Philippine Rants

<v Speaker 1>Okay, welcome to another episode on a crime pace that
<v Speaker 1>bond he doesn't podcast. I'm here with my buddy Johnny Altamonte.
<v Speaker 1>We're in the Philippines and he's with the Philippines Taxonomic Initiative,
<v Speaker 1>which is an NGO. You started that, right, nob robbed it?
<v Speaker 1>Okay anyway, but we're in this we're basically we were
<v Speaker 1>in the van for like four hours up to the
<v Speaker 1>edge of where the land clearance stops in the actual
<v Speaker 1>wild habitat begins, and that's where we are. So tell
<v Speaker 1>me what. I'm going to take photos of this mellowstone
<v Speaker 1>while you're telling me, But tell me what Philippines Taxonomic
<v Speaker 1>Initiative is. How you guys got started doing this?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well it was started by rab.
<v Speaker 1>And.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, honestly, that guy just has a like long
<v Speaker 2>standing love for plants. He's a completely self taught taxonomist
<v Speaker 2>slash botanist.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, he didn't go to school for this, right, No.
<v Speaker 3>Not at all, not at all.
<v Speaker 2>It was just really into plants. I kind of just
<v Speaker 2>went so far down that rabbit hole, you know. And
<v Speaker 2>then now he's like an expert on orchids into Philippines
<v Speaker 2>had a couple of Taxa. So he's also an next
<v Speaker 2>in like I think Amorphophallus and some others as well.
<v Speaker 1>Where's he from? Is he from Manila too? You guys
<v Speaker 1>are all from Manila mostly or what?
<v Speaker 2>No, So he is from somewhere into Visia's originally and
<v Speaker 2>then Palawan I think is where he really started doing
<v Speaker 2>a lot of work.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, I mean he also now is based out
<v Speaker 3>of Manila.
<v Speaker 1>Mm hmm.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So I mean he put it up I think back
<v Speaker 2>in twenty nineteen, I think informally, and then twenty twenty
<v Speaker 2>is like really when it started kicking off, he was.
<v Speaker 1>Saying he kind of realized you needed to do an
<v Speaker 1>NGO for what purposes, like to get funding and to
<v Speaker 1>get permits.
<v Speaker 3>Right, yeah, exactly.
<v Speaker 2>So I mean the Philippines we have a lot of
<v Speaker 2>good policy in place to kind of like protect everything.
<v Speaker 2>I mean obviously implementation is another thing. Yeah, but it
<v Speaker 2>also means if you're a researcher and if you want
<v Speaker 2>to do things the right way, there's a really long
<v Speaker 2>bureaucratic process of getting permits if you want to study,
<v Speaker 2>and if you want to collect, and if you want
<v Speaker 2>to describe anything new. So yeah, he put up an
<v Speaker 2>NGO called the Philippine Taxonomic n issition of and we've
<v Speaker 2>basically been using the ORG guess sort of a different
<v Speaker 2>way to get all the different permits, the gratuitive permits,
<v Speaker 2>like we have one here for example, in this forest.
<v Speaker 3>And basically let.
<v Speaker 2>Us go out and just study collect orbarian specimens and
<v Speaker 2>uh yeah, mostly to describe a describe new species or
<v Speaker 2>even just what we're doing here is pretty cool too.
<v Speaker 2>We're providing like a checklist of flowering plants for the
<v Speaker 2>forest and ultimately that turns into species protection plans, you know,
<v Speaker 2>predicted area management plans.
<v Speaker 1>So like this area is understudied, there has been very.
<v Speaker 3>Super super understudied.
<v Speaker 2>We started doing maybe like one or two expeditions here
<v Speaker 2>a year since twenty twenty, and we've i think more
<v Speaker 2>than doubled the species checklist.
<v Speaker 1>Since Jesus Christ. That's crazy. Yeah, what made you guys
<v Speaker 1>pick this area?
<v Speaker 2>So one of the foresters, Quia Leo Yudasco, he's been
<v Speaker 2>like a champion here. He invited rab over just because
<v Speaker 2>he wanted to, you know, rap to kind of come
<v Speaker 2>out and check out some of the new stuff. He
<v Speaker 2>thought we're new, but you know, really didn't have sort
<v Speaker 2>of the experience to at that time to really describe anything. So, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>Rab came out the first time.
<v Speaker 3>That was around like.
<v Speaker 2>Literally when COVID hit, like when the Philippines locked down.
<v Speaker 3>Rab was out here in the field.
<v Speaker 1>He was at the spot we were just saying, he said, right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. And ever since then, you know,
<v Speaker 2>we've gotten invited back over and over again, and que
<v Speaker 2>Leo is now the assistant Protected Area Superintendent of this
<v Speaker 2>whole place.
<v Speaker 1>But there, but I mean overall, you see, there's like
<v Speaker 1>a value towards what's left of the remaining habitat though, right.
<v Speaker 2>Oh absolutely, it's insane. I mean we're we're hopefully a
<v Speaker 2>lot of the work that we've been doing here ends
<v Speaker 2>up with this place becoming a protected area just so
<v Speaker 2>we can really just stop all the.
<v Speaker 1>Because yeah, you said, it's every year, it's been worse.
<v Speaker 1>Every year they just take more, and it's just for
<v Speaker 1>agriculture or what are.
<v Speaker 2>They Yeah, mostly for agriculture sometimes also just for I
<v Speaker 2>mean people just coming here to settle also, right, So
<v Speaker 2>I mean that place you saw that that lit the
<v Speaker 2>carpet is flowering, Yeah, that wasn't there the first time
<v Speaker 2>we were here.
<v Speaker 1>No ship and then they just clear it's just open land.
<v Speaker 1>It's there's nothing there. Yeah, exactly, well there's nothing there, exactly.
<v Speaker 1>Well there's nothing there now, right, Yeah, I know. But
<v Speaker 1>uh yeah, so I mean every year it gets a
<v Speaker 1>little bit worse. People are clearing, people are settling, you know.
<v Speaker 2>I mean the place where staying is a it's a
<v Speaker 2>fucking resort for God's sake.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the people coming in from like lower down to
<v Speaker 2>build like resorts. And there's also a lot of development too.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, oh, the place where staying supposed to be
<v Speaker 1>a resort, that's a resort of the SpongeBob.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah yeah, yeah, that's a resort technically.
<v Speaker 1>Or it was started as a guy. You can hear
<v Speaker 1>the fucking cutting right now. Man, Yeah damn. So how
<v Speaker 1>does it the land clear and start off? It starts
<v Speaker 1>off as logging and then just turns into but it's
<v Speaker 1>with the idea that it's going to remain clear and
<v Speaker 1>then yeah, people will be able to comments gorgeous farm there.
<v Speaker 3>Look at these birds though there's playing around.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the man, daybreak today sounded really nice. That was
<v Speaker 1>pretty fucking incredible.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but it's crazy that we hear logging right over there.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, the forces are probably going to try to
<v Speaker 2>maybe stop it.
<v Speaker 1>It's the tour man. It's just it's just what it
<v Speaker 1>does society. That's what I just don't get is how
<v Speaker 1>do people not value this at all? And it's everywhere,
<v Speaker 1>it's not specific to any one reason. Certainly it's like
<v Speaker 1>worse in some areas. God, you can really see the
<v Speaker 1>poor cydal anthers on these fucking melastomes. Oh god, it's
<v Speaker 1>so crazy.
<v Speaker 3>We'll also see a probably a couple of Mendelias later.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well, I fucking go slow. What was it you
<v Speaker 1>were telling me? You guys made some patches or something
<v Speaker 1>about What did you say? Uh?
<v Speaker 3>What was I saying?
<v Speaker 1>We were talking about going slow yesterday the Botanist pace.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, oh, the Slow Hikers Club. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly
<v Speaker 2>what we're doing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you guys made you made some nice merch too.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so.
<v Speaker 2>That's always fun, just kind of making stuff out of
<v Speaker 2>like whatever ideas we have.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, whoever does your graphics man, they're fucking yeah, what
<v Speaker 1>is this like us again? I guess uh, oh no,
<v Speaker 1>that's NYC. Look at that those massive.
<v Speaker 3>Uh yeah, shoot, I forgot.
<v Speaker 1>Stipules in the middle.
<v Speaker 3>I forget that.
<v Speaker 1>So how did you How did you guys hook up
<v Speaker 1>with Jason?
<v Speaker 3>I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Rob found him somewhere. Yeah, I mean Rob's good at that.
<v Speaker 2>He kind of picks people who are kind of like
<v Speaker 2>have an interest in that. And most of the people,
<v Speaker 2>with a couple of exceptions in the in the organization,
<v Speaker 2>most of them don't have a formal background bompany. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and so Jason started out as a teacher, like a
<v Speaker 2>like a high school teacher, like an elementary school teacher.
<v Speaker 3>But he's always left plants. He's also self thought.
<v Speaker 2>And then he just finishes Masters in botany after kind
<v Speaker 2>of working with BT I. Oh really, and that's now
<v Speaker 2>he's teaching at the at the University of the Philippines.
<v Speaker 1>Oh dope, So now he lectures on Yeah. I feel
<v Speaker 1>like a formal education sometimes is a hindrance because it
<v Speaker 1>just I feel like it locks people into this world
<v Speaker 1>that may kill the joy in some ways. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know what is it? What Jason's right here this with
<v Speaker 1>the the these giant coreaceous leaves and then the stipules
<v Speaker 1>in the middle. A beautiful red on that new leaf too.
<v Speaker 1>Oh it's pubescent. What is this neoclea. That's not that's
<v Speaker 1>ruby ac.
<v Speaker 2>That's all with the they're they're flowering by.
<v Speaker 1>The giant in florescence. Yeah, it looks like a cephalanthis
<v Speaker 1>in fluorescence, which is also ruby acre. Oh wow, whine mania.
<v Speaker 4>Or what yeah? Formerly queen manya it's now terla.
<v Speaker 1>Oh they split it up. Yeah that's good.
<v Speaker 3>Was that a chainsaw?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 4>I recorded it.
<v Speaker 3>God what cuele was here?
<v Speaker 2>So quel Leo the foster one who like brought us
<v Speaker 2>here in the first place. That guy is like a
<v Speaker 2>like batman or something.
<v Speaker 1>Oh really get them? Oh yeah, what happens? It's villagers
<v Speaker 1>that come up. Where do people come from?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean around the area, honestly, So a couple
<v Speaker 2>of them are oh come, so I mean there are
<v Speaker 2>there are indigenous people's here, so sometimes I mean they
<v Speaker 2>have a right. I mean that's the ancestor the main
<v Speaker 2>But then you also have a lot of settlers coming
<v Speaker 2>in from like the lowlands.
<v Speaker 1>Holy fuck is that a What the fuck is that?
<v Speaker 1>That's an actual rock that looks like a satchel. It
<v Speaker 1>looks like a black velvet satchel the size of a
<v Speaker 1>fucking bulldozer. What is this? Man? Is all that's just
<v Speaker 1>moss covering it. Huh? Or is that the actual?
<v Speaker 3>No?
<v Speaker 1>No, what is that material? Is that ultra matic? I
<v Speaker 1>don't know what the fuck this is? Oh yeah, oh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>scrape it?
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, huh, you're right.
<v Speaker 1>I can't tell what that materials made out of.
<v Speaker 3>No idea.
<v Speaker 1>But this is all This is all cleared land. This
<v Speaker 1>was all forests and now it's cleared. And then you
<v Speaker 1>can see where the forest starts.
<v Speaker 3>Literally there's a straight line with.
<v Speaker 1>So you've got a host of uh, pioneer species. I
<v Speaker 1>guess some of these are probably native, and a lot
<v Speaker 1>of these are neotropical. I saw a lot of neotropical
<v Speaker 1>aster racy.
<v Speaker 4>What is this that?
<v Speaker 1>That's a the fuck that's insane? A leaya? We got
<v Speaker 1>a slight we got leaves are about eight inches long,
<v Speaker 1>petials like half an inch, and then these spikes of
<v Speaker 1>tiny flowers. Oh that's cool, man, got bud Laya's everywhere.
<v Speaker 1>The ficus we were seeing yesterday, I should say, for
<v Speaker 1>the record, we're fucking insane. We saw massive ficus that
<v Speaker 1>were enormous around with buttress roots. Then we saw little
<v Speaker 1>vines too, right, and then that's crazy, and that Aristolochia
<v Speaker 1>was pretty remarkable too. It's another one pseudo palma.
<v Speaker 4>It's a ficus that we have.
<v Speaker 1>Jesus Christ I had no idea there was so much
<v Speaker 1>diversity in ficus. Who's getting who's getting blown up? Well? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so these these flower spikes are like nearly ten inches
<v Speaker 1>to a foot long each with like, uh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>these tiny white, four pedal flowers and a typical you know,
<v Speaker 1>bud laya, and you know what the species on this.
<v Speaker 4>I think that's a shot.
<v Speaker 1>We're getting My body's uh, these little puppers, these little
<v Speaker 1>what are little chihuah WA's what is it?
<v Speaker 4>Those are local mixed?
<v Speaker 1>Hey, Boddy, got a pepperoni? Now you run away? That's
<v Speaker 1>what I thought. They all they all run away?
<v Speaker 2>Well something the a bipe though, trying not to try
<v Speaker 2>not to get a bit.
<v Speaker 1>What is this? This is? Is this native to? This
<v Speaker 1>is baraji and ac What is this thing?
<v Speaker 2>Sorry, Jason is getting excited about.
<v Speaker 1>Oh that's the magnolia we're going to find. Come here, buddy,
<v Speaker 1>come here.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah that's magnia.
<v Speaker 1>But you guys get rabies out here. Yeah, yeah, fu
<v Speaker 1>I had my raby shadow still pump the little chihuahua
<v Speaker 1>room if it bites me.
<v Speaker 3>Though, Yeah, I'll kick it.
<v Speaker 4>High elevation.
<v Speaker 1>An animal lover, and I just want to let you
<v Speaker 1>know if it bites you, that it's your fault and
<v Speaker 1>you should just here we get some some Yeah, look
<v Speaker 1>at this magnolia.
<v Speaker 5>Wow, this is a I'd be good the girls a
<v Speaker 5>forestation species.
<v Speaker 1>This orange pubescence. I've noticed this orange pubescence on a
<v Speaker 1>lot of plants in tropical climates. Why is it always orange? Though?
<v Speaker 4>No one asks that.
<v Speaker 2>Isn't that like mostly like an adaptation for just to
<v Speaker 2>prevent that.
<v Speaker 1>This sun burning new tissue. Yeah, to prevent What.
<v Speaker 4>Is this, Jason, it's a Jamaican thing.
