Natural Science Forum / Biology / Botany / February 2006

One model system for stomatal research uses leaf epidermal peels, often
Vicia faba leaves. There was just a thread in bionet.plants.education
on other species that are good for epidermal peels.

The epidermal peels can be floated on solutions of different osmotic
potential to cause the guard cells to shrink or swell. Here's a couple
of articles that use that technique:

Tallman, G. and Zeiger, E. 1988. Light quality and osmoregulation in
Vicia guard cells: Evidence for involvement of three metabolic
pathways. Plant Physiology 88: 887-895.

http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/content/abstract/88/3/887?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hit
s=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=epidermal+peel&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=11396
16705411_8761&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=1&journalcode=plantph
ysiol

Shope, J.C., DeWald D.B., and Mott, K.A. 2003. Changes in surface area
of intact guard cells are correlated with membrane internalization.
Plant Physiology 133(3):1314-21.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=1
4551331&dopt=Citation

You can locate other articles using the search engine at the top of the
webpages. All the issues of the journal Plant Physiology, except the
most recent ones, are available free online on both PudMedCentral and
Plant Physiology websites.

You can also try google.com to locate more articles.

David R. Hershey