A ‘Star Thistle’ (Centaurea calcitrapa), replete with enormous involucral spines, is included within the vacuole membrane (‘tonoplast’) of a plant cell, seen in cross-section, which it distorts but does not puncture. The cell is intra-connected to six neighbouring cells through ‘plasmodesmata’ in its cell wall, which appears as a golden cage. Two of the neighbouring cells are blackened and sealed off, their internal membranes having been ruptured by six-pointed star-shaped crystals of ice that have formed within their boundaries.