<v Speaker 1>Oh it's Jamaican. Yeah, it's boragina see it right, Oh
<v Speaker 1>it's verbonac all right, yes, sorry, I just don't know
<v Speaker 1>with the white flowers. Okay, you guys have a whole
<v Speaker 1>Schmorgesborg of neotropical fucking invasive species here. Unfortunate because oh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the Spaniards. Yeah, what is so? What's the Philippines history
<v Speaker 1>regarding Spanish colonization? They got here one five hundred. That's
<v Speaker 1>that's why we were seeing. That's what we were seeing.
<v Speaker 1>The intense Catholic Schmorgesborg. The intense Catholic bonanza? It was it?
<v Speaker 1>Would you say it was a Catholic bonanza yesterday?
<v Speaker 3>I mean, how many Jesus do you see?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know a lot, but I thought it was
<v Speaker 1>cheating because they the one that one guy sought off
<v Speaker 1>the end of the crucifix and it easier to carry, right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's some of them are pretty intense. We didn't
<v Speaker 2>see any of them, but some of them are like
<v Speaker 2>really flagellated.
<v Speaker 1>Is that native?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? No, meotropical? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Where's it? Where's it from? You know?
<v Speaker 4>I think it's in Mexico.
<v Speaker 1>So the Spanish we're bringing this stuff over for you had.
<v Speaker 2>The Galleon trade. So I mean there's a lot of
<v Speaker 2>stuff that they're bringing over.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, Jesus vcs quite narcotic.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, it's what is it narcotic?
<v Speaker 1>Oh? Really? Oh it's a it'll make you sick.
<v Speaker 4>It'll make you high.
<v Speaker 1>Oh really not in a pleasant way though, in a
<v Speaker 1>food poising like fever and I'm pissing out my assway. Yea,
<v Speaker 1>and my electrolytes are depleted.
<v Speaker 3>What is that? This one? This shrub?
<v Speaker 1>So okay? So Rob started Philippine taxonomic Initiative and then
<v Speaker 1>you guys got a grant to do this. You're electing
<v Speaker 1>trip right now? Is this chrome Alina looks like it?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>What is that?
<v Speaker 4>I honestly don't know.
<v Speaker 1>This is Odorata? Oh god, that's such a great native
<v Speaker 1>where we're from, but where I'm from, but uh, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's horrific here. I've heard this was real bed in
<v Speaker 1>base of all over the world.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, especially here in all these disturbed areas.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So do you think I mean, do you oh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>look there's a massive field. There's some brass like I
<v Speaker 1>done there. So do you think that the the land
<v Speaker 1>clearance will stop at some point if it's protected?
<v Speaker 3>Or yeah?
<v Speaker 2>I mean right now, you have like ninety plus thousand
<v Speaker 2>hectors of like this forest, specifically the forest boundaries about
<v Speaker 2>ninety thousand hectares. Yeah, and you have about twelve foresters
<v Speaker 2>that are managing the whole place.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So I mean what one forester every.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there's just no enforcement.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah exactly.
<v Speaker 2>So there's not enough money just to protect it. Once
<v Speaker 2>it becomes acted area, you do get a lot more
<v Speaker 2>money flowing into into the land. You also get a
<v Speaker 2>lot more rights to protect it, you know, land use
<v Speaker 2>will be more difficult. It's not gonna stop, but it'll
<v Speaker 2>slow down.
<v Speaker 5>You'll still get fun with like this trying to exactly
<v Speaker 5>yeah exactly, So what.
<v Speaker 1>Are they cutting then? Probably probably the tarotcarps.
<v Speaker 2>Or what yeah, yeah for a lumber.
<v Speaker 1>God this geology rules. Look at these rocks, they're like
<v Speaker 1>they look like they're covered in black velvet. Oh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and you gotta here you can see a little bit. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>it's like a granite. This looks like metamorphic almost. There's
<v Speaker 1>a large grain size, but then like it's been cooked
<v Speaker 1>or something, and there's this red material seeping out. You
<v Speaker 1>got like a iron rich materials seeping out of it.
<v Speaker 1>But there's an area where there's no none of this
<v Speaker 1>bio crust. The ship is this This looks kind of
<v Speaker 1>like something I saw in New Caledonia.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, yeah, like.
<v Speaker 1>These like uh peridotite or ga even gabbro boulders. They're
<v Speaker 1>fucking massive though, they're really pretty Oh yeah, I look
<v Speaker 1>on the underside you can see it. Yeah, it looks
<v Speaker 1>like oh yeah, huh, I don't know what this would
<v Speaker 1>be what those it's not sedimentary though, we could say that,
<v Speaker 1>yeah for sure. Yeah, it's igneous and maybe metamorphic. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, but I mean, you guys have two subduction
<v Speaker 1>zones on Holy fuck, how weathers. You guys have two
<v Speaker 1>subduction zones on either side of the island. Right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there's like two subduction zones converging. It's a tectonic clusterfuck,
<v Speaker 1>So there's got to be there had to have been
<v Speaker 1>some uplift at some point. It last hundred million years.
<v Speaker 1>Of the more deep rocks like peridotite and serpentine. You
<v Speaker 1>guys have ultramatic areas too.
<v Speaker 3>Right, Oh yeah, a lot, a lot.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, this is pretty careful. Don't wander too far because
<v Speaker 1>the bluetooth might not pick up the micro Oh yeah, oh,
<v Speaker 1>here's that's cracked open. Okay, it's a few hours earlier,
<v Speaker 1>and this fucking MIC's about to die. But we worth
<v Speaker 1>these forests about four thousand feet elevation. Now, it's remarkable
<v Speaker 1>that there's no mosquitos here.
<v Speaker 3>What is that?
<v Speaker 1>What do you see? It's a nice collie after ooh,
<v Speaker 1>it's all shiny shit. Yeah, it's nice. So Jenny, tell
<v Speaker 1>us about your pandanus obsession.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man, Well, honestly, the way it started was when
<v Speaker 2>I first came up here.
<v Speaker 1>The screw pines, pandemaces, the family Pandanus. They're fucking weird.
<v Speaker 1>They've got prop roots like palms. There's they're hyper species.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the Philippines they have a whole bunch of them too.
<v Speaker 2>But the big reason I studied them is becus no
<v Speaker 2>one else does. And when else. When I came up
<v Speaker 2>here with Rob and I was thinking, like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>what should I focus on? He was like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>nobody's studying pandemic Why did you do it?
<v Speaker 3>Like?
<v Speaker 1>Huh, all right?
<v Speaker 2>So I played for this fellowship with the Zoological Society
<v Speaker 2>of London called.
<v Speaker 3>The Edge of Existence Fellowship.
<v Speaker 2>It turns out pandance are all edge species that are
<v Speaker 2>evolutionarily distinct and endangered.
<v Speaker 1>What does edge mean?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's it's uh, what is edge in reference to? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>evolutionarily distinct.
<v Speaker 1>Oh it's an acronym.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I forgot what gs but endangered generally endangered and
<v Speaker 2>I'm a horrible edge fellow.
<v Speaker 3>I don't even know what it sounds for.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, so they're both evolutionary distinct and there are
<v Speaker 2>also some level of endangered, so like on the Ice
<v Speaker 2>and Red List, and a whole bunch of the pandanas.
<v Speaker 2>So most of them in the Philippines actually are edge species.
<v Speaker 5>What pollinates them beatles Actually.
<v Speaker 1>Beatles pollinate pandemics.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so if you look at like the reason they're
<v Speaker 2>so hard also to like identify, the staminate flowers only
<v Speaker 2>last a day. Yeah, they last a day and then
<v Speaker 2>like most like beetles eat them because they're kind of they're.
<v Speaker 3>Oh look at us, snowshell.
<v Speaker 1>Oh Jesus Christ, the thing's massive. Yeah. We should also
<v Speaker 1>mention we saw a mountain crab, which I didn't even
<v Speaker 1>know it was a thing.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but yeah, the stamina flowers are like really nectary,
<v Speaker 2>and beetles eat them.
<v Speaker 3>And now I don't know where we're going. I think here.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I mean they look like Giana gave is the
<v Speaker 1>new species that you saw, that giant one. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I mean it looks it's like twenty feet across. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they're six meters across.
<v Speaker 2>Uh, they're super massive, so getting like a leaf sample
<v Speaker 2>as such a painted ass.
<v Speaker 1>And they've got those like weird gutter like formations in
<v Speaker 1>the mid rib of the leaf.
<v Speaker 3>They have those pleats in the middle.
<v Speaker 1>But the ship has this a raspberry What the fuck
<v Speaker 1>it's native? I take it or what.
<v Speaker 3>Probably if it's here. Oh yeah, okay, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah that's wild. That's pretty cool. So anyway, so how
<v Speaker 1>do you figure out this was a new species.
<v Speaker 2>We thought it was this other big species called simplex,
<v Speaker 2>and we just assumed it was for the longest time.
<v Speaker 2>And then last August when we were here, we finally
<v Speaker 2>found a fruit and it was so different from anything else.
<v Speaker 1>What did the fruit look like?
<v Speaker 3>It's just almost like a jackfruit.
<v Speaker 1>I guess you said it was five kilos.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, huge, huge.
<v Speaker 1>But it's an aggregate fruit, right.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's a droop.
<v Speaker 1>Huh. Yeah, it was just massive and giant strawberry.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it didn't look anything like the species we thought
<v Speaker 2>it was. Like, the fruit was so different, and if
<v Speaker 2>the habit also once you kind of really look into it,
<v Speaker 2>the habits a little different. It's akolescent, well mostly apparently
<v Speaker 2>not all the time.
<v Speaker 1>Someone stems through this. So these things look like crosses
<v Speaker 1>between gaves, bromeliads and yuccas.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Actually, and we've got prop roots like poems.
<v Speaker 3>Some of them are properly some of them don't.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, related to phrase Sinetia, which is the other genus
<v Speaker 1>in the family.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, they're all epiphytic.
<v Speaker 2>There's two more in the genus, Dure's Benstonia, which used
<v Speaker 2>to be under fandanas, named after the legend himself, Ben Stone.
<v Speaker 2>Who's it The guy is telling you about the one
<v Speaker 2>who was the pandemic expert and then he died on his.
<v Speaker 1>Just croaked at his desk.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I think that's why nobody wanted to study pandic Do.
<v Speaker 1>You believe there's no mosquitoes here? Yeah, at all, just
<v Speaker 1>the occasional king.
<v Speaker 2>Cobra hopefully not hopefully not here. I would love to
<v Speaker 2>see some colibrids though, a pit piper.
<v Speaker 1>What the fuck is this? Look at the Spraycenetia. Man, Oh,
<v Speaker 1>there we go.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, it's flower. So these are bracts.
<v Speaker 1>So they were just bracts with Yeah, if we can
<v Speaker 1>at the base of those eight inch long leaves, it's
<v Speaker 1>like this red attractive.
<v Speaker 3>Oh shit, yeah, these might be britpon.
<v Speaker 1>It looks like it with that red.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, especially they usually flower up high. Let's let's open
<v Speaker 3>this up.
<v Speaker 1>We can get a nice photo of that really quick.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah all right, Uh, that wasn't working. That was it
<v Speaker 1>was a little distracting, but we just got back. It's
<v Speaker 1>two days later, the cicadas here sound like burglar alarms.
<v Speaker 1>This ship is this? Is that a crowd time? What
<v Speaker 1>is this thing? Oh no, it's some sort of weird
<v Speaker 1>u form. Yeah, this rusty pubescence you see on so
<v Speaker 1>many plants in the tropics is really, uh, it's an
<v Speaker 1>unusual convergent trait. I've seen it Eastern Hemisphere, Western Hemisphere
<v Speaker 1>always at low latitudes though, and I think that's it's
<v Speaker 1>got something to do with the uh, the humand since
<v Speaker 1>it's not really a dry environment that's seasonally dry, there's
<v Speaker 1>also high rainfall and so there can be high humidity
<v Speaker 1>as well as well as heat. I'm sure there's other factors,
<v Speaker 1>as you know, but that like orangish hair, that orangish
<v Speaker 1>pubescence that you see on a lot of plants normally
<v Speaker 1>on their ab axial surfaces in their stems, we really
<v Speaker 1>only see in the tropics at low latitude. So there's
<v Speaker 1>a former patch of forest that's been cleared, the produced tomatoes.
<v Speaker 1>There's some guys, like a lot of guys on crowdrockets here.
<v Speaker 1>I wouldn't say crowdchrockets are a little dirt bikes, but
<v Speaker 1>it's you know, it really is a more efficient way
<v Speaker 1>to get around. It's a more efficient form of transportation,
<v Speaker 1>especially in these hilly areas, much rather be around a crotch.
<v Speaker 1>It's then, you know, fucking cars, God, the fucking the
<v Speaker 1>Ruscity pubescence is really something else. I'm walking down. We're
<v Speaker 1>going down that this little store so I can use
<v Speaker 1>the fucking wi Fi. I was not prepared for how
<v Speaker 1>many species of Ficus there would be. There was numerous
<v Speaker 1>species of ficus, you know. And if you were just
<v Speaker 1>you know, hiding out in the bushes watching me walking
<v Speaker 1>down a road right now, you'd say that guy's fucking insane.
<v Speaker 1>He looks like he's he's just full on having a
<v Speaker 1>conversation with himself. So hopefully you can get a chuckle
<v Speaker 1>out of that in no matter where you got the
<v Speaker 1>fucking figs here, there are a vining ficus, there are
<v Speaker 1>a large ficus. There's herbaceous ficus. Here's an acalifa eupourbac.
<v Speaker 1>That fucking lukena that's so invasive in South Texas is
<v Speaker 1>also here as well, which is a memosoid with the
<v Speaker 1>pinnate leaves, but the leaflets are a little bit larger.
<v Speaker 1>It's like a it's called the fat Gordito Tepewahey looks
<v Speaker 1>like our native South Texas tepe waye. Oh that's sun
<v Speaker 1>the increased a violet. But the forests here are fucking fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>We went on this hike. We ascended to about fifty
<v Speaker 1>eight hundred feet on this ridge, got to see the penthes.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, is this a clittoria? No, it's the
<v Speaker 1>other one. What is it? The central sema? And I
<v Speaker 1>gotta get it looks like a volva. I'll just say
<v Speaker 1>it straight out. It looks like you know, it looks
<v Speaker 1>like some sort of the This looks like a like
<v Speaker 1>a general shot right there, beautiful pa resupinate flower with
<v Speaker 1>a large banner petal. But anyway, so, but these forests
<v Speaker 1>are just fucking incredible. But it's you know, it's NonStop
<v Speaker 1>land clearance here too, for for agriculture, not subsistence agriculture,
<v Speaker 1>market agriculture. And it's just kind of you know, as
<v Speaker 1>people spread, there's more everywhere. You know, who are you
<v Speaker 1>to tell them? No? Right? But there's got to be
<v Speaker 1>room in the culture for plants. I wasn't there. That's
<v Speaker 1>how you prevent this. You teach people to respect it
<v Speaker 1>and they or you culturally teach people to respect it,
<v Speaker 1>you know, if you make room for the plants and
<v Speaker 1>the culture. Like they have strongeload on the jadevine on
<v Speaker 1>the fucking currency here on the coins. They have other
<v Speaker 1>plants on the coins as well. New Zealand also does this.
