16 August 2023

Beautifully colored tiles. An intricate pattern. What floor, wall or ceiling holds this mosaic? Click here to see a closeup.

The photo caption at Wikimedia Commons has the answer:

Woody Dicot Stem Vascular Cylinder in One Year Liriodendron, photo from Berkshire Community College Bioscience Image Library, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

The mosaic is made of cells in the woody stem of a one year old tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera), sliced thin and magnified 100 times. The colors and shapes are specific to the species and its age. The description indicates that things change at lot in a one year old tulip tree.

The mosaic slice was photographed in 2014 at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, MA from a sapling that probably grew in Western Massachusetts.

When a tulip tree grows up it has leaves and flowers like this.

Still beautiful and intricate even when not magnified.

For more information on the mosaic image see the description of the image here. It is so technical that I need a glossary to figure out what it means.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons and Kate St. John)