Mayapple Rust

This is a cloesup image of the rust fungus, Puccinia podophylli, forming a lesion on the underside of a Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) leaf. Note the aechal cups containing spores and the individual orange spores that dust the leaf. This image is composed of 40 individual images taken with a Zeiss Luminar 63mm lens at a very shallow depth of field. The images were made at slightly different focal depths as described in this article. The final composite was made by running the images through Helicon Focus Pro software. Click here to see a Zoomify version in which you can view the full resolution of the image.