Sputter coater scd 50 bal tec

Freshly collected material was photographed and then fixed in FAA (100 ml FAA = 90 ml ethanol 70% + 5 ml acetic acid 96% + 5 ml formaldehyde solution 37%) before being stored in 70% ethanol. The anatomy was studied from serial sections using the classical paraffin technique and subsequent astrablue/safranin staining (Gerlach 1984) . For SEM analysis, the FAA-material was dehydrated in formaldehyde dimethyl acetal (FDA) for 24 h (Gersterberger and Leins 1978) and later critical point dried. Sputter coating was done with a Sputter Coater SCD 50 Bal-tec (Balzers). The specimens were examined with an Auriga Zeiss TM. Macrophotography was accomplished using a digital camera (Canon PowerShot IS2) and microphotography with a digital microscope (Keyence VHX 500F) equipped with a high-precision VH mounting stand with X-Y stage and bright-field illumination (Keyence VH-S5).