San Luis Potosí Rants

<v Speaker 1>Oh you could keep playing a smooth shit. It's down
<v Speaker 1>the low anyway. Welcome to another episode a crime page,
<v Speaker 1>a botany doesn't. I'm coming to you from San Luis Poto.
<v Speaker 1>See where the fuck he wasn't even a time we
<v Speaker 1>stayed in last night. Wonderful little pound. Oh it's cordy
<v Speaker 1>about the are wonderful? Oh this is all that so
<v Speaker 1>many South Texas plants here. We're only at twenty nine
<v Speaker 1>hundred feet at three thousand feet so times three and
<v Speaker 1>then move a decimal point over that's what like nine
<v Speaker 1>hundred meters so anyway, Oh, beautiful Steino, Sirius Wes the
<v Speaker 1>Korum just massive, massive fucking plants to a tree columnar
<v Speaker 1>cact ie too, I don't know, five meters fifteen feet tall. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>it's been a wonderful time. We only been here two days,
<v Speaker 1>and with my buddy Gabrielle, and we're looking at hillsides
<v Speaker 1>that don't have any billboards or shopping plazas on them,
<v Speaker 1>or cul de sacs or fucking McMansions or anything, you know.
<v Speaker 1>I was just I was just pondering why, or realizing,
<v Speaker 1>I guess why so much of Mexico has not been
<v Speaker 1>trashed like the US. God, there are so many fucking
<v Speaker 1>wonderful plants on these limestone cliffs. Jesus Christ, they these
<v Speaker 1>bad right now, you know, And then I realize, of course,
<v Speaker 1>you know, we got the central plaza like every little,
<v Speaker 1>every little rural town you go to in Mexico, even
<v Speaker 1>I mean big towns too, have a central plaza, like
<v Speaker 1>a little socolo area, and you know where people just
<v Speaker 1>loiter and congregate and hang out, and they got trees
<v Speaker 1>planted and shit like a public park, and then everything
<v Speaker 1>around that is generally laid out in a grid that's walkable,
<v Speaker 1>you know. And that's like a huge difference to what
<v Speaker 1>exists in so much of the southern United States. Some
<v Speaker 1>of the you know, northern like Midwest towns, Northeast towns
<v Speaker 1>have that kind of general vibe. But most of what
<v Speaker 1>America's done in the last fifty years is of course suburbs.
<v Speaker 1>And it's, you know, part of the reason we're all
<v Speaker 1>isolated from each other and hateful, anxious, depressed, and generally
<v Speaker 1>in poor shape, you know, because human beings evolved to walk,
<v Speaker 1>and we we haven't we haven't been doing too much
<v Speaker 1>of that lately, so it was Fuck, it's just you know,
<v Speaker 1>everything about it. There's like there's so much open land left.
<v Speaker 1>That's the thing too, you know, not everywhere people don't
<v Speaker 1>drive every day. It'll spend three hours a day in
<v Speaker 1>the car. That's crazy. It's a crazy idea, but that's
<v Speaker 1>what is the case in much of this in the
<v Speaker 1>United States. I'm just gonna keep hammering this home every
<v Speaker 1>episode because it really does. You know, you start to
<v Speaker 1>realize that you're unhappy living this way, and then maybe
<v Speaker 1>you start to look for something else, and maybe eventually,
<v Speaker 1>you know, it starts to be and I become an
<v Speaker 1>idea that spreads among people, and you know, the people
<v Speaker 1>that just don't like hearing me say negative things and
<v Speaker 1>go fuck themselves. So I don't know why you're listening
<v Speaker 1>to this. Well, look at these cacked I holy shit,
<v Speaker 1>shit god, Oh it's pack a serious marginatum Like they
<v Speaker 1>get photos of that in habitat at some point. So anyway,
<v Speaker 1>we've been doing some really nice things. It's been barely
<v Speaker 1>four to eight hours. We started off on gypsum habitats,
<v Speaker 1>looking at gypsum endemic plants in San Luis Poto c.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, there there's a band of gypsum that basically
<v Speaker 1>runs from northern New Mexico through West Texas, UH through
<v Speaker 1>an Awavo Leone, through San Luis poto Cea, through parts
<v Speaker 1>of Hidalgo UH into Kolima and then south into Wahaka.
<v Speaker 1>And wherever you see the gypsum, of course you see
<v Speaker 1>plants that have evolved to only grow on gypsum. Ooh,
<v Speaker 1>isolato serious, I think Mrpillo cactus, giant mapillo cactus the
<v Speaker 1>size of a shack. Look at these fucking cactus for us,
<v Speaker 1>God damn it, you know we might have to fuck.
<v Speaker 1>We can't pull over, I guess God dam or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>We're trying to you know, keep time, but uh keep
<v Speaker 1>his schedule, but I don't. I try to avoid at
<v Speaker 1>tenerary as best I can because I don't know if
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna feel like doing it the next day. So uh. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>but these gyps and habitats. We were looking for Pinguicula
<v Speaker 1>gypsy cola, which is uh, and there was also Pingwicula
<v Speaker 1>tataki I. But of course when you go looking for
<v Speaker 1>one plant and it's a rare plant, and then especially
<v Speaker 1>in a daphic endemic meansing meaning it only grows on
<v Speaker 1>a certain soil type, you end up encountering a number
<v Speaker 1>of extremely other unique and interesting plants like pileaa ribe, palaya,
<v Speaker 1>ribbi ri i b ae. I guess that's what. I
<v Speaker 1>guess that's how you pronounce it rebuy and uh that
<v Speaker 1>that's a That was a fuck the gypsum coffee fern.
<v Speaker 1>You know the genus Poleaia. You know you got polea
<v Speaker 1>andromettap i. Thing is it andro metafolia? You got Plaatropapuia
<v Speaker 1>in the Midwest and the east. He got the whole
<v Speaker 1>post of pelaya species. They're in the family there at
<v Speaker 1>ac in the Kylanthoid fern subfamily, the xeric fern subfamily,
<v Speaker 1>which which also has astro Lipus and Mariopterus and Kylanthes
<v Speaker 1>in it, et cetera. A whole fucking cool group of ferns.
<v Speaker 1>But this pilaya was not. I mean, whenever you see pelaias,
<v Speaker 1>they're generally smooth and glabrous, and you know, nice blue
<v Speaker 1>glaucus colored to them. This thing was wooly as hell,
<v Speaker 1>Like I thought it was an astro lepus at fir.
<v Speaker 1>It was so god damn booley. It had huge tufts
<v Speaker 1>of wool on the undersides of the leaves. Especially Uh,
<v Speaker 1>it was just the one of the weirdest looking plants
<v Speaker 1>I've seen in a while. And of course, you know,
<v Speaker 1>when I when I got closer to it and it's
<v Speaker 1>sooka a closer look, I realized, holy shit, this is
<v Speaker 1>a pilaya, unlike any other member of that genus that
<v Speaker 1>I've ever seen, and I kind of lost my shit.
<v Speaker 1>And then I looked it up and I realized it's
<v Speaker 1>on gypsum. This wool probably has to do with the
<v Speaker 1>harsh substrate it's growing, and you know, it's a coping
<v Speaker 1>strategy for the harsh gypsum. The more open exposed environment
<v Speaker 1>exposed to the sun. Gypsum has the texture it's not sand,
<v Speaker 1>it's got the texture of concrete of like bad concrete.
<v Speaker 1>The way it dries, it's very soluble in water, becomes
<v Speaker 1>mushy when it's wet, and when it dries it's like
<v Speaker 1>really poorly mixed concrete, very abrasive. And oh two Cara
<v Speaker 1>cars hanging out on a pack of serious marginitis. Whatn't
<v Speaker 1>idylic scene? Fuck me got like, there's no build I
<v Speaker 1>haven't seen any shit eating grins for ambulance chasers or
<v Speaker 1>botox clinics or any of this stupid shit. What the
<v Speaker 1>fuck was that? This is so hard to drive through
<v Speaker 1>this stuff without stop at Gabriy we might have to stop.
<v Speaker 1>We might we might have to stop at some point. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we might have seemed like a nice spot, you know,
<v Speaker 1>God damn it, Oh my god. Elevation three thousand feet. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you go to like three thousand and thirty five hundred
<v Speaker 1>feet in central Mexico and it's gonna be large. Cactuy there. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>there's a it might be cool. It might be a
<v Speaker 1>nice spot. Look at them Maritillo cacause it's the size
<v Speaker 1>of a small house. What the fuck? So anyway, where
<v Speaker 1>was I this pilea uh was just blow my mind?
<v Speaker 1>I look it up. It was only described in two
<v Speaker 1>thousand and one. I think George Yesktevich, I've always princes
<v Speaker 1>pronounced his name, the nice kind gentleman that runs the
<v Speaker 1>UT Austin Orbarium described it. He wrote the paper on
<v Speaker 1>it in two thousand and one. Oh Jesus, there's just
<v Speaker 1>you know, there's never enough time done here, right, And
<v Speaker 1>my biggest fear is that because it's it's really I
<v Speaker 1>worry that, you know that the shiny shit lifestyle of
<v Speaker 1>of of the car slums and everything the United States has,
<v Speaker 1>it's such a tempt it's such a temptation, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I wonder. I worry that eventually Mexico is gonna do
<v Speaker 1>the same thing to its land, just absolutely fucking into
<v Speaker 1>a coma, make it as ugly as possible, but highly convenient.
<v Speaker 1>It'll be very very convenient, uh, you know. And of
<v Speaker 1>course the setup too for much of Mexico, the HETO system,
<v Speaker 1>it's all tied to the Mexican Revolution, which I am
<v Speaker 1>not knowledgeable enough about but I should definitely, uh definitely
<v Speaker 1>learn more about. And you know, all this ship, all
<v Speaker 1>this shit, all this stuff has a context, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I think with the AHTO system too. Of course, developers
<v Speaker 1>can't so easily and so readily purchase up land because
<v Speaker 1>it's community owned, much of its community owned, and it's
<v Speaker 1>you know, reserved for agriculture, et cetera. So it's not
<v Speaker 1>but it's led to much more preserved land that's not
<v Speaker 1>as destroyed like you have in the US, where every
<v Speaker 1>last little bit, especially in Texas and Florida, every last
<v Speaker 1>little bit of development that's gabbled up and it's it's crazy, man.
