A Clusterf*ck of Mustards - The Order Brassicales

<v Speaker 1>Tanta, and so we're able to finally get material of
<v Speaker 1>it from this like explorer that went to the island
<v Speaker 1>and got it and found out it is nested within Cryptanta.
<v Speaker 1>So we've been working on a paper to re characterize
<v Speaker 1>it as a cryptantha from Neeso Carrion.
<v Speaker 2>This is this is Mike Simpson's popcorn flower thing. Yeah
<v Speaker 2>seeah yeah, wait an island? How how far off the
<v Speaker 2>coast of Chili?
<v Speaker 1>Oh it's in the paper. It's hundreds of miles off
<v Speaker 1>of the.
<v Speaker 2>Way the fuck out there?
<v Speaker 1>God damn, yeah, it's really far.
<v Speaker 2>This is part of that God, what is that island?
<v Speaker 2>There's where where is dendrosceris? You know that weird that
<v Speaker 2>weird ask the that like giant chickory? Yeah, oh god,
<v Speaker 2>I just forget the name of it. What is it?
<v Speaker 2>That's what's the island off the coat? Let me look
<v Speaker 2>this up.
<v Speaker 1>This one's on This one's on is Lesian Ambrosio. So
<v Speaker 1>it's nine hundred kilometers.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my god, can you imagine the kinds of wild
<v Speaker 2>ship that like if that's out there too? What else?
<v Speaker 1>I know, it's so crazy. It's it's a weird one,
<v Speaker 1>but it's really cool that it that it's in Captantha,
<v Speaker 1>so that's really exciting. Johnson was the one that originally
<v Speaker 1>transferred it from helotropium to aneso carium in nineteen twenty seven,
<v Speaker 1>So now we're answering it.
<v Speaker 2>To Captanthasla's ventures. What is I wonder if it's something?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's in there, Yeah it is. It's a group
<v Speaker 1>of islands yet.
<v Speaker 2>God, also everything out there basically got probably got there
<v Speaker 2>from bird or debris rift at some point since the
<v Speaker 2>island's inception. How I wonder how old it is too.
<v Speaker 2>It's probably volcanic, I assume, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I think it is the same way I'm looking and
<v Speaker 1>double checking. Yeah, just yeah, that's the same. It's a
<v Speaker 1>the larger of the two that this one's on on.
<v Speaker 2>What's the island? Where then Droceros is from? God? Damn it?
<v Speaker 2>You know this is I'm already like getting pre Senile.
<v Speaker 2>I'm only in my early forties. Oh, Robinson Crusoe, That's right.
<v Speaker 2>Wasn't Robinson Cruz? Wasn't that a book? Wasn't What is Robinson?
<v Speaker 2>What is it?
<v Speaker 1>You know?
<v Speaker 2>If it's done in Chile, why is it named Robinson Crusoe?
<v Speaker 2>I don't get Oh Wan Fernandez there you go. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>the Wan Fernandez Islands. That's another cool biogy. I guess
<v Speaker 2>you can go out there. I want to go out
<v Speaker 2>there anyway. Sorry, sorry, what are you gonna say? I'm sorry,
<v Speaker 2>I'm so sorry for no.
<v Speaker 1>No, that day is less Ambroso I think it's really
<v Speaker 1>hard to get out there. I'm not sure. I think
<v Speaker 1>we'd get like special permission.
<v Speaker 2>I knew this God, I knew this guy, Frank Callahan.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if he's still alive. He was a
<v Speaker 2>crazy old bastard, but in a cool way. He had
<v Speaker 2>that kind of like Hunter S. Thompson vibe about him,
<v Speaker 2>and he was obsessed with connifers. He lived in He
<v Speaker 2>lived in gold something, Oregon, I forget the name of it,
<v Speaker 2>but this tiny little cutty town in the Klamath Mountains
<v Speaker 2>on the Oregon side where it's like super dry and
<v Speaker 2>the summer, you know, and it's all serpentine around there.
<v Speaker 2>And he hired some fucking Mexican fisherman to take him
<v Speaker 2>out to Guadalaloupe Island, like in the seventies or eighties,
<v Speaker 2>to collect seed of all this stuff. And he got
<v Speaker 2>I think he got seed to that Guadalupe cypress and
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of other side. I mean the goats were
<v Speaker 2>still there, and then before they removed the goats, the
<v Speaker 2>goats had destroyed everything and all it was left was
<v Speaker 2>a soil sea bank. But he got a I guess
<v Speaker 2>he got seed to that cypress where it was probably
<v Speaker 2>growing on cliffs or something. He was a character, man.
<v Speaker 2>I remember, yeah, God, I remember, like he took me
<v Speaker 2>out to look at some baker cypress, or look for
<v Speaker 2>some baker cypress that was near O'Brien, Oregon, some long
<v Speaker 2>lost stand. We never found it, but it was. But
<v Speaker 2>I spent the day with this guy and he was crazy.
<v Speaker 2>He was like this old Haggard died in the wool,
<v Speaker 2>you know. Fucking uh it's like southern Oregon plant dude.
<v Speaker 2>And yeah it was. It was a fucking experience, this experience.
<v Speaker 2>This was like twenty eleven or something. Anyway, I digress anyway,
<v Speaker 2>So doctor Mackenzie Maybury, welcome to the Crime Pace Upton.
<v Speaker 2>I'm recording, by the way too, I snucked in there.
<v Speaker 2>That was a cool story about about Chile. But doctor
<v Speaker 2>Mackenzie Maybray, who's studying brass of Kayley's and recently got
<v Speaker 2>back from the Mibia where you got to see I'm
<v Speaker 2>so jealous Tigano fighting. What is the species, Karra? What
<v Speaker 2>is it?
<v Speaker 1>The car?
<v Speaker 2>Sense?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, the Taigano fighting car and sunsay. I think I.