<v Speaker 1>Australia also does this. In the United States, we don't
<v Speaker 1>have that. We just have dead honkeys and maybe a buffalo,
<v Speaker 1>which is, you know, a testament, kind of insulting testament
<v Speaker 1>to how we almost drove them extinct. Lots of invasive
<v Speaker 1>Upatorium different upuatoree, that's the tribe of Upatorium species on
<v Speaker 1>the side of the roads here. I can see that
<v Speaker 1>they're neotropical. They've got very strong fhital chemistry that discourages herbivores.
<v Speaker 1>And so you take them to a place they've never
<v Speaker 1>been before and now there's no herbivores, microerbivores, there's no
<v Speaker 1>insects that can keep them in check. Lots of Astraci
<v Speaker 1>are really good at at avoiding herbivaly with the due
<v Speaker 1>to their chemical signatures, the chemical cupounds. But uh, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this fucking force we went there was incredible yesterday. It
<v Speaker 1>was a brutal fucking hike. I felt like an old
<v Speaker 1>man when I was done, because I've been carrying all
<v Speaker 1>this shit. I'm wearing these stupid like pull on steel
<v Speaker 1>toe boots. They're they're like bluntstones, They're like knockoff blunstams.
<v Speaker 1>I think they're wolverine. Totally inappropriate footwear for the ship
<v Speaker 1>we were doing yesterday. It rocked my fucking what is
<v Speaker 1>it plant or fasci itis when you when you're the
<v Speaker 1>heels hurt. I don't know what it was, but it
<v Speaker 1>felt like shit. I needed to do some yoga. It
<v Speaker 1>really kicked my ass. But uh, that's nice. The kid.
<v Speaker 1>The kid just waved to me. It's they see people
<v Speaker 1>are friendly. Kid on the back of a motorcycle. But man, though,
<v Speaker 1>So there was the cretty impacted natum up there. It's
<v Speaker 1>probably a new species because Pectinatum is uh I think from.
<v Speaker 1>It's probably a new Decridium species or undescribed not new,
<v Speaker 1>but it sounds weird. New undescribed Deacritium species, which is
<v Speaker 1>taxonomically distinct from Pectinatum, which is seen uh in the
<v Speaker 1>islands further west. Where was it Pectinatum is from? Where?
<v Speaker 1>Like Indonesia? I gotta look, but there was. There was
<v Speaker 1>Nepenthes Vaccinium leptospermum, which is mertesi ah Simplokos, which is
<v Speaker 1>I think the family is simple casey, but that's in
<v Speaker 1>h Eric Calees. It's another era Calees member, blueberry order member.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely wild shit. This decritium was just fucking what a
<v Speaker 1>banger of a plant, Just these Jurassic age conifers growing
<v Speaker 1>all scraggly and shit in the forest. You know, the
<v Speaker 1>the foliage looks like lycopod leaves. Just the really remarkable plant.
<v Speaker 1>I love seeing poto carbs because they're just so fucking old.
<v Speaker 1>There was also Agathis, which is another you know, it's
<v Speaker 1>the quote unquote monkey puzzle family, Eric Carreyace. There was Agathis.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's been lumped in with Alba, but it
<v Speaker 1>used to be Agatha's philippinensus. I don't know if that's
<v Speaker 1>a valid lump. You know. I always prefer splitting as
<v Speaker 1>opposed to lumping. Oh shit, we got a chicken in
<v Speaker 1>the variety store in a sorry, sorry store. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know what are you doing in are you can't hang
<v Speaker 1>out in air? I came down here to use the internet,
<v Speaker 1>but it's closed. You know, these fucking Catholic holidays. The
<v Speaker 1>Catholic is hell here due to the Spanish colonization and whatnot.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you know, if you could take how crazy
<v Speaker 1>Albolinas and shit get everybody gets about their religions. Oh
<v Speaker 1>you know, fucking eyes rolled back in the head, hands
<v Speaker 1>up in the air. Oh god, they're just feeling the glory,
<v Speaker 1>the orgasmic glory of whatever in visible friend they have.
<v Speaker 1>If you could take that and teach people to have
<v Speaker 1>that kind of feeling about the biosphere and the living world, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you got it. You don't have to worry about conservation anymore.
<v Speaker 1>It'll be handled. Oh look a puppy. Anyway, I gotta
<v Speaker 1>do some work right now. I'll get I'll check back
<v Speaker 1>with you in a little bit. Oh, these dogs are
<v Speaker 1>coming by to vet me. All right, here we go.
<v Speaker 1>It's this should be fun, all right. Uploaded a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of iron Aid observations and uh now I'm headed back
<v Speaker 1>up the hill to the quote unquote resort. I mean
<v Speaker 1>for a resort, I don't know if I would call
<v Speaker 1>it a resort. It's more like a uh it's like
<v Speaker 1>a cinderblock hostile that's got two rooms and a shitter.
<v Speaker 1>You know what's nice though, it is all the shitters
<v Speaker 1>here have bid days. How the fuck can you call
<v Speaker 1>the United States a civilized country if we haven't normalized
<v Speaker 1>bid days yet. It's disgusting, it's fucking repulsive. You know,
<v Speaker 1>using toilet paper, you're just rubbing the shit into your ass.
<v Speaker 1>This is why you listen to this podcast so we
<v Speaker 1>could talk about toilet at a kid. Do you hear
<v Speaker 1>that cicada? Still? It sounds like a burglar alarm. I'm
<v Speaker 1>fucking walking up a very steep grade, so you're just
<v Speaker 1>gonna have to deal with my windedness. But yeah, there's
<v Speaker 1>mid days everywhere, and it's the ones that actually hang
<v Speaker 1>up on a wall and you know, you squirt your ass,
<v Speaker 1>you can. You know. I went into a Denny's. We
<v Speaker 1>stopped in a fucking Denny's and there was a bid
<v Speaker 1>day in the Denny's. I was impressed. I said, wow,
<v Speaker 1>Oh Jesus Christ. So anyway, lots of fucking pandanas here
<v Speaker 1>and it's a remarkable genus that I'm really coming to
<v Speaker 1>appreciate more and it's amazing. Oh yeah, this is Steve.
<v Speaker 1>I wanna take a break. God damn man, the pavement's
<v Speaker 1>got grooves in it, so you know, people coming downhill
<v Speaker 1>don't slip and slide all over the place during the
<v Speaker 1>wet season, which is most of the year. This is
<v Speaker 1>tropical rainforest, but Pandanus is everywhere, man, and I think
<v Speaker 1>we sell like six species yesterday, including the new one.
<v Speaker 1>And it's amazing the convergent evolution between the dick like
<v Speaker 1>prop roots of pandanas and the dick like prop roots
<v Speaker 1>of Iriardia del toidia, the quote unquote walking palm, which
<v Speaker 1>doesn't really walk, it's a dick palm. It just sends
<v Speaker 1>out prop roots. So being monocots, of course, these plants
<v Speaker 1>don't get growth rings. Beautiful fucking butterfly. These plants don't
<v Speaker 1>get growth rings, and they don't have lateral growth, just
<v Speaker 1>apical growth up and down. Roots grow and the shoots
<v Speaker 1>grow just like palm trees. They don't grow wider, but
<v Speaker 1>for that to compensate for the increased need for vascular
<v Speaker 1>supply as the plant grows up. Because many of these
<v Speaker 1>pandanas pandani is that a word, Many of these pandani,
<v Speaker 1>I'll just make it up. That's what I call it.
<v Speaker 1>Many of these pandani branch to make up for that
<v Speaker 1>increased vascular supply as well as the structural support in
<v Speaker 1>these soils. They send out these prop roots, and the
<v Speaker 1>way that the root cap is situated on the prop root,
<v Speaker 1>it really looks like a dick. It's very oppressive, you know.
<v Speaker 1>And if you got if your mind's in the gutter
<v Speaker 1>like me, well you know what to do with that.
<v Speaker 1>But some of these pandanas, I mean, they look like
<v Speaker 1>they were mildly reminiscent of a gave Atroverians known from
<v Speaker 1>the cloud force of Wahaka, the generally biggest fuck agave,
<v Speaker 1>probably the largest agave that exists. Jeremy Spath sells it
<v Speaker 1>a hidden a gave nursery, and Encinitas think he sells
<v Speaker 1>all the agaves, most of them, including some gentry Eye
<v Speaker 1>that I sent him seed for which if you live
<v Speaker 1>in Portland, a gave gentry Eye is like a gave Montana,
<v Speaker 1>except to produce his offsets so you can cut them
<v Speaker 1>off and give them to your friends. Absolutely massive agave
<v Speaker 1>known from higher elevations into Wavo leone like Sarah Poto
<v Speaker 1>c at ten thousand feet in the pinus Hertweggi force.
<v Speaker 1>What the fuck is that thing. What is that white flowered,
<v Speaker 1>massive tropical tree. God damn, there's some cool shit here.
<v Speaker 1>I'm glad they're looting it for destroying it to make agriculture.
<v Speaker 1>They I just mean my fellow humans. But uh, fucking hey,
<v Speaker 1>what are we doing here? Man? Is there not a
<v Speaker 1>way you can have both keep remnants of the forest
<v Speaker 1>because you appreciate it, and still grow five undred thousand
<v Speaker 1>shitty tomatoes. I shouldn't call them shitty. Maybe they're wonderful. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this is that central sema, the Cuitttoria vine. Maybe I'm
<v Speaker 1>gonna take this back and bring it to Jason because
<v Speaker 1>I think it's invasive here anyway, unless it's pantropical. But
<v Speaker 1>these pandemics look like a gave atro Virreans can get
<v Speaker 1>this fucking thing old. I got to chew it. God damn,
<v Speaker 1>a gave atro virance. Just these massive rosette leaved monocots
<v Speaker 1>with spiny margins, and except the pandanas have proper roots
<v Speaker 1>of course, just growing in the understory of these tropical
<v Speaker 1>force I don't think I've seen any growing out in
<v Speaker 1>full sun, like when we were on the Knife Sedge
<v Speaker 1>Ridge yesterday with rhododendron subsessile and the simplocos interesting genus.
<v Speaker 1>Why does our gang or the king organic materials smell
<v Speaker 1>like dog balls or like dog breath or something. It's
<v Speaker 1>like you need a slobbery dog. You ever meet those,
<v Speaker 1>Like when you ever met a redneck that fetis dog beer.
<v Speaker 1>That's terrible, But I've met it. I've met that before
<v Speaker 1>and it smelled like this. But anyway, so these pandanas
<v Speaker 1>Pandanas and fray Sanetia are the two genera in the
<v Speaker 1>pandines we're encountering. Fray Sinetia has really cool looking flowers too,
<v Speaker 1>purple anthers that look like large purple cotton swabs. I
<v Speaker 1>think they're monecious or dioecious. I'm not sure, but it's
<v Speaker 1>an impressive family. And then, of course, the order Pandinales
<v Speaker 1>is the order of the New World velozi Ac, which
<v Speaker 1>go fucking apeshit in Brazil. Probably one of my most
<v Speaker 1>favorite plant families, the Velosias, I mean, they just look
<v Speaker 1>fucking nuts. I think there might be an old world
<v Speaker 1>genus too, called zero something x er. So these are
<v Speaker 1>drought talent, heavily drought tolerant genera. The Velosia is not
<v Speaker 1>the pandanus and uh. I just remember being on these
<v Speaker 1>rocky quartzitic outcrops in Mina Cheries, Brazil, and there is
<v Speaker 1>just I mean, some of these velosias there. They can
<v Speaker 1>dry out almost fully and turn crispy and then come
<v Speaker 1>back to life. So they're poiquilo hydric or desiccation tolerant,
<v Speaker 1>and they just look fucking wild. Their flowers are super
<v Speaker 1>We're showy, which is cool, but that's like the least
<v Speaker 1>of the interesting thing about them is that they got
<v Speaker 1>pretty flowers. Who gives a fuck? What am I like?
<v Speaker 1>Mark the Stewart, I look like a fucking Hallmark. I
<v Speaker 1>look like one of the rich ladies that volunteers their
<v Speaker 1>time at Missouri Botanical Garden. Oh, expect more jabs at
<v Speaker 1>that institution. Not very pleased with them right now. They
<v Speaker 1>kind of pissed me off. It's their HR department, to
<v Speaker 1>be honest, fucking with some friends of mine. Anyway, they
<v Speaker 1>got to get with the program over there. Man. They're
<v Speaker 1>in this old school, wealthy, elite view of botanic gardens,
<v Speaker 1>and that's not the way things are moving, at least
<v Speaker 1>in the botanical sciences. There's a lot more people with
<v Speaker 1>a lot more class consciousness getting into this stuff, and
<v Speaker 1>Mobot seems a little stuck in the past, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like they're just they're gonna alienate the poor in a
<v Speaker 1>working class so that they can please the wealthy. Don'tor Okay,
<v Speaker 1>that's enough. I think I'm already banned from that spot,
<v Speaker 1>which is honestly not that much of a bummer. From
<v Speaker 1>the herbariums a little bit of a bumb but like sure,
<v Speaker 1>sure I could just put like a mustache and glasses
<v Speaker 1>on and go in there, you know, be fine, mustache,
<v Speaker 1>glasses and uh uh, you know, some sort of fucking hat,
<v Speaker 1>some goofy fucking hat. I going to Yeah, he's fine.
<v Speaker 1>He's got a goofy head and a mustache, a glue
<v Speaker 1>on mustache and some glasses on. He looks totally different
<v Speaker 1>night and day. I'll grow with beards, so I can
<v Speaker 1>still visit the Mobot herbarium. Some squirrely kid in the
<v Speaker 1>chair that's like super quiet, like glaring at you. Does
<v Speaker 1>that happen? I think that's happened before. Is that cramp
<v Speaker 1>PAGs and ye? Yeah he's problematic. So uh anyway, so
<v Speaker 1>the velosias that I saw in Brazil were just fucking incredible.
