Fig. 5.3-10. Water lily leaf. The object with the odd shape between the vascular bundle and the palisade parenchyma is the body of an astrosclereid. It does not look much like an astrosclereid because the microtome has cut away all its arms, leaving just the round white areas (arrows; white because we are looking all the way through the sclereid). If you have the chance to examine your own slides of water lily leaves, you will see many sclereids like this, and also you will see just short pieces of red tube – the arms whose body has been cut away and is in a different section.