<v Speaker 2>Would think, oh God, what is this? You know? Thank
<v Speaker 2>God for the Internet. Yeah, Cara sense k A R
<v Speaker 2>A s E N s e. Oh there's my photo
<v Speaker 2>from the Namibia the wind hook herbarium. How do you
<v Speaker 2>pronounce wind hook?
<v Speaker 1>Is that like a be ben hook?
<v Speaker 2>Wind hook? Oh, it's like a German huh.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's from.
<v Speaker 2>When the Crouch colonized Namibia and then they got thrown out.
<v Speaker 2>Later you could say crowd. It's fine, it's it's like
<v Speaker 2>it's an Anglo anyways. But okay, that aside. So when
<v Speaker 2>Namibia was really cool, it seemed a lot more chill
<v Speaker 2>to me than South Africa, which still has you know,
<v Speaker 2>I mean apartheid. Maybe I got its independence before apartheid
<v Speaker 2>was ended, which was in it. That's when na maybe
<v Speaker 2>I got its independence.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, oh wow, I.
<v Speaker 2>Thought it was earlier than that, but they had a revolution.
<v Speaker 2>I mean I noticed it was a little more chill.
<v Speaker 2>It felt a little more chill when I was there,
<v Speaker 2>Like it was like it was more equitable. They had
<v Speaker 2>gotten like more equitable than South Africa, which is not
<v Speaker 2>saying much because South Africa, I mean, apartheid was so
<v Speaker 2>fucking crazy. But I know I enjoyed Namibia. I still
<v Speaker 2>met some crazy racist old white woman though, oh yeah
<v Speaker 2>they're out there.
<v Speaker 1>Everyone I met was super nice.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool. Okay, anyway, sorry, sorry, we
<v Speaker 2>won't get into that. But but we got the same
<v Speaker 2>shit here in the US, of course. But but the
<v Speaker 2>plants there are fucking incredible and and you were you
<v Speaker 2>were going out to see so tell eybody about Titanofy tasty.
<v Speaker 2>This is a this is a not just a genus,
<v Speaker 2>not just a species, not just a genus, but an
<v Speaker 2>entire family that was only described in like twenty fourteen,
<v Speaker 2>right twenty twenty. Wow, I didn't realize it was that recent.
<v Speaker 2>Holy hell.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So it's just a really interesting and we're looking.
<v Speaker 1>I always say, it looks more like an octopus than
<v Speaker 1>a plant. Has like these little short shoots that kind
<v Speaker 1>of resemble like suckers, like from an octopus. But it
<v Speaker 1>is just does not look like any other But you
<v Speaker 1>commonly think of when you think of Brassic casey or
<v Speaker 1>brass achilles, but it does. It has very minute, tiny
<v Speaker 1>little flowers that then kind of start to look a
<v Speaker 1>little more grassic caseish, but it is. It was a
<v Speaker 1>surprise for see. So I first went to Namibia in
<v Speaker 1>twenty twenty four really kind of for fun, but I
<v Speaker 1>was teaching a workshop in South Africa. So then we
<v Speaker 1>went over to Namibia to work at Goba Bad. This
<v Speaker 1>is a research facility in the in the desert, and
<v Speaker 1>then we went out to find Wowichia, of course, because
<v Speaker 1>you can't leave Namibia without seeing Wowichia. And then we
<v Speaker 1>kind of got to talking and they had mentioned that
<v Speaker 1>there was this, you know, one plant that had been
<v Speaker 1>described using just herbarium material. So people going through the
<v Speaker 1>collections and noticing that this one species it was first
<v Speaker 1>lifted as self Sola, I believe, did not kind of
<v Speaker 1>fit the expectations, and so these researchers went through and
<v Speaker 1>then went to look at it in the field and
<v Speaker 1>then discovered it was not even in the same family.
<v Speaker 1>It was actually in the bracket case. And so they
<v Speaker 1>named it. And there's only really three known populations that
<v Speaker 1>are listed in that original description in twenty twenty and
<v Speaker 1>so with the director of gob Abub and the head scientist.
<v Speaker 1>So this is Jillian and Eugene. We drove out there.
<v Speaker 1>It was like ten hours south from the Kubabab Research
<v Speaker 1>Facility to try to find his plant. It was quite
<v Speaker 1>the journey. We did a lot of eye naturalist documentation
<v Speaker 1>along the way.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you, thank you. I tell it man, there's people
<v Speaker 2>there's like, you know, friends of mine who are in
<v Speaker 2>academia who are scientists whatever studying really cool stuff, and
<v Speaker 2>I tell them, can you put that on IAT so
<v Speaker 2>other people can learn about it? And they're like, I
<v Speaker 2>don't really use on it. I'm like waw why, But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so thank you for doing that. That's amazing because your
<v Speaker 2>photos on IAD are incredible. If anybody wants to look
<v Speaker 2>at him t I G A N O p H
<v Speaker 2>y t O N. This thing is fucking bizarre, though,
<v Speaker 2>what would and no plant is anything without its habitat,
<v Speaker 2>So describe for us what the habitat here was like
<v Speaker 2>where these three populations are.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so they're on salt pans, are kind of on
<v Speaker 1>the really like the outside edges of salt pans, so
<v Speaker 1>super dry and pretty in some populations pretty sandy. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they do not get much water. There's parts of Namabia
<v Speaker 1>that don't get water for years, and if they do
<v Speaker 1>it's just millimeters, so just super super dry, extreme environment,
<v Speaker 1>all sun, pretty short like scrubby spaces. It's not too
<v Speaker 1>many like tall plants for shading or anything, but these
<v Speaker 1>like edges of salt pans is where they seem to be.
