Thin walled, hyaline spores

[SheffieldLass]

Thin walled, hyaline spores that are not amyloid ... I find some of them very difficult to see under the microscope ... are there any stains or other techniques that make it easier to see them?

Melanie

[mollisia]

Hello Melanie,

I use congored, as I always do to stain cell walls. Trypan blue is an alternative which is exactly as useful. You may get good results with Cotton blue and you have the chance to note if the spores are cyanophilic or not. But at least in Pezizales the spores get destroyed by Cotton blue and can not be measured in this mount.

best regards,
Andreas

[Chris Yeates]

Originally Posted by SheffieldLass

Thin walled, hyaline spores that are not amyloid ... I find some of them very difficult to see under the microscope ... are there any stains or other techniques that make it easier to see them?

Melanie

paying close attention to correctly positioning the substage condenser and adjusting the diaphragm (ideally each time you switch objectives) can make quite a difference

- not suggesting that you don't do this yourself Melanie - just adding this as a general comment

Chris

[SheffieldLass]

Originally Posted by mollisia

Hello Melanie,

I use congored, as I always do to stain cell walls. Trypan blue is an alternative which is exactly as useful. You may get good results with Cotton blue and you have the chance to note if the spores are cyanophilic or not. But at least in Pezizales the spores get destroyed by Cotton blue and can not be measured in this mount.

best regards,
Andreas

I'll persevere with the congo red, though my first attempts didn't seem to make much difference. I often find cotton blue too strongly coloured - it ends up blotting out stuff, so all I see is the cotton blue ....

Some of the Mycena spores in particular seem to be very hard to spot. I can do a spore print, line them up exactly under the microscope dry, where they are visible, then add water or stain and coverslip very carefully and put it back in positon, and they have vanished .... It happens particularly when I only have a few spores, but do the same with dark spores and they are still sitting there pretty much in the same position they were before the coverslip was added ....

Melanie