<v Speaker 1>I remember, you know you see these uh this looks
<v Speaker 1>really interesting, that looks like a hyptus or something on
<v Speaker 1>the side of the road. You see this mentality, you know,
<v Speaker 1>especially in Texas and Florida. I don't know where it
<v Speaker 1>comes from. I think it's this this dumbass Southern mentality
<v Speaker 1>and nofense. You know, this this we don't lack app
<v Speaker 1>sid or Southern mentality where they instead of blaming the
<v Speaker 1>developers and crooked politicians who are houring their land out
<v Speaker 1>and selling them out, they blame you know, people that
<v Speaker 1>move there, like just other you know, middle class or
<v Speaker 1>working class schmucks who are getting fucked by the same system,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and then end up moving to these places
<v Speaker 1>trying to you know, find whatever, find cheaper housing or
<v Speaker 1>find a better life whatever. So fucking stupid. You know,
<v Speaker 1>you really got to snap those people as that come
<v Speaker 1>from that duped mentality, you know, blame the little guy
<v Speaker 1>and just you know, avoid blaming the uh it's really
<v Speaker 1>ugly qualities and human beings, you know, instead of blaming
<v Speaker 1>the people in power that are fucking you blaming anyway
<v Speaker 1>they don't want to get distracted. But that's gonna happen
<v Speaker 1>a lot more in this podcast. But the gypsum was
<v Speaker 1>just fucking. This pinguicula, by the way, which was growing
<v Speaker 1>sympatrically growing next to this pilea, was absolutely insane. It's
<v Speaker 1>one of the most insane looking plants and certainly the
<v Speaker 1>most insane pinguacula that I've ever seen, and I've seen
<v Speaker 1>Pinguicula castabitoana and Dominican Republic that'say epiphytic one that's highly poached.
<v Speaker 1>I only found one or two plants, and I had
<v Speaker 1>to climb a tree to get to them. But uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, really wet cool habitat cool and wet habitat
<v Speaker 1>everything draped in moss that was in the dr uh
<v Speaker 1>and and that was a wild one. But this thing
<v Speaker 1>just looks absolutely insane. It's growing in gypsum. This These
<v Speaker 1>stressful soils make plants look fucking insane, whether you're talking
<v Speaker 1>about the quartzite sandstone in Brazil or serpentine in California,
<v Speaker 1>or elateritic soils like in h i own California, or
<v Speaker 1>even sand dunes to a lesser excent. I guess on
<v Speaker 1>sand dunes you just get a lot of hairy plants,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, long tapering root systems that resemble the
<v Speaker 1>hold fasts of kelp. But you know, but whatever, the
<v Speaker 1>quartzite and the gypsum especially make plants look fucking insane.
<v Speaker 1>They they cause plants to evolve that just look absolutely nuts.
<v Speaker 1>And this pinguicula is probably the best example of it.
<v Speaker 1>And I didn't catch a flowering. Gabrielle was here two
<v Speaker 1>or three weeks ago, caught it flowering. I did not
<v Speaker 1>catch a flowering. He's doing tours, by the way, you
<v Speaker 1>want to go on a tour with this guy, you
<v Speaker 1>hit him up. He's what is it, cactus under the sun. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he's doing these tours and stuff. He'll take you out there.
<v Speaker 1>He'll show you where all the nice bathrooms are. He'll
<v Speaker 1>he'll show you, you know, the good spots to you
<v Speaker 1>don't drink coffee, but they'll show you the good spots.
<v Speaker 1>To hit him up, you know, I'll try and get
<v Speaker 1>my friends some business. Here, give me a fucking break. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>come out here. Hit him up. He'll think you're right.
<v Speaker 1>He got a nice Nissan too, But uh, anyway, Jesus Christ,
<v Speaker 1>ay fag anyway. Yeah, So pinglicular gips. It's got like
<v Speaker 1>many of the Mexican pings, as we refer to them
<v Speaker 1>in the in the trade, they're uh, you know, they're
<v Speaker 1>they're generally prefer more shadier sights. And most oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there we go, We're now we're in correct. Throw how nice.
<v Speaker 1>It feels good to be back in care thora. And
<v Speaker 1>so they got you know, they got winter leaves and
<v Speaker 1>summer leaves. That's because Mexico has a dry winter season.
<v Speaker 1>And what the fuck is that beautiful composite Jesus Christ.
<v Speaker 1>And then it's got a summer Oh it looks is
<v Speaker 1>it a montana or a small anthus? I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's a ruteral plant. It's thriving on the side
<v Speaker 1>of the road and it's about twelve feet fifteen feet tall. So,
<v Speaker 1>because the summer season is wet, they they they've got
<v Speaker 1>different leaves. And then the winter, during the drier winters,
<v Speaker 1>they get these tightly compact, more compact, tightly wound rosettes,
<v Speaker 1>spiral rosettes of leaves. But their summer leaves look insane.
<v Speaker 1>They look like octopus or squid leaves. They're very long
<v Speaker 1>enthicles for trapping those tiny flies and shit that end up.
<v Speaker 1>And again I'm so curious what pollinates this thing? When
<v Speaker 1>what does it mostly eat? Right? And of course we
<v Speaker 1>know why it evolved. I mean, most carnivorous plants you know,
<v Speaker 1>growing in water logged wet areas that that are you know,
<v Speaker 1>have inaccessible nitrogen, are very nutrient poor, you know, like
<v Speaker 1>bogs and stuff. But gypsum also has is very nutrient poor.
<v Speaker 1>It's got inaccessible nutrients in it and presumably a very
<v Speaker 1>very high pH and so that is what's selected for
<v Speaker 1>the evolution of a gypsum endemic pinguicular. There was a
<v Speaker 1>pinguicula growing nearby, and at some point in the last
<v Speaker 1>every many millions of years, and seeds got into the
<v Speaker 1>gypsum and most died and couldn't survive, but then some could,
<v Speaker 1>and then you end up eventually, after so many generations
<v Speaker 1>and natural selection, you end up with a gypsum endemic pinguicula,
<v Speaker 1>and boy does it look nuts. And then Pinwicula tatakia
<v Speaker 1>is another gypsum endemic ping and it was growing in
<v Speaker 1>the same fucking habitat like six feet away from a
<v Speaker 1>cactus from Trebnocarpus lowie i, which is that's another gypsum endemic,
<v Speaker 1>I think, right, which is sunk into the ground, suck
<v Speaker 1>sunk into this crust, I mean, and it looks the
<v Speaker 1>gypsum looks like sand castles too, like the crust does.
<v Speaker 1>And it can be hollow on the inside because water
<v Speaker 1>dissolves of Gypsum's very soluble in water, much more so
<v Speaker 1>than limestone, and so uh, you know that's why you
<v Speaker 1>never find it really in high, higher rainfall environments. Right,
<v Speaker 1>that's part of the reason gypsum. And you see that
<v Speaker 1>horse at a giant cock and I can't then see it? God,
<v Speaker 1>damn it, fuck, why did I look? What's wrong with me?
<v Speaker 1>I'm like a twelve year old boy with a sense
<v Speaker 1>of toilet humor. The thing was two feet long anyway,
<v Speaker 1>So so anyway, so the you know, does all this
<v Speaker 1>dictates how And gypsum, of course is basically sheet. Rocket's
<v Speaker 1>just basically dry wall, so you know, And there's parts
<v Speaker 1>of these gypsum hillsides where you can knock on it
<v Speaker 1>and you can hear that it's it's hollow. It's like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, fifteen inches hollow inside because it's all been
<v Speaker 1>you know, water watered out, weathered out, dissolved out, but
<v Speaker 1>the crust is left wild stuff. Man. But yeah, so
<v Speaker 1>there was a cactus growing six feet away from this
<v Speaker 1>Pinguicula tatakii, which is as much smaller. Pinguicula doesn't look
<v Speaker 1>that wild. It looks like any normal ping but and
<v Speaker 1>not as big with the gypsum. Philo was just insane.
<v Speaker 1>Some of these rosettes with the summer leaves, with the
<v Speaker 1>tentacles where god damn, they had to be I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>eight to ten inches across, I mean, very large. And
<v Speaker 1>then the rosettes are much more you know, in preparation
<v Speaker 1>for the dry season, are much more compact. And then,
<v Speaker 1>of course I wonder what the roots look like, because
<v Speaker 1>the roots on most pinguiculous, don't you know, if you
<v Speaker 1>grow them cultivation, like you know, people have given me
<v Speaker 1>pinwiculos over the years. I keep them alive. They produce offsets.
<v Speaker 1>I give them to other people. I think I've got
<v Speaker 1>Gigantia and a few others, some hybrids that drew from
<v Speaker 1>carnivoro made and I got mine under lights relatively seventeen
<v Speaker 1>thousand locks under these let these spider farmer lights. Pinwiculas
<v Speaker 1>like shade. But you know, gigantia does really well in cultivation,
<v Speaker 1>and so you just keep it in a little a
<v Speaker 1>little tray full of water. You keep it in a
<v Speaker 1>pot that's then in a tray full of water, and
<v Speaker 1>I dump all the mosquitoes I catching them a mosquito
<v Speaker 1>trap on it, and feed them. And because I feed
<v Speaker 1>it a lot, it produces numerous offsets, which I then
<v Speaker 1>root and give to other people. Everybody should have a pinwicular.
<v Speaker 1>They do probably do fine in a kitchen window. You know,
<v Speaker 1>there's probably enough light there, even though it's so much
<v Speaker 1>darker inside than outside, there's probably enough light there to
<v Speaker 1>grow up pink and so just don't let it dry out.
<v Speaker 1>They don't like that. But these were growing on dry soil, too,
<v Speaker 1>which is not so I mean, I guess once they're established,
<v Speaker 1>they probably established during the wet season. The sea is
<v Speaker 1>absolutely fucking tiny. But once they established during the wet
<v Speaker 1>feet and then they're they're they're good to go, and
<v Speaker 1>they could just hold in through the summers. But god damn,
<v Speaker 1>there was so much other wild ship on the slope
<v Speaker 1>above this, and they're going all up and down this
<v Speaker 1>little like cut in the in this gypsum rock wall.
<v Speaker 1>You know, twenty thirty feet high. They're all the way
<v Speaker 1>up with that pialaa and Selaginella gypsophila. The quote resurrection fern,
<v Speaker 1>which is not a it's not a fern at all.
<v Speaker 1>It's a lyco fight. But another beautiful rosette. Oh wow,
<v Speaker 1>what the fuck? Oh that's that cool anta cardiac member.
<v Speaker 1>That would be a cool thing, because yeah, if you
<v Speaker 1>find a place to stop, let's stop here. I love
<v Speaker 1>my you rush you all containing ana cards. It's like
<v Speaker 1>a giant tree ana card. What the fuck is that?
<v Speaker 1>Supo smodingium? I think, yeah, we should stuck you stop here?
