The Flower That Looks Like a Bird (especially if you're high) & other rants

Hi, and welcome to the crime Pace. But Bodany doesn't podcast today.
It's the fuck Days Tuesday, December nineteenth. It's a lovely day in South
Texas. It's great. It's chili. It's gonna be permissible to go outside
during the daytime for the next five months, you know, March and April
is when it starts getting hot as balls here again and uncomfortable. Right now,
it's it's kind of ideal. We might even get a chili day where
you got to put a hoodie on. And you know, I'm just enjoy
My fucking yard is still covered in a bunch of queen butterflies and all kinds
of interesting activity. I've got some large ass Texas spiny lizards, which are
the same genus as the western fence lizard, this scaloperis. But I saw
a fucking juicy one back there. I love I love those guys. They
get these little baby and knoles too. I think they're just the Cuban of
noles, the little brown ones. But they're like an inch long, these
little lizards. They're fucking cute. But you know, it's nice. It's
it's been a fucking wonderful last week or two. I'm working on this book,
slowly losing my mind, trying to do nine things at once at any
given time. And you know, got a bunch of drawings I've done printing
shirts in a garage, doing screen printing, you know, trying to you
know, sneak in a fucking two or three mile run every day. You
know, it's been nice, making fucking crockpot food for the dogs. It's
a nice one. You know, Jack is going on fifteen now. It
got to issue a silver alert for him every other day. He doesn't seem
to know where he is and he just wanders off. But you know,
he wakes up at three in the morning. I hear his little tap tap
of his nails on the on the floor, and then he seems to not
know where he is. He's confused whatever. But it's it's kind of it's
very akin to human dimension. You ever dealt with dog dementia before. It's
kind of cute in its own way. It's also kind of sad. I'm
gonna be a fucking mess when he goes. But uh, anyway, go
right to the chase. I someone sent me this, fucking I don't know
if they did. I think people send me shit because they know I'm gonna
share it on this stupid social media that's ruining all of our lives and our
brains and our fucking dopamine levels. But but people send me this stuff,
and I think they know I'm gonna share it, which oftentimes I do.
I can't help, but I especially if it's stupid shit. The dumber it
is, the more inclined I am. That sounds like so negative. I
think so negative it's trying to really be positive. The dumber it is,
the more inclined I am to share it sometimes because it's and this thing is
this fucking this took the cake it was. I've seen posts like this before,
and uh, they're just like these clickbait posts. This this in question,
it was on a rarer season R A w R. I forget the
fucking what was it? The I gotta look at this roar see some fucking
Instagram page, like a clickbait Instagram page. They share other people's posts,
and uh, probably monetize it and make money and steal your attention span and
prevent you from doing things that you should be doing. But it basically shows
this plant, this legume in the genus Curtilaria, which is a very common
legum, very common legum genus. I think it's all over the world,
and then we get a few here in in North America. This one in
particular is in Australia, Curdal area. Cunning hammy eye named after Cunningham,
some fucking dead white guy. Pretty obnoxious again, but you know, from
one hundred and fifty years ago, he was probably a schmuck. But anyway,
so you know, sometimes that's actually been me in the ask because you
normally assume it's some fucking honkey from one hundred and twenty years ago. And
again this is no I'm not an identitarian. I don't buy into that shit,
you know, but but I think it's safe to assume one hundred and
twenty years ago, you know, white guy from you know, a European
background, could you there's a good chance, at least a fifty to fifty
chance, especially if he's if he's you know, adopting the values of the
society that he lives in, and if he's not like a reject or a
criminal or something, he's maybe you know a little there might be some questionable
ethics and morals in there, And I think it's just safe too soon.
Everyone's a product. Every human is a product of the culture from which they
come, for better or worse. Uh, in this case a little bit
on the more negative side. But anyway, I don't, I don't fuck
I don't know who the fuck hunting him was. He was probably a twad.
Anyway, The point is, Uh, this Crodalaria cunning Hamiy, it
looks like a It looks like a bird kind of if you're not familiar with
pe flowers, like if you if you look at it from the back,
it looks like a bird, I guess, but it's not. It's not
the way that like Aerocarpus looks like a rock, like the cactus genus Aerocarpus.
Like it's if you don't if you don't know anything about botany, maybe
you could go or natural selection or evolution or pollination or any of these things,
or biology, fucking biology in general. You could maybe think in some
way, I guess, if you just smoked a copious amount of weed to
you could think that this was there was some adaptive benefit, But you probably
wouldn't know to put those words on it. You would you would think the
plant is trying to look like a bird, okay to somehow mimic the behavior
of a fucking another bird that pollinates it. It's actually pollinated by honey eaters,
which are a type of bird that look nothing like the bird that this
is. That this supposedly looks like that people. People are saying this sorts
like a hummingbird, you know, whereas the fucking pedicil the stalk of the
flower is the bird's beak. The problem is, there's no hummingbirds anywhere outside
of the Americas, North and South America, so that kind of shits on
it. There's and honey eaters don't look like this. It's got like a
green green sepals that form a KALs. To me, it just looks like
a variation on a fucking pea flower. All right, this is not like
I see it. And I'm like, yeah, I guess if someone was
stoned out of their mind, like they just you know, smoke themselves into
a coma beyond any level of comprehension, and we can do that, we
can make you extremely stupid. No offense to any potheads. It's you're certainly
better off than if you were a drunk or something. And I've had a
lot of friends who were junkies and alcoholics, and I love them, all
the ones that are still alive, which are not many of them. But
uh, the weeds, you know, definitely a better if you're going to
be addicted to something, being addicted to weed is better than a lot of
other things. But I do have to I do have to mention it does
dull the gears of the mind. That makes you a little dumb, Okay,
especially if you're doing it a lot. No offense to anyone that's smoking
a lot of weed. Now if you know you're it's making you dumber and
you're still doing like, yeah, it's just I like it. It's pleasant,
and I get you, that's right on. But you just be honest
it. You gotta be fucking honest. You gotta keep it real, all
right. Weed makes you a little dumb. That aside. You know,
I could see if you smoked a lot of weed and you looked at this
and you were like, wow, that's like I could see it's like a
like the plant is like trying to to like mimic a bird, and like,
you know, I guess I could. I guess I could see that.
And then then next day once you come out of your funk, you're
like, that's the dumbest shit I've ever I know. But looking at this
flower, it doesn't look like a bird to me. It looks like a
pea flower. It looks like a variation on the pea flower, specifically the
phaboid subfamily of the leg and family. FORBASI. Now, I don't want
to ridicule anybody, because we all grow up disconnected from plants, and this
has learned shit that you learn after paying attention to the natural the quote unquote
natural world aka the real world, and you learn from paying attention to pea
flowers. To even know that this is just a standard pe flower, you'd
have to have some familiarity with plants, right, even if you're just like
doing vegetable permaculture, gardens or some shit, you know, because you would
know, you know, fava beans, peas, regular beans, whatever,
they all produce the same flower morphology. You've got a banner pedal, two
wing pedals in a keel pedal, and in this case, the veins of
the keel pedal the vasculature is read while the keel itself is green. The
petals are green, the sequels are green. And and I maybe I guess
the fucking in this case, the banner is supposed to be the wings.
You know, I guess you could see I guess you could see it.
But again it's it's it's the same way. It's very obvious that the plant
is there's no adaptive benefit to this, all right, I mean, the
it doesn't. It's not trying to attract other birds because the birds that pollinate
it are five times the size of the flower. There's no fucking way their
visual acuity would somehow mistake this for another bird. I mean, and that's
what it has to do. What what that's That would be the whole point,
all right. Now there's a there's the fucking caption. God, it
was so it's so embarrassing. It's not even it's not even embarrassing. It's
just, you know, I see this. I guess My issue is,
like I see this because there are cases where plants mimic female insects. A
lot of orchids do it. Of course, the the you know, cognition
of an insect is exponentially lower than that of any vertebrate, especially a bird.
Birds are generally pretty smart compared to bugs, and so it works with
insects. You can get horny male insects, like in the case of the
cape befly, to try and fuck your flower, thus picking up pollen and
taking it to another flower. If you mimic, if you produce a flower
that mimics a female bfly or a female wasp in the case of some of
those terrestrial orchids in Australia, et cetera. And of course some of those
terrestrial orchids also produce pheromones, which seems fucking wild pheromones that mimic insects pheromones
or that are close enough to them. But you know, chemical biologists I've
talked to say it's actually not that many steps to get there from some of
the you know, biochemicals that are already being synthesized by by flowers, by
plants and orchids, especially in subfamily orchid Doity that's the terrestrial orchids. Generally
speaking, it's one of the it's I think the largest family of terrestrial orchids.
You also have the simpropedioids, which are terrestrial, you know, versus
the epidendroids, which are the epiphytic ones with the velamin roots. Those white
quirky roots, which are I think that's the most diverse subfamily. Also the
quote unquote newest, the most recently evolved. That can kind of fuck you
up to and a lot of taxonomists don't like it when you when you when
you talk like that, so uh. But yeah, orchidoids terrestrial orchids.