<v Speaker 1>And we were able to find a fourth population once
<v Speaker 1>we got a good search image for it, so we
<v Speaker 1>put that on I naturalists as well, But it was
<v Speaker 1>they're so surprising. It was like I thought from the
<v Speaker 1>photos that they were gonna be like my height, so
<v Speaker 1>I'm like five but a little bit tall, like I
<v Speaker 1>thought there would be around like a tall shrub size,
<v Speaker 1>and they are much smaller. In some areas they were
<v Speaker 1>like really really tiny, just like maybe I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>twelve to fourteen inches. And then there were some that
<v Speaker 1>we found another population that like got to be maybe
<v Speaker 1>like thirty inches and like kind of wide and more
<v Speaker 1>like a shrubby plant than like a smaller kind of
<v Speaker 1>populations the different ages, and then I think, but I'm
<v Speaker 1>not sure that some they kind of send these shoots
<v Speaker 1>straight up and I again have no way to prove it.
<v Speaker 1>We wouldn't interested in is just to see if like
<v Speaker 1>it's because they get covered in the sand. That there
<v Speaker 1>was one that I took a photo of that it
<v Speaker 1>was almost all covered in sand, but then the little
<v Speaker 1>shoots were sticking up, just like these tiny little green
<v Speaker 1>shoots just sticking out of the sand. But the main
<v Speaker 1>part of the plant was all covered in sand, possibly
<v Speaker 1>kind of to help with these like sandstorms that come through.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, can you tell what was the was
<v Speaker 2>the sand like an igneous derived sand or was it
<v Speaker 2>like a limestone? Could you tell?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know those types of sands. I'm that about
<v Speaker 1>soil types, but I can see if they.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I guess it doesn't matter it was it's
<v Speaker 2>probably like a quartzite, because I think most of that
<v Speaker 2>most of this stuff down there is metamorphous, like very
<v Speaker 2>old metamorphous granite.
<v Speaker 1>But could it as it is expected to be in
<v Speaker 1>like somewhat saline soils. And then cal pllicicle, you know
<v Speaker 1>that type calic calicle.
<v Speaker 2>No, how do you see a L C?
<v Speaker 1>I see oh p A L see C A L
<v Speaker 1>C I see C L C.
<v Speaker 2>A Oh probably uh, let's see, yeah, Colich so maybe
<v Speaker 2>it is calcium based, so maybe it's like a limestone.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, but either way, super salty because it's
<v Speaker 2>super salty, which we expect to see in desert areas
<v Speaker 2>because you get high evaporation rates and lots of water
<v Speaker 2>running into valleys that heads weathered the rock around it.
<v Speaker 2>So I guess it's not surprising. But these things they
<v Speaker 2>probably grow incredibly slowly too.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I think they they must. We did see
<v Speaker 1>it seem like some different like generations are They're like
<v Speaker 1>the smaller ones and then the larger ones. So I
<v Speaker 1>hope we don't know about the age though, but we
<v Speaker 1>took some samples back and going to collaborate with a expert,
<v Speaker 1>Mark Olsen, you know that is going to try to
<v Speaker 1>look at the wood of it to see if we
<v Speaker 1>can learn anything from that part of it.
<v Speaker 2>God, that's going to be cool. Probably see if there's
<v Speaker 2>the growth rings or something or what.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, he I sent him some photos that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>once we get permits and everything, he will send I'll
<v Speaker 1>ship it to him to.
<v Speaker 2>Let me see. What do you know, what latitude that
<v Speaker 2>was it? What latitude is na Maybia? Probably like upper
<v Speaker 2>twenties or early early thirties. I don't know. Let's see,
<v Speaker 2>got you man, you got some nice photos up there. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>thank you for putting those up. It's so cool to
<v Speaker 2>see that. Yeah. Negative. It's twenty five south. Yeah, so
<v Speaker 2>that's cool. So there is like very cool, So there
<v Speaker 2>would be yeah, there definitely would be a season. It's
<v Speaker 2>it's far enough south, so there would probably be good
<v Speaker 2>growth rings. Yeah, man, what what is up with that?
<v Speaker 2>So it's got like these little rosettes of leaves, like
<v Speaker 2>attenuated branch It's heavily branched, but the branches are also
<v Speaker 2>heavily attenuated, so that they just basically look like scales
<v Speaker 2>that spiral around the plant, and uh like like scales
<v Speaker 2>of leaf rosettes.
<v Speaker 1>I guess, right, Yeah, that's like the kind of the
<v Speaker 1>best guess. But they're they're working, I said. The last
<v Speaker 1>author of the original description of the paper is doing
<v Speaker 1>some anatomy on the plant right now, so hopefully that
<v Speaker 1>kind of information can be a little bit more understood
<v Speaker 1>for this group. But I think we just really don't
<v Speaker 1>know very much.
<v Speaker 2>It's one of the most bizarre looking plants I've ever seen,
<v Speaker 2>probably oh weird.
<v Speaker 1>Do you think it looks like an octopus. I think it's.
<v Speaker 2>Totally Oh yeah, totally yeah. I mean those little those
<v Speaker 2>leaf rosettes look like the suckers. Yeah, they look like
<v Speaker 2>the the oct Yeah. I was obsessed with this plant, man,
<v Speaker 2>I had it. I was down there with my friend
<v Speaker 2>Russell and and he was he was studying Miss Sims
<v Speaker 2>and I was like, we gotta go see tiganaphyting and
<v Speaker 2>and then I had to leave Lamibia, Namibia, but I
<v Speaker 2>had to cut the trip short. But uh yeah, that's man, God,
<v Speaker 2>it's such a weird place. So but this this is
<v Speaker 2>a great segue in to your work with the Order itself,
<v Speaker 2>press of Kaylee's, which is also fucking weird. I mean
<v Speaker 2>it's the Mustard Order. Got a lot of weird members
<v Speaker 2>in there, and a lot of weird monotypic members like COBERLINEA,
<v Speaker 2>which I don't know what the common name is all theigners,
<v Speaker 2>who gives a shit, I don't know. COBERLINEA is is
<v Speaker 2>so unique, it's it's it's basically like another one of
<v Speaker 2>those crucifixion thorn desert style plant, you know, leafless photosynthetic stems,
<v Speaker 2>just looks like a brand, like a big you know,
<v Speaker 2>sometimes colony twelve feet wide by ten feet tall of
<v Speaker 2>spines with no leaves, just green spines with no leaves.