<v Speaker 1>This is a distraction from pandanas, but they're both in
<v Speaker 1>the same order. Pandinalies. Uh so velosias are incredible. And
<v Speaker 1>then of course you've got also in Pandinales that the
<v Speaker 1>Panama hat family, the cyclant they see, which are also
<v Speaker 1>pretty credible and bizarre. And when you look at the
<v Speaker 1>flowers and you know, of course they're both all monocass.
<v Speaker 1>When you look at the flowers, you could you could
<v Speaker 1>see a lot more similarities as well. So seeing fray
<v Speaker 1>Sinetia flowering was incredible. And I guess they do mass
<v Speaker 1>flowering sometimes, so they've got these bright red bracts. And
<v Speaker 1>then the purple anthe the purple pollen, purple pollen and
<v Speaker 1>purple anthers is fucking wild. They're just there's They're really cool.
<v Speaker 1>It's a it's a cool family. I think Pandanas is
<v Speaker 1>all old world, so you're not gonna see any in
<v Speaker 1>the Americas unless it's in a botanic garden or something. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>we're getting back, we're getting back to the little domicile
<v Speaker 1>and want to talk to Johnny a little bit more
<v Speaker 1>about this organization. He started and talk to Jason as well,
<v Speaker 1>who's a fucking excellent botanist. Okay, we're back. We're back
<v Speaker 1>with Johnny and Jason. So okay, so you guys start this,
<v Speaker 1>this Phillip pp I Philippine Taxonomic Initiative, And what made
<v Speaker 1>you guys start this? It's an ng O is that?
<v Speaker 1>What is NGOMAN? It's like a nonprofit basically.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's a nonprofit. So again, like, well, we were
<v Speaker 2>probably one of the earlier members, me and Jason, and
<v Speaker 2>now we're both in the on the board of the
<v Speaker 2>of the nonprofit. So like we're both directors along with
<v Speaker 2>Rob who is the founder.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it was such a super collaborative, grassroots program.
<v Speaker 2>Just everyone's a volunteer.
<v Speaker 1>Just a little bit. Yeah, like that's good, that's good.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah right here, yeah, right there we go. Yeah yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's just all volunteer based, right.
<v Speaker 1>But the purpose of it was what there was no
<v Speaker 1>organization dedicated to exploding the botany of the Philippines. And
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of work.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah here, it's an understanding area, super under studied. And
<v Speaker 2>we found out, i mean, we realized that there were
<v Speaker 2>so many things that were undescribed or novel or new.
<v Speaker 2>There weren't a lot of botanist or taxonomists really working
<v Speaker 2>on several families, right, and so yeah, I mean the
<v Speaker 2>whole point of the nonprofit was to kind of just
<v Speaker 2>really go out to these under described, under explored areas,
<v Speaker 2>kind of take a look at what's out there described.
<v Speaker 2>And I mean a lot of it is I mean,
<v Speaker 2>the showy part of it is describing new species, but
<v Speaker 2>a lot of it also just kind of figure out
<v Speaker 2>what's there in the first place.
<v Speaker 1>But I mean it definitely seems pressing. It definitely seems
<v Speaker 1>pressing when you look at the satellite map and you
<v Speaker 1>can see the beige cleared areas creeping up. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you guys said, in the last five years alone, you've
<v Speaker 1>seen like that down there used.
<v Speaker 3>To be Yeah, yeah, exactly.
<v Speaker 2>I mean every year it gets a little bit worse,
<v Speaker 2>which is kind of, yeah, you know, kind of depressing.
<v Speaker 1>I guess it's like everywhere though we're in the sixth
<v Speaker 1>mass extinction, this is like.
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, yeah, no exactly, And I mean this
<v Speaker 2>is supposed to be this is already supposed to be
<v Speaker 2>like one of the most protected areas. I mean, we're
<v Speaker 2>trying to get it to be even more protected through legislation,
<v Speaker 2>but Yeah, it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't
<v Speaker 2>matter how beautiful the environment is, how remote environment is,
<v Speaker 2>and everything eventually starts slowly getting cleared. You see traces
<v Speaker 2>of it everywhere, even in all these really hard to
<v Speaker 2>reach areas. Like one of the sad things about this
<v Speaker 2>place specifically, it's a watershed right the forest we're in
<v Speaker 2>right now. So, I mean there's a hydro dam that
<v Speaker 2>was built. You know, it's supposed to be for the people,
<v Speaker 2>burn power, you know, economic development, all the kind of stuff.
<v Speaker 2>But one one thing it really led to was because
<v Speaker 2>if you want to build a hydro dam, you build
<v Speaker 2>roads to the hydro dam, and that makes it a
<v Speaker 2>lot easier to poach and the lug or to just
<v Speaker 2>even just get up here.
<v Speaker 3>And you know, build places.
<v Speaker 1>Like poaching can include hunting or poaching orchids.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah we have we have both, right, so with people
<v Speaker 2>who are poaching, yeah, plants orchids. And I mean even
<v Speaker 2>our guy yesterday was when we were at the end
<v Speaker 2>of things, he saw that hoya remember, and yeah, he's
<v Speaker 2>talking about how everybody kind of wants hoyas.
<v Speaker 1>Now, fuck.
<v Speaker 4>Even a military, even the military, they are interested in
<v Speaker 4>the flora because it's very ornamental and a lot of
<v Speaker 4>things happened during the pandemic wherein everyone wants to sell,
<v Speaker 4>everyone wants to grow. So that's the things just and
<v Speaker 4>a problematic in our plate in our angio. And the
<v Speaker 4>other thing is this is a protected area supposed to be,
<v Speaker 4>but there's no comprehensive listing in any case in our
<v Speaker 4>protected areas, there's no comprehensive listing, so you don't know
<v Speaker 4>what you get and you don't know what you lost.
<v Speaker 4>A listing of plans, a listing of plants.
<v Speaker 1>This makes work like this so important.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, this thing is so important, and we kind of
<v Speaker 4>empower the locouse, the forest rangers, the legislators by just
<v Speaker 4>doing our thing. So it's a win win situation for us. Yeah, PTI.
<v Speaker 1>So that's like what you guys were doing yesterday collecting specimens.
<v Speaker 1>You guys don't I found it interesting. You guys use
<v Speaker 1>dnature alcohol for everything, even paper specimens. So you were
<v Speaker 1>collectings in a bag so that they stay in a
<v Speaker 1>good shape and with humidity and everything, and then bring
<v Speaker 1>them back to the photo box, take pictures of it,
<v Speaker 1>and then someone would be working the computer taking down
<v Speaker 1>data and you'd be dick adding a description, a verbal
<v Speaker 1>description of the plant, you know, pubesting, sound, undersides, whatever.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, all of the things are important for record keeping
<v Speaker 4>because some characteristics tend to feed when you preserve it
<v Speaker 4>in alcohol. So we try to capture everything. So we
<v Speaker 4>take photo so that we know the flower, we know
<v Speaker 4>the scent, we know the color, we know everything about it.
<v Speaker 4>And also we take note for on the location and
<v Speaker 4>the coordinates. But it's internal on us and also the
<v Speaker 4>general ecology and it might be helpful in the future.
<v Speaker 4>Imagine one hundred years from now and everything's kind of
<v Speaker 4>converted into farms. We don't know what's going to be
<v Speaker 4>the baseline data for this if we don't know it today. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>but it's going to happen right away.
<v Speaker 1>Right, But that happens because people don't value the forest.
<v Speaker 1>And it's the same all over the world. Yeah, most
<v Speaker 1>people just don't value it if it's not immediately used
<v Speaker 1>as a sellable good, a medicine, a drug, or or edible.
<v Speaker 1>People just don't give a shit.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it's kind of problematic because it's they the indigenous
<v Speaker 4>people that doesn't care on the environment.
<v Speaker 1>So it's the indigenous people. Yes, sounds kind of counteracts
<v Speaker 1>the whole like Western identitarian narrative that it's just about
<v Speaker 1>it's just about rather than being about the ideas, the
<v Speaker 1>cultural ideas, like whether a culture values the plants. It's
<v Speaker 1>just like this, and I feel it's important to point
<v Speaker 1>out because it's really fucking annoying, Like this is a
<v Speaker 1>big thing in the US. It's just this kind of
<v Speaker 1>oversimplified thinking of like anything indigenous, they automatically value the
<v Speaker 1>flora and protect it and their goods and they know
<v Speaker 1>how to do conservation. Yeah, it's like this really fucking weird,
<v Speaker 1>like racialist thing, and of course people misinterpret it as
<v Speaker 1>that too, like you know, you they just break it
<v Speaker 1>down to bare bones without talking and then why that
<v Speaker 1>aggravates me. It's like, no, it's about the fucking does
<v Speaker 1>the culture respect the plants?
<v Speaker 3>You know?
<v Speaker 1>And it doesn't. I don't care what their fucking phenotype is.
<v Speaker 1>Do they respect the plants? And that's where I come at,
<v Speaker 1>trying to, you know, inspire that in different cultures or
<v Speaker 1>different people or whatever, get people excited about the plants,
<v Speaker 1>like it's cool, not just because you can put it
<v Speaker 1>in your ass and make a drug out of it
<v Speaker 1>or eat it or whatever. But because it's this part
<v Speaker 1>of this incredible living machine that we're barely on the
<v Speaker 1>cusp of understanding, and we kind of.
<v Speaker 4>Torn or feel the about it because on the other hand,
<v Speaker 4>these guys are poor.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So poverty.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it's poverty that driving them to do these things.
<v Speaker 4>So if they have just enough opportunity, they might not
<v Speaker 4>do this. But because our our government is kind of
<v Speaker 4>mess up.
<v Speaker 1>Well people still do the United States. I mean, there's
<v Speaker 1>more poverty, but all the developers in the United States
<v Speaker 1>are pretty wealthy, and they're still just destroying everything. Like
<v Speaker 1>it's this human it's like this, if it's there, they'll
<v Speaker 1>take it. It's just the human. When you don't have
<v Speaker 1>a human culture that respects the native plants and sees
<v Speaker 1>or protects them with laws, then people take it, rich, poor, whatever,
<v Speaker 1>they just start going for it. It's just kind of
<v Speaker 1>our our nature unless we protect against it with culture.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, and to your point on sort of indigenous
<v Speaker 2>knowledge sometimes of being destructive, that's absolutely true.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, I think that's a bat peep of mind.
<v Speaker 2>When conservationists, especially here in the Philippines too, when we
<v Speaker 2>talk about sort of like a new plant or like
<v Speaker 2>a new plant. Whenever we describe a new species, that
<v Speaker 2>actually always happens, right, any species, What it is one
<v Speaker 2>of the first questions people ask us. Also, it's like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, what benefit does it have? You know, how
<v Speaker 2>how do people use it?
<v Speaker 3>What can I do in life?
<v Speaker 1>Drives me?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? Why can't things just exist? Like?
<v Speaker 1>Oh, you you get to decide whether this has a
<v Speaker 1>right to exist? Yeah, exists on how it serves you. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So if it doesn't have any use, does it mean
<v Speaker 2>it can go extinct? I mean, we can clear it absolutely.
<v Speaker 1>Do you know how many aspects of culture I, in
<v Speaker 1>my opinion, are just frivolous and have no fucking use whatsoever? Billboards,
<v Speaker 1>car dealerships, you know, strip malls paid a loan places.
<v Speaker 1>Those places should be wiped out of existence. Not things
<v Speaker 1>that took millions of years to evolve, Yeah, a loan place,
<v Speaker 1>especially predatory insurance companies, all these insurance offices.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I think we have kind of pivot away
<v Speaker 2>from sort of that idea of conservation where if something
<v Speaker 2>is worth conserving, it means it has some sort of
<v Speaker 2>economical value. To some people, like no, I think that's
<v Speaker 2>insane and I think that's not that's a completely wrong message.
<v Speaker 1>That's like from the like twenty years ago. Oh do
<v Speaker 1>you know how many potential cancer remedies there might be
<v Speaker 1>in the rainforest. Yeah, that's the only reason for it's
<v Speaker 1>going to cure cancer. Like, why don't you fucking stop
<v Speaker 1>pumping poison into the environment. That might be a place
<v Speaker 1>to start. Start regulating your corporation, start regulating your politicians
<v Speaker 1>through the corporation's.
<v Speaker 3>Own Yeah, exactly. So.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that that's what part of conservation, especially are in Philippines.
<v Speaker 2>That's such a big thing now. I mean we're kind
<v Speaker 2>of behind that. People are just righting the wave of
<v Speaker 2>you know, ecosystem services, you know what about all the car.
<v Speaker 1>But people who care about biodiversity. Yeah, people bring that
<v Speaker 1>up all the Yeah, it kind of missus the whole point, right,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, my god, the universe is so beautiful and
<v Speaker 1>it's just a reflection of ourselves to me, right, Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I always talk about this this sagan esque dystopia, like
<v Speaker 1>the Carl Sagan's version of dystopia, where everyone benefits from technology,
<v Speaker 1>but everyone's just a fucking ignorantus and there's no clue
<v Speaker 1>how it works, doesn't care too. Yeah, it's it's you know,
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't like see the beauty in science, like it's
<v Speaker 1>just but that's you know, the result of cultural conditioning
<v Speaker 1>as well. I mean we see that that's going on
<v Speaker 1>really bad in the US right now.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think, I mean even here, there's just a
<v Speaker 2>complete lack of like, yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Sorry, that truth that's slowly driving by.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, that's an outfit thought. That's nice. You know, that's
<v Speaker 1>like a like the Philippine version of a hippie band.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, actually that's pretty cool. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Shoot, I have totally lost my train of thought there.
<v Speaker 2>That found was so loud, just.
<v Speaker 1>Completely But we were just talking about about just getting
<v Speaker 1>people to care about conservation and science and this this
<v Speaker 1>dystopia that, at least in the United States we're headed
<v Speaker 1>to where it's like every year society is getting dumber,
<v Speaker 1>and there's there's people inadvertently fighting against it just by
<v Speaker 1>you know, citizen science or community science or fucking getting
<v Speaker 1>people excited about the biosphere they live in. But it's
<v Speaker 1>it's not enough because there's just such a defunding of
<v Speaker 1>science in the US in general. But there's funding for
<v Speaker 1>science here.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, there's a reason, like I mean Our org
<v Speaker 2>is entirely volunteer base, and we only come out on
<v Speaker 2>these expeditions when we've raised money for it, or whether
<v Speaker 2>it's through a graph or whether it's through crowd fundraising.
<v Speaker 2>And I mean, I guess that's one of the success
<v Speaker 2>stories that if the Beans too, is that a lot
<v Speaker 2>of it is citizens science. A lot of like especially
<v Speaker 2>for botany man, like, most of it is citizens science.
<v Speaker 3>A lot of it is just volunteer work.