They tend to be kind of hairy and they pop up from you know,
from down below. But anyway, that aside, but there can also be
epithel anthoids that are or not epithelantic. Excuse me, epidendroids that are that
are terrestrial too, but I think they're generally most of them tend to be
epiphytic. Anyway, that aside, This this doesn't I mean, I see
this and it's just so obvious that this is just people. This just looks
like birds to human beings. You know, it's like a roorshotch test am
I pronouncing that right? Roorshots or the same way like a cumulus cloud.
You know, I might think a cumulus cloud up in the sky looks like
a giant leathered daddy with a heart on holding a cane and a Santa head,
right, because it is fucking Christmas is coming up. It could be
read, you know, but I'm not going to go out and say it
it's a message from God that that's what I need to do, you know,
try to make myself any gayer than I've ever made myself in the past
and put a fucking stant the head on, you know, and go arouse
myself and try and change somebody. I'm not saying it's a message from God,
you know, I'm not going I'm just saying you could take this two
ways, and this this thinking that this is a quote intentional which of course
it's not, or adaptive benefit, that this is an evolutionarily beneficial trait of
the plant of Curtilaria cutting hami I to resemble a pea flower. When you
start to think about it, it starts to fall apart with that. You
know, after like thirty seconds, Well, what would it really do?
I mean, what's going to do? It's gonna get the If it is
a bird, the bird is facing the in you know, the axis of
the plant, away from it, away from anything that would pollinate it.
The head of the bird is not the opening of the flower. Uh,
It's not gonna scare away insects because again, it's the bird is flying away.
The bird is flying away from the opening, flying you know the way
it looks, it's pointed away from the opening of the flower. You know,
I just it's a fifth of the size. If it's trying to get
another bird, one of the honey eaters, to mate with it, it's
it's one fifth the size of these these honey eaters. There's no way you
could a honey eater would possibly mistake this fucking thing for another bird. Also,
bird pollinated flowers tend to be red in tubular I guess they can be
yellow two. In this case, I'd have to see this thing. I'd
have to see how much necktar it's producing. I know bees produce it too,
or pollinate it to supposedly according to what I've read in the literature.
And also the fact that no other fucking botanist or biologist of any note you
know, of any noteworthiness or or any you know, uh, there's no
papers out there on this. There's no papers out there, like no,
no, no one who actually studies this shit is seeing this and thinking,
well, that looks like with the plot tried to be a bird flower like
baby. That's no you know, the only people who think that are people
who don't know anything about buying, which is fine, I get it.
It's like I don't there's a shit ton I don't know about fucking dentistry that
I would probably and if you know, I was talking to a fucking dentist,
and you know, he was, you know, gonna sit back for
his own amusement and watch me have a go at someone's fucking mouth. You
know. Say we're like at one of those sketchy border dentists, right,
you know, you go over there and progress, so you cross the border
because our health insurance here in the United States is fucked and we'll never get
any better because you've got a whole industry that's dedicated to ripping people off and
making money off of health insurance. Uh, you know, and say I
go, you know, I'm like one of those dentists, and he's just
for entertainment purposes, watching me go poking pride someone's mouth. If you were
to hear me say, uh, you know some of my presumptions on how
dentistry works, he probably laughs his ass off and ridicule me. You know,
maybe jovially. I prefer if you did it Jovi, like, just
bust my balls. You know, we'll go drink a few na beers.
It's some sketchy bar on the main drag of progresso later progresso tamilipis, you
know what I mean, something like that, like that kind of flip,
Like I'm not ridiculing anybody who doesn't know about this, but I'm just saying
again when you my problem with this is when you put this shit out there,
especially in a big post. You know, there's cases where you know,
mimicry, baitsy and mimicry, mimicry, you know, camouflage plants trying
to look like rocks. You know, like that case of that Fritillaria that
was actually being selected for the population was being selected for by humans because humans
were picking any Fritillaria. It's a lily. This species was in China that
that stuck out on the talus piles, the talus slopes on which it grew,
and so they were actively selecting for the ones that were harder to spot
because their leaves were kind of a grayish blue or you know, just more
of a gray color and blending with a tallis. You know, there's cases
where this actually happens, and it's fascinating shit, and I'm in love with
that. I study it. I'm I'm obsessed with it. I traveled to
see it. This is not it, like, this is nothing. This
is just a stoner who thought a bird or a flower looked like a bird.
And it's fucking hilarious because I made the mistake of trying to like engage
people in the comments section. It's not a mistake. I think it explains,
you know. I think half the people who read it probably don't.
They either get pissed you're killing their buzz. They want to believe in some
sort of magic without having to actually read about the very real magic that exists
in biology and quote unquote natural sciences. And then the other half probably get
it. They're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, I get
it, you know, but it just I just I want to if I
can help make anyone less dumber. And I realize that's incorrect grammar, but
fuck fuck all. If that phrase doesn't suit our times culturally, so well,
less dumber. Somebody should make shirts that say less dumber with like a
picture of the American flag and a cheeseburger on it or something, you know,
we're getting less dumber kind of you know, whole fucking encyclopedia is worth
of information at our fingertips. We can read about anything, we can research
anything on our phones. But still we're managing to get more stupid. There's
a culture in a society as time goes on. Maybe not, there's good
sites to it too. Anyway, it's a fascinating you know those cases where
plants produce flowers that do mimic insects, or produce leaves that do mimic rocks,
or stems that mimic rocks in the case of Aerocarpus, the cactus that
looks like a living rock. It's fascinating shit, and you really realize how
natural selection works. I guess that was what drove me nuts too, is
on the fucking post that God. There were so many people who just I
don't get it. It's proof of God. I can't comprehend it. It's
proof of Allah. I mean, just the dumbest shit and people and they
were getting fucking mad at anyone who tried to explain it, like there was
like a there was like a I forget. There was another comment by a
scientist, a botanist in India and people were just like calling him a fag,
like you know, it's like that that's from that Idiocracy thing, Like
what was it that Idiocracy movie. We're like, oh you radio fog.
Oh I'll go fucking step and whatever rul or I mean it was. They
didn't, of course call him a homophobic slur, but you know, it
was that kind of like level of just like Jesus Christ did, I feel
like, I don't know, man, That's what terrifies me. That's what
terrifies me. He's like entering a new kind of dark ages, like the
kind that Carl Sagan wrote about, you know, like how to fuck whatever.
I don't need to focus on this any of you. Let's talk about
some nice stuff anyway. I took Jim Mouse set out into the field to
go look at astrophiedom and lafafar and some other cool plants here in South Texas.
The weather's fucking lovely. As I said before, I love it when
you're able to smell the volatiles, you know, just exuding out of plant
stomata. That, if anything, is a great reason to kill your fucking
lawn and put a native plant garden in because the smells you get, especially
at night when those stollmada open. God, I'd love to have like a
time lapse, a time lapse microscope video, microscopic video of stomata opening.
You know, there's a little gas pores on the undersides of the leaves and
to a lesser extent, on the top side of the leaves and on the
stems. Basically anywhere there's green, you know, anywhere there's chlorophyll, and
uh, and just see them opening and closing according to the temperature and the
humidity and what time of day it was, et cetera. So it was
it's fucking And of course, when you know that's how they take in CO
two isn't really akin to breathing. Breathing would be respiring, and they actually
breathe oxygen. But they're taking in CO two to make their own food,
to synthesize their own food. They're letting out water, vapor and oxygen and
then of course whatever secondary metabolites they're producing two little whiffs of that and fuck
all, it smells good. So anyway, it's been such a nice fucking
time here in South Texas. I took my daughter off for a bike ride.
I got this little bike. She sits in between me and the handlebars,
and we went out to Turia Brush Tract. Out there, it's fish
and wildlife property. It was a product of this period in the nineteen eighties
when people actually gave a shit about conservation in South Texas and it wasn't just
an orgy of greed in rampant development. Well that's kind of like it is
all over the state. I mean, fuck you go all the way up
into Dallas. They're destroying everything. Everything left so you could just live in
a fucking statewide twenty four hour car slum. You know, there's nowhere to
go if you don't have a car, if you don't want to be trapped
in your car. But anyway, in the nineteen eighties, there was a
period of conservation here where they established all these different fish and wildlife tracks and
it was or wildlife refuges. It was mostly fish and wild us fish and
wildlife land. So I don't know is it technically public or water? Is
it private? They don't want you to go there. I mean, it
wasn't preserved for people to necessarily enjoy. It was preserved for the species.
You know, it's a little leftover islands because now we just had this ocean
of development and car slums and agriculture and tract housing, and so you know,
that was it was an effort to you know, give a little bit
of space to things like ocelots. The oscelots have to fucking pronounce that.
