As some of you might be aware, strange seeds in hydroponics can sometimes roll a trait called ?????, which as far as the code says, does aboslutely nothing. However it used to be tied to a plant called Alien Weed, which gave me an idea: Add unique researchable plants to Lavaland.
How it works at first will be simple: A miner will be able to find a unique flora while on lavaland, denotable by a unique sprite compared to the other four plants as well as a description of "Undocumented Plant" or some such. They can harvest a sample of this plant and then bring it back to be redeemed for mining points. Upon redemption, Hydroponics will be given a message much like science is when new materials arrive, and will be able to come pick it up unless cargo decides to ship it to them directly.
As for the researching the trait part, I'm not too sure how to go from there. Perhaps it could require growing a certain amount of samples to be analyzed before you can find out the trait in some cases, or be immediately noticeable in the case of chemicals. We could treat it similarly to strange seeds but also give them unique traits only found on these Xenoflora plants.
Open to suggestions for traits that might make sense for this of course, and thoughts like always.