<v Speaker 1>Is it possible? Is there enough for real? Oh? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's good. That's a little shrine. They're gonna make one
<v Speaker 1>for us when we drive off the road. Oh it was,
<v Speaker 1>it's nice. Now we're even lower. Now we're sixteen hundred
<v Speaker 1>feet elevation. Very pleasant temperatures, but got to be hot
<v Speaker 1>as balls in the summer. I just we stopped to
<v Speaker 1>look at these monster pseudosmodingium, which are a rush you
<v Speaker 1>all containing member of the poison oak and mango family, anacardiac.
<v Speaker 1>And this one was like eighteen feet tall, six meters tall,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and then you stop to look at one
<v Speaker 1>thing and you look at other things. That was only
<v Speaker 1>the only took me like fifteen minutes, which isn't bad
<v Speaker 1>for me because normally I take a lot longer. But
<v Speaker 1>I saw this really cool back arris relative coyote bush
<v Speaker 1>relative with you know, golf ball sized flowers on it,
<v Speaker 1>maybe a little bit smaller, but they almost look that,
<v Speaker 1>you know, multi serial fatories, almost looked like like thistle flowers.
<v Speaker 1>It was like a thistle meta coyote bush, but it
<v Speaker 1>wasn't spiny, just talking about the flowerhead. And then there
<v Speaker 1>was night of skulls there too, the malamuhir, the stinging
<v Speaker 1>member of U four bac and uh and a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of Cordia bossierra of course as well, and then some
<v Speaker 1>little mammalarias on the side of the rocks. And then
<v Speaker 1>I saw not all grass Melinus rappents, which is a
<v Speaker 1>horrible invasive on the rocks too, getting established. So maybe
<v Speaker 1>in a decade or two it'll be all over the
<v Speaker 1>fucking roadsides here, who knows. I was talking to my
<v Speaker 1>friend Lily, who lives in Florida, where that species is
<v Speaker 1>especially bad, really bad invasive, and I guess some dude
<v Speaker 1>from where it's native. I think it was in the
<v Speaker 1>media message there and said it was wild to see
<v Speaker 1>it everywhere because where he lives, where it's native, it's
<v Speaker 1>like a small component of the flora which is wild,
<v Speaker 1>which is the same thing kutsu does. Where it's native.
<v Speaker 1>Kudzu's like a small it's it's not super dominant where
<v Speaker 1>it's native, where it evolved, you know, something like the
<v Speaker 1>perma culture. No offense permaculture, you know, invasive species denialists.
<v Speaker 1>Not all ashtag, not all perma culture. It's just the
<v Speaker 1>ones I like to make fun of because they don't
<v Speaker 1>believe an ecology. This is where they kind of don't
<v Speaker 1>get it, you know, they just they don't realize how
<v Speaker 1>small their lens on the world is and how narrow
<v Speaker 1>and myopic you know it is. And uh, anyway, but
<v Speaker 1>maybe you know, everybody comes around. Eventually, people can come around,
<v Speaker 1>they can figure it out. So yeah, anyway, Uh, but
<v Speaker 1>where we were talking about gypsum habitats in the way
<v Speaker 1>be they owned. So what was really cool was above
<v Speaker 1>the slopes of this gypsum was a whole bunch of
<v Speaker 1>plants that I know from South Texas now Wattlia hype Luca,
<v Speaker 1>the artist formerly known as guok Nadia hype Luca sunflower
<v Speaker 1>family Asta seed. It's like a small tree. These were large.
<v Speaker 1>We've actually got some at thorn scrub on our you know,
<v Speaker 1>our our conservation property, but they top out it like
<v Speaker 1>five feet taller. And then there was Karwinsky a hum
<v Speaker 1>both Yana as well and Senegalia BERLANDI rise so many
<v Speaker 1>plants I know from South Texas, but there they all
<v Speaker 1>look much healthier, you know, at forty six hundred feet
<v Speaker 1>in San Luis Poto c And even though they were
<v Speaker 1>growing on gypsum and growing right above gypsum. You know,
<v Speaker 1>it's I think it's a good indicator for me for
<v Speaker 1>what South Texas may have been like during the Pleistiscene,
<v Speaker 1>when it was no doubt still hottest balls in the summer,
<v Speaker 1>but generally much milder. And so I think the general
<v Speaker 1>trend that it the idea that it gives me is that,
<v Speaker 1>you know, South Texas, despite its proximity to the coast,
<v Speaker 1>is going to be becoming a lot hotter with climate change,
<v Speaker 1>and probably more you know, for a while more volatile
<v Speaker 1>temperature dips and drops in the winter because the jet
<v Speaker 1>streams all fucked up, and the jet stream you know,
<v Speaker 1>circumnavigating the going around the higher latitudes is what helps
<v Speaker 1>keep all that cold air up top, so you can
<v Speaker 1>have hotter summers and then cooler winters for a while
<v Speaker 1>as well, until finally it just gets so hot and
<v Speaker 1>so dry. I think, you know, were there no humans
<v Speaker 1>around in climate change was doing what it was with
<v Speaker 1>South Texas, which some of those plants, eventually it would
<v Speaker 1>just get too hot for them, you know, because they
<v Speaker 1>look the ones in South Texas just looks so much
<v Speaker 1>more rough and stressed than the ones that you see
<v Speaker 1>at higher elevations further south in Mexico, you know, like
<v Speaker 1>the Nahualia and the Karwinskia, et cetera. And there was
<v Speaker 1>even I mean there's black brush here of a chili
<v Speaker 1>or rigidula, and uh oh, yeah, there was that lipia.
<v Speaker 1>I forget. It's not oregonoides. It's the other one, the
<v Speaker 1>one that smells like a reggano verbonac that I'd like.
<v Speaker 1>Usually it native landscaping in South Texas because it can
<v Speaker 1>take full sun and it actually prefers not to be watered.
<v Speaker 1>Once it's established that rots really easily and it smells delightful.
<v Speaker 1>There was also turnera the fusa. Where did I see?
<v Speaker 1>I think I saw that at the gypsum area too,
<v Speaker 1>Damiana passive flora pass the floor ac he doesn't look
<v Speaker 1>anything like a passion flower by though it's a small
<v Speaker 1>woody subshrub. Oh yeah, no, I saw that yesterday when
<v Speaker 1>we were looking at some of the cool kac by
<v Speaker 1>the aerocarpus and other stuff. So anyway, so that night
<v Speaker 1>then we stayed in this this beautiful Taxodium ucranadum grove.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I was still just kind of wonderfully shell
<v Speaker 1>shocked from experiencing all the gyps and endemics. And you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's always fun. You photograph this shit and then you
<v Speaker 1>I take, you know, thousands of photos, and then I
<v Speaker 1>go back and the photos are all I have unless
<v Speaker 1>I collect an urbarium specimen. All I have to reference
<v Speaker 1>that plant and uh, and then you find out what
<v Speaker 1>it is and you're just you know, blown away, You're
<v Speaker 1>like holy fuck, because you you know, especially you've got
<v Speaker 1>some context for other plant families, if you've got an
<v Speaker 1>awareness of taxonomy and different plant communities from this continent,
<v Speaker 1>but maybe at higher latitudes or higher elevations, whatever, and
<v Speaker 1>you just kind of get blown away. You start realizing
<v Speaker 1>all these different variations that evolution has produced on a theme.
<v Speaker 1>And so like when I saw that poleaia, I was like,
<v Speaker 1>this is fucking insane. I've never seen a such a
<v Speaker 1>wooly palaya, like they're normally really smooth and glaborous. And yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's just not just natural selection over many generations and thousands,
<v Speaker 1>tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.
<v Speaker 1>So uh, that's part of that. I mean, that's most
<v Speaker 1>of the fun in this. That's where the little shots
<v Speaker 1>that dopamine come from. And then of course just realizing
<v Speaker 1>the close ties between geology and plant life as well.
<v Speaker 1>But that day, the night, we stayed in this this
<v Speaker 1>monazum of Cyprus grove and it was in like this
<v Speaker 1>kind of basin. It's very salty soil, but there was
<v Speaker 1>a spring nearby that kind of looked like the San
<v Speaker 1>Marcos River watershed. The you know, the water that was
<v Speaker 1>coming out of it was blue, indicating it probably had
<v Speaker 1>bicarb dissolved by carbonate in it, coming from the surrounding limestone,
<v Speaker 1>which is the same thing you get in the charstick
<v Speaker 1>watersheds of the San Marcos River up there, Buffland Marcus,
<v Speaker 1>Texas and uh, obey, I don't know, it's a fake.
<v Speaker 1>Holy shit, we've had some rough run ins with topees. Man,
<v Speaker 1>just fucking woom boom, just fucking you know, you're gonna
<v Speaker 1>need new shocks at some point here soon. But uh,
<v Speaker 1>but yeah, the uh, the water was like this beautiful blue,
<v Speaker 1>and then there was a really dominant grass species that
<v Speaker 1>was everywhere, and then these just huge beautiful redwood relatives
<v Speaker 1>Mana zuma, Cyprus texadium of grenadum, the same species that
<v Speaker 1>grows up in Uvalde, Texas and Austin, Texas, which you know,
<v Speaker 1>Texas botanists have been mistakenly referring to is just a
<v Speaker 1>different kind of Taxodium distant him. It's just different. It's
<v Speaker 1>just a little bit different because it's a different species,
<v Speaker 1>because it's the northern extent of the ring. Texas just
<v Speaker 1>refuses to accept that it's basically Mexico, that it's basically Mexican.
<v Speaker 1>And it's like they're with so many plants, like they
<v Speaker 1>called the Texas madrone when ninety five ninety six percent
<v Speaker 1>of the populations in Mexico so funny, man, it really is.
<v Speaker 1>It's a you know, well, we were our own country.
<v Speaker 1>You were your own country for nine years, buddy, after
<v Speaker 1>you stole it from Mexico and then you were going broke.
<v Speaker 1>So you find you realize you that joined the union. Anyway, Oh,
<v Speaker 1>fucking Texas pri It's just like sports team pride. Texas
<v Speaker 1>pride like Chicago. I don't have Chicago. Probably love Chicago.