You know, that rare cat looks like a little tiny leopard, like a
leopard, meta bobcat, Indigo snakes, you know, all the other rare,
rare wildlife that you can get down here. You know, kowates,
like, there's coates down here too, maybe the odd jagarundi. There's another
really weird cat. So you know, it's anyway, we went out there
to eteria and it's all in vain by Buffalo and it's so it's so sad.
I was talking to Mike Heap, you know, owns the nursery in
Harlingen two days ago, and he was telling me about you know, there
are one of these plant walks. I took everybody to go see Essen Becky,
this rare member of the citrus family that only grows. I mean it's
rare everywhere. It grows the majority of the populations in Mexico. But you've
also got this small population that was discovered by Heap and his brother in the
eighties on an old versaka on an old Oxbow Lake, you know, an
abandoned leg of the Rio Grande River, and it just grows in there with
a couple other interesting plants, and you know, it's it's right next to
a big farm field and there's just this little strip of land that didn't get
bulldozed for whatever reason. God, I think about all the shit, there's
probably species that were here that never even got described before they got knocked out,
you know, because there's just no one was paying attention to it.
Very few people were paying attention to the plants down here. And so anyway,
Heap and his brother discovered this in the eighties, took everyone out there
and go see it, and you had like thirty people show up for the
plant walk. It was really nice. And I noticed there was guinea grass
and buffalo grass, right, two species that are everywhere in South Texas.
The buffal is shade intolerant and frost and tolerant, so it's a little bit
easier to manage. The guinea can tolerate anything, but I think it needs
a little bit more moisture. So either way, they both formed these horrific
monocultures. Now they're both from Africa, I believe, and they smother everything.
They knock it out. They've led to you know, local extinctions aka
extirpations of some of the plants here. But I was asking them like,
what was it, like, you know, in the eighties, Like it
was like, what did it There wasn't any buffal grass or guinea grass.
And He's like, no, no, it's just you could just walk right
into the woods. You didn't have to walk through this thicket of you know,
three foot towel grasses, African grasses. It's so nuts to think about
too. And I'm like, god, man, there was there's such a
small minority of people down here, I mean all over the world, but
especially here. And I assume it's the same in places like Florida and maybe
to a lesser extent some other places. In the southeast quadron into the country.
You get a little bit more native plant awareness as you go further west.
I don't know why it is. I don't know why, but certainly,
uh, you know, I think it jobs with the culture too.
There's more religiosity in the southeast. Maybe maybe there's you know, the fucking
hippies and the sixties and seventies were doing you know, more abundant out west,
and that led to more progressive views. Man, I don't fucking know.
I'm just spitballing here. But either way, that's why, you know,
shit like stuff that people like Kyle Eiberger are doing are so important.
He's in Alabama, he's bringing attention to all the native plants out there and
not politicizing it. So anyway, you know, I just I can't imagine
what that must have been like, and what loss like, What a fucking
loss that's gotta be, you know, But again, you could change it.
It's really easy to control. I was talking to Ken King too.
Ken King's like, man, the buffal so easy to get rid of.
You just got to go spray. Of course, there's a whole shit ton
of people that don't like glyphasate. Apparently they like, you know, species
going to extinct more. But I would, to be honest, I'd rather
take the spot applications of glyphasate. You have to. It's like you got
to pick. There's no you can't go in there and mainly remove all this
shit. You got to go spray and be you know, it's use a
scalpel, right, use the spray and not just broadcast, you know,
spray everything. You know, you don't want to get the plants that you
want to keep, obviously, you just want to get the fucking buffalo grass.
And you just go in there, you spray it when there's a lot
of leaf surface area. The more leaf surface area, the better. The
warmer it is, the better, so that plant's actually metabolizing and taking all
that glyphosate in there. And you know, these people that think that glypisate
is the equivalent of depleted uranium, I'm just like, fuck, do you
know the science? Can you explain to me how? No, don't tell
me that there's a lawsuit by some ambulance chaser about how it causes cancer.
You know, I'm sure you're not supposed to drink this shit. I'm sure
it causes cancer if you're swilling the shit. But if you're just spraying this
stuff, I mean, how long, what's the half life? How quick
does it break down? You know, does it actually persist in the soil,
does it get into the aqua? For how to fuck does that work?
If you're just spraying a little bit on the leaves. How to fuck
is it going down into the water table? You know, if they could
break down the science for me, maybe i'd listen. I mean, I
don't. To be honest, I don't even know how the fuck life is
it works, and I should. I'm a dummy. I could learn that
right now. I could have learned that before I started talking to you on
this podcast, and I could have just pretended that I knew what the fuck
I was talking about, like so many people do in this day and age.
But I didn't. I didn't. I don't know the motive of action
for Glipher's safe, but we'll look it up right now here we go.
God bless the Internet. You can use it to look at pictures of butts,
food or stupid cat videos where you can read about how a chemical that
is way overused in society but still has pragmatic uses, how it actually works.
So anyway, they're still just controlling those dopamine shots, these fucking you
know, these motherfucking social media I want Zuckerberg's head on a pike. They're
just all dictating our dopamine, that's all they're doing. Or they're manipulating our
dopamine levels, dictating whatever you know what I mean? Anyway, cliveas works
by inhibiting a specific enzyme called EPSP synthase. So this, this enzyme is
contained in all almost all plants and without it. Without this enzyme, if
you inhibit the production of the enzyme, the plants can't produce other proteins that
are essential to growth. Okay, so this this, let me see do
do animals? Do vertebrates produce ep SP synth And the answer to that is
no EPSP synthase, thank you. Wikipedia is produced only by plants and microorganisms.
So this is gonna fuck with some microorganisms? Which ones? Is it?
Ones that are closely related to plants? On the phylogeny another reason to
study evolution and know what a clatogram is and what bylogeny is. You could
look at that triangle, that tree of life and see how closely related things
are and maybe have a hair's worth of a guess. It's gonna say a
groin hair is worth of a guess, but I don't have to be nasty
doing a groin hair is worth of a guess. Some insight into how how
you know? If things are obviously closely enough related, then they might have
the same Achilles heel. This is why it's so hard to attack fungal pathogens
because turns out fungi are more closely related to animals like humans than they are
to plants, you know, or bacteria, So you know it's it's it's
again a lot of things that a lot of medicines anti fungals. That's the
dull problem. A lot of anti fungals can be very toxic to people because
we are somewhat closely related to fungi. So if you're attack they produce.
You know, if you're targeting an enzyme or a fucking biosynthetic pathway that the
fungus has, chances are uh, you might have it too, So you
know, it's the again, the phylogeny thing. You got to learn about
this evolutionary if you teach an evolutionary biology shit in school. It also helps
explain how stupid racism is, how fucking pointless and dumb of an idea racism
is because race doesn't really exist anyway. So EPSP synthase is produced only by
plants and micro organisms, and the gene coding for it is not in the
mammalian genome, so we don't even this is not even in our fucking genetic
vocabulary EPSP synthase, so that is not going to to affect us. Obviously,
it's not going to affect any production of EPSP synthas in people. But
that's not to say it's not toxic. I'm sure if you're swilling this stuff.
I'm sure if you're mixing it in your hot coco when you're having your
little Martha Stewart get together's, you know, learning to make macrom with all
your friends and make your live laugh love sign like I got. I just
got a fucking dormat that says, hope you like dog hair, welcome,
hope you like thegret because that's what kind of person I am. I'm a
fucking homemaker, now you know is I'm gonna let out an SBD all right
anyway, So, uh, you know, there's probably some other toxic shit
that goes on again, But there's you know what, there's toxic shit when
you leave your car parked in the sun with the windows rolled up, you
walk in, you get in your car and it smells like off gassing plastic.
That's toxic as fucked too, all right, So you stop the hogwash
about the fucking glyphistate relax or at least if you're gonna hate on it,
know what the fuck I'm I'm all for people having strong opinions. You just
gotta back them up, all right. So the hippies that think that fucking
glyphosate's depleted uranium and don't want people to use it at least for restoration purposes,
now due, I think you should go spraying it aily on fucking crops.
No, I think that's pretty shit for brained and insane, not to
mention lazy. All right, we're not talking about that. We're talking about
using glyphosate for restoration, uh, restoration purposes. And you know there's there's
herbicize that only target my mind too, and grasses, so like there's there's
herb sized that won't affect uni coots or you know, et cetera. So
again, it's that there's differences between these groups of organ That's why it's important
to learn about how these things evolved and how we group them. That's why
taxonomic names matter. So if you know something's a monocont which display this you
know, is indicative of a certain taxonomic level, you can know that Okay,
this is probably the way it's going to grow. It's not going to
produce secondary growth. It's going to be susceptible to such and such herbicide.
