I'm sending in my samples to the Penn State "CSI". I sure wish that I knew
the head of that service personally so he could visit my veggie patch and
make recommendations. By the way I did go to Penn State for 7 years and

When I was in grad school, we used to get samples coming into extension
service that no one had an idea of what it was... we called it "stump the
botanist" g

They included such things as cuttings in plastic bags sent over a long,
warm weekend (just pour 'em out and then try to read the paperwork that
was also sogged out so you could call and ask for another sample), or
questions about a leaf disease, and the sample would be a leafless twig,
or just plain strange stuff, like the objects we finally realized were
what was left of a sycamore ball once the fuzzies blew off, or the
strange little structures that took me several minutes to realize were
the little separating structures from a velvetleaf fruit (that one
was a CSI special, btw, because it came from a murder scene, complete
with a detective who brought it along so we weren't breaking chain of
evidence).

One of my favorites was the "weed" someone wanted to know how to get
rid of -- turned out to be a threatened wildflower. Luckily, he was
delighted, and Nature Conservancy helped him manage the area with the
plants.

But my very favorite was the "mold" growing on someone's bathroom wall.
The mycologists didn't know what it was, but it wasn't a mold... maybe
it was insect eggs? The entomologists said it wasn't insect eggs, maybe
it was bacterial? Bacteriologists said it was cellular, so it wasn't
theirs. Finally wound up with me in the seed lab, and I thought it looked
like really small nettle seeds, but I didn't have an exact match.
What it turned out to be were seeds shot from an artillery plant, in
the nettle family. The folks who sent the sample had one on their windowsill.

Life in extension service can be interesting. ;-)

Kay