we talk about these two microscopy images, seed and hypocotyl.
What would be a microscopy images without a pattern?
The structures in the seed microscopy images above were so beautiful that we could not resist to turn them into a pattern in a few different colour versions. Let us know what you think about those patterns below in the comments and which colour option you prefer. This artistic pattern has a deep going story all the way to the start of a plant’s lifecycle.
Not only decorative but also meaningful
We are delighted to let you know that we have released the blue color version of this pattern on a wide range of products in our print on demand shop at Society6. Here below are a few of numerous examples. To see this recent release of the pattern.
We appreciate to be able to offer our patterns on textiles here in our webshop or through our retailers. As production takes however time, the possibility to release patterns in parallel through print on demand services that produce in various countries around the world makes our art quickly accessible to you and produced close by without the need to hold the products in stock. If you love those items, discover more in our Society6 shop. If you want to see textile in linen produced through our own manufacturing partners in Europe and even designed by ourselves, head over to our very own linen webshop for a tour.
If you have questions or comments to today’s podcast or you need help finding the right product for your needs, we are delighted to assist you. Just get in touch.
