| 23 August 2026 |
 My photos of tomato trichomes last week were taken with a hand held camera. I decided to upgrade this week; now the photos are taken indoors, using a tripod and using focus stacking to increase the depth of focus. You probably won't notice a lot of difference.Unfortunately, I'm sure that even careful handling of the fruit damages a lot of the trichomes.  But I hope this closer view will impress you with how much is going on at the surface of a plant. Tomatoes have two categories of trichomes, glandular (with the droplets) and non-glandular. This morphological view of trichomes, however, greatly underestimates the biochemistry and function of glandular trichomes. I attach a review article which you might want to peruse just to give you an idea of the scale of complexity going on at this level of plant biology.  Part of the planning for our trip up north was to set foot in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. In doing so, Mary and I both completed our goal of having visited all 13 provinces and territories. A map showing our path is available here. |
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