Katherine Esau was a phenomenal plant anatomist and her books are still used today, 70 years after their first publication. In this homage her beautiful drawings are placed side-by-side with modern micrographs highlighting recent progress in plant imaging.

Pollen tubes, the delivery tool for the sperm cells in plants, are enriched in the cell wall component callose. This distinguishes them from most other plant cells. We investigated how callose supports the particular needs of the pollen tube: rapid and invasive growth.

Plants move - sometimes astonishingly fast. We found out our differentials in hydrostatic pressure are converted to efficient leaf actuation through multiscale anisotropic stiffening in the pulvinus of Mimosa pudica.

Methods, tips and tricks to successfully label and image microtubules in plant cells.

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Cannabis trichomes produce and enrich compounds including cannabinoids such as tetrahydro-cannabinolic acid. In this review we summarize the current understanding of glandular trichome function in cannabis and outline future research directions.

Mimosa is able to rapidly fold its leaves upon a mechanical trigger. We investigated the mechanism allowing the plant to perceive mechanical triggers and found a mechanosensitive ion channel to be involved. Highlighted in a News and Views Editorial.

Plant cells such as pollen tubes, root hairs and fibers have the ability to invade substrates. Plants are also subject to invasion, for example by fungal hyphae. This review discusses the physics of the invasion process, the biological purpose and the underlying mechanism.

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The past decade has shown rapid adoption of microfluidics and MEMS-technology for research on tip growing cells. This article provides an overview of the nifty experimental designs and the challenges associated with this approach.

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The plant cell wall is assembled upon cell division and growth. The regulation of the delivery of cell wall components and of the assembly process proper relies with the cytoskeleton. In this review we summarize how the elements of the cytoskeleton-plasma membrane-cell wall continuum interact.

Labeling polysaccharides in the living plant without interference with development and morphogenesis requires carefully adapted techniques. A summary of methods is provided in this Conference Proceeding, related to a full paper published in Journal of Microscopy.

We used finite element modeling to simulate the hair growth process and identify the forces that enables follicles to push the growing hair outside of the skin. We also identified the structures that enable a hair fibre to emerge from the skin while simultaneously being firmly anchored. More...