Diagnosing home and gardening issues?
Do you get occasional plant or insect samples from gardeners or homeowners that puzzle you?
All Cornell Cooperative Extension staff on campus and in the counties are invited to participate in the e-list cce-hortdiagnostic-L. This list has been active for more than a year now using the experiences of many to try to relatively efficiently identify puzzling plant material, insects and pests that come into their office. Only the odd stuff not the routine.
This effort compliments that of the Plant Disease Diagnostic Clinic, extension entomologist Carolyn Klass in the Insect Diagnostic Lab and extension botanist Ed Cope in the Bailey Hortorium .
Check out this impact statement (word doc) for more information.
To join cce-hortdiagnostic-L:
We can only accommodate CCE staff on this e-list. If you have a volunteer who is active in diagnosing he/she must work through the supervising CCE staff person. Only people who join/subscribe to the list can post to the list.
To join an e-list (also called subscribing), send an e-mail message to lyris@cornell.edu . The body of the message should be:
subscribe cce-hortdiagnostic-L “your name”
where your name (include the quotation marks) is the name you want to be available to the list’s administrators.
Basic cce-hortdiagnostic-L guidelines:
We encourage you to send digital photos and detailed description. For example, include information about where the plant or insect was found, its size, key features such as leave and bud arrangements for plants or mouth-part types for insects. Clarify the symptoms, type and extend of damage suffered as well as a brief list of what resource you have been scouring to make your diagnosis.
Some educators have had good luck taking digital pictures of plant material using a digital camera and/or the inexpensive Digital Blue QX3 + Computer Microscope. Good digital images of the small and tiny insect are more challenging. We welcome suggestions on equipment that accomplishes this well.
Do not send copyright images. It is too difficult for us to worry about breaking copyright laws. Assume every image sent will become freely available to the world.
We also encourage you to respond to postings if you can help with an answer or even simple another resource the person might check into. Send your insightful replies back to the whole list so we might all learn. If you have inquires of a personal matters send those just to the party of interest. We will be strict about keeping the e-list on the relevant and not something that clutters our in-box.
Send question, comments or concerns to LJB7@cornell.edu or call 607.255.5918
Lori Bushway | Campus News, Program Work Team