eeveefang's Identifications

Garden cucumber leaf. Looking like a flight over an agricultural landscape, this patchwork pattern is characteristic of a mosaic virus infection. An inexpensive stereo microscope was used for a closer look at the green and brown rectangles. Trichomes were an interesting target, appearing more white and opaque in the brown areas versus more translucent in the live, green areas. A square cm of leaf tissue was put on glass slide with water and a coverslip and observed under a compound microscope. Surprisingly, nematodes appeared to be wriggling out of the tissue (at least a dozen or more were observed), suggesting this may be a nematode disease rather than CMV (?). Note, this leaf was trellised and had no ground contact.