You know, you know, the difference is the sanapomorphies, the shared traits
of clades. And there's going to be a huge part in my fucking book
about this, all right. So even you, even you you goof can
get it because this really changes the way you look at the world and you
start paying attention to things and just learning. You start learning the correct way,
at least you know the way that's in limbo that's accurate with how the
rest of life works. To think about things. You learn the correct way
to think about things. So when you see a flower that quote looks like
a bird, you know, you're not kind of go fucking thinking that.
You know it's proof of God or Allah or you know that the bird that
flower, the plant somehow knows what a bird looks like and is trying to
get hummingbirds, which don't even exist in Australia. The fuck it. I
don't know, I don't know. I don't know what the fuck people are
thinking, you know, but I do remember a friend of mine who was
really high once twenty years ago. We were smoking a lot of pot back
then. It was also the last time I ever did blow and she was
looking at a piece of bread and she said, Wow, bread is cool
to look at, and I was so I was so impressed with what a
stoner comment that was. Uh, you know, it's just it's stuck with
me. I wonder where she is, old Jen Bock. Where the fuck
the Jen? Where's Jen? What she's doing? She was always banging these
hot guys she was. She was dating some hot guy, you know,
some fucking real handsome George Clooney looking motherfucker who was in a band or something.
I don't know where she I don't know. Good for her, she
was getting it in, but I don't know where she went now. You
know, she's probably living it up somewhere. I don't know. She was
a really close friend of mine. We dated for a while, like twenty
fifteen, twenty years ago. But it's the good friend. I wonder where
the fuck she is anyway. You know, you lose track of people.
At least she's not on Heroin like so many other people that I've lost.
It's been a long time. I'm sorry. You gotta get a little dark
about reality anyway. So moving on, the breakdown of glyfosit is roughly,
uh, what the fuck? I don't know, five to eight days.
Some places say six months, but the shit doesn't last that long and it
doesn't really wash into aquifers because I think it binds the soil somewhat easily.
I should actually let me, let me, let me get the let me
get you the straight dope on. Yeah, I don't know, I'm coming
up. It's all over the board here. Six to nine days, six
months. I think it depends on a lot of things, not to mention
climate, soil structure, probably temperature to a degree, rainfall of an area,
and most specifically, more specifically, how much of this shit you're spraying.
If you're just using a backpack sprayer and you're not spraying the ground,
you're just getting the leaves, it probably breaks down somewhat quickly. And interesting
about it. How these motherfuckers at Montsanto figured out how to make you know,
round up ready, round up ready. What a great branding idea.
How these motherfuckers figured out how to make round up ready crops? Was they
identified a strain of Agrobacterium, because remember bacteria have this ees ep sp synthase
produced. They produce this epsp synthas as well. They they identified a strain
that was found surviving in a waste fed column at a glyphissate production facility,
which would be the spot to search for it. I mean, that's natural
selection, right, You're gonna look for whatever area is getting the most glyphyssate
and see if there's any bacteria still alive in that column, all right,
because that's how natural selection works. Like when they were dumping fucking DDT uh
into southern France in the fifties and sixties to get rid of mosquitoes, and
they were using such large amounts for it of DDT, that's a huge selection
pressure, which means you're going to knock out everything except that very initially small
percentage of mosquitos that have a mutation that enables them to survive DDT poisoning.
And then slowly and incrementally that you know, is the ninety nine point nine
percent of the rest of the population that has susceptibility to DTT. Of DDT
of those mosquitos gets knocked out, that small percentage starts to grow incrementally and
get bigger and bigger until soon that is that allele that codes for that or
series of alleles copies of a gene that code for resistance to ddt UH has
you know, an allele frequency that's throughout the whole population. The whole population
has that trait, and that's how it works, you know. And because
you've knocked out ninety nine point nine percent of the population, but there's still
a little bit left, that means there's that much more food in space and
lack of competition for that small percentage of insects that mosquitoes that have that mutation
to now grow, whereas otherwise they would not be They wouldn't be growing,
there'd be nothing selecting for them. They'd stay infintesimally small, or maybe that
mutation would just die out there's nothing selecting for it. That's the same thing
that happens. You're going to look for where what area is getting the most
glyphosate and look for bacteria there. Take that bacteria back to a lab and
look up what's you know, see why this is not dying, like,
see what's different about it from a regular Agrobacterium strain that's still susceptible to round
up And then you take that gene and you just insert it into some crops.
Who the fuck knows what other you know effects it has on the rest
of the ecosystem. Who gives you shit. We're just trying to make money.
We're picks. But anyway, again, this is not an endorsement of
glyphosa. This is not the you know, defending monsanto. It's just I
think it's it's fascinating science. It's another great case of natural selection, or
in this case, I guess is kind of human selection. And the fact
is you need to use glcys sate in restoration. And I would love to
see a biocontrol for some of the grass species down here, the buffal grass,
the fucking guinea grass, whatever. I guess they're working on it,
but again, who knows. How can you be sure that that biocontrol,
if it's an insect or what, isn't going to go for other grass species
because back in its native ecosystem, buffle grass still gets out of control.
I mean it still forms of heavy monoculture. But you know it does.
I mean, I've seen buffal grass and photos of you know, African habitats
before. I mean, you get that thick grass like thick grasses, you
know, and you know, but there's things there that have evolved with it.
Because those millions of years spent evolving together in ecosystms, something evolved to
occupy this knee of eating the buffalo grass. Not to mention the herbivores,
but I'm talking about like an insect or something. Maybe we just need more
ponies. Isn't that the answer? You just get more ponies in South Texas.
Ponies and donkeys. You could put little hats on the little party hats,
maybe a fucking tuxedo or Hawaiian shirt. Could you get a Hawaiian shirt
for a donkey? You could make one, you could, you know,
it's make it festive and just have them out there and slowly reclaim some of
these crumbs of natural habitat, like the fucking Mission hike and bike that's just
getting ravaged by buffalo grass. And have Alena, I guess have Alina used
to not be as dominant down here in South Texas either, So it could
be helena that are fucking up some of these cactus populations. Not necessarily feral
pigs, though at the astrophytem spot it certainly was feral pigs because they are
much more destructive. They root around the soil. And the tracks are slightly
different too. You know, have alena and pigs have those two little hoofy
prints, you know, those cute little prints, and the pigs are wider
at one end. You know, they're further apart and just look a little
bit different. I mean you to get a comparison, just do a Google
image search of have a lena versus pig tracks. So anyway, this all
started because we were talking about a brush track. I took my daughter out
there. It's sad as hell to see it getting ravaged again. In twenty
fourteen, I was out here and none of this grass was here yet.
It was just bare ground. It was such a fucking wild habitat because it's
still a desert. But there was this open, bare ground with nothing growing
on it in density, and just little clumps of cactus here and there,
and just, oh god, it was so cool. I mean, I
shared photos on the Thorn Scrubs Sanctuary Instagram page of you know, clumps of
mammalaria hider eye and a kindo serious pent, the locusts and all this shit,
and it is just you know, The only thing that's left that the
pigs aren't fucking with is de grusonia because it's so goddamn mean. The dog
choya. The Mammalaria hideer eye is gone. I'm trying to convince people to
grow that shit from seed. Mammalaria hider ie seed is fucking tiny. The
fruits looked like little red chili peppers. And you know, I think you
could probably get seed at Mason Gardens. Should do well. You should grow
some cac dike, you know, in a little humidity dome. Just use
a fifty to fifty mix of one eighth inch pummice and at Fox Farm motion
forest soil mixed it together, putting a little you know, tray w to
cover on it under some LEDs. LEDs connect like a seasonal effective disorder light
for your ass. When you're up there at forty five degrees latitude in the
depths of February, drinking yourself or smoking yourself into a coma, whatever,
you know, grow some cac dive from seed, then send them to us.
We'll plant them in the ground. You can come visit us at this
fucking land project. This land we're trying to purchase here and stick them in
the ground yourself, but try to make it sure it's locally sourced. South
Texas seed. I don't need Mammalaria hid ri is all throughout Texas, and
it goes on into Arizona two southern Arizona, but then it's got it's a
different subspecies. Anyway, So moving on, we went on this nice bike
I got. It was so beautiful. It was such a fucking lovely day.
And again I'm not used to it because down here in South Texas,
in the border lands, you know, six months out of the year,
God, is it just fucking brutally hot. I mean, just you can't
go outside. You might as well be living on fucking marsh. I mean,
I still go outside. I just sweat so much, and I gotta
have a cooler in the truck if I'm doing field work, so I can
go not because I need water, but just because I need cold water,
because it's the easiest way to cool yourself down fast, because you know,
at a certain point it's not even about getting water anymore, it's just about
cooling your internal body temperature. So anyway, till March, it's gonna be
really nice out here. So so we get all those winter Texans. You
know, you get all the Anglos and Caucasians coming down here, but they're
to be fair, they're the nice Anglos and Caucasians not you know, it's
like with the fucking racist Chicago cops used to say that sometimes back in the
early two thousands, it's not you, it's not you, guys. It's
a problem. Yeah, it very was. It very much was us that
was a problem. We were fucking doing a lot of graffiti, vandalism and
other shit. It was very much us. You know, don't just assume
because of the color of our skin that we're not a problem, officers.
