If you take a thin slice of a young stem of Acleisanthes chenopodioides, a low creeper found in North American desert environments, and look at it under a microscope, this is what you will see. The blue clusters in the middle of the white circles (the medulla) are the vascular bundles, through which sap and water carrying mineral salts flow.
Image submitted by Israel Lopes da Cunha Neto, a PhD student at the Biosciences Institute of the University of São Paulo (IB-USP)
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