<v Speaker 2>A lot of it's people contributing just random photos, getting
<v Speaker 2>a little bit of excited posting it on Facebook, trying
<v Speaker 2>to find an id's.
<v Speaker 1>But not a lot of people use our naturalists too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's weird because I mean, well, the Philippines is
<v Speaker 2>also one of the most chronically online.
<v Speaker 3>Countries in the world.
<v Speaker 2>I think we're like literally the most social media We
<v Speaker 2>have the most social media presence per capita or something
<v Speaker 2>of the sort. So I mean one of the instead
<v Speaker 2>of using like anat, we literally have a Facebook group.
<v Speaker 2>People just post on the Facebook group.
<v Speaker 1>You got to get people on though, because just the records,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and then you can link that to like
<v Speaker 1>your own science. Yeah, Philippines specific science.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So what happens currently is on the group. We
<v Speaker 2>have a couple of like people who manage the group,
<v Speaker 2>so like doctor Pelser, doctor Julie for all the good
<v Speaker 2>records where there's like clear idea, good pictures, they upload
<v Speaker 2>everything onto a website called it's also called Coast Digital
<v Speaker 2>Floor the Philippines Philippine Plants. Yeah, named after Leonard Cove,
<v Speaker 2>who was like the godfather, like the patron saint of
<v Speaker 2>Botany and the Philippines. Yeah, he was like a legend,
<v Speaker 2>so it's named after him. Everything's online this sort of
<v Speaker 2>repository there. But yeah, I mean eventually, I mean that's
<v Speaker 2>something I'd like to work on eventually, is trying to
<v Speaker 2>find a way to just link that whole repository to
<v Speaker 2>like imat or to other.
<v Speaker 1>I think data bass people who use I naturally. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Also it's super easy, so helpful.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, emphasize the importance of obscuring location. YEA four attacks
<v Speaker 1>that like the penthes or the orchids. They got the
<v Speaker 1>fucking orchid diversity. We started saying, So let's talk about
<v Speaker 1>more of the plants that we saw. We saw that
<v Speaker 1>bulbo phylum. How many new species or undescribed species did
<v Speaker 1>we see yesterday?
<v Speaker 4>Do you think about ten or twenty like that, because
<v Speaker 4>I let us tame alone. It has about fifty and
<v Speaker 4>underscribes p sees all over the Philippines a.
<v Speaker 1>Lot of cases. Yeah, the explosive standards.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, those those things, those are pretty understudied here in
<v Speaker 4>the Philippines. And it's about fifties. You have fifty to
<v Speaker 4>fifty chinks of seeing and undescribed a lot of stema
<v Speaker 4>in the Philippines. That's how understanded it is. We all
<v Speaker 4>our our attention is all on beguns, but not on
<v Speaker 4>other uncharismatic things that looks like weird and somehow do
<v Speaker 4>you have this in the US, Like when you discover
<v Speaker 4>some new species of plant, you tend to.
<v Speaker 3>What do you call that?
<v Speaker 4>You know, Madama, disregard the scientific value of that because
<v Speaker 4>everything knows that it's already existing. Like that. Do you
<v Speaker 4>have that in US?
<v Speaker 1>Well, people have known about the plant already, but it
<v Speaker 1>hasn't been.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, or even just I mean this is so this
<v Speaker 2>is kind of annoying the Philippines there. Like this also
<v Speaker 2>happens whenever you public new species. For example, we published
<v Speaker 2>in Nepenthees new Spieces of Depentees.
<v Speaker 3>We described as critically endangered.
<v Speaker 2>It's only like a curse and it's really steep, vertical
<v Speaker 2>limestone cliffs. There's only a couple of populations, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they're endangered everything. And then you get all these comments
<v Speaker 2>on Facebook or whatever saying like the Penthees new we
<v Speaker 2>have that in our province, we have that in our village.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, people have no idea.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but that's just a jerk off online, there isn't
<v Speaker 1>they all look the same.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, exactly.
<v Speaker 2>So I mean that's that concept, the plant blindness. And
<v Speaker 2>then you know plant blindness exacerbates conservation issues.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, that's a frustration. Man. That's
<v Speaker 1>just welcome to the club. You know. That's like the
<v Speaker 1>yeah I've got on by property. No, I'll do that
<v Speaker 1>with like plants in South Texas and someone. But I
<v Speaker 1>don't get mad at them to I understand. It's like
<v Speaker 1>this motherfucker has no idea. It's okay. I just want
<v Speaker 1>them to give a fuck about it and protect it,
<v Speaker 1>you know. And also my hatred for horticultural ship, like
<v Speaker 1>the Grandma plants, the fucking I mean, it's it's skyrock
<v Speaker 1>right now. I hate it so much because I realized
<v Speaker 1>I came to realize how in the way of appreciation
<v Speaker 1>of natives and of ecology that stuff is. When it's
<v Speaker 1>like it's like, you know, and people do the same
<v Speaker 1>shit with things. It's like the way people view women,
<v Speaker 1>like you, when you view women with lip injections and
<v Speaker 1>fucking tons of makeup and all this shit on, like
<v Speaker 1>this fucked up shit that women are taught to do
<v Speaker 1>to their faces because of low self esteem or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>I might get control for saying that's my opinion. Right,
<v Speaker 1>when you view that, then you see someone who's got
<v Speaker 1>like a woman's got like you know, isn't wearing makeup
<v Speaker 1>or whatever. This is no one I associate with. This
<v Speaker 1>is like the square community, you know. But when they
<v Speaker 1>see a woman that doesn't have that, then they're like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>that's like she's ugly. All you wear makeup. It's like, well,
<v Speaker 1>your mind's all fucked up because you think marl Lago
<v Speaker 1>faces is pretty Like that's deranged and you don't even
<v Speaker 1>realize how you've been in doctrine. It's the same thing
<v Speaker 1>with plants, I think, right, or like r vice versa,
<v Speaker 1>like the women version of how women look at men
<v Speaker 1>and how society tells men that they're supposed to work.
<v Speaker 3>It's fucked up.
<v Speaker 1>So that's why I've gotten this really like raging fucking
<v Speaker 1>hatred for the grandma, you know, Martha Rich Lady, Martha Stewart,
<v Speaker 1>Ye garden Center stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Like that horticultural obsession with you know, really showy flowers
<v Speaker 2>or yeah, always dead zones.
<v Speaker 1>There's never any insects there. There's never any birds there.
<v Speaker 1>They're just showguard. They're useless, sugar. This is the distraction
<v Speaker 1>from Philip stuff. Sorry, I went on my own tangent
<v Speaker 1>carry Wait, but but the bubble pilum we saw yesterday,
<v Speaker 1>the one that stank. There was the one that stankd
<v Speaker 1>that was in the lepto spermum tree, which was incredible.
<v Speaker 1>I got a photo of you in it, like this
<v Speaker 1>bondz eyed lepto spermum tree on a fucking sketchy knife
<v Speaker 1>sedge bridge, you know, one hundred and fifty feet above
<v Speaker 1>the ground. That was crazy. And then there was the
<v Speaker 1>other bubble phylum with the spike on it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that one's yeah, the potentially new one.
<v Speaker 1>Tiny flowers on that fleshy spike that looks like a
<v Speaker 1>meat rod, like.
<v Speaker 2>Pro looking love with these tiny flowers that like inverted.
<v Speaker 1>Really remark in rhododendrons everywhere, and what is that jug lands?
<v Speaker 4>That walnut weld those are in Gilhartia.
<v Speaker 1>Speacause it looks like a jug lands. It looks jugland
<v Speaker 1>ASTI like carry out or walnut.
<v Speaker 4>You have a couple of neo asiatic temperate plants, but
<v Speaker 4>we're lucky because those are rare and those can only
<v Speaker 4>be found in higher elevations. So much which ones though,
<v Speaker 4>the juglands, the little harpos, you can only find it
<v Speaker 4>in the high elevation. The Plethraci, the plethronescence, yeah, clet Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>those are nice. And Helicia. Have you seen that?
<v Speaker 1>That was the prote Yeah?
<v Speaker 4>Pretty as Yeah I didn't, we didn't.
<v Speaker 1>I haven't seen flowers though. But I love Jason really.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you're probably one of the best bondis I've
<v Speaker 1>met in a while. No, I mean not just trying
<v Speaker 1>to glaze you and being honest, because you you look
<v Speaker 1>at all these you're really well studied. Your what twenty eight?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah I'm twenty eight.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you're really well right well studied. You know what
<v Speaker 1>characters to look for, especially for tropical botany. A lot
<v Speaker 1>of times you don't have flowers, So you know what
<v Speaker 1>other traits to look at, like step mules, resin ducts
<v Speaker 1>and the absision scars and like you saw on that melo,
<v Speaker 1>that mahogany.
<v Speaker 4>Family, the resin ducts. Yeah, the presence of resin ducts,
<v Speaker 4>the type of indmentum, and probably I think it's the
<v Speaker 4>thing that I want to I part with my teaching
<v Speaker 4>in taxonomy class. I'm currently teaching undergraduate student biology in
<v Speaker 4>upidili mind. I want them to look at not only
<v Speaker 4>the floral parts, not only the reproductive parts, because most
<v Speaker 4>of the time you're going to see plants but on
<v Speaker 4>their stereo conditions. So you need to find other way
<v Speaker 4>to identify. And there's a lot of options. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 4>non flowering, non fruiting, and you need to see, you
<v Speaker 4>need to feel, you need to taste. Yeah, if it's safe,
<v Speaker 4>you need to taste. Yeah, that's why you see me,
<v Speaker 4>I used to taste a lot because those gives me
<v Speaker 4>hint on what family is to look at, what family
<v Speaker 4>is avoid Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Well we looked at I mean we saw you saw
<v Speaker 1>those resin ducts, those little dots in the excision scar,
<v Speaker 1>and then that narrows it down. What families could it be? Okay,
<v Speaker 1>it could be an a cardiac burst racing. Oh wait,
<v Speaker 1>but it's got these other traits that make that not plausible.
<v Speaker 1>It can't because burst racing only has this. So it's
<v Speaker 1>not that it's not burst racing. And and so, you
<v Speaker 1>you know, just being able to Yeah, it was. It's
<v Speaker 1>really cool. I mean, it's and it goes off just
<v Speaker 1>really it's like detective work, like trying to really figure
<v Speaker 1>out what the hell you always start, of course I
<v Speaker 1>tell people this all the time, what family, Yeah, start,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you've got to figure out what family first,
<v Speaker 1>and then you move towards other traits and other characteristics
<v Speaker 1>and maybe consult the list and what's been observed here,
<v Speaker 1>et cetera. But but yeah, man, it's a I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>It was really, it was really wonderful being in those forests.
<v Speaker 1>I still can't get over the cicadas that sound like
<v Speaker 1>burglar alarm, like a squeaking cicada. It's the most bizarre
<v Speaker 1>thing to me. So, but how did you get into
<v Speaker 1>plants to begin with? And how did you get into
<v Speaker 1>bodany as a science?
<v Speaker 4>Are you talking? I was born with this affinity to
<v Speaker 4>plants already. I used to identify plants, but only using
<v Speaker 4>common names. Then somehow, jurning elementary days, I learned that
<v Speaker 4>every plant has scientific name. Then I just want to
<v Speaker 4>elementary school. I'm obsessed also with dinosaurs, so my father
<v Speaker 4>bought me a dinosaur book, so I tend to memorize
<v Speaker 4>them all. Then later I just realized there's no dinosaur
<v Speaker 4>in the Philippines. What things can be studied? That's so many.
<v Speaker 4>So you have plants, and I tend to guarden. Then
<v Speaker 4>up until high school, I was obsessed with native trees
<v Speaker 4>because of Sir Leonard Leonard Core who was killed by
<v Speaker 4>the way.
<v Speaker 1>Then later on yeah rebel. Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Then I got inspired by that situation because he did
<v Speaker 4>not graduate under on his bachelor's degree, but he's so
<v Speaker 4>good that even the phdsc consulted him.
<v Speaker 1>Oh he never graduated from college.
<v Speaker 4>He almost he did graduate, but it was thirty years.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it was thirty years. It's so late.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Then he was killed. Yeah, so that's it. I kind
<v Speaker 4>of like that situation that you're kind of uh, low profile,
<v Speaker 4>but at the same time you're so good at it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, I say all the time. Schooling can get
<v Speaker 1>them away. Yeah, things for some people, especially like in
<v Speaker 1>the US because it's so defunded and it's so associated
<v Speaker 1>with a very high cost, because it's been seen I
<v Speaker 1>think is like by the ruling classes this way, like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>people need to go to school, so they did a
<v Speaker 1>good job, so we need to charge We could charge
<v Speaker 1>a lot for this, and you know, it undemocratizes the knowledge.
<v Speaker 1>So I kind of look to me, I realized school
<v Speaker 1>was maybe a scam. Early on, I dropped out and
<v Speaker 1>then just did a trade. I worked for the railroad
<v Speaker 1>and then just got into this. I didn't had no plan.
<v Speaker 1>I just liked it. It was very interesting, so, you know,
<v Speaker 1>learning about taxonomy and this. But but I think like making
<v Speaker 1>the shift from just being into plants to appreciating taxonomy, biogeography,
<v Speaker 1>ecological roles, like seeing that whole context is a huge
<v Speaker 1>step for people. How did you get there? Like, how
<v Speaker 1>did you actually realize all that?
<v Speaker 4>So I graduated as a teacher. Then later on I
<v Speaker 4>met RAB, I met the PTI, then I got invited.
<v Speaker 4>I get to write a couple of papers, new new species.
<v Speaker 4>Then I just decided that I don't like to be
<v Speaker 4>a teacher. There's a lot of teachers that could be me.
<v Speaker 4>You could be thousands of teachers who are dreaming to
<v Speaker 4>be a teachers, but there are only few, probably one
<v Speaker 4>hundred that wants to be a taxonomist. So you have
<v Speaker 4>a lot of teachers, but no botanists here in the Philippines.
<v Speaker 4>So I decided to be a botanist to be unique.
<v Speaker 4>And there's so many things to study. There are ten
<v Speaker 4>thousand species of plants here, so we we need more,
<v Speaker 4>we need more.
<v Speaker 1>I think there was maybe one plant you saw out
<v Speaker 1>of you know, the whole day Australia. You didn't know
<v Speaker 1>what it was, maybe not even.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, no one, yeah, only one, the only one. Yeah
<v Speaker 4>that Eric is the one that looks like plots, but
<v Speaker 4>it's not in blocust not Also you're yeah not also.
<v Speaker 1>You thought it might have been pantophied as well.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, the safe bed for that is eric less. So
<v Speaker 4>let's when you are and the Wi FI zone.
<v Speaker 1>Uh.