<v Speaker 2>And I'll see them out in West Texas, just forming
<v Speaker 2>these little thickets that have to be great habitat for
<v Speaker 2>all kinds of cool critters to hide from, you know,
<v Speaker 2>raptors and bobcats whatever. It's also good cool.
<v Speaker 1>I haven't seen that yet. I want to come see it.
<v Speaker 2>You've never seen COBERLINEA. Yeah, there's a I think there's
<v Speaker 2>a there's a disjunct stand in the Newberry Mountains and
<v Speaker 2>the Mojave, but everything else is like I think other
<v Speaker 2>than that, like Western Arizona Cofa National Wildlife Refuge is
<v Speaker 2>the furthest West. I've ever seen it, but I guess
<v Speaker 2>there's a disjunct in the Mohave. But the Mohave is
<v Speaker 2>so much drier than where it normally grows too, so
<v Speaker 2>but anyway, sorry, okay, So, and then there's such a lant,
<v Speaker 2>the se which is such a lant this. So tell
<v Speaker 2>how did you get into Brassic Kaylee's work and what
<v Speaker 2>is so bizarre about it?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? So I got into working on the Brassickeales during
<v Speaker 1>my PhD. And it was really coming at this perspective
<v Speaker 1>of trying to understand where whole genome duplications happen across
<v Speaker 1>the phylogeny, and so we tried to mostly using like
<v Speaker 1>a feed collection, grow as many representatives from the order
<v Speaker 1>that we could. And so it was like growing these
<v Speaker 1>weird plants, which I just kind of feam of them,
<v Speaker 1>like riseidacy, it's so smelly that people either love it
<v Speaker 1>or hate it, and then like kleomis are super sticky,
<v Speaker 1>Like it's just there's just some really cool plants in
<v Speaker 1>this group, and so kind of fell in love with
<v Speaker 1>them growing them in the greenhouse. And then when we
<v Speaker 1>got their DNA to try to understand how they're related
<v Speaker 1>to one another and trying to place these whole genome duplications,
<v Speaker 1>we found that we were not unfortunately able to confidently
<v Speaker 1>place this one whole genome duplication called at beta that
<v Speaker 1>is somewhere in the middle or near like the base
<v Speaker 1>of the order. Such a land sac is actually going
<v Speaker 1>to be a really important group to understand where that is.
<v Speaker 1>But that a lot of these families have family like
<v Speaker 1>independent whole genome duplication, so like polyploidy and hold gingum
<v Speaker 1>duplication is rampant across this group of plants. And it's
<v Speaker 1>cool because we already know that some of are my
<v Speaker 1>favorite crops, like the Braska crops of cabbage, cauliflower, canola, blacktoy,
<v Speaker 1>all these delicious vegetables and seeds wells like have the
<v Speaker 1>history of whole genum duplication that may be associated with
<v Speaker 1>their ability to domesticate them for all these unique cultivars
<v Speaker 1>that we enjoy. So polypilidi, you know, we believe is
<v Speaker 1>like one pathway to developing new traits or key innovations,
<v Speaker 1>and so that's one of the that's the way we
<v Speaker 1>came at this order. But then kind of luckily started
<v Speaker 1>learning more about the group when we were successful in
<v Speaker 1>getting funding from the Joint Genome Institute, which is through
<v Speaker 1>Doe Department of Energy to sequence a genome or two
<v Speaker 1>mums from every family in the order to look at
<v Speaker 1>just these really interesting traits. So at the base of
<v Speaker 1>the order, wittiness is actually ancestral. And so when we
<v Speaker 1>typically think Nebraska, I think most folks will picture a
<v Speaker 1>herbaceous plant, but the ancestral state of this order is woody.
<v Speaker 1>Secondary metabolites like lucosinolates are all across the.
<v Speaker 2>Order and glucosimilates those are they're like sulfur compounds, correct.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, mustard oil. So the reason you like mustard, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>with sabby mustard. All of the reason why people used
<v Speaker 1>to hate Brussels sprouts, it's really been bred out of
<v Speaker 1>them so much of buttery. Now they're so good. They're
<v Speaker 1>so good.
<v Speaker 2>You roast those things. You know what Brussels sprouts, that's
<v Speaker 2>what tiganophyton looks like. It looks like Brussels sprouts.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, I never thought.
<v Speaker 2>It's the same fucking thing. Yeah, it's like those rosettes
<v Speaker 2>of leaves and there, really and really quick, let me
<v Speaker 2>interrupt you for polyploidy, for any fellow degenerates who may
<v Speaker 2>not be familiar with the you know, humans, mammals, vertebrates
<v Speaker 2>have two copies of the chromosome, or of the of
<v Speaker 2>the genome, right, two two copies of chromosomes. One comes
<v Speaker 2>from the one parent, one comes from another. Plants, of course,
<v Speaker 2>can have multiple copies of the chromosome, so like backup copies,
<v Speaker 2>and this is extremely beneficial. It gives them more in
<v Speaker 2>their quote genetic toolbox. It enables I mean, like all
<v Speaker 2>our crops are polyploid, like people hybridize two wild species, uh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and the hybrid is polyploid, and it's more
<v Speaker 2>robust and more able to cope with environmental stresses. Lots
<v Speaker 2>of weeds are polyploid, like you know, ruteral plants you
<v Speaker 2>find growing on piss strewn roadsides at truck stops that
<v Speaker 2>are able to cope with like getting the ship beat
<v Speaker 2>out of them by the sun and you know, really
<v Speaker 2>bad soil, et cetera. So polyploid is the thing that
<v Speaker 2>plants do that I think maybe there's probably a couple
<v Speaker 2>of animals. I don't know, I've never looked into polyploid
<v Speaker 2>and animals. Salmon are polyploid.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so there some fish, there, some frogs.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Okay, mammals.
