During May I noticed a newcomer growing in the middle of the back lawn that looked like an orange dandelion. Several more appeared and after an extensive search on Google I identified them as Orange Hawkweed. I carefully mowed around them for the next few weeks.
The above picture was taken through the stereomicroscope at 60x magnification. It shows a stamen and wound up anthers covered in pollen. I had previously bought an expensive camera adaptor for the microscope which fitted over one of the eyepieces and enabled me to attach a DLSR but it was fiddly, took a lot of time to setup and had a very restricted field of view.
So I experimented with my Iphone. It was very hard to keep a steady hand as you need to keep the camera about one centimeter above the eyepiece to capture the complete view. There are adaptors available but again they aren't cheap and don't look too simple to setup. I wanted something quick and cheap. Eventually I found a plastic cap from a mouthwash bottle, drilled a hole in the top, cut out some of the inner plastic parts till it rested over the eyepiece at about the right height. Then I just steadied the iphone on top in the right position and snapped away.
The result is the picture above and the cropped pictures below. The photos have been tidied up : Dust spots removed, contrast increased and the anthers sharpened but otherwise this is what I see. The new iphones have very reasonable cameras and adapt well to the sometimes poor lighting conditions.
30x magnification showing stamen and a few petals in the foreground.
Several pollen bearing anthers now unwound in the sunlight 30x .
Another shot of the anthers and pollen 60x magnification.
A series of 7 images at 10 x magnification stacked in Photoshop. Notice the greater depth of field in focus.
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