That's kind of prejudice of you. All right, we're actually causing a lot
of trouble for the city anyway. What the fuck. No, get a
lot of Canadian birders and shit, you know, coming down here to see
brown Jay's. It's like a corvid that you can only see in a They
hang out on the Taxodium mucronadum tree over there at Santa Margarita Ranch. And
a guy who owns the ranch has slowly been, you know, catching on
to the eco tourism thing. He's catching on to the fact that really nice
guy, but you know, they being aware of native plants or having a
reverence for life is not a thing down here. You know, it's just
not as it's not in many places in the country. I'm sure it was
when the Lipans and the coyle Tekans were here, but uh, you know,
now that they've they're a very small minority now, I'm sure it's you
know, anyway, the dom it's not a dominant culture. There's not a
big native plant movement. It's a relatively small fucking movement down here. But
this ranch own slowly, thank God to my friend Zach, a Staten Island
jew in South Texas. That's going to be a children's book I'm gonna write.
But anyway, Zach's been showing, you know, he leaves these birding
tours, and he's been getting these you know, Canadians and other shit to
fork over money to pay to seat this thing, these birds, these rare
birds. Only place in the US you can see these birds is right at
this ranch on the South Texas border. And so that and then of course
the ranch owner gets a cut. And so the ranch owner is learning that
you actually make more money doing eco tourism than root plowing your land. And
grazing it for cattle, which is good, and that actually just saved a
huge parcel of land that was bound to get root plowed. His dad wanted
to root plow it. Uh and Zach and him convinced them not to,
and they said, you know, you can put this into a conservation easement.
Then you can actually still make money off. The conservation easement just says
that you can't, you know, build a fucking apartment complex or a whata
a burger there at some point, or sell it to someone who can't like
or anyone you sell it to can't do it. I'm not sure what the
rules are. Can you still, like build a small house on a conservation?
He's been Probably not. I don't know either way. I gotta call
some people and ask about that, because we're trying to look into doing this
for this land, this fucking land we're getting. Anyway, I'll talk about
that in a minute, go back to what we were talking about. Sorry,
I'm all over the place, man. Eighty of the has been real
bad. I got, you know, go a couple of days with I've
taken my medge, but I've taken my riddle in and then it just gets
the you know, the dopamine levels all up and down. It's caused in
a lot of problems. You know, just ask the dogs. Jack's not
even looking at it right now. Anyway, he was gonna the ranch owner
was gonna bulldoze this Parcela land decided against it, or his dad did.
And uh, and now they're just gonna, you know, do e goo
through some things. And there was God, there was so much fucking so
many cool plants on this land. Like it's there's a little bit of invasive
grass. But again, to get that invasive grass established, you need a
disturbance event or you need it to bevely seated. It's not in a lot
of places on this ranch yet. I mean, this is like a pristine
Some of these parcels that haven't been destroyed yet are just pristine. They're just
God, They're so fucking wonderful. And it's like to me, it's like
going to church. It's sacred. You go out there and you're like,
oh, this is this just like fills my fucking soul. This is like
a cocktail for the soul, even though I don't drink, you know,
And uh, God, to lose that, God, especially if you can
be out there when the blackbrush is flowering. Fucking amen, you know.
Oh god. Anyway, so, uh, that saved that parcel. They're
not going to do it anymore, so it's cool, So I'm all for
it. You know, whatever fucking means necessary to get people to not destroy
shit, to get people to not to get us as humans to not behave
like a tumor cell on this landscape, you know, I mean idealistically,
you know, get someone into a fucking peyote ceremony or something, you know,
invited of course by natives and they'll show you away, you know,
or there's other ways too, whatever. You just get some fucking reverence for
the rest of the life around you, you know, just get shook out
of your human myopia, your anthropocentrism, whatever the fuck. Anyway, I
got a bunch to say about that payote ceremony shit too, because I went
to another one. I was invited at the Tono Autumn Reservation in Tucson,
and it was just amazing. Man. It was just you know, payoti
by itself is nothing. It's like, who cares, it's not It's subtle.
I don't really care for it on its own. It's all about that
meeting. It's all about you know, humility, gratitude and listening and using
it as a learning experience. You know, from the the roadman that throws
the meeting, that has the meeting, whatever throws, he's throwing a part.
It's not a party. You don't want to do it. It's not
fun. It's a you know, there's really a lot of similarities between I
saw a lot of similarities. Maybe it's just me between AA meetings and Payote's
ceremonies. You don't want to go in there. It's gonna suck. You're
gonna be in there for twelve I mean in some ways it's gonna stuck.
You mean, there for twelve hours. It's long, it's uncomfortable, the
medicine sits uncomfortably in your stomach. But it's like a group evert like,
you know, you got to do it because it's going to make you a
better person. You're putting you know, good quote unquote good energy into the
meeting for others, Like you're serving a purpose by being there for the group.
I shouldn't even be talking about this shit, because you know there's you
don't you don't want some fucking honkey shaman out there trying to you know,
there should actually be like it should be seen as a you know, the
same thing is it should be seen payote should be seen I mean, if
some old lady wants to grow out in her yar or whatever, that's one
thing. But for people that are actually ingesting it, it should be seen
as culturally disrespectful to do it without any acknowledgment or or or to do it
for a fee, or to do it, you know outside of you know,
Native American cultural institutions that you know, have historically been using it,
especially in the last one hundred and fifty years, you know, after Quanta
Parker Quana Parker, excuse me, basically started the Native American Church. You
know. It's like Peoti's the same as like you know, communion wafers for
Catholics, or fucking prayer rugs for Muslims, or menishchevitz wine, you know
for Jews. Would you drink Menishevits if you weren't a Jew? Just because
yea, oh, you know, you know, just for shits and giggles.
I guess some people, I guess if you're like fifteen, you want
to get hammered and that's all you get your hands on. Maybe, but
uh, you know, there's the it's really got to be viewed through that
lens, at least any ingestion of you're just growing it for shits and giggles.
That's fine, but you know there should be I do support a cultural
shaming behind anyone that tries to commodify, you know, peyote as a psychoactive
drug, or tries to fucking that's the thing, right because if you get
all these fucking and again, I'm not dentitarian at all, I'm pretty I
think I made that pretty clear in the pocket. But you get these fucking
honky shamans, you know, who claim that their great grandpa was like part
Cherokee, and you know, thus they're entitled to use to you know what,
He's just Instagram drug bros. I guess you know, no offense to
anybody, right, But you know what I'm talking about, and it's that's
not that's not what that plant should be used for. And that's not what
that plant, that's not the that's not how that plant works, you know.
But if you just want to grow it, to grow it, grow
it, of course, it's a it's a beautiful plant. You know,
you see what the some of the tie in the Japanese have done with it,
you know, not to mention some old ladies here, but that aside
anyway, So, uh, this this property we're trying to get, which
we were going to go through our fiscal sponsor, and we're trying to get
into a conservations minutes out in Star County in South Texas, and uh,
I'm going to be doing fundraisers for it, you know, fundraiser on steroids,
n PR pledge drive on steroids, trying to get basically raised money to
purchase the land. God, it's it's an amazing piece of property too.
It's just fucking you know, a little more than thirty acres. It's got
a Sleepy's prostrata on it. It's got a erythrostemic called Data's really cool sace
alpinoid p that's got a very narrow distribution. It's got Eocene oyster fossils on
it. It's got an area where we could replant astrophyt them, you know,
the companion plant they always see with astrophyte them, Varrilla Texana. It's
a succulent asteraci has grown down there too. Because astrophytem tends to like lower
lying areas that you know, have a wetter soil horizon than plants like peyote
or ancistro cactus. And there's actually some lafafara on the land. There is
hectia on the land, really cool bromeliad that looks like in a gave.
There's I mean, it's just you know, but it's there's also buffalgrass on
the land. It needs a lot of management. We're gonna have to get
rid of that. We're gonna have to you know, we'll have a little
volunteer part and stuff. You know, people can come down and then we're
just gonna be yeah, planting shitting of cacti, you know, rematriating a
bunch of cacti starting with astrophied them and some of the cool Chino series.
There's horse cripplers there too, which is now homolocephalate tex sans. It's really
cool, little squad cactus, hamato cactus that of spine, a bunch of
stuff. So I'm so excited for. But really, what I'm what I'm
most excited about is the ability to share this land or let other people experience
that who want to see it. Because there are so few places where you
can do that down here. And you know, if people are insulated from
quote unquote nature, if they're insulated from the rest of the biosphere, of
the native habitat around them, they're not going to give a shit when it
gets bulldozed. The more people that are allowed to see it, that are
able to see it, that have the resources to see it and experience it
and learn about it and have a context for it, the more people can
love it and cherish it and realize how wonderful it is and maybe stand a
chance of coming together to protect it. You know, maybe what we do
will inspire someone else to do the same thing, all right, or at
least to kill their fucking lawn and plant the native plant garden in this region.
