High-Magnification Microscope Images of a Wood Toothpick

I previously shared high-magnification images of solder, a cut machine screw, broken up diamond abrasive, and high-quality diamond particles. For this series of images I bent and fractured a wooden toothpick, presumably birch, and looked at the splintered end with an electron microscope.

Wood is non-conductive, so it is somewhat difficult to image using a conventional electron microscope. Even so, I was able to capture a couple of decent images. The surface looks somewhat compacted, which is why I focused my attention on the splintered end.

I could have coated it with a conductive material such as carbon or gold, but opted not to.

In the center, what does that look like to you? To me it looks like a venus fly trap (Wikipedia).

I am not sure how to explain these features, but the regular spacing of the strings (for lack of a better descriptions) suggests it is a naturally-occurring feature, rather than damage or a consequence of the toothpick production process.

Between the stringy portions you can see an intertwined fibrous area. This is presumably what more of the material should look like before the natural hardwood becomes a toothpick.

At 2500x you can see small pores or channels on the wall of the large pore. If you scroll back up to the second image you should notice several patterned zones located around the sample just like this one.

In the image just above this one, right in the middle you can see similar features towards the bottom, but in the middle and towards the top it seems to sort of unravel into a more obviously fibrous region.

As a reference, human red blood cells are about 6-8 µm (microns) in diameter. A piece of paper is about 100 µm thick.

I hope you enjoyed these images! If I am able to find a lab with affordable microscope usage rates, what non-biological materials would you like to see imaged in the future?