<v Speaker 1>It's a shithole in many ways. It's also a wonderful
<v Speaker 1>city in many ways that Texas couldn't hold a fucking
<v Speaker 1>candle to. But I don't have Chicago pride. It's just
<v Speaker 1>where I'm frog of a fuck. We could have been
<v Speaker 1>born there, I could have been born in Iowa. I'm
<v Speaker 1>glad I was born in Chicago. But you know, this
<v Speaker 1>is Texas pride. It's just ego compensating for insecurity and
<v Speaker 1>lack of self exploration and lack of self depth. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>So this taxodium u crenadum grove was amazing, and then
<v Speaker 1>we saw it later in the day from this really
<v Speaker 1>dry limestone hill covered in ocatillo's and uh, some really
<v Speaker 1>cool plants. I saw Neo Pringlia integrifolio, which is a
<v Speaker 1>very common UH dry shrub that's in the willow family
<v Speaker 1>Sela Casey and UH. There was also Nerdsta used to
<v Speaker 1>be Siguria Sigaria mexicana and now it's Nernstia mexicana. But
<v Speaker 1>it's it's a monotypic genus, and it's the only member
<v Speaker 1>of UH of its genus, and it's the only member
<v Speaker 1>that I know of that's a like a small tree
<v Speaker 1>to shrub in ruby Ace the coffee family. It's crazy, man,
<v Speaker 1>it's fucking what. It's got the opposite leaves and their
<v Speaker 1>petiole or stipules. At first, I thought it was some
<v Speaker 1>sort of you know, mandavilla or something, because there was
<v Speaker 1>a flower not open, and then I saw the ovary
<v Speaker 1>the fruit, and I realized, that's not a fucking a
<v Speaker 1>postinacious flower. That doesn't look like a postaace uh at all.
<v Speaker 1>This is Rubyac. And then I had to figure out
<v Speaker 1>what it is and I went to sign it. Southwest
<v Speaker 1>Biodiversity dot orgon did a collection search for Rubyac and
<v Speaker 1>San Luis Poto c and that was one of the
<v Speaker 1>things that came up, and I was like, what the
<v Speaker 1>fuck is this? Oh Jesus, Okay, I took a little
<v Speaker 1>break just now. And now we're in the Sierra Gorda
<v Speaker 1>where I don't know, roughly thirty seven hundred feet which it.
<v Speaker 1>But we're in this mountain range, and so it's not
<v Speaker 1>you know, even though we're relatively low, it's not cactus habitat.
<v Speaker 1>This is like we're going through an arroyo filled with
<v Speaker 1>these giant sycamore right now, these giant Platinus species with
<v Speaker 1>beautiful white trunks. There was apparently a fire in some
<v Speaker 1>of it. But uh, but the ones, I mean, the fuck.
<v Speaker 1>They they're huge trees. They're like eighty feet tall. It's
<v Speaker 1>it's relatively music. It's a really fucking cool habitat here,
<v Speaker 1>and it's again it's craziest. It's I think it's just
<v Speaker 1>more wet because we're in the Sierra Gorda mountain range.
<v Speaker 1>Only Sierra Gorda. Fucking balls, man, Oh is that a
<v Speaker 1>just scale. There's a bamboo. Oh my god. We might
<v Speaker 1>have to stop and get some photos of us at
<v Speaker 1>some point. I don't know. God, damn it, it's so
<v Speaker 1>hard to make it anywhere. Juniper is flaccida, the flaccid juniper,
<v Speaker 1>the weeping juniper, which you know, you can grow that
<v Speaker 1>in West Texas, fine, but no one's no one's doing it.
<v Speaker 1>No one's growing all the rare stuff. It only occurs
<v Speaker 1>in the United States in Big Bend National Park, which
<v Speaker 1>I guess has been fucking swamp lately. God, you couldn't
<v Speaker 1>pay me to go there right now. But h just
<v Speaker 1>mobbed with people like a zoo. But god damn, there's
<v Speaker 1>some incredible habitat. So anyway, what was I talking about?
<v Speaker 1>Oh there's a cropia. Yeah, man, this is really when
<v Speaker 1>this is all just it's just so rocky. There's all
<v Speaker 1>these little nooks and crannies that it's and lots of
<v Speaker 1>moisture that it's it's even though we're not very high up,
<v Speaker 1>it's still pretty pretty loaded with, you know, a wetter habitat.
<v Speaker 1>But I think up on the ridges, definitely, it looks
<v Speaker 1>a little bit drier, looking like, you know, seven hundred
<v Speaker 1>feet up with Steve Cliff. Holy fuck, what's this? That's
<v Speaker 1>just wow? Fuck? Okay, you know I might have to
<v Speaker 1>stop and take a piss break here and look at
<v Speaker 1>some cool stuff. You gotta stop, okay, give me a second.
<v Speaker 1>Oh boy, that was nice fucking see here and Gordon
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna have to come back here and spend the
<v Speaker 1>couple weeks sometime. So now we're at six thousand feet.
<v Speaker 1>We've hit the pines, the oaks, the alders, the cypresses.
<v Speaker 1>We just stopped to look at a rock wall covered
<v Speaker 1>in a gave mitas, and like everything else, he stopped
<v Speaker 1>to see one thing, and you see ten more things.
<v Speaker 1>I saw probably the largest flowered menzilia that I've ever
<v Speaker 1>seen outside of Menzia levaculis, which grows in northern California. Uh.
<v Speaker 1>And it was growing with like a salina serious and
<v Speaker 1>epiphitic cactus and at Cavaria species that had a stem
<v Speaker 1>like a coalescent at cavaria, and then a gave mitas
<v Speaker 1>just all over the rock walls. It's probably a common menzilia,
<v Speaker 1>because it was certainly common in this habitat. The flowers
<v Speaker 1>were like the size of baseballs orange. I thought it
<v Speaker 1>was some sort of composite, you know, a member of
<v Speaker 1>Esta raci. But no, it was a fucking mint. What
<v Speaker 1>the fuck is this pine? No, God, we have to
<v Speaker 1>stop again. You see a nice piss spot with the pines. Yay, God,
<v Speaker 1>Danny's weeping pines. These beautiful weeping fucking pines. God is
<v Speaker 1>just so gorgeous. And again, if this was the US,
<v Speaker 1>this would be so much more developed with dumb shit.
<v Speaker 1>And I don't know, man anyway, but yeah, there's alders.
<v Speaker 1>And then I regret not getting not documenting the platinus.
<v Speaker 1>I just saw the platinus, the sycamore. But just epic, man,
<v Speaker 1>just epic. There was Decatropis by color, which is a
<v Speaker 1>really cool member of rutaesi, the citrus family, with panicles
<v Speaker 1>of white flowers and rusty orange hairs on the undersides
<v Speaker 1>of the leaves. The leaves are smooth up top and
<v Speaker 1>of course Harry and the undersides indicating a wet, dry
<v Speaker 1>season at tropical latitudes. And you know, it's just the
<v Speaker 1>fucking wonderful time appearance. But yeah, now we're at six
<v Speaker 1>thousand feet and it's starting to sixty five hundred feet
<v Speaker 1>excuse me, and it's starting to feel like some of
<v Speaker 1>the cloud forests of of Wahaka or in any other
<v Speaker 1>cloud for us wonderful Salvia species right there. Goddamn, it's
<v Speaker 1>gonna be hard to record a podcast, not because there's
<v Speaker 1>just there's there's there's too much good ship to see
<v Speaker 1>and it's distracting, and it's just gonna be me calling
<v Speaker 1>out names, you know, botanical names like a ping pong ball,
<v Speaker 1>just this and that and this and that and but
<v Speaker 1>these oaks are incredible too. Again, you could just come
<v Speaker 1>down here and spend a few weeks, manutes. There's just
<v Speaker 1>document everything, you know, blow through a couple of SD cards,
<v Speaker 1>make some irbarium collections, go to there we go. Oh
<v Speaker 1>Jesus Christ, that's a beautiful pile. Oh we got these steviacious,
<v Speaker 1>these upatoriacious bastards on the side, these purple flowers. They
<v Speaker 1>look like a kind of cleanium, but are not. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>give me a second here, Oh, I said, wow, you know, okay,
<v Speaker 1>So we just stopped to look at some weeping pines,
<v Speaker 1>which I, you know, wish I could tell you the
<v Speaker 1>species name. It's on the tip of my tongue because
<v Speaker 1>it's quite famous, at least among pine nerds conifer enthusiasts,
<v Speaker 1>but I can't tell you what it is. And there
<v Speaker 1>was something I thought was an oak that turned out
<v Speaker 1>to be Circocarpus macrophilus. So if I thought it was
<v Speaker 1>an oak, that kind of gives you an idea of
<v Speaker 1>this stature. Of how big it was, which is odd
<v Speaker 1>for circle carpus, it still might have been an oak.
<v Speaker 1>The bark looked very oak like. It was not smooth
<v Speaker 1>like I generally think of circle carpas, but it had,
<v Speaker 1>you know, really distinct venation on the leaves and kind
<v Speaker 1>of alder like leaves, like a serrate margin. But I
<v Speaker 1>couldn't find any flowers or fruits. But there were acorns
<v Speaker 1>on the ground, and there was nothing else really that
<v Speaker 1>it seemed like those acorns could come from. And then
<v Speaker 1>there was Juniperus flaccida again, the weeping juniper, and then
<v Speaker 1>two different Stevias species, and it's a ton of cool shit.
<v Speaker 1>Oh there was a Castellea to And now we're at
<v Speaker 1>eighty six hundred feet going past these hills just covered
<v Speaker 1>in pines. The slopes covered in pines. We got glaucus pines,
<v Speaker 1>we got dur green pines, we got weeping pines, we
<v Speaker 1>got all kind of pines you need. If we don't
<v Speaker 1>got the kind of pine you're looking for, you don't
<v Speaker 1>need it. Wild shit, man, that the fucking diversity here
<v Speaker 1>is in the Sierra Gorda. Who knew? I mean, I
<v Speaker 1>guess many people knew. If they're familiar with Mexican plants.
<v Speaker 1>Oh there's a pinion. There's a fourth species of pine,
<v Speaker 1>but you know there's it's man, it's really you can
<v Speaker 1>see why they made a giant biosphere reserve here because
<v Speaker 1>it's this huge, just dome of mountains with all kinds
<v Speaker 1>of little microclimates and nooks and crannies and tons of
<v Speaker 1>endemism and diversity and just a really special, fantastic place.
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, but yeah, you know, we got we were
<v Speaker 1>kind of like pressed for time, so we gotta we
<v Speaker 1>gotta get down into the other side and then head
<v Speaker 1>up to Sira elductor. But uh, when was that time?