<v Speaker 1>It's tricky because we have sexual reproduction.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, but anyway, but so it's the thing that
<v Speaker 2>you normally associate with plants. But it's a very it
<v Speaker 2>can be very adaptive, it's very it can be very
<v Speaker 2>beneficial most crops, most weeds, et cetera. And so that's
<v Speaker 2>polyploid is dominant in a Brasschle's order, not downinant, but
<v Speaker 2>very common in the brassicle's orders, as is being monotypic, right,
<v Speaker 2>like having a family that's out there on its own
<v Speaker 2>branch when you look at a phylogeny at a family tree,
<v Speaker 2>but it's only got like one species in it or
<v Speaker 2>one genus.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I was curious, Like I tried to do a
<v Speaker 1>little like research preparing for this, like to talk about
<v Speaker 1>like how if it is the order with the most
<v Speaker 1>monotypic families, and I think it has to be one
<v Speaker 1>of the most if you consider like percent of order,
<v Speaker 1>because there's on.
<v Speaker 2>Let's go ahead, sorry, sorry, keep going, keep coming.
<v Speaker 1>No, it's okay, there's uh, there's eighteen families on and
<v Speaker 1>I counted that there's like eight or like eight monotypic
<v Speaker 1>or nearly monotypic families. So what I mean by nearly
<v Speaker 1>monotypic being like just a couple full of species or
<v Speaker 1>like like two species one genus, and then there's like
<v Speaker 1>sometimes one split into two species that other people recognize
<v Speaker 1>it as one species. So around around eight families, which
<v Speaker 1>is kind of crazy. It's so they're so weird too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, totally, Okay. After wasting some water to ask
<v Speaker 2>artificial intelligence something, you know, they're they're doing it, they're
<v Speaker 2>gonna be they're using AI to find ways to fucking
<v Speaker 2>builk consumers and start in new wars. But I can
<v Speaker 2>use it to ask what is the most you know,
<v Speaker 2>the order with the most monotipic fan. It's saying lamey Alies,
<v Speaker 2>but oh, I don't know. I don't know about that.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like eight of of just like because lame
<v Speaker 1>alias has so many more families.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, maybe I don't know. I think as full
<v Speaker 2>of shit. Maybe it's maybe it's mixing this so I
<v Speaker 2>use deep Seat because that's the one that pissed off
<v Speaker 2>all the American billionaires and it's you know, I want
<v Speaker 2>to support Chine but uh anyway, okay, but so but Brasilles.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, like I think, I think with this order,
<v Speaker 2>people don't realize how much is in it. Maringa, which
<v Speaker 2>is like the famous abulita plant where I live, Like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>where I live. Every Mexican grant he's got a maringa
<v Speaker 2>tree in the yard.
<v Speaker 1>Uh, papaya love maringa powder. For like people take maringa
<v Speaker 1>as a stupplement. You can go your local GMC and
<v Speaker 1>buy a maringa.
<v Speaker 2>Do you think that's snake oil? Do you think that's bullshit?
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's good for you, but enough to be
<v Speaker 2>I've hoized and sold it, you know, however much.
<v Speaker 1>I've never tried it. But yeah, so speaking for your memory,
<v Speaker 1>I'll try.
<v Speaker 2>I'll try boofing maringa powder next time. You can be
<v Speaker 2>ye subject, okay, yeah a cane ac. Never heard of
<v Speaker 2>that tropy olece. Of course, that's the genus Tropiolum, which
<v Speaker 2>is mega diverse in the Andes, really fucking cool.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, are sorry desertions. Everyone loves planting. I can't ever
<v Speaker 1>say that genus that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally. But and you can again that glucoscinillites you
<v Speaker 2>can smell or when you touch on me. They got
<v Speaker 2>that mustard. It used to be this thing like every
<v Speaker 2>hippie in the Bay Area would be like, oh, tropy Nosturtium,
<v Speaker 2>you could you could eat it. And then like I realized,
<v Speaker 2>and so I just came to know that one species.
<v Speaker 2>Then I realized there's like thirty of them with crazy
<v Speaker 2>flowers and they're all kind of waxy and have that
<v Speaker 2>you know, really heavy on the wax on the leaves.
<v Speaker 2>And then I found out that that's the common names nasturtium.
<v Speaker 2>It's not actually Nasturtium's its own genus that's also in
<v Speaker 2>this order, but in a different family.
<v Speaker 1>But.
<v Speaker 2>Mooringaycy Yeah, and then Mooringaycy, which is the I will
<v Speaker 2>lead a plant, you know, the nice tree see and
<v Speaker 2>like the granny's backyard, but it's also Maringo big genus.
<v Speaker 2>Some of them are bottle trees and the Maybia. Did
<v Speaker 2>you see any of those?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they're so cool. They're like I saw one. Nothing
<v Speaker 1>else was in flower, like it's just lunar landscapes. And
<v Speaker 1>then off a distance you see one Maringa tree and
<v Speaker 1>a full flower. So we like cart the car, of course,
<v Speaker 1>and ran out. It always looks far, it looks closer
<v Speaker 1>than it is, but we got out there and they're
<v Speaker 1>just like thousands of bees just like so happy because
<v Speaker 1>this one Maringa tree and it was it's so beautiful.
<v Speaker 1>And then we like scaled this rocky mountain or outcrop
<v Speaker 1>to try to like get up to some closer to
<v Speaker 1>some Oh. They're just so cool.
<v Speaker 2>And they can love them. They can flower and survive
<v Speaker 2>in that because a lot of them are succulent, right yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Well they have that like storage system in their trunk.
<v Speaker 2>The bottle. Yeah, they've got like a bottle shaped trunk.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And then oh wow, that's Mareen Gacy's sister to Kara Casey.
<v Speaker 2>That's the papaya fa correct.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and sees interesting because we also know that it
<v Speaker 1>has sex chromosomes and that's not too common in the
<v Speaker 1>plant world.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, explain what do you mean by that?
