Variation of Calcium Oxalate (CaOx) Crystals in Porang (Amorphophallus muelleri Blume)

Copyright © 2013 Nurul Chairiyah et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This research had aimed to determine variations in form of calcium oxalate (CaOx) crystals in porang. Slides for mi-croscopic observation were prepared from sliced leaf, petiole, and tuber of porang. Sliced organs were cleared by using modified clearing method. The parameters that were observed included form and variety of morphology type of CaOx crystals. Microscopic observation showed there were four basic forms of crystals, i.e., druse, raphide, prism and styloid with some variation of diverse types, each of which had 49, 10, 8, and 5 variations. CaOx crystals, based on the size, were grouped into large (20- 250 µm) and small (1- 15 µm) crystals