<v Speaker 1>Like what Fortes? We know, we don't even finish talking
<v Speaker 1>about the Taxodium uk grenadum, the the fifteen hundred year
<v Speaker 1>old individual that actually had the boreholes to prove it
<v Speaker 1>it had actually been cord and it was, you know,
<v Speaker 1>this massive, It had this they get this spiraling bark
<v Speaker 1>when they're older. It's really curious, beautiful spiraling bark. And
<v Speaker 1>it was growing in this you know, this grove of
<v Speaker 1>them that was only there because there was a spring
<v Speaker 1>coming up through the karstick limestone substrate. And again the
<v Speaker 1>water was blue because of the dissolved by carbonate in it,
<v Speaker 1>which comes from the rock. Really special fucking place. Oh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And there was an endangered pupfish there, the checkered pupfish
<v Speaker 1>of Saint Louis poto seed, the long lost checkered pupfish
<v Speaker 1>of Saint Louis poto seed. She I want to get
<v Speaker 1>like a like a painting done on my toilet seat
<v Speaker 1>of the checkered puppish. It was a cute, little, fucking
<v Speaker 1>cute little basroom. There were a bunch of them inside
<v Speaker 1>the uh inside this crystal blue muhlenbergia. Everywhere. There was
<v Speaker 1>some weird polygola polygalasi that Gabrielle saw flowering last time
<v Speaker 1>that he was showing me pictures of it looked like
<v Speaker 1>a succulent POLYGALACEI. What was the name of this species
<v Speaker 1>name Turkeita t U r g I d A. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so that was that was a fucking wonderful. And then
<v Speaker 1>there was a lyceum there too, very salty soil. The
<v Speaker 1>gentleman we spoke to who lived nearby city got bit
<v Speaker 1>by a rattlesnake, presumably during the summer. It's rebably a
<v Speaker 1>mean aggressive snake. I wonder if it was a scoute latus.
<v Speaker 1>You can get those done here, but I was hoping
<v Speaker 1>to see a rattlesnake. But near that Monuzuma cypress grove,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, not too far off, was some really cool
<v Speaker 1>cryptic cacti that grow and what looks like an otherwise boring,
<v Speaker 1>boring habitat, you know, just miscuaits prinkly pears, species of
<v Speaker 1>sueta that sell tolerance, succulent member of the Amaranthesi, the
<v Speaker 1>spinach family order carryophiles, of course, indicated about the betal
<v Speaker 1>aine pigments and the succulents. And there was Maytinis phil anthoides,
<v Speaker 1>which was a large shrub here. We get that in
<v Speaker 1>South Texas as well, but it's only tops out of
<v Speaker 1>like two or three feet, and then it grows along
<v Speaker 1>the coast, like kind of near Boca Chica, you know
<v Speaker 1>where h fucking elon that, you know, the gym with
<v Speaker 1>the laminated face, and you know who refused to go
<v Speaker 1>to therapy under any circumstances and is desperately in need
<v Speaker 1>of it. You know, just you got almost a trillion
<v Speaker 1>dollars and you're still so desperate for validation. Anyway, near
<v Speaker 1>where he built this little spaceport that's where that Meetenis
<v Speaker 1>phil Anthoides grows. But again it doesn't get that big.
<v Speaker 1>This was a large I mean, I could tell it
<v Speaker 1>was a maintenis. It might be a different species of Meetinis.
<v Speaker 1>It's certainly matinis. It's certainly is cellustraci, glabrous ovate leaves,
<v Speaker 1>very waxy, thicking, coryaceous, and and then tiny little flowers.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, and then there was turbino car turbenic karpus
<v Speaker 1>loaf of froides, supposedly because it looks like a lofaffra,
<v Speaker 1>I did not happen to think so. But it was
<v Speaker 1>a beautiful cactus. Nonetheless, yeah, I guess it had, you know,
<v Speaker 1>this similar lobe structure. We did see Lafafa cosii later
<v Speaker 1>this same day, and so after seeing it, I can
<v Speaker 1>confirm that, yes, indeed, it does look much different than
<v Speaker 1>Lofafera william c I. And I haven't seen any clumping
<v Speaker 1>individuals of Lafafera corecii named after cors some German bastard
<v Speaker 1>no offensive music in this podcast. Douty's listened to this podcast.
<v Speaker 1>I say, bastard, you know, lovingly, warm warmly, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, I just I hate eponyms though you can't.
<v Speaker 1>You can't get mad at me for Oh see, now
<v Speaker 1>we're going down here. Now we're going down on the
<v Speaker 1>other side of a Sierra Gorda and this is kind
<v Speaker 1>of like open rocky grass. It definitely dryer. Oh my god,
<v Speaker 1>don't even get me looking at the fucking clips. We
<v Speaker 1>have this job again. Fuck, I'm gonna do this whole
<v Speaker 1>thing on foot sometime, you know, with a donkey, and
<v Speaker 1>could get a donkey if you ever wanted to have
<v Speaker 1>a donkey before. They're fucking cool man, right, they're kind
<v Speaker 1>of like dogs. I'd put a little hat on it
<v Speaker 1>and ship and weight and that's what I would do. Man.
<v Speaker 1>That's the way to travel is you know, after everything
<v Speaker 1>crashes and you know it goes to ship and you
<v Speaker 1>just get yourself a donkey and just travel the country
<v Speaker 1>on foot. You know. Yeah, that's the way to do it.
<v Speaker 1>You know. You know you're American. You want to lose
<v Speaker 1>some weight, get yourself a donkey, and go hike the
<v Speaker 1>you know, some of those long distance hiking trails before
<v Speaker 1>Trump sells them to a mining companies and developers, you know.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, this, uh, this, this, it was remarkable how
<v Speaker 1>much this area where this turbino carpas grows felt like
<v Speaker 1>some of the salty you know they smell. You can
<v Speaker 1>smell the air. It smells briny and somewhat acrid and
<v Speaker 1>biological but not revolting, but it definitely smells. It reminds
<v Speaker 1>me of parts of South Texas, Like there's this spot,
<v Speaker 1>holy shit, blind kerb Okay, all right, a holly fuck
<v Speaker 1>who We're gonna become one of those little crosses on
<v Speaker 1>the side of the road. You know. It's, oh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the Mexican driving thing is really stressed to me. We'll say, okay,
<v Speaker 1>I gotta just get used to you know. I like
<v Speaker 1>it when there's like it's a two lane road, but
<v Speaker 1>they're wide lanes and you got you can fit three
<v Speaker 1>cars on them. That's fucking you want to get the
<v Speaker 1>adrenaline pumpin'. It's like that scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles,
<v Speaker 1>you know, when when Steve Martin looks over and John
<v Speaker 1>Candy's wearing a giant Spandex devil suit, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>their whole life flashes before their rise. It's pretty marvelous.
<v Speaker 1>It's a marvelous scene. It's fucking hilarious. He said, to
<v Speaker 1>cut a white John Canty movie at some point. You know,
<v Speaker 1>wife should rewatch that. It'll really loosen the mood from
<v Speaker 1>the distopic. Man, I flew out of fucking Austin because
<v Speaker 1>it was cheaper than flying from near my house. And
<v Speaker 1>I could just leave the dog with Hovey air and
<v Speaker 1>you know, and go see some friends, you know, kick
<v Speaker 1>it with the kick it with Hovey the night before
<v Speaker 1>and then whatever. And I flew out of Austin. Was
<v Speaker 1>such a fucking nightmare, just just packed, asked to nose
<v Speaker 1>six in the morning, Just miserable flying experience, and everyone's
<v Speaker 1>in a bad mood and hates each other. Well, partially
<v Speaker 1>because it's the United States and that's just the general
<v Speaker 1>vibe there, and also because everyone's packed, ask to nose
<v Speaker 1>in the airport and traveling for the holidays. It's a
<v Speaker 1>horrible time to fly. You look how dry it is here.
<v Speaker 1>Now you can see we're really in that rain shadow
<v Speaker 1>on the west side of a beautiful sea of Gorda. God,
<v Speaker 1>what the fuck, man, there's so much cool shit. Oh
<v Speaker 1>my god, I can't Yeah, man, it's crazy, there's and
<v Speaker 1>there's not a lot of like you look at I
<v Speaker 1>Naturalist for Carethro and San Louis Potosi, and there's not
<v Speaker 1>a lot of uh of observation. So we really need
<v Speaker 1>to convince all our Mexican listeners and friends to start
<v Speaker 1>using the shit out of I Naturalists. Please God, I
<v Speaker 1>need to just learn fluent Spanish, you know, I really
<v Speaker 1>need the It's pathetic that I don't because I could, really,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I do a Spanish language version of a
<v Speaker 1>crime Pace podcast and get what the fuck? Ah? Fuck? No,
<v Speaker 1>oh we have to stay. What's this? Is that a Blia?
<v Speaker 1>Oh no, that's a Chilians Garcia in ah gove a
<v Speaker 1>Garcia and those there's nowhere to park? Huh yeahs fuck
<v Speaker 1>so oh there. Now we're already hitting Martillo cactus. What
<v Speaker 1>elevation we are now seventy three hundred feet and there's
<v Speaker 1>Martillo cactus And that tells you what we're trying out.
<v Speaker 1>All right, we're drawing it. We're still pretty high up,
<v Speaker 1>but we're it's drying out. There's no thread of frost,
<v Speaker 1>I guess, despite being so high up. But it reads
<v Speaker 1>the rain shadow effect. It's elevation and the rain shadow
<v Speaker 1>effect and proximity to a warm body of water that's
<v Speaker 1>evaporating moisture, and if it depending if there's a mountain
<v Speaker 1>range between you and that warm body of water that's
<v Speaker 1>evaporating moisture, that like, in this case, the ocean. So
<v Speaker 1>god damn. Yeah, it is just naked not naked gealgae,
<v Speaker 1>but it's shrubling. It feels like parts of Chile or California.
<v Speaker 1>What is that? Oh? This is that a sola? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>God damn. But anyway, yeah, so it's it's really whoo
<v Speaker 1>oh fuck me, what's that? Thank god? That looked incredible. Fuck. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>there's so much amazing stuff. Okay, I'm coming back to
<v Speaker 1>see your gorda. That's what's happening at some point here,
<v Speaker 1>you know. But it seems like a lot of stuff
<v Speaker 1>actually flowers during the winter dry season, which would make
<v Speaker 1>sense because it's a good time to really capitalize on
<v Speaker 1>pollinators because it's still warm out, but it's the dry season.
<v Speaker 1>There's not a lot of other stuff going off, so
<v Speaker 1>there's presumably a benefit to that. Yeah, wild. I wonder
<v Speaker 1>how many plants have their phonology set to the flower
<v Speaker 1>during the dry season. Anyway. So yeah, so we were
<v Speaker 1>at this taxodium spot and then I think that we were.
