Cenozoic Era: 65.5 Million Years to Present
Oligocene Epoch: 33.9-23 Million Years Ago
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Palmoxylon Cenozoic; Paleogene; Oligocene Catahoula Formation Texas, USA 31 cm x 20.5 cm

Scroll down to view increasingly closer views of the vascular bundles preserved in the specimen above. The first two images were taken with a Canon PowerShot SD770 IS Digital ELPH 10.0 MEGA PIXELS, cropped and resized in Adobe Photoshop CS6. The images were taken in sunlight outside.

Vascular bundles in palm fiber are embedded in a ground mass of parenchyma cells. Vascular bundles consist of water and food conducting vascular tissue supported by a cap of fibrous tissue composed of sclerenchyma cells. The phloem is composed of sieve tube members, which transport food made from photosynthesis. The sieve tube members are associated with companion cells, which help transport materials in and out of the sieve cells. Vessels and smaller tracheids transport water up through the plant. The close-up below zooms in on a single vascular bundle and was taken at 30x using a Swift M29TZ Zoom Stereo Trinocular Microscope and a Moticam 2500. The microscopes upper halogen light was used for illumination. The image was cropped and resized using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0.

The next two images were taken with a Dino-Lite AD7013 MT 5.0 MP. Images were resized in Adobe Photoshop CS6. The first image shows a fibrous bundle at 250x. The second shows a fibrovascular bundle at 150x.