<v Speaker 1>So, like humans, we have an X and Y chromosome,
<v Speaker 1>and so that's not too common across the plant plant
<v Speaker 1>world that Casey is one place you found it, you
<v Speaker 1>find it.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, so the chromosomes themselves are like demarketed in the
<v Speaker 2>genome as being one sex or.
<v Speaker 1>The other cracked. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's crazy, it's so cool. Yeah. What do you
<v Speaker 2>think the adaptive benefit of that is something having to
<v Speaker 2>do without crossing?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I would guess something about keeping the nied diversity.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, okay, And then we got the limb nant theacy,
<v Speaker 2>which sounds familiar, but I don't. I don't. I can't
<v Speaker 2>think of that. Do you know that one?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's a cool one. And there are some really
<v Speaker 1>endemic like natives to California. There is another really small,
<v Speaker 1>small family. Uh, and it's just the one in California,
<v Speaker 1>I think so. And it's a it's just their nice, cute,
<v Speaker 1>little tiny plants.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, okay, I've seen Yeah, that's right, Lemna.
<v Speaker 1>In vernal pools, which I think are one of the
<v Speaker 1>coolest ecosystems in California. I only know them in California.
<v Speaker 1>So some of the members of lemon thesis are vernal
<v Speaker 1>pool endemics too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's right. I haven't thought about this genus in
<v Speaker 2>four years, man, because I haven't been I haven't been
<v Speaker 2>out there button. I think, Wow, that's great. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>forgot about that. Guy. Oh that's nice. It's nice to
<v Speaker 2>be reminded. Okay. And then we got such a lant thesy.
<v Speaker 2>Tell everybody about such because this is so fucking cool.
<v Speaker 2>This is a really cool there's another monotypic family.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so such Alanthus is just when I'm like just
<v Speaker 1>getting kind of familiar with. So with some collaboration with
<v Speaker 1>Mark Olsen and some other colleagues in Mexico where it's
<v Speaker 1>endemic too, he actually thinks that this could be one
<v Speaker 1>of Mexico's only endemic plant families. So really cool group.
<v Speaker 1>And so we believe that it is like really important
<v Speaker 1>to understand where at beta falls in the phylogeny. And
<v Speaker 1>why that's important is and it allows us to kind
<v Speaker 1>of track the fate of genes that are responsible for
<v Speaker 1>some of these interesting traits that you and I have
<v Speaker 1>been talking about. But it has a disjunct distribution in
<v Speaker 1>Mexico as well. But really hard to get to these
<v Speaker 1>are like multiple day drives into the field to get
<v Speaker 1>to these plants. But they have purple flowers. They're really pretty.
<v Speaker 2>Wait what okay, so at beta again, refresher is what
<v Speaker 2>is this again?
<v Speaker 1>Well, it's just holding on duplication that we know is
<v Speaker 1>somewhere at the base of the order for this like
<v Speaker 1>file for the phylogeny, but we don't know exactly where
<v Speaker 1>it is. And so to kind of the one major
<v Speaker 1>goal that myself and doctor Pat Edger have is to
<v Speaker 1>try to figure out where it is in the order.
<v Speaker 1>And so we haven't been able to sample such a
<v Speaker 1>lands e very get any nuclear DNA for it. So
<v Speaker 1>we're hope we're with this collaboration and we're going to
<v Speaker 1>be able to figure out where that event occurs.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So when you say where it is in the order,
<v Speaker 2>basically you're going to find where on this cladogram it
<v Speaker 2>is and find what families don't have it, and what
<v Speaker 2>families do.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and then hopefully we can see as like an
<v Speaker 1>expansion of a gene family that's responsible for I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>any kind of interesting trait after that whole genome duplication
<v Speaker 1>once we know where it is.
<v Speaker 2>Would you say as a whole that that brash Achilles.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, there's there's aquatic members too, but would you
<v Speaker 2>say as a whole they're kind of more more of
<v Speaker 2>the species and families in there are more cut out
<v Speaker 2>for dry environments.
<v Speaker 1>I they're very woody, like a lot of them. But
<v Speaker 1>there it depends like for the families. Maybe for if
<v Speaker 1>you just look at the families, but I feel like
<v Speaker 1>at individual species, a lot of them are Mediterranean.
<v Speaker 2>Mm hmmm, well that's I mean that's dry, that's somewhat dry. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>summerre dry. The hottest season is the driest.
<v Speaker 1>But uh, and then you have like Cape Racey that's
<v Speaker 1>more tropical ish. Yeah, Papaia is a little bit more
<v Speaker 1>tropical ish.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Pi is not. But yeah, man, there's some really
<v Speaker 2>cool Okay, so keep it. We're moving down a finelane. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>So such a lant. They see sister to lem nanthis,
<v Speaker 2>they see which is lym Nanthe's yeah, in such a lan. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>there's like a population in Hidalgo and then a population
<v Speaker 2>in takuakan uh the wa kan take Uaking you know,
<v Speaker 2>take Waking biospe reserve.
<v Speaker 1>But we're working on that one right now. So working
<v Speaker 1>to first you got it, you need to go into
<v Speaker 1>the communities. But these plants occur, So this is all
<v Speaker 1>information I've learned from Mark, like, and then ask for
<v Speaker 1>permission to sample these plants. And then once you have
<v Speaker 1>permission from these communities, then you're allowed to ask the
<v Speaker 1>government for permission to sample them. So it will be
<v Speaker 1>many year or a year probably till we can get
<v Speaker 1>the proper permissions in order to sample this plant. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>trying to do it the right way.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they don't. I don't want just a bunch of
<v Speaker 2>random hockeys going down there being like you know, they're
<v Speaker 2>they're skeptical, understandably, I guess. But I mean, you guys
<v Speaker 2>are working with Mexican bondanists too though, Yeah, yeah, but
<v Speaker 2>are they are they generally they're not like wary of scientists,
<v Speaker 2>are they? Depending on where you go or what I mean,
<v Speaker 2>Like indigenous communities, there's just small farming communities or I haven't.