<v Speaker 1>Elevation here was roughly thirty six hundred feet and it
<v Speaker 1>was this beautiful spring fed pool filled with cool fish
<v Speaker 1>and a really unique Nymphaea species water lily species, and
<v Speaker 1>it was so so I guess it must be so
<v Speaker 1>gorgeous when at flowers that there was even a sign
<v Speaker 1>ups telling the locals, not the not to take it.
<v Speaker 1>You know, so don't drink too much alcohol, you know,
<v Speaker 1>no tiar basura, don't dump your trash, and also don't
<v Speaker 1>take these fucking water lilies, even though you might feel
<v Speaker 1>inclined to because because they're they're so gorgeous, you know,
<v Speaker 1>which is if there's if you're if you have to
<v Speaker 1>tell non plant people not to collect the plant, that
<v Speaker 1>must be pretty cool. But and it did. It had
<v Speaker 1>these like aquatic basal leaves and then the stalks you
<v Speaker 1>know that come up from below, uh, and then have
<v Speaker 1>the actual floating leaves on that too, So it had
<v Speaker 1>two different kinds of leaves. It was really cool. None
<v Speaker 1>were flowering, one was about the flower but yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>then just the hop skip and a jump away was
<v Speaker 1>the Turberinocarpus LoVa for roidies. And again just this habitat
<v Speaker 1>looks like some of the salty the salty soiled misky
<v Speaker 1>quote wastelands of South Texas. But it's filled with corafanta
<v Speaker 1>maista blenzes and and the turbinicarpus Lofa feroides cryptically hiding
<v Speaker 1>in the soil, like eighty percent of the stem underground
<v Speaker 1>and then just just a you know, because cact there
<v Speaker 1>just stems, right, even if it's like a globe shaped cactus,
<v Speaker 1>and then the top ten or twenty percent poking out
<v Speaker 1>at the soil surface. And so yeah, really fucking cool
<v Speaker 1>to see. And this sueda, this this succulent amarant thesy
<v Speaker 1>that loves salty soil was dominant there, and again very
<v Speaker 1>salty because it's this basin surrounded by these mountains. Instead
<v Speaker 1>of grain, water chemically weathers the limestone, dissolves some of
<v Speaker 1>the minerals, washes it into the basin, and then evaporates,
<v Speaker 1>you know, because it's hot as balls for three quarters
<v Speaker 1>of the year and evaporates in the dry climate, it
<v Speaker 1>leaves all the salt behind, so it end up you know.
<v Speaker 1>That's why most cacti in my experience, seemed to be
<v Speaker 1>very tolerant of falty soil, right like if you got
<v Speaker 1>some hard water coming out of your half. You know,
<v Speaker 1>at least once they reach a certain size, it seems
<v Speaker 1>like they can tolerat it because the ship coming out
<v Speaker 1>of the sky. The rain obviously does not have minerals
<v Speaker 1>as at, but a lot of tap water does. What
<v Speaker 1>the fuck is that blue thing down there? A blue
<v Speaker 1>plant on Green Hills? Wow? Oh, it's one of these
<v Speaker 1>What is is that a leuco violent? What the fuck is? Like? Fuck? Okay,
<v Speaker 1>if we see if you find a spot where one
<v Speaker 1>could presumably urinate and and also take a photo of
<v Speaker 1>that plant. Oh shit, okay, I'm just gonna do. It's
<v Speaker 1>gonna be real quick. All right. I don't know where
<v Speaker 1>I left you just now, but we're starting again. It's
<v Speaker 1>a beautiful morning here in Visa n and uh oh wow.
<v Speaker 1>All the dahlia is going off, Dahlia by colors. These
<v Speaker 1>these two foot tall pink shrubs we just passed the marble.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what they were doing or some with marble.
<v Speaker 1>They were pulverizing it. They're cutting it somehow, And there's
<v Speaker 1>it's just it looks like wildfire smoke. There's like white
<v Speaker 1>dust over all the shrubs and all over all the
<v Speaker 1>cars and shit, and you have to drive through it.
<v Speaker 1>You kind of roll up your windows and hold your breath.
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of wild. But we had a really nice
<v Speaker 1>day yesterday up to up to ten thousand, five hundred
<v Speaker 1>feet elevation, it's like thirty one hundred meters. Got to
<v Speaker 1>see the winter leaves on the Bigwcula mornensis that grows
<v Speaker 1>up there, and it grows with a bunch of cool
<v Speaker 1>kylanthoid ferns. Goddamn, this day is beautiful bunch of cool
<v Speaker 1>caylanthoid ferns beneath this canopy of oak cover next to
<v Speaker 1>a Gave montana in tetra chiron webstery, which is a
<v Speaker 1>little labouru sleeved composite with opposite leaves. And right now
<v Speaker 1>we're going to check out the Pinus pinciana Venus pinciana,
<v Speaker 1>the weeping Mexican pinion pine. Miss I'm stoked to see
<v Speaker 1>if it's actually this. It's it's beautiful, it's beauty. It's
<v Speaker 1>a beautiful fucking pine. And I think it's cold hearty
<v Speaker 1>to like like negative six celsius whatever that is, what
<v Speaker 1>it is, that like eighteen degrees fahrenheit twenty anyway. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>really really good day yesterday. And I got to see
<v Speaker 1>that astro Lipus that that doesn't even have a name
<v Speaker 1>yet because it hasn't been described. Who is that luca
<v Speaker 1>phylum ambiguoum over there, one of the another Siniso species?
<v Speaker 1>Oh holy shit, a bunch of pack is serious, margin
<v Speaker 1>adi is Goddamn. There's so much good stuff to see
<v Speaker 1>in a side of a row that's just really bringing
<v Speaker 1>out the ad D.
<v Speaker 2>I'm trying to get a following his damn Jane, because
<v Speaker 2>it's the jay that disperses the pinion pine seeds. But
<v Speaker 2>it's not letting me get close through it. It's driving
<v Speaker 2>me fucking nuts. Okay, So now you know that was
<v Speaker 2>kind of frustrating. I was trying to I mean, it
<v Speaker 2>was wonderful to see, though I was about to dip out.
<v Speaker 2>I was in the pinion pine grove, these beautiful weeping
<v Speaker 2>pinions on this hillside growing with the croton species with
<v Speaker 2>silvery leaves to about three feet tall. A Porophylum marigold
<v Speaker 2>tribe of astac This Porophleum smelled absolutely delicious. It smelled
<v Speaker 2>so fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>I got one on the car right now, and it's
<v Speaker 1>got these like deep purple waxy and volacars on the
<v Speaker 1>flower heads, no rays, I mean the flowers I'll put on.
<v Speaker 1>We want to check out my I ned if you
<v Speaker 1>want to see what it looks like. It'll be, you know,
<v Speaker 1>under the genus porophylum po ro o, but really unique
<v Speaker 1>flower heads on it. And there was a whole bunch
<v Speaker 1>of other stuff. There was a shrub that seemed like
<v Speaker 1>it was in polygonac but it it looked like a
<v Speaker 1>like a woody buckwheat to like seven feet tall. Slightly
<v Speaker 1>different flower structures, so it's probably a different genus, but
<v Speaker 1>definitely looked polygonaceous, but I also could be totally wrong.
<v Speaker 1>And then and then I was about to dip out
<v Speaker 1>go down. There was a castella's you know, a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of stuff's going dormant, going dry. There was a gaves
<v Speaker 1>alone a cant there with the those wavy ass spines
<v Speaker 1>on the margins of the leaves. It's a really rich site.
<v Speaker 1>Oh and junipers flatted of course too. And then you
<v Speaker 1>know I was leaving, this mob of blue jays, rather
<v Speaker 1>large jays, I think it was Mexican jays came through
<v Speaker 1>and that was the sounds you heard, and of course
<v Speaker 1>those are what dispersed the seeds of this pinion pine,
<v Speaker 1>you knows. And that's a that's a symbiotic relationship that
<v Speaker 1>goes on with many pines actually, whether it's Clark's nut
<v Speaker 1>cracker and the white bark pines in northern California, or
<v Speaker 1>you know, scrub jays used to do that in Oakley
<v Speaker 1>and with the coast life oaks that you know, they
<v Speaker 1>plant these things, These these cute little bastards plant these
<v Speaker 1>things and they only recover about half of what they plant,
<v Speaker 1>and the rest then germinate and turn into new trees.
<v Speaker 1>But I did not find a lot of cones. Oh
<v Speaker 1>my god, fuck me, is that all isolato serious? It
<v Speaker 1>almost looks like pack is serious what we're having that really?
<v Speaker 1>Maybe it's serious. We're going back up and we just
<v Speaker 1>saw this massive flank of this massive slope covered in
<v Speaker 1>these tall, you know, multi stem columnar cacti. But uh, anyway,
<v Speaker 1>you know, so this, uh, these jays dispersed the seed.
<v Speaker 1>They basically plant new forests of this this tree. But
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't find many cones. There were some old cones,
<v Speaker 1>it looked like they maybe these trees were stressed a
<v Speaker 1>little bit. Most of them looked somewhat healthy, but a
<v Speaker 1>couple were dying. I don't know if it's you know,
<v Speaker 1>a drought year or what, but HiT's man, it was
<v Speaker 1>a fucking beautiful It's a beautiful sight, you know, an
<v Speaker 1>idyllic sight that only the Mexican countryside can offer. Gabriel
<v Speaker 1>has been very tolerant of my ranting. I have to say,
<v Speaker 1>it's been thank you by the way, you know. But uh,
<v Speaker 1>now we're going up again. We I had to stop
<v Speaker 1>and look at this forest of isolato series discreto femness.
<v Speaker 1>This succulent composite is covering these shale hills. You could
<v Speaker 1>see these it's not shale hills, they're fucking shale rock
<v Speaker 1>walls on this sketchy winding road. You know, it's nice
<v Speaker 1>when you pass the trucks at you know, forty miles
<v Speaker 1>per hour and these sketchy winding roads. Here. It is
<v Speaker 1>mid December, it's it's warm, it's hot as balls and
<v Speaker 1>cools off at night. Best time to visit Grethro at
<v Speaker 1>least the dry slopes. And so we're going up to
<v Speaker 1>go check out some of the wetter forests in this
<v Speaker 1>yere at Gorda, but there was I just saw pseudo Smodingium.
<v Speaker 1>If you can spit that fucking genus name out. God.
<v Speaker 1>These fucking dahlias man the daily yeah, bicolor, it's just
<v Speaker 1>fucking gorgeous. But Pseudosmodingium, as you rush you all in it,
<v Speaker 1>it's so you know, the allergenic compound. That's some poison ivy.