So you know. Anyway, So anyway, I'm gonna be asking for
money here at some point. That's what I'm getting at. You know,
any you know, any millionaires, you know, anybody who wants to throw
us some It's tax deductible. We got a fiscal sponsor. It's a nonprofit.
Okay, just just email me if you want to know who to make
the check out to. God anyway, So moving right along, So yeah,
we were, you know, back again. This all started because I
was telling a story about taking my daughter for a bike ride at the brush
tract here, which was a product of this nineteen eighties push where I live
in South Texas to preserve little strips of habitat, little crumbs of habitat,
mostly for wildlife and to a lesser extent, for plants. But nobody really
gives a shit about plants or pays attention to them. I'm trying to change
that, at least down here. Get a lot of the man the fucking
people. Like thirty people came out to this plant walk the other day,
which was far more than I for down here. That's a lot and a
lot of young people. And they were all stalked about plants. And I
just always encourage people ask questions, you know, ask questions. There's no
stupid questions. Ask whatever. I love talking about this stuff. I love
being able to see people start to grasp a concept and get excited about it.
Whatever. So we went to the taxodium u grenadum grove, the Montzuma
cypress grove in Brownsville. There was a shit ton of seedlings popping up too.
And you know this, this area where I told people to dig them
too, because they're not going to last there. That area. It not
only does it flood, I think it's actually because it's kind of treated like
a walking trails, it gets whacked. So these little ceilings pop up.
You know, you get five cotal leedens on these cypress seedlings and looks like
a little green star or it looked like a redwood ceiling because they're kind of
closely related to redwoods. They're in the same family, very old lineage of
plants. You know, they just need wet feet, especially in the heat
down here. And this is the same population that grows all the way up
into San Antonio and Austin. As you know, frequently mislabeled as tax sodium
dis thecome which it's not, that grows in a much different and disparate habitat
in East Texas and Louisiana and on up into Illinois. This population Austin's like
the north end of this population. And the population goes all the way down
into Wahaka Lerbo delt tools that massive bastard that's the size of a McMansion,
h you know, the size of a of a house and am not quite
the size of a mc mansion, you know, maybe like a three bedroom
house, but anyway, there are tons of ceilings popping up, so you
could just and they don't have you know, they don't form these branching roots.
They have a pretty simple root structure. When they germinate, you know,
the cones look like little soccer balls. They disintegrate on the trees and
those each you know, scale of the soccer ball is a seed, so
you know, that's what ends up germinating. It's a really cool little thing.
But they're meant, you know, obviously they've evolved to you know,
these branches are overhanging water. Most times they germinate, they fall in the
water, get washed down, wash up on a bank somewhere, and get
lodged somewhere germinate there. So they kind of need wet soil. They just
gotta you know, they're not necessarily a front yard tree unless you water the
shit out of your front yard or you live you know, in a lower
area and the water tables not too far away. But what a fucking great
tree though. And they're different from Taxodium dis to come in a sense that
they mostly grow in limestone running arroyos, not swamps, not like acidic swamp
water with a lot of organic material in it. They run in these They
mostly grow in these you know, limestone geology, arroyos and creeks that can
sometimes dry out too, and they don't form cypress knees like the Florida and
Louisiana and East Texas species does. They've got a much different habit. They
get more broad, more wide, they're far, they're fucking great trees,
and they have smaller cones too, So they differ in a number of ways.
But those were going off, and then of course at this spot,
these cypresses are covered in Tilanzia, Bailey and Tulansi recrovide of the quote unquote
air plants that drink through their leaves with peltate, that is to say,
shield shaped tricombes. Tricomb's just the word for hair. And so these tricomb
cells, you know, help trap water between the leaf epidermis and the shield
because the hair looks just like a stalked shield. That is the tricombe,
you know. So it's the peltate trichom helps trap water. It's like a
little umbrella poking up from the epidermal tissue. Of the leaf blade and it
traps water in there and then that's what actually absorbs the moisture. It's a
bromeliad, you know, it's relative of pineapple. Fucking cool plant. And
I think Bailey is only known from South Texas and northern Mexico, so it's
one of I don't know eight hundred tilansais. How many species of talanzi are
there. I know there's like ones with six foot long flowers inflorescences rather compound
flowers. You know that you'll see growing epiphytically in pine forests at eight thousand
feet in Wahaka and et cetera. But uh, anyway, so we had
a good plant walk. But going back to this this this brush tract,
you know, it was as you you go through, we're going in this
kind of lower area of the brushes, like eight to ten feet tall,
Cideroxlan's going off, salviable, lot of floors going off, tiny leaves,
tiny blue flowers, but there's hundreds of these tiny blue flowers. Smells good.
The cideroxlan aka the Coma sapatases the family there. The little flowers smell
incredible. You could smell from ten feet away. They produce edible fruits.
They can actually form large trees, you know, and cultivation as long as
you prune them up, they can form these you know, twenty to twenty
five foot tall trees. Again with edible fruits. Somebody should be breeding that
down here, because it's they're so tolerant of heat. Uh, you know,
it's it's such a great like semi desert plant. At least for these
these muddy soils, these calcareous muddy soils. You know, you could probably
breed a variety that produces larger, sweeter fruits, or more nutrition fruits whatever.
I mean. It's human selection can obviously work wonders in a very short
span of time, as we've seen with cannabis, broccoli and cauliflower, dogs,
fucking citrus fruits whatever. Anyway, So who's breeding cideroxalon celeustrinum. But
anyway, as we started to you know, go up, we were just
I was head on a bike. We were just biking for like, you
know, five miles probably, and we started to go up this little embank
not embankment, but you know, very slight grade, you know, like
zero point five percent grade. Suddenly we got to an area where the bedrock
was closer to the surface, the soil was thinner, and the plant community
changed. I mean, you got all these species that you didn't get back
in the thicker brush. It was really cool to see. And that's the
kind of shit I wouldn't have noticed fifteen years ago before I got into botany
and studying ecosystems and paying attention to plants, and so I noticed that the
rock was now right at the surface. There was exposed limestone bedrock at the
surface, and the brush went from being ten foot tall to being three feet
tall. Because there's thinner soils, they're dwarfed because it's more stressful, there's
not as much soil there, there's as much nutrients, and it probably dries
out quicker. So because of that, you also got all these different species
that appeared, like Malochia tomentosa, a pink flowered member of the cotton family
Malvasi. You get it in Florida. Two grows on sand out there.
Fucking excellent plant. It can be hard to keep in a garden unless you
give it a lot of light and a lot of room. It likes airflow.
They rot, they can rock pretty easily. But it's a really cool
little shrub. There was also Cromerio ramosissima out there, which is a hemiparasite
that's in the orders Zygophilele's the same order as Guayacum, Guaya Khan, and
creosot you know the creosot bush you get out west and the Mohave and Sonoran
deserts and so. But Crimeri is in its own family, crimeri ac and
it produces these It's got these petals that produce lipids, these petals that have
been more into oil producing glands because they're pollinated by bees. In the genus
centrist there was actually some guy was gonna uh interview who studied that that genus
of bee. But these bees collect these lipid molecules, these these basically these
oils, these fats to feed to their larvae, and they're primarily what pollinates
Cromeria. And it's cool because there's cremeria. There are many variations on a
Cromeria. When I was in Chile, we saw a succulent leaved cromerea.
I've seen you know, cromerias. They can get upwards of six foot tall
shrubs in the Wavo laone that was a really cool one. You know,
I saw two species of Cromeria in Chile, actually, Crimeria cystoidia and Crimeria
lapasia. They've also they've got these beautiful pink flowers that look kind of orchid
ish, and then the fruits are like these little you know, like sticky
hairs. It looks like a little ball that's covered in velcro velcro spikes.
Cromeria cistus soides was the one that I saw in Wava laone. That's a
large shrub. But anyway, yeah, really cool fucking genus. And so
that Cromerio ramasisima starts appearing. It doesn't get that tall. It's a shorter
Cromeria, like barely a foot tall. Sometimes you'll find astrophytem growing under it
in the right habitat or thilocac. This provides a nice cover, nice shade
screen for many species of cacti. And so that started appearing. All these
all these plants that just I mean, you only see them on on thin
soils, on drier sites. You know. Mandavilla lenugenosa, really cool member
of a postinace that produces these white, tubular trumpet shaped moth pollinated flowers.