<v Speaker 4>Johnny kind of joked us that, wow, Jason and your
<v Speaker 4>you man, the first time.
<v Speaker 2>That was the first time I haven't seen him. I've
<v Speaker 2>seen him that's stunted, like just only to.
<v Speaker 3>The order level.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, man, that's when we saw that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, sixty years that's the first time I've seen him anything.
<v Speaker 1>You know, the thing that smelled very fragrant, right, Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's it. Yeah, probably and that sketchy ridge.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, that sketchy ridge when you.
<v Speaker 1>Guys said knife said ridge. Though I thought it was
<v Speaker 1>going to be like just a rocky no vegetation to
<v Speaker 1>catch you. It wasn't that bad. It was. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it was sketchy, but it wasn't that sketchy. Yeah, beautiful
<v Speaker 1>views of the RhoD of dendro.
<v Speaker 4>Now if you go further, that's kind of worst. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, So Johnny, how about you? How did you get
<v Speaker 1>into all this? And what was your background? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>I think I'm sort of the opposite of I mean,
<v Speaker 2>funnily enough, I'm hearing Jason's story. We're super similar. Turns
<v Speaker 2>out I was a dinosaur not when I was a
<v Speaker 2>kid too, Like I.
<v Speaker 1>Also was a dinosaur.
<v Speaker 2>I guess there's a common path there, man actually bring
<v Speaker 2>dinosaurs back.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>No, I wanted to be a paleontologist all my life
<v Speaker 2>growing up, and then watching a lot of like I
<v Speaker 2>don't know, like Steve r and Captain Planet and all
<v Speaker 2>that kind of stuff. Yeah, maybe want to get into like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, more ecology, environmental science, so I mean I
<v Speaker 2>finished under God as an environmental scientist, I wanted to
<v Speaker 2>focus on.
<v Speaker 3>Marine ecology, so that to it for a while.
<v Speaker 2>My first job out, I worked for an environmental consultancy
<v Speaker 2>and it was I found it was super corrupt. One like,
<v Speaker 2>there's one big presentation I had with my boss and
<v Speaker 2>we were doing an environmental impact study for a coal plant.
<v Speaker 3>You know, did this whole study.
<v Speaker 2>We had all these different impacts and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>all right, we're doing God's work here.
<v Speaker 3>You know, we're gonna list all these impacts.
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to realize, you know, Cole's pretty fucking horrible
<v Speaker 2>for everybody, and we're not going.
<v Speaker 3>To build it.
<v Speaker 2>So it presented it to the developer and to my
<v Speaker 2>boss and they're both like, okay, you can't say that.
<v Speaker 3>You got to change this and change it.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like what And I quit on the spot.
<v Speaker 3>So, you know, made a.
<v Speaker 1>Whole was the point of even doing it then?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, exactly, just to say they could do it exactly.
<v Speaker 3>So I mean, that's that's how we did.
<v Speaker 1>It's fine, it's a classic Philippine thing.
<v Speaker 2>We have honestly, really good policies and regulations in place.
<v Speaker 2>It's just way easier to bypass them. Yeah, so it
<v Speaker 2>makes it harder for everybody else.
<v Speaker 1>It's better than places like the US and Mexico where
<v Speaker 1>there's not even regulations. In a lot of places there
<v Speaker 1>used to be regulations. California has a lot of regulations. Yeah, Texas,
<v Speaker 1>you can. You can fuck the land into a coma.
<v Speaker 1>You can destroy it whatever, It doesn't matter. If you
<v Speaker 1>own it, it's yours if you want it. If there's
<v Speaker 1>endangered species there and you want to nuke everything with
<v Speaker 1>a flamethrower, you can do it. It's totally Yeah, it's crazy.
<v Speaker 1>There's no one stopping you. It's it's absolutely insane.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So I mean yeah, because it adequate. You know, went
<v Speaker 2>completely different routes to entrepreneurship around COVID. I started gardening.
<v Speaker 2>You know, my dad was a lifelong gardener. I always
<v Speaker 2>really envied him, so I really started gardening. From gardening,
<v Speaker 2>it turned into taxonomy. Reached out to RAB or somebody
<v Speaker 2>introduced me to rab and funnily enough, when I first
<v Speaker 2>had a conversation with Drop, He's like, yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 2>what can you bring it to PTI?
<v Speaker 3>And I'm like, when I was looking, I had to
<v Speaker 3>chat with him.
<v Speaker 2>I was like, honestly, and I love Rob God bless
<v Speaker 2>his soul, but he's not great at managing things or
<v Speaker 2>organizing things.
<v Speaker 3>And I was like, yo, I'll.
<v Speaker 2>Help you run the I'll help you run the organization,
<v Speaker 2>make it more efficient and make it better and everything.
<v Speaker 2>And that's how I joined mostly, but I want to
<v Speaker 2>just really fell in love. But like everything we did,
<v Speaker 2>I joined him here just my first field work was
<v Speaker 2>here and the forest were in now and it was.
<v Speaker 3>Just so awesome.
<v Speaker 1>But again, how did you make that switch from being
<v Speaker 1>into gardening and plants to being into native plants, which
<v Speaker 1>are plants that were literally bred by the region that
<v Speaker 1>they evolved. Yeah, well, to tie into evolution and biogeography
<v Speaker 1>and millions of years of selection by the environment. How
<v Speaker 1>did you arrive there? Because that's really remarkable. That's what
<v Speaker 1>I want more people to do.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah for me, And I think this is something I
<v Speaker 2>like now, even moving through workshops or when we try
<v Speaker 2>to teach, I think it's super important that.
<v Speaker 3>You can't really teach in school or maybe we should.
<v Speaker 2>We figure out a whin to teach us. Honestly, just
<v Speaker 2>a lot of whimsy and curiosity. It's really curiosity, just
<v Speaker 2>wanting to explore how why why does this thing look
<v Speaker 2>like this? How did it evolve from this other thing
<v Speaker 2>that looks exactly like this, How does the soil affect it?
<v Speaker 2>How does pollination syndromes change its distribution?
<v Speaker 3>How does this interact with this or that? And I
<v Speaker 3>mean everywhere you look.
<v Speaker 2>You could sit in a ten x ten square foot
<v Speaker 2>plot of forests and study it for a year and
<v Speaker 2>find out new things every single day.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, just think about what's in front of you and
<v Speaker 1>ask questions. And that's what I think I rate my
<v Speaker 1>merit of people on is if they're curious about the
<v Speaker 1>world around them, yeah and there, or if they're not,
<v Speaker 1>like when you meet when you meet kids, or if
<v Speaker 1>there's you know, the generation coming up that lacks curiosity.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not saying that they do, but if I see
<v Speaker 1>elements of that, you know, where they just take it
<v Speaker 1>as if for granted, they don't think. There's no critical thinking,
<v Speaker 1>there's no curiosity. That's when it's like, well, what the
<v Speaker 1>fuck are we even doing here as human beings anymore?
<v Speaker 1>You know, what are you doing? You're just it's just
<v Speaker 1>this race to know where to accumulate stuff. I'm sorry
<v Speaker 1>it turns with my own personal rant. You can tell
<v Speaker 1>I'm working through some shit here philosophically, but it's just
<v Speaker 1>it's disconcerting to me because that's the whole trajectory of society,
<v Speaker 1>is their curiosity, is their critical thinking or not, because
<v Speaker 1>if there's not, then you're just getting farmed.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly.
<v Speaker 2>But we have like chat cheapt and everybody's just asking
<v Speaker 2>chat cheapd everything, right, I mean, curiosity is really probably
<v Speaker 2>going to drop.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, well, I mean, fucking AI can be used.
<v Speaker 3>He's super useful.
<v Speaker 1>But when you're just doing it to pass the test,
<v Speaker 1>and that's what's taught in America is just memorizes you
<v Speaker 1>can pass the test. Do you understand it? No, who
<v Speaker 1>gives a fuck as long as you can answer the
<v Speaker 1>questions and get a good grade. Like why why would
<v Speaker 1>any intelligent person want to be a part of a
<v Speaker 1>system like that. When they realize that's what's going on,
<v Speaker 1>it's like, this is just a fucking joke. This is
<v Speaker 1>just grooming people to be good workers.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, exactly, you know, I mean I don't want to
<v Speaker 5>understand the world, you know, I.
<v Speaker 2>Mean that's my grandpa also, but like, yeah, I mean
<v Speaker 2>a lot of classes are universities here, it's just memorize
<v Speaker 2>X y Z and use it to pass an exam,
<v Speaker 2>and it doesn't really translate to anything, right. I mean, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>if there's not enough curiosity, and I think that's something
<v Speaker 2>we really need to cultivate.
<v Speaker 1>We really need to try to pi. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, I mean, have you seen Jason in
<v Speaker 2>the field. Every time he walks into something cool and
<v Speaker 2>he's just like a little yeah, oh my god, everything everything.
<v Speaker 1>No.
<v Speaker 2>I thought that literally the first my first field work
<v Speaker 2>here to that point, I found I still think botanists
<v Speaker 2>are crazy. But the first field where we did here,
<v Speaker 2>we went we took a wrong turn somewhere, and it's
<v Speaker 2>the first time we went through that trail. And now
<v Speaker 2>that trail we call it suicide trail just because it's
<v Speaker 2>pretty horrible. It's one of those moments where we're kind
<v Speaker 2>of clutching on like a stray root and your thing.
<v Speaker 2>You know, if this rude iss dat falls up, you're
<v Speaker 2>gonna yeah yeah, and it's like a like a.
<v Speaker 3>Cliff face and like this breaks, you're straight up just
<v Speaker 3>and gone.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. What was cool about that area yesterday though, is
<v Speaker 1>when you look on the map, you're like, yeah, we
<v Speaker 1>went to right where the clearance stops. Yeah, and I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure it's just like a tumor, it's gonna keep spreading.
<v Speaker 1>But then you look and there's and you see the
<v Speaker 1>crazy shit we saw, and you look deeper in and
<v Speaker 1>you're like, holy fuck man, there's got to be so
<v Speaker 1>much more.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it doesn't stop, It goes on, yeah, exactly, and
<v Speaker 2>it just keeps getting it just keeps getting like better,
<v Speaker 2>Like every every time we i mean we've been coming
<v Speaker 2>here how many times. It's at eleventh field work in
<v Speaker 2>this forest, and every time we've come here, there's always
<v Speaker 2>something new. We've been to the same site how many
<v Speaker 2>times and there's always something new to shit, it's crazy.
<v Speaker 3>Just I mean there's so and we've.
<v Speaker 2>Covered what zero point one percent of this protected area.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, there's just so much more out there.
<v Speaker 1>There were ton just to not to get distracted on.
<v Speaker 1>But that shit's hilarious. Like that palm, this short palm,
<v Speaker 1>do that even get really big? Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>They got huge.
<v Speaker 1>Get the hypodermic needle palm and it's it's got these
<v Speaker 1>but those those trailing ends that taper off, you know,
<v Speaker 1>you've got the leaf that comes out. What is the
<v Speaker 1>is that what's what's the proper name for a palm
<v Speaker 1>leaf that comes up. It's just leave whips. Yeah, the
<v Speaker 1>front and then it's got the whips that come down
<v Speaker 1>and have those curved spines. Then is the point of that.
<v Speaker 4>It's the leaf apex of the pandane. It's used for
<v Speaker 4>climbing because the Yeah, they're a time because climbing, for climbing,
<v Speaker 4>because they are.
<v Speaker 1>Gross do in Australia, they use their tendrils for.
<v Speaker 4>Climb yeah like that like that, so they use that
<v Speaker 4>and also for defense because animals tend to avoid spiny
<v Speaker 4>things here we don't have a lot of. Yeah. So
<v Speaker 4>Johnny is the example. So he got caught up in
<v Speaker 4>his head with reap off their at time.
<v Speaker 1>They kept taking my hand out.
<v Speaker 2>I was gonna say, ratons have evolved over millennia to
<v Speaker 2>get to this point specifically to fuck with me.
<v Speaker 3>I hate them.
<v Speaker 1>You guys when you I mean, I have spiny plants
<v Speaker 1>where I live, so I'm used to them. So when
<v Speaker 1>you guys talked about this hate for ratans yesterday, I
<v Speaker 1>was like, man, it just spiny plants whatever. But then
<v Speaker 1>when you see those whips, you realize like they really
<v Speaker 1>are they're like himalay and blackberries that we haven't invasive
<v Speaker 1>hybrid BlackBerry we have in the US that like hook
<v Speaker 1>onto you. They're just these really mean kind of like
<v Speaker 1>the bush lawyers, the raspberry species in the New Zealand
<v Speaker 1>they call them bush lawyers. They've got that same thing,
<v Speaker 1>these long whips with those. I guess it's for climbing too,
<v Speaker 1>but fucking hey, man, it's mean. Why can't they just
<v Speaker 1>use tendrils like, you know, like other plants too. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, it's it's bizarre, but that's a big genus though.
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of species.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, there's a lot of species here in the Philippines.
<v Speaker 4>And if you're understudied, yeah, there are only a few
<v Speaker 4>old people that study the rattans.
<v Speaker 1>What is their main pollination?
<v Speaker 4>I think they are issues. So the males and female
<v Speaker 4>flowers are separate, so it could be wind or it
<v Speaker 4>could be insects. Right, Because ratans and many other palms,
<v Speaker 4>they have a reliable reproduction year around. They can flower. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>it's a relied no, not even in dry season. They
<v Speaker 4>can flower. That's why so many pollinetors and many fruit
<v Speaker 4>eaters depend on palms. The palmd diversity and rattime. If
<v Speaker 4>you're not careful cleaning the trail, some might even fall
<v Speaker 4>onto you.
<v Speaker 1>So that's calamus. Yeah, and then you've got Penanga.
<v Speaker 4>We got Pinanga, We got karyota in Palawan, and in
<v Speaker 4>the Lowlands you have the oran. Yeah, you also have
<v Speaker 4>a giant one that and live in Stonia, Saribus. We
<v Speaker 4>have a lot.
<v Speaker 1>Actually, I had very little interest in palms, so I
<v Speaker 1>started going to more tropical regions. I think it's because
<v Speaker 1>they're so heavily abused in horticulture, because of this corny
<v Speaker 1>association with you.
<v Speaker 4>Know, tropics.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but we've got a really interesting stable where I live.
<v Speaker 1>They get they're huge. They're very important habitat trees for
<v Speaker 1>owls and bats and stuff because they create these skirts
<v Speaker 1>of dead leaves that house a lot of things. But
<v Speaker 1>what are some other really high density species diversity genera here.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, Yeah, those are crazy. We have about one hundred
<v Speaker 4>and twenty species and many are and then actually you
<v Speaker 4>can find them as a banyan so it's just a
<v Speaker 4>strong strangler fig. So it's a very big tree with
<v Speaker 4>a lot of Aia roots. So we've seen that last
<v Speaker 4>time the first day.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the large one that's over there, the large one.
