I was amazed how well it came out. See my notes here; this specimen has seen some abuse from my careless hands.

Yes, it was moved from alcohol to lacto-phenol/GAA for about 24hrs, then moved directly to the slide, where I used transmitted bright-field illumination and a 10x Olympus SPlan APO objective. I just got a good price on a 20x SPlan APO, so after that arrives I plan to shoot this again before I send it off to OSU. With a 20x objective, or 50:1 at the sensor, this specimen should barely fit within the 0.3mm x 0.45mm viewfinder coverage.

The biggest improvement over an alcohol mounting is in the dorsal view, where all the extra material just disappears from view. Any additional cleaning work otherwise required would have certainly damaged or broken the pair of fragile fertilization ducts on this tiny specimen.

I used the same clearing fluid here, and here, and to expand the palp here which was mounted in alcohol for photographs to make sure the heamatodocha would be visible. Clove oil may have worked fine for this vitis specimen. I used clove oil here with reasonable results. Later treatment with lacto-phenol/GAA cleaned all the black gunk VERY nicely; however, clueless as I am, I moved it back to alcohol and destroyed it while trying to clean off the extra dorsal material with a brush.

I'd mention details like this for every image as I post it, but I'm still figuring this out as I go and don't want to send anyone on wild goose chases, especially when it sometimes involves such harsh chemicals.