<v Speaker 1>It's a relative of poison ivy. It's an antacardiac. It's
<v Speaker 1>really cool genus. I saw one monstrous species of Pseudosmodingium
<v Speaker 1>yesterday in the hills, growing with Cordia bossierra and some
<v Speaker 1>other really cool shit. But you know it's it's got
<v Speaker 1>more rounded leaf margins. And then I saw Pseudosmodingium andrew
<v Speaker 1>si uh just now and yesterday at a site that
<v Speaker 1>we stopped at that had strombocact the sun it and
<v Speaker 1>you know this it like rooss, like the sycamore with
<v Speaker 1>which it's related. It turns this beautiful red color when
<v Speaker 1>it's about to drop its leaves as it reabsorbs the
<v Speaker 1>chlorophyll and the the anthosygn and pigments are left behind,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, same thing rous does you know roosts
<v Speaker 1>in the temperate latitudes. Is doing it because of it's
<v Speaker 1>you know, anticipation of the cold winter here. It's doing
<v Speaker 1>it just because of the drought season, the winter dry season.
<v Speaker 1>Still hot as balls. Oh yeah, look there's that Lucophylum
<v Speaker 1>ambigue them all up in those goddamn hills. So uh. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>we just stopped to look for la for the fusa
<v Speaker 1>at a spot that a friend had given us. But
<v Speaker 1>it had been such a good rain year that the
<v Speaker 1>grasses had kind of created this, you know, this totally
<v Speaker 1>dense understory beneath the vicelia and the mimosa shrubs, the
<v Speaker 1>thorny shrubs. There was no catillo all over there too,
<v Speaker 1>and a cool parthenium parthenium. But that's where this the
<v Speaker 1>fusa grows, which is the false paoti. It looks like
<v Speaker 1>a like a mint green doughnut that someone sat on.
<v Speaker 1>It's got like a little dimple in the inside. But
<v Speaker 1>you know, I'm sure it's probably there. We didn't see
<v Speaker 1>any because there was there was so much grass, and
<v Speaker 1>it was a native grass too. I saw this guy, man,
<v Speaker 1>I've seen so many cool Mullenbergia species and there was boutlua.
<v Speaker 1>I believe it was just Kurt of pendula. But some
<v Speaker 1>of these fucking grasses are gorgeous, you know. But then
<v Speaker 1>you go to like the what's the would I've been
<v Speaker 1>calling the Sokolo the fucking Plaza Hard Dean Principal. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you go to hard Dean Principal. You know, Mexico needs
<v Speaker 1>a native plant movement too, because you go to the
<v Speaker 1>hard Dean Principal and it's all these fucking avolita no
<v Speaker 1>offense to the Appolitas. It's all these appolita shrubs, you know,
<v Speaker 1>corny ship clones of stuff with the variegated leaves, no
<v Speaker 1>no bearing on place or or pride and where you
<v Speaker 1>live or anything, just this corny ship, you know. And
<v Speaker 1>they I do like how they paint the bottoms of
<v Speaker 1>the trees white. Do you know why they do that?
<v Speaker 1>It's like this because of the dance they put like life,
<v Speaker 1>does it really do? Does it really work? Yeah? They
<v Speaker 1>put They looked like, uh, what's it? I forgot the
<v Speaker 1>name of the powder. Oh yeah, yeah yeah yeah, well
<v Speaker 1>well you know, it's it's a it's ath. I like
<v Speaker 1>it because it's comforting to me in a way. This
<v Speaker 1>reminds me of places. Oh wow, is that gog Nadia fock. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>there's so much nice stuff. I don't know. Maybe we
<v Speaker 1>should stop up here and look at it. See if
<v Speaker 1>that's just a monster guck Nadia or a different coc
<v Speaker 1>Nadia species or what. I can't tell. Just stopped for
<v Speaker 1>a second up aeria. Well that was nice. We just
<v Speaker 1>stopped and yeah it was Nihualia hype luca again, goog Nadia,
<v Speaker 1>which we have at thorn Scrub and uh and Croton
<v Speaker 1>and Signus and all these South Texas plants in tons
<v Speaker 1>of Kowinskia as well, you know, worth five thousand feet
<v Speaker 1>fifty four hundred feet in correctro The one thing we
<v Speaker 1>don't get in South Texas which you know might be
<v Speaker 1>worth growing there is Neopremia integrafolia, which is in the
<v Speaker 1>willow family of salea casey. It's got these little winged fruits. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>Gabriel's pissed in front of the truck right now. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>my line of vision is cut off right where by
<v Speaker 1>right up right above his done. It's good not trying,
<v Speaker 1>not trying to give anybody a free show here, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Uh got these mountains, man, they look like a like
<v Speaker 1>a birthday cake that's been carved out with like a
<v Speaker 1>stream of water. It's wild, all this cool limestone. So anyway,
<v Speaker 1>we're gonna head up now to higher elevations. Uh. I
<v Speaker 1>think there's like a disjunk stand of Douglas fir up
<v Speaker 1>in these mountains, and then we're gonna fuck around and
<v Speaker 1>see what we can find. Look for some I think
<v Speaker 1>there's plotting us up there too. I want to I
<v Speaker 1>definitely want to get get some footage of the sycamores
<v Speaker 1>document them. I don't know if it's just playing Platinus
<v Speaker 1>oxident tellus or whatever the ship they're calling it, but
<v Speaker 1>it's definitely gonna be a different ecotype. I almost got
<v Speaker 1>cream by a truck that was taking a wide berth
<v Speaker 1>on this sketchy two lane road. These fucking trucks, some
<v Speaker 1>of them more huge. Anyway, we don't even talk about
<v Speaker 1>the Uh. The ephemeral lago and Co, which I was
<v Speaker 1>skeptical was an actual different species from lofal for A.
<v Speaker 1>Williams the truepeoti, But after seeing habitat and seeing the
<v Speaker 1>different shape of the tubercules and the lobes, I'm convinced
<v Speaker 1>that it is. And then Uh. Aerocarpus koshu bayanis named
<v Speaker 1>after Princess Koshubile, the dumbest, dumbest fucking name. Slapdovski, slapped Ski,
<v Speaker 1>Russian guy. You like to get beat on and slapped around.
<v Speaker 1>You know, got these fucking every time, every eponym I
<v Speaker 1>have to make fun of. But that was a that
<v Speaker 1>was a really cool spot. And then oh yeah, on
<v Speaker 1>a separate note, the the I saw a bamboo and
<v Speaker 1>a native bamboo that, unlike the Asian bamboos, was not hollow.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, it's a good diagnostic factor for if it's
<v Speaker 1>the if it's an old world bamboo or a New
<v Speaker 1>World one, and this was It was O Tatiya kumen
<v Speaker 1>nata in the Sierra Gorda. This is like like seven
<v Speaker 1>thousand feet growing with Menzelia hispida and Decatropis by color,
<v Speaker 1>and a ton of other cool shit on this including
<v Speaker 1>orchids and an echiandia species on this very steep slope
<v Speaker 1>Odaitia ot A t e a A cuminata I guess
<v Speaker 1>it's called Mexican weeping bimboo. But anyway, but yeah, anyway,
<v Speaker 1>so back to the ephemeral lagoon. So we drove out
<v Speaker 1>to this area after the Taxodium uk grenadum grow. We're
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, thirty five hundred feet four thousand feet,
<v Speaker 1>you know, lowland Mexico. I guess it's mid elevation, but
<v Speaker 1>for most of the central Mexican plateau, that's a low elevation.
<v Speaker 1>That's where the cool cat that are going to be.
<v Speaker 1>And so we drove out to what looks like a
<v Speaker 1>relatively barren area. It's you could tell it's a dry
<v Speaker 1>lake bed that probably floods with a couple of inches
<v Speaker 1>of water and then turns exceptionally muddy during the wet season.
<v Speaker 1>And and you know, I've knowne about this psychology for
<v Speaker 1>a while for Alberto Boiechi, another stupid eponym named after
<v Speaker 1>a person it also grows. It's another species of lufafer
<v Speaker 1>and other species of peyota that grows in this same
<v Speaker 1>similar habitat. And they've occupied the psychology where they're underwater
<v Speaker 1>for a couple of days during the rainy season. You know,
<v Speaker 1>they're under a few inches of water, and then the
<v Speaker 1>you know, as the water slowly evaporates and the mud
<v Speaker 1>dries out, then they're just stuck in this, you know, perfectly,
<v Speaker 1>like someone took a cement blade over it and smoothed
<v Speaker 1>it out like they were laying cement, and just you know,
<v Speaker 1>sunk it into the ground. And you wouldn't even I
<v Speaker 1>mean you'd look out, you gud be five feet away
<v Speaker 1>looking out over them, you wouldn't see them. Just really
<v Speaker 1>cool habitat and ecology. So they've adapted to these ephemeral
<v Speaker 1>lagoons that are in these basins of these mountain ranges,
<v Speaker 1>surrounded by deserts. And the soil, of course, is no
<v Speaker 1>doubt exceptionally salty, because you know that's what rain does.
<v Speaker 1>It chemically weathers and then dissolves minerals off of them,
<v Speaker 1>washes those minerals into the basin, and then evaporates, leaving
<v Speaker 1>the minerals behind. But you know, the center of this lagoon,
<v Speaker 1>this ephemeral lake bed, this dry lake bed, was open
<v Speaker 1>and empty, and then it was surrounded on the margins
<v Speaker 1>by these little islands, these soil mounds composed of spiny
<v Speaker 1>shrubs and soil crusts. And you know, Cobralineus spinosa, another
<v Speaker 1>Texas plant to the planet we get in Texas, was
<v Speaker 1>one of the most dominant ones that and then nel
<v Speaker 1>Tuma leve gatta, a species of miska formerly Prosopis leva gatta.
<v Speaker 1>There was Condoliopsis up to Sifolius there formerly za Zyphis
<v Speaker 1>you know, Buckthorne family ramnassy and then Condalia spatiolata as well.
<v Speaker 1>And then you know on these little islands, you know,
<v Speaker 1>each the size of you know, medium to large sized
<v Speaker 1>kitchen table under these shrubs. You know, the roots would
<v Speaker 1>hold the soil together and forming these mounds, and then
<v Speaker 1>and then there would be uh, the soil crust. You know,
<v Speaker 1>there were mosses there, dry mosses obviously because it was
<v Speaker 1>the dry season, cyanobacteria and lichens and on these little mounds,
<v Speaker 1>and you'd see, you know, all these cool cacti and
<v Speaker 1>a kind of serious species. I forget what species it was.
