This place is pretty close to a swamp, especially when the mosquitoes and flies get going. I came to town to try to help get things back to normal and make a few bucks. But this has been hard.

A lot of the subcontractors will undercut you, cheat you out of your money if they can.

We reinvented ourselves back in 1994, when we got money for a new herbarium that was open to the public. Most herbariums are impossible to get into. We have access for gardeners and everyone else. Other ones, you need credentials.

Certain plant parts are associated with crime, drugs or poison. We encourage the public to go to the [Delaware] Cooperative Extension first. The stuff they can't identify, they send to us. We do the hard things.

The stuff comes in as a craft item so it's never inspected. We're working on a software key that the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service [a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture] can identify when it comes through.

If it's an endangered species, they store it here.