Plant scientists explore the cellular ultrastructure in tepals, leaves, stem, and pollen of the rare and famous Cambridge moonflower.

Plant researchers and local enthusiasts in the United Kingdom and beyond were excited to discover rare blooms on their moonflower, Strophocactus wittii, at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. The cactus first made headlines during quarantine in 2021 during its famous first bloom over live stream. While common in the Amazon forests, these moonflowers are uncommon and difficult to nurture in gardens with plant blooms occurring less than once per year. Additionally, the flowers last less than twelve hours, which gives plant scientists very little time to collect data to learn more about these elusive structures.

Fortunately, microscopists at the imaging core facility, housed within the grounds of the garden at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU), were ready for when the flowers bloomed. Dr. Raymond Wightman is the Core Facility Manager at SLCU and led the project to capture images of this delicate specimen using cryo scanning electron microscopy with the ZEISS EVO SEM. He worked with Kristina Buch, a PhD student in Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Their work documents the first ultrastructural images of different moonflower tissues and identified an unusual tissue structure they look forward to studying with the next rare flowering.