<v Speaker 1>There was Lafafra correzzii, Aerocarpus uh koshiubayanas, Cora panta uh
<v Speaker 1>Mais tablensis, named after a town called Maise, and then
<v Speaker 1>another town called Les Tablas that was the same one
<v Speaker 1>we saw at the other salty soil area growing with
<v Speaker 1>Turbiniccarpas LoVa varieties that I told you about maybe forty
<v Speaker 1>minutes ago. But I I mean it's one of those
<v Speaker 1>places where you know, You don't just go and to
<v Speaker 1>take photos you leave. You got to you gotta like
<v Speaker 1>sit there, take it all in and think about it
<v Speaker 1>and really grasp that you're looking at a cactus that
<v Speaker 1>grows submerged for two or three days in a few
<v Speaker 1>inches of what is probably exceptionally briny water, and then
<v Speaker 1>you know, it just hangs out the rest of the year,
<v Speaker 1>the top of its stem just completely flush with the
<v Speaker 1>soil surface. And again it's this silty, calcareous material because
<v Speaker 1>this is a limestone substrate. It's fucking wild. It's such
<v Speaker 1>a cool habitat and ecology and I mean literally you
<v Speaker 1>walk out into this basin, oh yeah, and as the
<v Speaker 1>water dries, it leaves behind. I don't know if this
<v Speaker 1>is all soil crust that's a verifying drug. Holy shit,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if it's all this. You know, it's
<v Speaker 1>this black soil crust. And and they got a beautiful
<v Speaker 1>look at it. They got a beautiful Guadalupe painted onto
<v Speaker 1>the side of the mountain. So you never forget that
<v Speaker 1>you're in a Catholic area. Oh yeah, they really beat
<v Speaker 1>you over there with a religion here, don't they. That's
<v Speaker 1>what you know. Dominance dominator societies do you know, But
<v Speaker 1>but yeah, so it's it's it's just such a fucking
<v Speaker 1>cool habit. It's such a cool ecology. And to think
<v Speaker 1>that these, I mean, you out onto this, you know,
<v Speaker 1>you almost feel bad stepping on some of the soil crust,
<v Speaker 1>but then you realize, well, during the wet season, it's
<v Speaker 1>all gonna get inundated again and probably moved around. It
<v Speaker 1>looks like it might be some sort of dried organic
<v Speaker 1>material that was maybe in the water and then pools up,
<v Speaker 1>or it could just be yeah, the soil crust that
<v Speaker 1>stays alive for a while during the time it takes
<v Speaker 1>for this still decalcarious mud to completely dry out. And
<v Speaker 1>then you know, in these in all of that or
<v Speaker 1>you know, three or four of these cactus species, the
<v Speaker 1>Cora phanta my east tub lenses. You know, these species
<v Speaker 1>grow both on the islands of spiny shrubs, the kitchen
<v Speaker 1>table sized islands of spiny shrubs and out in the
<v Speaker 1>open in the middle of the ephemeral of goon. But
<v Speaker 1>the Cora pantha my east toup lenses actually pops up
<v Speaker 1>a little bit more. Aerocarpus coach you byanus of course,
<v Speaker 1>you know in places it looks like a spider web,
<v Speaker 1>like like a spider web tattoo. Is it better way?
<v Speaker 1>You know, some people get spider web tattoos. Kind dumb whatever,
<v Speaker 1>no offense if you if you happen to have one,
<v Speaker 1>of course, not making fun of you, but it's definitely
<v Speaker 1>better than a pirate ship or a coyfish. Fuck if
<v Speaker 1>you have one of those doing most not making fun
<v Speaker 1>of you. Well maybe a little bit, just throwing some
<v Speaker 1>champs here. But it looks like one of those, you know,
<v Speaker 1>flash spider web tattoos, just laying in the in the mud.
<v Speaker 1>It doesn't get that tall at all. The same with
<v Speaker 1>the lofafra, and the loafafa kind of retracts a little
<v Speaker 1>bit as it loses to some loses some of its volume,
<v Speaker 1>you know, as it spends up its energy and water
<v Speaker 1>reserves during the dry season. But the cora phant that
<v Speaker 1>stays pretty uh, you know, like an inch above the
<v Speaker 1>soil surface at most. But again, these things, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you really have to be out there, you know, scouting form,
<v Speaker 1>looking over the soil trying to you know, see if
<v Speaker 1>they're there, because you can be right on top of
<v Speaker 1>them and and not notice. I also saw an Ibervilia species,
<v Speaker 1>which I only noticed, you know, a vining member of
<v Speaker 1>the Kukurba tas uh ibervilla species, which I only noticed
<v Speaker 1>because of the red red fruits. And it's it was
<v Speaker 1>either I think Ibervillia tenuis secta and Ibervilia lindheimer ii
<v Speaker 1>are the only ones that grow in the state of
<v Speaker 1>San Luis Poto s because that's what this was. And
<v Speaker 1>so you know, you can't really tell them the part
<v Speaker 1>unless you have leaves. And the leaves were gone. It
<v Speaker 1>was just like the dried the dried stems of the vines.
<v Speaker 1>And then scary, Yeah, it's another scary truck. Holy shit. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>why not move a back oh down a fucking two
<v Speaker 1>lane road with that? Well, there's no shoulder there. You
<v Speaker 1>couldn't pull over if you wanted to, you would just
<v Speaker 1>take a tumble. Seen so many stevious species. Man, there's
<v Speaker 1>a Stevius species here too. But again, so a few
<v Speaker 1>parking lots. So if you billboards, so if you cull
<v Speaker 1>the sacks and mc mansions, and it's a much different
<v Speaker 1>way of life, you know, a much different infrastructure too.
<v Speaker 1>You know, not everybody needs to have a car and
<v Speaker 1>live in a fucking suburb. There's no, there's not really
<v Speaker 1>suburbs in Mexico, are there not? Really? It's not like
<v Speaker 1>in America. I mean, do you just ask me what
<v Speaker 1>a suburb is? Yeah? No, big cities have suburbs kind of,
<v Speaker 1>but they're more like outskirts. They're not like Culda sec. Shit. Well,
<v Speaker 1>if you just ask me what a suburb is, that's
<v Speaker 1>a good sign. That means you probably don't. Yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god. Yeah. And I'm still washing off the
<v Speaker 1>PTSD from the US. You know, I don't mean to
<v Speaker 1>knock it all the time. It's just they're just what
<v Speaker 1>are we doing up there? Really? What are we doing?
<v Speaker 1>You know, people are fucking miserable and pissed off and
<v Speaker 1>everyone's getting fucked and you know it's this is of course,
<v Speaker 1>I'm just doing this. I'm just talking about this to
<v Speaker 1>just you know, flush away the squares. It's like, you know,
<v Speaker 1>get them to turn off the podcast, try the way.
<v Speaker 1>Oh look at that ipomea. That's that that native blue
<v Speaker 1>ipomea species tri color. Yeah, God, that is a gorgeous
<v Speaker 1>color on it. What what selects for blue colors? And
<v Speaker 1>a flower that's wild? Wow? So yeah, the ephemeral Lagoon
<v Speaker 1>was probably one of my favorite spots, just because it's
<v Speaker 1>so unique and mystifying and just such a bizarre It's
<v Speaker 1>just such a fucking bizarre college. And all again dictated
<v Speaker 1>by the wet dry season, the alternating wet and dry season,
<v Speaker 1>which is yeah, nice, nice stratigraphic layers there. Well, this
<v Speaker 1>is all this is metamorphous limestone a little bit. It
<v Speaker 1>looks like, so, you know, the wet and these ephemeral
<v Speaker 1>lagoons all dictated by the wet and dry season as
<v Speaker 1>well as the latitude. The latitude dictates the wet and
<v Speaker 1>dry season as well as the rain shadow of the
<v Speaker 1>Sierra Madre, which squeezes out like a sponge. That all
<v Speaker 1>that moisture laden air that moves west from the Gulf
<v Speaker 1>of Mexico hits those mountains, dries out, and then causes
<v Speaker 1>you know, all this cool cactus diversity and other xeric
<v Speaker 1>xerophytic diversity, xerophyte diversity to have evolved on the west
<v Speaker 1>side of the Sera Mandre. And so right now during
<v Speaker 1>in the winter, the ITCZ has shifted that low pressure
<v Speaker 1>zone that causes the rain to the southern hemisphere. So
<v Speaker 1>it's raining and Mina's your eyes Brazil right now. So
<v Speaker 1>you know, those dry forests that I love so much
<v Speaker 1>down there are probably very verdant and green while it's
<v Speaker 1>up here things are really starting to dry out. And uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know that's why we got the seat of cool
<v Speaker 1>rosette leaves on the pinguicula at ten thousand feet yesterday
<v Speaker 1>and Sierra Eld doctor, Eld doctor, the doctor was. It
<v Speaker 1>took my pain away. And so I'll tell you what,
<v Speaker 1>it was a fucking doctor for me more ways than one.
<v Speaker 1>So everything again, that wet dry season dictates everything here,
<v Speaker 1>from the fucking pinguiculus at ten thousand feet that have
<v Speaker 1>two different leaf types, one corresponding each season, to the
<v Speaker 1>ephemeral lagoons that false Payoti and area of Carpus coach
<v Speaker 1>you bianus growing. Anyway, I'm gonna end it there for
<v Speaker 1>now because there's gonna be so much shit I'm gonna
<v Speaker 1>have to do another episode anyway. So wow, yeah, look
<v Speaker 1>at all the agritinas and stevieas what God, look at this?
<v Speaker 1>This has been cooked. But what cooks these these vertical
<v Speaker 1>cliffs to our left? A molten body? Was there a
<v Speaker 1>molten body in nearby? Look at this there's all these
<v Speaker 1>cool conifers up there too. Now we're at sixty seven
<v Speaker 1>hundred feet. Anyway, I did, I do. Hope you got
<v Speaker 1>some out of that. You know, the white and dry seasons,
<v Speaker 1>the differences in elevation, the rain shadow, and so many
<v Speaker 1>cool and wonderful plants, and much of it much safer
<v Speaker 1>than a lot of the plants in the US. Into
<v Speaker 1>much different land management than land uses. Not perfect, but
<v Speaker 1>you know, there's very little sprawl. Maybe there will be
<v Speaker 1>at some point. Anyway, we're gonna hope we don't drive
<v Speaker 1>off the road there. Say goodbye, Gabrielle, goodbye. Anyway. That's
<v Speaker 1>a good. Uh, it's a good. That's a wrap. Have Agrescia,
<v Speaker 1>They go fuck you, some bake