An arrangement of three Triceratium balaniferum from Sendai (written as Sandai on the slide), Japan. Mounted in Styrax. Some yellowing of the mountant. Lower label says upper and lower valves. No makers name. Olympus BHB microscope using 450nm LED light. As well as the arrangement, I imaged two of them at higher resolution. The upper right one using the 40x Leitz Pl Apo NA 1.00 objective, oil immersion. Olympus Aplanat Achromat condenser, oil immersion, oblique lighting. 2.5x Nikon CF PL photoeyepiece. Monochrome converted Nikon d850 camera. 75 images stacked in Zerene (Pmax). The smaller one at the lower left using the 63x Leitz Pl Apo NA 1.4 objective, oil immersion. Olympus Aplanat Achromat condenser, oil immersion, oblique lighting. 2.5x Nikon CF PL photoeyepiece. 11mm removed from the tube the camera to increase the field of view. Monochrome converted Nikon d850 camera. 66 images stacked in Zerene (Pmax).
The two imaged at higher resolution look to have different surface morphology, and presumably one is an ‘upper’ valve and the other a ‘lower’ valve. As for which is which, I am less sure, but looking at other similar diatoms, suspect that the 40x objective image shows what would be described as the upper valve. The 40x one has the striking sunburst pattern on the surface which is reported for this species.
Triceratium balaniferum Tempère & Brun 1889. Original description: Brun, J. & Tempère, J. (1889). Diatomées Fossiles du Japon. Espèces marines et nouvelles des calcaires argileux de Sendaï et de Yedo. Mémoires de la Société de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelle de Genève, 30(9): 75 pp., 9 pls. page(s): page 59, plate 6, figure 4. Accepted Name: Entogoniopsis balanifera (J.Tempère & J.Brun) J. Witkowski, P.A. Sims, N.I. Strelnikova & D.M. Williams, 2015. There is some additional information on this in my page of a Sendai strew here. The 40x one looks like the illustration in Tempère & Brun 1889.
A quite striking and I think rare diatom, and lovely slide to image. I’m not sure on the maker for this, but I have just imaged a few of them by the same maker, and they are all interesting slides. If you want to see others by this maker search for BBBBB in the search function.
EDIT – based on the handwriting and style, and some conversations with experts, I this could be by Edmund Grove (of Grove and Sturt). But I have no 100% proof of this at the moment.