I got in my yard. Actually fucking great plant. More people need to
grow that, So I'm waiting to collect the seed. The fruits are taken
forever. Fucking sure, they look like little bullhorns. A lot of members
of the oleander family of Postinase produce those bullhorned looking fruits, all right,
Whereas like you know, a milkweed subfamily of sclepydoitie produces follicles. I mean
it's still a follicle in Mandavilla, but it produces two of them. God,
there was another really weird species and that family I saw on Chile in
that cool, really dry desert, really cool as in temperature wise, ocean
side desert that produced these the bullhorn fruits. But they kind of curly cue
they just they looked so fucking weird. Man. It was such a bizarre
such a bizarre fruit the form of a fruit. So anyway, so all
this shit started appearing, and then you know, I had I had my
daughter on my shoulders. You know, we put the bike down. Louis
was with us, She runs with us, and I was just out there
looking at stuff, and she kills my fucking neck or whatever. I like
having her up there, and then I have to worry about checking her for
text or something, and I was looking at I looked down. I saw
this well looked like a liver ward all over the ground and these openings of
this small shrub layer, and I thought, that's fucking bizarre. I've never
seen that before. I thought it was maybe a cilaganella or something, you
know, one of these cela Janella's. A lot of them are resurrection plants.
They can completely dry out. You'll see some really cool ones in deserts.
There's a really cool one that grows in northern Baja that looks like,
you know, it looks like sun bleached shag carpeting. First time I saw
it, I thought it was a dump site, like it was an old
carpet somewhat dumped out. But no, it was just this dormant celaginella.
Actually get that selaginella, that same species, the Baja one in San Diego
County in California too. But anyway, and I looked down and it was
a fucking hairy liverward, which you know, that may not mean anything to
you. Liverwarts can be kind of boring and un enthralling. Their non vascular
plants they just look like little green match they've got a thallus, which is
just the word for a rootless, leafless stemless it's what would you call it?
A non vascular little flake that lichens and and you know some of the
bryo fights can produce a what's the best definition for thallas. Yeah, it's
just a it's just a plant body that's not differentiated into stemmer leaves and lacks
true roots and doesn't have a vascular syste many internal plumbing. But this this
one looked like a hairy clam. That sounds perverted, I know, but
that's literally that's what it looked like. It was so fucking cool, and
uh, I couldn't figure out what it was. There were no other observations
and a naturalisnearby. I sent it to Ken King. He sent it to
a liverwart nerd and uh it turned out to be a little a little known
liver work called oxenmitra in cressada. Oh x y M I t R A
God. It was so cool though, So it's I mean, and the
hair is you know, indicated. This is a plant that's been selected for
for dry environments. It's a liver wart that's been selected for for dry environments.
But you know, a lot of liver warts because they can they're poikilo
hydrate. They can just completely dry out and go dormant without dying like lichens
can. And you know many species of Selaginella as well. You know they
don't really need hairs, I guess. But this thing had on. I
collected a little piece because it formed a mat. It was everywhere, brought
up back, put it in a humidity Dolm under lights, so I can,
you know, further study it and give it a good wrectal exam with
the microscope at some point. God, that was a fucking call. I
just love going and you always, you always find something new. I've been
going to the spot for years. I've never seen this species before. They're
supposed to be uh Walker's manahat too. It's really really rare member of U
four bac the point SETI a family that grows out there as well. Ken
King said he lasts out like six or seven years ago. But it's in
an area that's inundated with buffalo grass, so I'd love to see if it's
still out there. It forms a big tuberous route, so it probably is.
But yeah, it was just a great thing and we hung out.
We met these you know, we got bum rush. We walked, we
went back along the road. We biked back along the road past this,
you know, little old farmhouse, and these two dogs like bum rushed us,
and so I grab my knifs, like fuck it, these things come
at us if they come in Louis. It's like, one of the main
reasons I carry a knife is for like the random odd dog, vicious dog,
or a fucking pet of pitbull charges once you know, pbably wouldn't do
anything about a pig. You'd probably have to pack heat for something like that
anyway. But the dogs turned out to be nice. They were super friendly,
little too intense, little too loving, slobbery and jumping up and shit.
But then they ran with us. They just hung out with us for
like another hour and a half. We just biked around, went and saw
a horse. My daughter saw some horses in a little field. You know,
she basically called them over. It's like they're not gonna want He's like,
look, horse, I'm like, they're not gonna want to come out
and see us. They're in the middle that they're eating there, you know,
they're chewing their cud in the middle of his pasture. They don't want
nothing to do with this, and she called him and actually came and uh,
it was a little like donkey. It looked like a donkey or like
a maybe some I don't know man looked like a dwarf pony and then a
larger horse. They hung out and actually they stuck her ound for a while,
even though we didn't have any food. They wanted just human company,
and they worked with us for a while, and then the dogs kind of
got into it with them, and uh, I think it took a while
for the dogs to figure out what's going on. But yeah, it was
a nice day. It was a beautiful day. There shift tons of butterflies
out, perfect weather, like seventy degrees, you know. And yeah,
so and I saw a new plant that I've never seen before. So anyway,
with that, I want to talk about, you know what, speaking
of Chile, actually I want to talk about tristix a phyla, which is
a plant that lives inside because I just, you know, put together another
re edited a rerun of a video I did when I was in Chile about
that plant, which is so fucking weird, and interviewing Jim Masseth last week
got me thinking about it. It's such a weird plan. It's a fucking
endophitic parasite. It's an a chlorophilis, it doesn't produce any chlorophyll. Endophitic
parasite that lives inside spends ninety nine point nine percent of its life completely hidden
from view, living inside its host plant, which is either you know,
a cactus columnar cactus in the genus Trichocius often Trichosirius chiliensis, or a species
of the genus Eulyknea, which is another really bizarre, uh, really really
drought adapted, but again from these cool Chilean deserts, you know, relatively
cool deserts compared to North American deserts, really drought adapted columnar cactus eu licknia.
There's two species, there's there's more than two, there's like six species
anyway. But this plant, this Tristrix, there's another species too, Afola
infects cacti. I forget what the other one infects. She actually looked that
up really quick. Well, I got you here, okay, yeah,
Tristrix corimbosis. Tristrix corumbosis is a generalist, all right, but one of
its most common host species is rapid thamness rap Bithamnus Spinosis verbon ace. So
this is obviously a spiny member. Spinosis of verbon ace, you know,
was one of the most frequent hosts uh with a flowering and fruiting season partially
synchronized with mitcheltoe reproductive phenology seasonality. Oh, it's on jay store. Can
I steal this paper? Let's see, we just take it go to sihub.
The newer papers you can't normally steal on saihab if they're from like twenty
twenty one to twenty twenty three, unless someone's already read it and uploaded it
yet or looked it up using the sy hub server around. How do sihub
work with a great system? Someone sent that Russian lady a check, all
right, or at least the fruit basket of some Christmas pears or something.
And let's see indirect positive effects of a parasitic plant on host pollination and see
dispersal from twenty fourteen. Yes, so this is probably This is probably on
sihub. We'll go ahead and see how fuck Come on, man, I'm
just trying to copy a goddamn link here. But anyway, so that's a
generalist but Antristrix Affla is a generalist on cacti. I've seen it infect some
Chilean opunthioids, some Chilean prickly pair of species. But what the fuck?
Alright, Sihab's making me? God, damn it? Why is it one?
Are you a human thing? We take the suspicious network activity from your
device. Come, I get the fuck out of here. Ah, it
doesn't have it. So it doesn't have it, all right, Maybe I'll
try the do I number. Sometimes you gotta put the do I number anyway.
So I remember seeing Christix infecting some opunthioids, but not with much success,
Like it was only popping out a little bit. So it stay.
It spent this whole life inside its host plant and only pops out these red
flowers, never any leaves, never any stems, just red flowers containing it
over you. The later matures into a jelly bean looking fruit, like a
spherical jelly bean, and then of course birds eat it. Birds pollinated birds
eat the fruit and disperse it, shit it out the seed lands, and
then sends out a long radical that then burrows into the through the epidermal tissue
of the host, the cactus host. But what was remarkable to me is
none of the plants that, none of the host plants I saw in my
short time in Chile. So this take, that take with a grand salt
seemed to be adversely affected by the parasite. It didn't seem like any more
getting knocked back too hard or having too shitty of a time, you know,
like this, like this missletoe is sucking them up. Whereas like in
a you know, Angelos National Forest, and this is probably a you know,
a co result of the shitty pollution produced by nearby Los Angeles. But
an Angelos National Forest some of the missiletoes that grow there, which are from
a different family. Of course, they're not from laurent Thesi, which is
the tropical missiletes. I was gonna say, they're from the family viscay Si,
right, like Archathobium, the juniper missiletoe, or Forhidendron, Foridendron californicum,
which infects Senegalia cacla Acacia, which is no longer in Accia in the
Mohave Desert produces some of the most pleasant smelling flowers of any desert plant.
And again those fruits are bird dispersed. They're all in order Santalle's, and
this used to be, you know, the United States missile tells used to
be generally in tribe viscacy or family viscacy, which has now been reduced to
a tribe of the family Santilece. So I guess they just broadened the family.
