I can relate (I’m an aspie myself). I’m just glad that it was a curiosity fixation this time rather than an upset fixation.
Neurodiversity and iNaturalist! - General - iNaturalist Community Forum
In Hawaii, I came upon a species of Psychotria that fascinated me because its infructescence exhibited what looked to me like perfect right angles; that is, each of the four side branches came off the main stem at 90 degrees from it and from each other. Rubiaceae (with notable exceptions) tend to have flower parts in 4’s (and in some cases, leaves in 4’s), so I figured that the panicle branches were continuing the pattern. This is why Rubiaceae is one of my favorite plant families.
But I can see how he might have connected plant and animal parts with minerals, since cells and indeed all biological molecules are made of chemical elements just as minerals are. Check out the first illustration in this Wikipedia article about sponge spicules, which are mineral crystals used as animal parts.