Rhizosphere Image Gallery

Pseudotsuga menziesii

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SCALE: Unless otherwise noted, these images are two centimeters wide and just under one and a half centimeters tall. To estimate the dimensions of zoom images, compare to their corresponding wide-angle shot. A fully-zoomed image can represent an area of the soil a mere three millimeters wide and two millimeters tall!


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The scene aboveground

Site: UC Santa Cruz upper campus, near Empire Grade road.

P. menziesii, or Douglas-fir, is a forest tree up to 70 meters tall. It is common among the coast redwoods of California, as well as on moist slopes generally below 5000 feet elevation.


The scene belowground


Young root with extensive root hair development.


In this zone near the surface, the soil is filled with debris. Roots both living and dead mix with dead branches, twigs, and various fibrous material that is somewhat resistant to decay.


See above...


This large root passes our tube. Notice the small young root, nearly transparent, on the left.


Notice the color of the soil in this shot. This area, just below the accumulated organic debris, is a zone in which most of the organic matter has been leached out to accumulate deeper in the soil profile.


Nice example of a deep root.


The otherwise uniformly gray soil contains occasional spots of white. These could be mineral particles, or they could be the signature of microbial colonization.