Oh Jesus Christ, what the fuck this the fucking lumpers man. I
wanted to talk about that too, because somebody was trying to lump Manfreda into
a gave, which it clearly is fucking not. It's closely related, obviously,
but it's got a much different habit. Many of them are baceous perennials
and can dive back to the roots. I don't believe any agaves can do
that. And when you look at the phylogeny, the cladogram, you know,
the tree, the evolutionary tree of the genus Agave Manfreda is still monophyletic.
That means all Manfreda species are still more closely related to other species of
Manfreda than they are to any other species of Agave, So it's still a
monophyletic clay. They're still all grouped together. They come out nested within a
gave, meaning that there's a section of a gave above them on the clatagram,
and it's a larger section of a gave below them. But to be
fair, this section of a gave that's above them on the clatagram is only
like ten species, and they look notably distinct. It's that a Gave striata
clade, which are those narrowly doing. Bractiosa's in there too. It's all
these things. Most of them are in northern Mexico and Nuevo Leone area.
You know, these weird, weird agaves with very thin leaves. They look
different from other species of agave. So I mean, rather than lumping,
I would just suggest grouping a Gave Bractiosa in Striata and that whole clade into
a new genus, creating a new genus form. That way, you're not
obscuring the evolutionary story there with Manfreda, you know, because people who don't
initially know, I mean, you could always put the footnote in this is
a you know, a genus, a section of a genus. The man
fretis section that all possess you know or you know much different flower morphology and
uh herbaceous perennial habit they have you know they can have herbacious leaves, many
of them. You know, you can always put that footnote in there,
but again, it just why, It's just it kind of obscures the context,
you know, and when you look at that cladogram, I mean,
nothing's really changed. There's just this whole other group of agave is somewhat small
that should technically be in another genus too, So you know, I don't
fucking know, Like I mean, I don't know, man, Like this
gets me started. I'm always a splitter, you know, as opposed to
a lumber because I think when you've noticed when when someone who doesn't know,
who's new to this, you know, or new to that group, sees
that, oh these are in a different genus, they must be different,
you know that Really that really get cuts to the chase more rather than having
that little footnote in there or having to look at like who the fuck looks
at section of a genus, you know, the next lower taxonomic level of
genus right, and no fucking no one, man, very few people except
like the nerds who are super obsessed like me, I just like this.
I don't get it. There's always I posted something afraid of thing and uh,
actually the guy wasn't saying it like this, he was just being he
was super chill about it. But there's always in that one case that one
fucking often a student or something or someone from academ well actually actually you know,
it's like, oh God, Jesus Christ. Well yeah, but let's
talk about that. Look at the let's look at the clatogram, you know,
let's read the paper on it. So and then the other thing was
someone was trying to lump Pelacifer, which is such a unique cactus, which
again is a monophyletic clade of two species, lump it in with Escobaria and
call it all Escobaria pelacifer because Pelacifer came out and again nested within, meaning
that it's got you know, species on the clatogram above and below it of
Escobaria. But that's I mean, that's just such a cluster fuck. The
other thing, too, is they're not looking at the whole genome. They're
looking at sections, which is normally I suppose, good enough, but I
mean, really to look at the whole genome, which is costly, and
we're not there yet technologically at least to do it with any ease. Uh,
you know, it's that would really give you the most resolution as to
how these things evolve and speciated and then whatever. And you know, it's
everything's got to evolve at some point, like a species. Could that be?
Could Placifhera just be what we see in that in that phiology. Could
it just be the emergence the more recent quote unquote, which again speaking in
terms of the geologic timescale, more recent emergence of this of this species,
of this lineage, which is so unique it doesn't look like any other Escobaria
species. No, I mean it could be. Yeah, I mean,
what we just lump it in now and just just obscure all that or what?
I don't know. I think that I'm still gonna call it pelas,
you know, ship like that. I'm still gonna call it placipher and call
all the other shiit Escobari. I'm not I'm not doing that. Fuck,
I'm not doing this goofy stuff yet, you know. But I will read
the paper and at least you came myself about it, so I know what
the fuck I'm talking about. And I'm not just being, you know,
some stubborn third who just doesn't want to learn a new name. I want
to learn new names, especially if someone's splitting. I want to I want
to know what the DNA says. I want to know what the phylogeny looks
like. I want to know how these things evolved. How many millions of
years ago, how many hundreds of thousands of years ago, if it's that
recent? Uh? What selected for the evolution of new species or clades?
What in the environment did Was it a dispersal event by a bird? Was
it the the orogeny? The rising of a mountain range? Was it the
you know, a rift zone, you know, a new ocean opening up
because the two plates were rifting apart from each other. You know what was
it? You know? That's what I want to know. All that shit,
it's good stuff, gives you some context. But anyway, so back
to the back to the missletoe. So I was trying to get someone to
send me Tristrix aphli seed from Chile because I want to infect a fucking try
go serious chiloensis that I have that I grew from seed that I collected from
a planet Ucee B botanic garden, because they were just putting fruits out there
worth tens of thousands of seeds, and so I grew some of them,
and they grow really easily, especially in California climate. They don't like like
many South American character that, they don't like the South Texas climate that much.
But uh, I'd like to infect one and then dissect it and look
at it under a microscope and see what the fuck that plant, that parasitic
plant tristrix is doing. Now, of course, this might be breaking a
few laws concerning you know, importation of seeds without a permit, et cetera.
But just a couple and I talked to the guy and he said it
was fine. You know, is they saying chicai. I talked to the
guy and he said, he said it was fine. And plus it would
be for science, you know, you fucking put put that info up there
and everyone gets a little bit more insight into how these kinds of relationships evolve,
what's going on, you know, physiologically with a host plant. It's
so interesting. I know Jim mossth actually dissected he wrote a paper on this,
he had done has done some work with that species that Tristrix affla.
It was such a weird fucking plant, man, I don't know so uh,
Anyway, I think that was all I wanted to talk about. I
think we're done here. You feel like we're done. You want to go,
You're still listening, even what the fuck what are you doing? Once
you get better stuff to do, I'll cut it right there. I'm I've
been printed a bunch of shirts. I got a blackbrush shirt, which is
such a keystone species here in the South Texas borderlands. You know, it's
the shrub that enables so many cool cacti to grow beneath it. It's the
nurse plant for so many other cool plants. And I got a Payote vandal,
a drawing of the Payote vandal the thrasher, because they like the peck
at Payote plants, you know, as I saw at the at Leo's property
over at morning Star and Tucson. I don't know what they're doing, man.
It's actually curve built thrashers over there, long built rashers, which the
shirt portrays are only here in South Texas. But you know, I just
went with the bird that's more common in the native habitat. So I'm selling
those, but whatever the fuck, I'm not even gonna hawk them. I
feel dirty. I just said, you know, I got to support myself,
somehow. You know, I get the Patreon, I got the selling
artwork. I'm stoked for this book. It should be really good. The
photos alone are gonna be pretty remarkable. I mean, I'm just putting all
the photos in there, and not all of them, still like only a
quarter of what I've got, And then I'm just gonna be cutting ninety percent
because I mean I worked on South Africa on the South Africa section two nights
ago, and I was like fucking ninety five pages. Man, I can't
have ninety five pages of a four hundred page book dedicated to you know.
So I'm gonna have to do heavy cuts. But I figure better to have
it all in front of me so I can make a better decision about it.
So it's gonna be shit tons of photos, shit tons of captions,
explanations of plants with really cool evolutionary histories or ecologies, good good good evidence
of mimicry of crypt crypsis, plants mimicking rocks, good, good cases of
cool pollination syndromes, whatever. So there's gonna be good, good cases of
good examples of you know, conversion evolution, as you see with some of
the carnivorous plants in Western Australia. So, uh, you know we're gonna
get a good Cephalotus follicularis photo in there a couple of them. Goy,
that was such a cool It's a fucking talk about conversion evolution. What a
great case that is. It's a picture plant, a little picture plant from
Western Australia that looks like all of the uh the picture plants from Borneo,
the in the Penthes that some of those collectors going shit over fucking fucking collect
collectors. Man. So anyway, yeah, it should be a good book.
It's not gonna be out the twenty twenty five, but yeah, I'm
putting a lot of good stuff into it. And there's gonna be like a
little autobiographical set action at the beginning explaining how I got into all this shit.
It just it'd be nice, you know. I think it's going to
be pretty affordable too, like twenty or twenty five bucks, but it's gonna
be fucking, you know, hardcover and four hundred pages. Stick. Anyway,
if you want to email me, keep it short if you want to.
If you live in South Texas, want to get involved in volunteer efforts
restoration efforts want to get involved in the nonprofit stuff we're doing for land conservation,
buying this parcel or you know, some of the protecting hamato cactus populations,
these other cool cactus populations that grow on the understory of miskeat from pigs
and have alena that we're trying to do on a public land out here,
which is not very abundant, very few and far between. Uh yeah,
let me know, email me, and other than that, thanks for listening,
have a good day, go fuck you a bay.