<v Speaker 1>Been down there, I hope too. So I'm not sure
<v Speaker 1>exactly what the community makeup is, but for sure to
<v Speaker 1>small local communities. And I think it's just trying to
<v Speaker 1>I know that's required for the permits right now in Mexico,
<v Speaker 1>so getting permits has been really hard lately. Yeah, just
<v Speaker 1>trying to protect resources, which is understandable.
<v Speaker 2>Well. Also, I think when like the one of the
<v Speaker 2>countries involved, it's like behaving like such a dick to
<v Speaker 2>the you know what I mean. Yeah, I guess they're
<v Speaker 2>asking for visas now to go down there too. I
<v Speaker 2>want like to there, which they're just like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I think understandably to their attitude is just kind of
<v Speaker 2>like you fuck you.
<v Speaker 1>Guys, like you guys you know, yeah, no, maybe too,
<v Speaker 1>you know, have to have a visa Jesus really yep.
<v Speaker 1>They just went into a fact April.
<v Speaker 2>Oh god, so what does that mean just topply online
<v Speaker 2>and then pay a fee and wait or what?
<v Speaker 1>That's it sounds like it I have it stupid, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>we charge them visas to come.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's stupid too.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I know, I know, man, I agree.
<v Speaker 2>Just think of like Marco Rube Gout. I fucking hate
<v Speaker 2>Marco Rubio. I fucking hate that guy. He's such a phony.
<v Speaker 2>He's such a fucking car salesman. All these people no
<v Speaker 2>offense to actual car salesman, you know what I mean,
<v Speaker 2>insurance salesman, you know what I mean. I'm not knocking
<v Speaker 2>to work. I'm just saying I'm not going to work
<v Speaker 2>in class someone who's got to sell fucking mazdas for
<v Speaker 2>a living. I'm just saying. These politicians, all these specially
<v Speaker 2>the right wing ones. Anyway, Okay, sorry, So uh cobralinear
<v Speaker 2>c bad tasty, bad tasty is Ah, that's like a
<v Speaker 2>salty It's a salty dog. It's a salty litter yeat.
<v Speaker 1>An aquatic plant too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, where have I seen I think I've seen
<v Speaker 2>that on the Gulf here in southern Texas.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. It's another really
<v Speaker 1>cool one. That's a kind of nearly monotypic too. Right,
<v Speaker 1>there's two species but one genus, and it is I
<v Speaker 1>grew that one at the University of Missouri during my PhD.
<v Speaker 1>And it is so cool. It's just they're very very
<v Speaker 1>cute plants. I really like. Unfortunately, that that one has
<v Speaker 1>not made it, but I really want to come go
<v Speaker 1>try to see some. Also, a lot of these I
<v Speaker 1>grew and then haven't seen all of them. But there's
<v Speaker 1>so many to see. It's like a checklist.
<v Speaker 2>Their baitis is its succulent too? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Mm hm. But it's like you have this plant and
<v Speaker 1>then you have taigonophyton in the same order. This is
<v Speaker 1>so different from one another.
<v Speaker 2>That's so weird, man. Yeah, so so succulents and salt
<v Speaker 2>tolerance and glucoscinilate fight out chemistry. Does every family have glucosinillates?
<v Speaker 1>I think every family, but uh, cobralin ace o.
<v Speaker 2>Weird, weird Salvador ace Ooh, another one of my favorites.
<v Speaker 1>What we learned about Yeah, so Salvador acey is you
<v Speaker 1>can also find it in the bibia. It's all along.
<v Speaker 1>There's actually one growing in the lobby of the globobob
<v Speaker 1>Research facility and it's all along in the washes. And
<v Speaker 1>I learned this last trip that the local tribes chew
<v Speaker 1>on the sticks of it to like as a toothbrush
<v Speaker 1>to keep their teeth white.
<v Speaker 2>So, okay, how many how many genera in there?
<v Speaker 1>Three?
<v Speaker 2>Three? God damn man, I want to see that too.
<v Speaker 2>Are there any is there any? Are there any in
<v Speaker 2>North America of Salvador? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Easy? Uh?
<v Speaker 2>Probably not? No man. How long were you in the
<v Speaker 2>Mibia for.
<v Speaker 1>This last trip? I went for because I kind of
<v Speaker 1>fell in love with the country, so I commenced my
<v Speaker 1>husband that he had to come see the country. So
<v Speaker 1>we went for a week before work for just touring around,
<v Speaker 1>and so I got to go up to the north
<v Speaker 1>part of the country. That was a week, and then
<v Speaker 1>I did a second week in Namibia doing the research,
<v Speaker 1>and then a third week in South Africa at the
<v Speaker 1>University of Patoria where they just had their one hundred
<v Speaker 1>year celebration for their herbaria.
<v Speaker 2>Oh shit, that's that's great. Man. Did you see you
<v Speaker 2>see any cool snakes in the Mibia.
<v Speaker 1>No, I'm afraid of snakes. I was shying not to
<v Speaker 1>see them, but I didn't see any.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they got those. They got bigger lapids over there.
<v Speaker 2>They got every vipers and the lapids. There's some cool. Uh,
<v Speaker 2>there's some cool I'd love to see. I've only seen
<v Speaker 2>a lamp at once. The cobra family. It was spitting
<v Speaker 2>at us and my friend Adam was like trying to
<v Speaker 2>I don't know what he was doing. He had a
<v Speaker 2>death wish at that point, so he was trying to
<v Speaker 2>like get to know it better. And it was funny.
<v Speaker 2>And this thing was just pissed off. It was like
<v Speaker 2>a spitting cobra. And I was like, just leave it alone.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, I just want to get close to look
<v Speaker 2>at it and and uh but it was spitting at us.
