Australia's Science Forum

Best plants apart from onion for year 7's to look at? We will cut the plants for them, because yr 7's can't be trusted with sharp things these days.

Celery?

I haven't done it for a while, but from memory at my old school we used to have an aloe vera plant and if you put a small spot of clear nail polish on it and let it dry then peel off you get a nice layer of cells to look at.

A small amount of mashed banana and iodine stain.

Can use the nail polish technique with agapanthus too.

Our school uses geranium leaves a lot. Can't say I've actually had a look under the microscope myself though, so not entirely sure why on this plant in particular