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The Leaf Perfect Parograph

Submitted by smomalley on Fri, 09/06/2019 - 15:43

The mystery leaf placed on my desk is superficially a green compound leaf, with three leaflets branching from the red center stem.  The red center stem continues to about half way throuh each leaflet were it transitions to a yellow center vein. The yellow veins subseuently branch into smaller and smaller veins off of the center vein. The leaflets are translucent with a waxy surface on the front side of the leaf; The back side of the leaf is a light green, with a matte finish. There is a golden yellow perimeter of the leaf that follows the asymmetric indentations of each leaflet. The yellow perimeter is periodically interupted by brown masses of damaged tissue, left behind by leaf minners. As the mass moves towards the outer perimeter of the leaflet, it grows thicker. The brown tissue is most concentrated at the edge of the leaflet. There are small three dimentional circular orbs of brown mass that are sitting on the leaflets. These orbs are most likely the eggs left by the leaf minning moths. The eggs enter the upper layer off the leaf tissue and burrow until they exit the leaflet to become a new generation of leaf minnig moth. This narrative is shown in the brown tissue pattern: the brown tissue starts off thin at one point on the leaflet and grows until it reaches the edge.  The leaf minning pattern makes each leaff unique and can be used to distinguish one leaf from another.

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Comments

Describing the bottom of the leafe as "matte" was really descriptive. Maybe discuss that the overall shape of the leaf as symmetrical despite the unidentical asymmetrical wavey sides? The overall shape of each leaf? Round versus heart shaped etc?

'orbs of brown mass that are sitting on the leaflets'. You can remove 'that are sitting' because it personifies the orbs. Instead the sentence can read 'orbs of brown mass on the leaflets'

Instead of saying 'This narrative is shown in the brown tissue pattern:' I think you should simply put 'this is shown'.