Cool. This reminds me of people pulling the cells out of leaves and replacing them with stuff like human heart cells [1].

[1] https://www.wpi.edu/news/wpi-team-grows-heart-tissue-spinach...

Wow, that technique should have their own thread here.

This is also very cool. I had heard of efforts using things like decellularised mouse hearts but with plant structures it bypasses the need for a living animal to die before a scaffold can be created. The video shot where you see the blood suffuse the structure is particularly impressive.

It makes for a very hearty salad.

Since there was no mention in TFA: please remember to add the hydroxide to water rather than the other way around (i.e. water into hydroxide)---the hydroxide dissolving into water releases heat and you don't want a highly caustic liquid to suddenly boil on you.

The thought of an inexperienced person boiling a solution of Sodium Hydroxide in something as crude as a soup pot on their stovetop gives me the shudders. I can’t express enough how stupid this is. Don’t do this.

Also, the two pointy frilly leaves are stinging nettle. Still absolutely nothing compared to fishing around with your hands wearing only cheap nitrile gloves in a liquid you just measured at 14 pH, then boiling it indoors for two hours.

So many PSA's for such a short post.

We learnt this rhyme in school: “Here lies _______, meek and placid, because he added water to an acid.”

I went to an all boys school.

Leaf arts used to be a common thing in many parts of India. As kids we used to keep fresh leaves in between pages in a notebook and keep it for weeks. aA the end, you are only left with the veins. Peepal leaves were used for its sturdiness.

Some beautiful craft works from such leaves. https://www.google.com/search?q=peepal+leaf+art

Being a big leaf with a distinctive tail Ficus religiosa should yield very nice results. As a footnote, the veins arrangement is a basic character to distinguish the many hundred extant species of Ficus. Some have very characteristic veins arranged in a stack (like pages in a book) and other show veins arranged in an irregular reticulate. Second and third grade veins are also an important character.

> you have to carefully unroll the leaves by hand

Don't do that. I assume that the curl problem can be solved processing the leaves into two (non-reactive) metallic mesh pieces or two glass panes joined together with a few clothes pegs. Or use pre-dried pressed leaves that are more rigid.

Pros: The procedure is faster than the 'macerate it in water for weeks' system plus saving bleaching final step, but (cons) 1) the results are not so good as in the classic procedure (lots of veins vanished in the Hedera leaves for example, and Platanus leaves are still imperfect) 2) you can not use delicate leaves (it seems that the fresh Ulmus, Urtica and Rosa leaves disappeared totally in the procedure but water still could process those), and 3) is more dangerous.

Is a nice explorative project, but is just at the middle of the road at this moment. Can be improved

I am not surprised that Urtica didn't work. They prepare and taste very much like spinach.

I’ve seen fancy tea strainers made from skeletonized leaves, so I clicked to see their process. I’ve been thinking of making some, but the only skeletonized leaves I’ve seen were in creeks and are pretty fragile. It seems like leaf selection is the hard part, not the method, since creeks do the job fine and with lye the leaves were still fragile. Looks like I need some peepal leaves!