<v Speaker 4>And we have another one that the cruise, the size
<v Speaker 4>of a dipterocarp. It looks like a dipterocarp with a
<v Speaker 4>large sweeping buttress. It's another type of Ficus, so it's
<v Speaker 4>from the Arriagata group. It has this street bowl just
<v Speaker 4>like the just like the terra car but still bears
<v Speaker 4>the same fig And another one we have the vining fig.
<v Speaker 1>What is the one that was back here? Did you
<v Speaker 1>show me the head the inflorescences that come off the
<v Speaker 1>bottom of the tree.
<v Speaker 4>That's Ficus minnahassee minahasa. Yeah, you tasted that? How is
<v Speaker 4>it enjoyable?
<v Speaker 1>It was a pleasant fruit. You don't like it?
<v Speaker 4>I like it. It's it looks like it tastes like
<v Speaker 4>forest rations. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>For the flower, what does the flower look it's a
<v Speaker 1>strange flower structure on figs.
<v Speaker 4>As well, right, Yeah, the strange flower. So the flower
<v Speaker 4>of the fig is actually on the inside, the inside
<v Speaker 4>of the fig. So we call it that sincona. And
<v Speaker 4>it depends on the the species depends on the genus.
<v Speaker 4>But some figs bear only male figs. Some figus they
<v Speaker 4>bear female. Some have hermaphrodite hermaphrodite figs.
<v Speaker 1>So it depends on these are flowers or it's the
<v Speaker 1>same thing.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, the fig is the sincuna.
<v Speaker 1>The flower. But and so there's no showy petals, No
<v Speaker 1>inc has to go inside this cha.
<v Speaker 4>The fig was.
<v Speaker 1>Always a wasp, the same way that yuccas. It's always
<v Speaker 1>a moth. For yuccas, it's a monocut genus. Massive in
<v Speaker 1>the actually massive, it's a sparagacy. It's a massive genus
<v Speaker 1>in western well in North America and arid regions like grasslands,
<v Speaker 1>the deserts. There's some massive ones in deserts. It's a
<v Speaker 1>great genus. But they're always only pollinated by moths.
<v Speaker 4>WHOA, that's amazing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah that can be. Yeah, like Joshua tree is proroinated
<v Speaker 1>by a specific moth species. Yeah, a lot of yolks
<v Speaker 1>are I believe, but they're fucking they're really it's a
<v Speaker 1>really cool plant giness. But the same way Figs. Ficus
<v Speaker 1>is only pollinated by wasps.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, yeah, only wasps.
<v Speaker 1>What draws them in there is that they're laying eggs,
<v Speaker 1>or it's they're going for nectar or what is it.
<v Speaker 4>So it's quite pretty life cycle. So the fig. The
<v Speaker 4>female fig wasp will lay eggs inside the fig. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>and after that the nymph will grow, so there are
<v Speaker 4>a mix of female and male. So the male comes
<v Speaker 4>out first, still inside the fig, and it will fertilize
<v Speaker 4>the female wasp, so when they go out, it's already
<v Speaker 4>they are already pregnant, and the male fig wasp will
<v Speaker 4>die inside.
<v Speaker 1>The fig, still eating the male wasp.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, we probably ate some of it, but it's good.
<v Speaker 1>So it's it's fine, you know, you don't even know.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, but that's it. You see the paradox of
<v Speaker 4>the forest. You have the biggest, weirdest figus and only
<v Speaker 4>it depends on very small.
<v Speaker 1>Was beautiful as.
<v Speaker 4>I'm not really quite sure, but it's un understanded ecological God,
<v Speaker 4>that's so fascinating.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I knew that it was wasps and figs,
<v Speaker 1>but I didn't know. I guess I didn't know the
<v Speaker 1>specificity of it. Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>I think the theory is one species of fig can
<v Speaker 4>host multiple species of fig wasp. That's another that's a hypothesis,
<v Speaker 4>and the other one is co evolution. So you have
<v Speaker 4>the fig wasp. One one fig was for one species of.
<v Speaker 1>Holy ship. That's a loaded. That's like a tricycle with
<v Speaker 1>two people and a ton of shit on it. That's amazing.
<v Speaker 4>I think they are they're going to be selling fish
<v Speaker 4>because it's a un luck sound. Everyone wants fish.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but so but that's but they
<v Speaker 1>need each other. It's the symbiosa, the washings, the fig
<v Speaker 1>and the big Yeah, spent.
<v Speaker 3>The whole life in the fig.
<v Speaker 4>Basically, I think what attracts them are the scent, but
<v Speaker 4>it's still an understandied research the scent of the fig.
<v Speaker 1>They lay eggs in the fig and then the larvae
<v Speaker 1>use it as food.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah yeah, this the ovary. It is nutritious for them,
<v Speaker 4>and it's where the female was will lay their eggs
<v Speaker 4>on the on the seed itself.
<v Speaker 1>There's some remarkable figs in the deserts of Mexico. Not deserts,
<v Speaker 1>but seasonally dry tropical forests.
<v Speaker 4>Are they the seed us?
<v Speaker 1>No, we have ficus. I forget some of the fighters
<v Speaker 1>I've seen in Baja, but it's they're going with giant
<v Speaker 1>tacti and really insane eight mushrooms once and this incredible
<v Speaker 1>fucking uh Somewhere in the right on the border of
<v Speaker 1>Baja California and Baa, California, Sir. I remember there were
<v Speaker 1>these figures that have been painted on the inside of
<v Speaker 1>this cave with like whales and ship. The fingers had
<v Speaker 1>six fingers on them, and I remember tripping my balls
<v Speaker 1>off pretty hard. There was a wonderful time. I came
<v Speaker 1>to some wonderful revelations at that spot. But there's blue
<v Speaker 1>jump trees and massive fighters like growing on these rocks
<v Speaker 1>with their roots coming down. I ever want to go
<v Speaker 1>to Baja, we should go get that's we gotta go
<v Speaker 1>to Vietnam first, So go check out the karst formations.
<v Speaker 1>So there's a ristal loki. It was fucking wild too. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>aristo located we saw.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, there's Aristolochio philippineensis. That's an endemic one.
<v Speaker 1>A small shrub.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, a small shrub.
<v Speaker 1>Or bush like that two three feet.
<v Speaker 4>The distinguishing characteristic for that plant is the absence of
<v Speaker 4>indumentum on it's actual leaf surface.
<v Speaker 1>Put a thick white wax. Yeah it's yeah, bright white undersides.
<v Speaker 4>I still don't know the mechanism why did it evolved
<v Speaker 4>that way. But there's another species with the pubis and
<v Speaker 4>leaves and most.
<v Speaker 1>Of the time, another Aristolochia.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, most of the time the aristo lochia here have
<v Speaker 4>pubis and leaves except for that, So that's kind of
<v Speaker 4>say shrub.
<v Speaker 1>It's weally mean, it's like one to two stems. It's
<v Speaker 1>like shrub and name only it's just like a woody shrub.
<v Speaker 1>It's not like a dense shrub shrub people might think
<v Speaker 1>of when they hear of like a right, it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>get dense.
<v Speaker 4>It doesn't get dense. Also, we have a difference between
<v Speaker 4>in the vocabulary, because.
<v Speaker 1>Well, you're here a technical term of shrub, but I'm
<v Speaker 1>using it like someone who's the way that I'm for
<v Speaker 1>anyone that's not a botanist, when they hear shrub, it
<v Speaker 1>might think of like a fucking box water or something
<v Speaker 1>like a two stemmed with long eighth and nine inch long,
<v Speaker 1>very couraceous, thick, leathery cardboardish leaves with and.
<v Speaker 4>We're lucky, by the way, because we found it flowering. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>most of the time it's just stereo.
<v Speaker 1>It's such a weird it was so cool to see.
<v Speaker 1>I love that genus man. But still trapping flies.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I observed that trapping fly, But right now no
<v Speaker 4>one is really studying flies flight taxonomy and no one
<v Speaker 4>is really studying the ecology between plant and insect interduction here.
<v Speaker 4>There are only a few people.
<v Speaker 3>I know.
<v Speaker 1>I don't understand why there's not many mosquitoes here. It's
<v Speaker 1>really thrown me out. There's mosquitoes at the lower elevations.
<v Speaker 3>Right, yeah, Oh so that's actually interesting.
<v Speaker 2>I was asking our guides about it yesterday and they
<v Speaker 2>were saying, there used to be a ton of mosquitoes here.
<v Speaker 4>It happened.
<v Speaker 3>All the wild boar got hunted off, so the mosquitos
<v Speaker 3>kind of went with them, apparently.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, because there's not as much yeah, I mean there's.
<v Speaker 2>Not much mammals there's I mean there's bury mammals here. Wow,
<v Speaker 2>there's not many monkeys, there's not they got hunted too, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and deer. The deer are gone as well. Cloud rats
<v Speaker 2>are gone. So it's this dir yea of all the
<v Speaker 2>mammals that have just gotten hunted, I mean the almost
<v Speaker 2>locally extinct basically. Wow, And you know, I guess that
<v Speaker 2>just also kind of decimates the mosquito.
<v Speaker 1>But the wild boar were native pigs though.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, so there were native pigs.
<v Speaker 2>And then I'd say maybe like only the last twenty
<v Speaker 2>years have all the mammals and at least in this
<v Speaker 2>forest have just been almost wiped out entirely.
<v Speaker 1>Just from hunting, just from hunting. Yeah, just so how
<v Speaker 1>deep I mean, if you go deep into the forest here,
<v Speaker 1>like another thirty miles north, like by air or something, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>what do you encounter? Are there indigenous communities?
<v Speaker 3>There?
<v Speaker 1>Is there people? Or is it pretty like raw?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah still or what it's mostly raw forest? Now?
<v Speaker 2>I don't think there's many people that live like really
<v Speaker 2>deep like no, no, no, yeah, most people are kind
<v Speaker 2>of like living mostly like in areas like this where
<v Speaker 2>it's been sort of either cleared or like there's been
<v Speaker 2>a lot of land use change.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, so I mean deep into the forest, pretty untouched.
<v Speaker 3>So I mean that's honestly would be cool to go there.
<v Speaker 1>But you know, there used to be headhunters here back yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so I mean the local diigenous people here, we're
<v Speaker 2>head of their historically, which has been pretty good for
<v Speaker 2>this forest.
<v Speaker 3>I mean that's a big reason why a lot of
<v Speaker 3>it is still intact.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's only getting cleared now instead of one hundred years. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Now that the headhunters are gone, I mean, well they're
<v Speaker 3>not gone, they're still here. They just stopped head hunt, they.
<v Speaker 1>Just stopped doing ahead hunting. Yeah. They switched vocations.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, because of the missionaries.
<v Speaker 1>Oh what was that There was Spanish colonization or no, No.
<v Speaker 2>It was American missionaries in the seventies or eighties, very recent.
<v Speaker 1>The history here was the because the Japanese occupied the
<v Speaker 1>World War two and then Americans came in and then
<v Speaker 1>they occupied. Yeah, and then you had they were just
<v Speaker 1>getting all Christy here and what yeah, pushing pushing a
<v Speaker 1>big JC or what.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, I mean the Philipin's already super Catholic as
<v Speaker 2>it is. Yeah, So I mean the American missionaries kind
<v Speaker 2>of went to like the like the indigenous peoples and everything.
<v Speaker 3>And I mean that's also I mean that's another tangent.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm curious we get to do a little bit
<v Speaker 1>because I don't know much about Philippine histories.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>No, I mean just interesting the effect I guess religion
<v Speaker 2>had on sort of the environment. So on the one hand,
<v Speaker 2>the Spanish and Catholicism really made a very concerted effort
<v Speaker 2>to demonize local animist religious beliefs. So I mean, to
<v Speaker 2>the point about sort of the figs, the Strangler figs,
<v Speaker 2>elsewhere in Southeast Asia are sacred, they're sacred trees. Here
<v Speaker 2>we see them as haunted. And that was a very
<v Speaker 2>concerted effort by the Spanish. Oh you see, yeah, you see,
<v Speaker 2>uh you see a spirit or a day thing in
<v Speaker 2>that treet that's actually, guess what, an evil spirit?
<v Speaker 3>And fuck you up.
<v Speaker 2>So now we see demons everywhere. Philippine mythology now demonized.
<v Speaker 1>A lot of a lot of like Mexkin cultures like
<v Speaker 1>that to very superstitious, yeah, crazy superstitious like and a lot.
<v Speaker 2>Of it was also to I mean, if you see
<v Speaker 2>trees as housing spirits, if you see trees as other
<v Speaker 2>than yourself where demons side, it's easy.
<v Speaker 3>For you to burn the place out, are clear it? Right?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>Something else also did the Spanish this.
<v Speaker 1>Again making space in the culture for quote unquote nature,
<v Speaker 1>for the living world.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's this.
<v Speaker 1>You've got these cultures that come in that are completely
<v Speaker 1>antithetical to that, completely contrariant to that. It's like, oh
<v Speaker 1>you like the life around you? Fuck that we have.
<v Speaker 1>We have this invisible man who's gonna, you know, watch
<v Speaker 1>over you and put you in exactly the lasting jail.
<v Speaker 1>If you don't.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly like you know, come come to the Christian world.
<v Speaker 3>It's modern.
<v Speaker 2>You can live in cities, you can be closer to God,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, you also end up burning down the forest.
<v Speaker 1>But with Catholicism, it's weird though, because I feel like
<v Speaker 1>there was this element, or there has been of this
<v Speaker 1>like progressive element at times, but then other times that vanishes,
<v Speaker 1>and a lot of the people that purport the follow
<v Speaker 1>Jesus that completely un Jesus.
<v Speaker 2>Like yeah, yeah, so I mean like there's there's been
<v Speaker 2>like historical Catholicism as a tool of oppression or like colonialism. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and then you also have but I mean a lot
<v Speaker 2>of our great bodyness were like Jesuits or monks, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know, early and so a lot of that were great.
<v Speaker 1>So it was St. Francis, he was doing good stuff,
<v Speaker 1>you know, animals.
<v Speaker 2>And whatnot, right, Yeah, but I mean even some of
<v Speaker 2>our early botanists were just like yeah, fantastic scientists too, right, So.
<v Speaker 1>What what what year was this?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, eighteen hundred, nineteenth century maybe to like early twentieth century.
<v Speaker 1>So like in this mountain range before you guys started
<v Speaker 1>doing stuff with PTI, who what was who were the
<v Speaker 1>last people to do major botanical work here.
