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This is what plants look like—from the inside out

With his camera-mounted microscope, a photographer zooms in to the cellular level to capture the hidden beauty of poplars, pine cones, and dandelions.

Red and blue dyes isolate parts of the interior of a male pine cone, sliced lengthwise and magnified 20 times. Pollen-filled sacs surround the pine cone’s central axis.

ByAnnie Roth

Photographs byRobert Berdan

November 7, 2023

4 min read

Growing up on the shores of Lake Huron in the Canadian province of Ontario, Robert Berdan was never far from water. When he was in sixth grade, he received a toy microscope for Christmas. Some of the first things he saw through its lens were tiny creatures inside droplets he’d gathered from a local pond. He was fascinated with the microorganisms.

(See the microscopic universe that lives in a single drop of water.)

In Robert Berdan’s lab, tinted slices of plants transform into kaleidoscopic works of art echoing agate or stained glass. His technique, known as photomicrography, involves photographing dyed specimens under a microscope fitted with a DSLR camera. Seen here, clockwise from top left: spruce branch; pine stem, showing four distinct growth rings; spruce needle; poplar branch; brown lily ovary; poplar branch at greater magnification.

After eighth grade, Berdan upgraded to a more sophisticated model and realized it was a portal to another world. “The new microscope changed my life,” he says. “I could see so much more.” He began studying photography and buying cameras to fit on his microscope. He captured images of ferns, mushrooms, and trees, and learned how to develop film. He also developed his microscopy skills, so much so that he earned a doctoral degree in cellular biology and spent five years running a lab at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

What looks like a lacy doily. — Thinly sliced, tinged with red, and photographed at 400 times magnification, a poplar branch calls to mind not wood but macramé. “I became interested in photography because I wanted to share what I saw in the microscope,” Berdan says. In this image, parenchyma cells, which are the foundation of all plant tissue, resemble holes, while a banding pattern reflects the tree’s annual growth. “Plants are more complicated than most of us imagine,” he says.

Magnified 100 times, the vein in a cross section of a camellia leaf reveals a hub of vascular activity. The orange-stained section in the center shows a cluster of xylem and phloem tissues, which transport water, sugar, and nutrients throughout the plant.

But Berdan never forgot his two early passions—being immersed in nature and photographing its tiny details—and he decided to return to them. His subjects range from snowflakes to spruce trees. To see the latter under a microscope, Berdan collects a small branch and wields specialized tools to shave off paper-thin slices, which he dyes red or blue. For the final images, he often uses a process called focus stacking, in which similar photos with different focal planes are blended to achieve a more profound depth of field, and he sometimes stitches photos together to create panoramas.

Something resembling blue corn cob. — Blue pigment adds an icy hue to this view of the cellular structure within a poplar branch.

“I investigate anything that might have possibilities,” he says. And he encourages others to do the same with a microscope. “Any tool that amplifies our ability to see will enhance our creativity,” he notes. “Our observations can potentially lead to new discoveries and solutions.”

This story appears in the December 2023 issue of National Geographic magazine.