Stock Photo Description: A detailed, close-up of a cottonwood tree leaf skeleton. (After a leaf falls to the ground, microbes in the soil consume the leaf's soft tissue and leave only the cellulose and lignin skeleton.) The leaf's vascular network can now easily be seen. This is a black and white version of photo #0038-0408-0316-4409, that is cropped much tighter to show detail.
The leaves (see the 'similars' below) I've photographed here were skeletonized through natural decay, and were hand-picked from tens of thousands of leaves. Here's an article on how this process works along with links to how you can artificially skeletonize new leaves by boiling them in alcohol, followed by a soaking in NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide or lye). Here's a similar skeletonizing technique, and a third skeletonizing method.
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