<v Speaker 2>The local government, the local Department of Environment natural Resources,
<v Speaker 2>you know, they they have like some regular surveys, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>biodiversity monitoring, you know. Honestly, a lot of it was
<v Speaker 2>done mostly ass uh that's a completion.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And also because because they wanted to build a hydropower
<v Speaker 2>that right or way back when, as a requirement you
<v Speaker 2>have to do sort of a biodiversity survey, So that
<v Speaker 2>was kind of like one of the early ones for it.
<v Speaker 3>But I mean it was very rough around the edgeress,
<v Speaker 3>you know.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, in the past six years alone, like doing
<v Speaker 2>all the work we've done, we've more than doubled the
<v Speaker 2>amount of species. Yeah, so I mean, and that we're
<v Speaker 2>still finding more.
<v Speaker 1>So it was in my mind that this isn't this
<v Speaker 1>kind of thing isn't funded by governments all over the world,
<v Speaker 1>Like you should be going out to figure what figure
<v Speaker 1>out and survey what species. Yeah, given how important plants
<v Speaker 1>are supporting the rest of the ecosystem and the biome,
<v Speaker 1>you know, survey what you have, like what's there, and
<v Speaker 1>then learn about it, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And I mean, honestly, it doesn't cost much to
<v Speaker 2>do to these these trips either.
<v Speaker 1>Especially if you find people who fucking love doing.
<v Speaker 3>It, like we none of us Yeah shit, dude, none
<v Speaker 3>of us get paid.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it costs like maybe like one thousand dollars or
<v Speaker 2>something to do like a five, six, seven day expedition.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah shit, yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>They'reabouts, yeah, thereabouts. I mean some of it just a
<v Speaker 2>random fundraisers where we sell like prints or let.
<v Speaker 1>Be done and support something like that, Like just do
<v Speaker 1>a donation based like crowdfund or something through crime pas.
<v Speaker 1>It'd be fucking awesome, man, I guess it is a
<v Speaker 1>long way. You guys have ultramafic areas too, Have those
<v Speaker 1>been surveyed?
<v Speaker 2>There's a lot that haven't been and there's a lot
<v Speaker 2>that are. I mean, I really want to do we
<v Speaker 2>should probably do a lot more work on the ultramaffics
<v Speaker 2>just because they're getting cleared. I mean, those are their discripes.
<v Speaker 1>No mining.
<v Speaker 3>You see, like whole islands just getting wiped off.
<v Speaker 1>The faces are mostly ultramafic islands or what I mean.
<v Speaker 2>There's some of the mainlanders, and that's some of bigger
<v Speaker 2>islands and is on there's some smaller ultramafic like islands
<v Speaker 2>that are getting like completely cleared.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy how much ultramafic ship there is in this
<v Speaker 1>whole chain down from New Caledonia up through the what
<v Speaker 1>do you call these island chains that the Philippines and
<v Speaker 1>so we see in Indonesia and all that. Is there
<v Speaker 1>a name for this region? I mean it's is this
<v Speaker 1>considered Southeast Asia or what? Yeah, Southeast Asia, Alsia, Malaysia, Alsia. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>but there's there's from Afix everywhere. Yeah, given all the
<v Speaker 1>subduction zones. Subduction zone, Yeah, you're up and crazy.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so tons of like weird and you have like
<v Speaker 2>sometimes there's just cool spot in Pallowed where I think
<v Speaker 2>you could probably see them from each other. But there's
<v Speaker 2>like an ultramafic mountain and then there's a cars mountain,
<v Speaker 2>and then there's a granite mountain and they're all.
<v Speaker 1>Like totally different species of Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, man, they're like literally just microandemics. These are all
<v Speaker 2>like super near each other. It's a cool place to
<v Speaker 2>explore to. Yeah, how do you spell it?
<v Speaker 3>P A L A W A N.
<v Speaker 1>How far is that from here?
<v Speaker 3>It's a flight? Oh really yeah, or I mean you
<v Speaker 3>can take a boat.
<v Speaker 1>But there's but there's probably a ton of endemics in
<v Speaker 1>the ultramatic area is then oh yeah, on that soil.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, and you can't get anywhere else, right, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>people things that adapt there are you know, very specifically.
<v Speaker 1>Tolerance for all from apex exactly grow anywhere else without
<v Speaker 1>having to re evolve.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, So there's a much of like naps there too.
<v Speaker 1>Many Yeah, undescribed species probably for sure, so many.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, there are a bunch and but tomorrow yeah yeah,
<v Speaker 3>yeah that's true.
<v Speaker 2>An automatic mountain Jesus. Yeah, that was pretty cool. So,
<v Speaker 2>I mean there's just so much there's so much crazy
<v Speaker 2>diversity here. It's just would be great to to really explore. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, we'd love to kind of go all over
<v Speaker 2>all over the Philippines. I mean the real big reason
<v Speaker 2>we come here so often is because the local government. Really,
<v Speaker 2>i mean, we have a champion in Dasco.
<v Speaker 3>He's he's awesome, he's naughty assistant Protected Area superintendent.
<v Speaker 1>And he loves what you guys do, and so yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he joinses a lot.
<v Speaker 2>Actually he's creative identifying now too, you know, and he's
<v Speaker 2>super supportive. So I mean we keep coming back because
<v Speaker 2>they have so much support.
<v Speaker 1>Let's talk about thearo carves really quick. Before we finish up.
<v Speaker 1>This is so the pterot carves, the terot carpace. It's order.
<v Speaker 1>Mount Valley is very ecologically important. Yeah, trees. You have
<v Speaker 1>shoria and I guess rubro Shoria is some new genus.
<v Speaker 1>They may or from yatual love. But tell me about them.
<v Speaker 1>The wood is like this beautiful color, right, it's like
<v Speaker 1>that mahogany color. Yeah, like a pinkish color. How would
<v Speaker 1>you describe these so.
<v Speaker 4>Everything, So the wood of mahogany. They are actually full
<v Speaker 4>of resins. And if we look at the habit of
<v Speaker 4>of the pterocarps, they are street bull They have this
<v Speaker 4>very straight trunk, easy fifty forty meters long lug, which
<v Speaker 4>which tells you that it can produce a lot of wood.
<v Speaker 1>Right, So they're desirable as number. And that's most of
<v Speaker 1>the cut like boards we were seeing yesterday.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, and those are the pterot carbs.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah. And here in the Philippines we have a lot.
<v Speaker 4>You are one of the centers of diversity for DiPT carps.
<v Speaker 4>We have any subtera we have, we have vatica. We
<v Speaker 4>have are the hardest ones and one of the most
<v Speaker 4>endangered ones.
<v Speaker 1>So fast growing trees.
<v Speaker 4>The sad thing is most of them are slow growers.
<v Speaker 4>That's why when we tend to cut the dept carp forest,
<v Speaker 4>it's very hard for us to recover them. That's why
<v Speaker 4>fire is our enemy, and those arsonists are our enemies.
<v Speaker 4>And the one that goeses fire, they actually use fire
<v Speaker 4>to clear land for hunting, for farming and many things,
<v Speaker 4>but also to make the lugging easy.
<v Speaker 1>How do they do that because it's a high rainfall area.
<v Speaker 1>They just wait for the dry season.
<v Speaker 4>Or yeah, they wait for dry season, or they will
<v Speaker 4>pour gasoline, or they will set up some compartment that
<v Speaker 4>will let that will create fire automatically. Yeah, that's a
<v Speaker 4>sad thing.
<v Speaker 1>The car So they how do they emerge from the forest,
<v Speaker 1>Like are they shade tolerant when young or do they
<v Speaker 1>need to exploit openings in the forest.
<v Speaker 4>Or they are really street tolerant and they require shed
<v Speaker 4>for growing. That's why it's really hard for reforestation, especially
<v Speaker 4>for the open areas. We see a lot down there
<v Speaker 4>right the open areas. It's hard to introduce in a
<v Speaker 4>very hot climate. They need they need shed, they need
<v Speaker 4>enough rainfall.
<v Speaker 1>But it's so they are not they're not they're not
<v Speaker 1>early secessional species.
<v Speaker 4>No, they are not pioneer species. They are the climate species. Here,
<v Speaker 4>the climate species. The pioneer species here are the u
<v Speaker 4>forbs the manga yeah pu was making into a half. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>really large leaves and homal and thus and a lot
<v Speaker 4>of they are the one that that are the pioneers.
<v Speaker 1>The lh create a microclimate that shorias and all the
<v Speaker 1>the teocrafts need. What are the flowers that the teracrafts
<v Speaker 1>like pantamrus.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, pentamerous five merus, sepus five marus petals and the
<v Speaker 4>petals are contorted. Yeah, oh really yeah, just like hibiscus. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>but it's smaller and also somewhat fragrant, the distinguishing characteristic
<v Speaker 4>for the the pteretocarps or the anthers. So you have
<v Speaker 4>the anterconnective. So something is sticking out on its statements,
<v Speaker 4>So that's the anterconnective. The presence or the absence of
<v Speaker 4>this anterconnective is diagnostic between species. Back then, it's.
<v Speaker 1>It's how many how many statements? Five?
<v Speaker 4>There's many many, ten twenty. We have this ruebrocho and
<v Speaker 4>negro sensis, which have fifty statements. That's crazy.
<v Speaker 1>We're in the style is in the center.
<v Speaker 4>Is it perfect flowers or yeah? They are perfect you know,
<v Speaker 4>sexual hermaphrodite. They are a hermark and it's fruit. That's
<v Speaker 4>that's the unique thing about the pterographs. They are wind dispersed,
<v Speaker 4>so the wings have the fruits have wings.
<v Speaker 1>How big the whole fruit has a wing?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, we have a nut and you have the wings
<v Speaker 4>like that.
<v Speaker 1>How big is the fruit about?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 4>About this six incheses. Some are three inches long.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, you're huge.
<v Speaker 4>And they have this tendency to mass probably free.
<v Speaker 1>So fruit will have how many seeds in it?
<v Speaker 4>One seed? One fruit, one fruit, one seeds.
<v Speaker 1>So is it a a or a king rather or
<v Speaker 1>what again?
<v Speaker 4>It's a king, it's a not Yeah, it's a nut.
<v Speaker 4>But it's an orthodox Yeah, not so it won't last
<v Speaker 4>a day, it means, Yeah, it needs it's not tolerant.
<v Speaker 4>There are only few species that can tolerate trout. But
<v Speaker 4>it will die soon when you have that rampant fire
<v Speaker 4>going in.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they don't keep well. They need to germinate shortly
<v Speaker 1>after them. Make sure.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it needs it also needs rain. It also needs
<v Speaker 4>somehow protection because fire really fucked them up, and.
<v Speaker 1>They think likee meters.
<v Speaker 4>The largest that I've seen seventy meters sixty seventy meters.
<v Speaker 1>Undred and twenty feet. The wood is beautiful, man, I
<v Speaker 1>didn't expect.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, all the things here. These are the pterocarps really, yeah,
<v Speaker 4>even those beams. The tar harps.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, are the carps you know their distribution throughout Malaysia
<v Speaker 1>then or yeah, the.
<v Speaker 4>I think up until yeah, Vietnam, we have that in
<v Speaker 4>Thailand also, and I think some few species in Africa
<v Speaker 4>we have the pterocarps there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>In India there's so many the ptero carps also, yeah wow, yeah, but.
<v Speaker 1>Is there a forest left in India, I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, there's a lot of forest left the yeah, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>but I mean some of the other edge fellows are
<v Speaker 2>three of them from there, so, I mean it's pretty
<v Speaker 2>cool stuff there. But I mean the also super important,
<v Speaker 2>like a lot of the I mean, when we look
<v Speaker 2>at the different forest types of the Philippines, right, we
<v Speaker 2>have twelve different forest types for most of them, at
<v Speaker 2>the at the very least structurally, the terra carps are
<v Speaker 2>the most important thing. Like they're really destructed, like the
<v Speaker 2>architecture of the forest. It's really just mostly the pterracarps.
<v Speaker 1>How so you mean just in being like such major
<v Speaker 1>keystone species.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, yeah, exactly.
<v Speaker 1>So these poles like telephone poles. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>If you look at if you fly like for example,
<v Speaker 2>like a drown or fly over it, most of the
<v Speaker 2>canopy is like the terracarp, right, what is.
<v Speaker 1>The shape from like a drone? What the what's the
<v Speaker 1>shape look like?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? Yeah, yeah, it's kind of just like a large brocoli.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah exactly.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, wow, I gotta go get photos of it. We
<v Speaker 1>head back into the if we could just take a
<v Speaker 1>walk around here before you guys dip out, before you
<v Speaker 1>dip out? Yeah, Am I gonna see you again after
<v Speaker 1>today or no?
<v Speaker 4>I don't know honestly.
<v Speaker 2>In the field, Jason's disappearing for like the next month.
<v Speaker 2>Sh he's gone on off April I thing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but I'll see you yeah yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I'll see you. Yeah, you're back of it for sure.
<v Speaker 1>Cool. Well we need to email at yeah yeah yeah yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and uh let's go to the ultramatic areas next year
<v Speaker 1>or so. So thank you so much for your time.
<v Speaker 1>I appreciate to check out if they want to learn
<v Speaker 1>more about this PTI.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so we're mostly on Instagram.
<v Speaker 1>You got plant Vision, the Plant Vision two.
<v Speaker 3>So we just e merged.
<v Speaker 2>We make cool things, a little posters. Yeah, we're going
<v Speaker 2>on a little plant Vision hike next week. Yeah, so
<v Speaker 2>that'll be pretty cool. Yeah yeah, so, I mean lots
<v Speaker 2>of cool stuff.
<v Speaker 1>Are you gonna be on that? You're not coming on that? Huh?
<v Speaker 2>You'll see another one of our guys genre, So he'll
<v Speaker 2>he'll be with us, he'll be yeah, yeah, he'll he's
<v Speaker 2>the firm guy.
<v Speaker 1>He's the guy like a Napis was the Mecca fight firm.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you can ask a lot, you
<v Speaker 2>can ask him anything about.
<v Speaker 1>Friend as you still don't know what species got you
<v Speaker 1>yesterday and I don't want to know that. But they
<v Speaker 1>were biting. You think that's thing there?
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, because I'm not itching now, so they were biting.
<v Speaker 2>I just have wounds all over. It's just horrible from pronounced.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, they got me good.
<v Speaker 1>Well, thanks Elepartus and uh yeah check them out plant
<v Speaker 1>Vision and then Philippine Taxonomic Initiative pt I. So yeah,
<v Speaker 1>all right, thank you guys for all you do. Thank you.
<v Speaker 3>Thanks