Wood Anatomy
Ever wondered what wood looks like under high magnification? Below are a few examples of what wood looks like under the scanning electron microscope (SEM).
Many of these images are of charcoal samples. Although the wood it is heated to high temperatures it is done so in an environment of low oxygen so instead of burning destructively it simply converts to carbon. In doing so it retains almost all of it's anatomical structure in fine detail. Some of these samples were produced by in the lab by heating the wood at ~300° in the absence of air and some were sample of commercially produced charcoal. The samples were then 'snapped' to produce the surfaces you see, which are sometimes jagged.
Other examples are of wood samples that have been simply cleaved, radially or tangentially.