<v Speaker 2>I was like, Jesus christ Man, this is like a
<v Speaker 2>this this really ups the ante. Like, we got rattlesnakes.
<v Speaker 2>They're very kind. They let you know when you're close
<v Speaker 2>a spitting coat, a snake that spits venom. It's like
<v Speaker 2>a you know, he died.
<v Speaker 1>Is a danger noodle. You stay away from it. Yeah. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this is why when we went to try to when
<v Speaker 1>we went to go find Taygonophyton, the collaborators are talking
<v Speaker 1>about Jillian and eighteen. They are the coolest people. But
<v Speaker 1>they were like, okay, well we just pull over and
<v Speaker 1>sleep on the side of the road. Like and I
<v Speaker 1>was like with these snakes and like all these scary
<v Speaker 1>animals like lions and everything that are going to eat. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they don't even use a tent. They are super hardcore.
<v Speaker 1>And I really I do not consider myself like too prissy,
<v Speaker 1>but apparently I am because I needed I.
<v Speaker 2>Wanted to no man, no, and they have there's scorpions
<v Speaker 2>over there that will that can kill you too. They're
<v Speaker 2>not just like the little bark scorpions we have that
<v Speaker 2>will you know how, it's like a beast thing. It's
<v Speaker 2>like big ass scary scorpions. Man.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And then uh, Eugene's like, don't worry, I sleep
<v Speaker 1>with an axe and I was like that, I know,
<v Speaker 1>I still don't think I can be sleep.
<v Speaker 2>Did you see did you see any large predatory mammals
<v Speaker 2>while you were there?
<v Speaker 1>Well, so the first week I was there more is
<v Speaker 1>like tourists. We were in Atosha at the National park
<v Speaker 1>in the north part of Namibia, and so we saw
<v Speaker 1>lions and lion cubs and very cute que animals. But
<v Speaker 1>I didn't see anything like out just a lot of
<v Speaker 1>ors Ostrich What about Secretary, I saw drafts in Oh
<v Speaker 1>we saw them the first year in twenty twenty four
<v Speaker 1>out like and then we saw zebras. We I think
<v Speaker 1>we did see zebras this time too, but yeah, it's
<v Speaker 1>it's so like coming from the US like driving and
<v Speaker 1>doing field work and like you look over after you
<v Speaker 1>filled up your car and gas and there's like giraffes.
<v Speaker 1>This hanging out is just like the wildest experience.
<v Speaker 2>Were you guys collecting for the for the your barium
<v Speaker 2>and Wynd Hook? Vind Hook? How do you say? Vind?
<v Speaker 2>What is it? Vind? Hook?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Is that right? Vin Hook?
<v Speaker 1>Then Hook? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay. Were you guys collecting for the bearing there?
<v Speaker 1>So they have a herbarium at Goba Bub Oh god,
<v Speaker 1>it's not digitized or anything, but it's just tiny, like
<v Speaker 1>a tiny yeah, but very good, good reference collection.
<v Speaker 2>Were you guys collecting a lot out there?
<v Speaker 1>We they collected specimens as vouchers did I? We didn't
<v Speaker 1>collect We just mostly did I and at documentation.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah yeah? But still what else was growing with
<v Speaker 2>with titana fighting in those salt pan areas?
<v Speaker 1>So a ton of South Sola, but not much is not.
<v Speaker 2>Bray, Probably not much else though?
<v Speaker 1>What else? I did see a borage because I'm always
<v Speaker 1>on the look for a borage, and I think it
<v Speaker 1>I think it was a helotropium. I don't remember what
<v Speaker 1>I identified it to, but and then I think we
<v Speaker 1>saw some other amorans. What else. That's pretty much. But
<v Speaker 1>it's growing like concurrently with the cell soul, which is
<v Speaker 1>why I'm not like surprised that they were like collected
<v Speaker 1>and on the same herbarium sheet if they like kind
<v Speaker 1>of share a little stand mound, so they were.
<v Speaker 2>On the same way with Gigano fighting was on the
<v Speaker 2>same herbarium sheet, like thought to be the same species
<v Speaker 2>as cell Sola.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's why it hasn't been described. It basically was
<v Speaker 1>like hiding in the herbaria for many years.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow, when was that collection from, you.
<v Speaker 1>Know, the original collection? I don't remember.
<v Speaker 2>We see, but like decades ago.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah wow, let's see. I can.
<v Speaker 2>So someone collected someone collected cell Sola and then collected
<v Speaker 2>a branch of tigain A fighting because it was growing
<v Speaker 2>next to it, and just said that these are the
<v Speaker 2>same thing. Yeah, wow, crazy, that's wild.
<v Speaker 1>Man, my understanding of it when I like read read
<v Speaker 1>the paper.
<v Speaker 2>So someone was then in the herbarium and looking and
<v Speaker 2>that's how they noticed this is different, then went out
<v Speaker 2>to go why not to go inspected at the collection location.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's the first author.
<v Speaker 2>Damn, that's that's wild. That's pretty cool. That's it also
<v Speaker 2>highlights the importance of her baria exactly.
<v Speaker 1>Like there's so many taxa that are still like order
<v Speaker 1>specimens that are like, you know, a genius stuff Like
<v Speaker 1>there's I think a lot of biodiversity that's underscribed that's
<v Speaker 1>in the herbaria. And as you know, herbaria are critically
<v Speaker 1>underfunded and being closed, like the do Cerbarium where they
<v Speaker 1>just decided no more.
<v Speaker 2>That went already. Huh is that closed it?
<v Speaker 1>Or yeah?
<v Speaker 2>It's crazy man.
<v Speaker 1>Right, it is crazy. And so like all these stories,
<v Speaker 1>we would never know about it if you know, people
<v Speaker 1>weren't going through their specimens.
<v Speaker 2>Well yeah. And also but like plants are the base
<v Speaker 2>of everything. Without them, you don't have any life, and
<v Speaker 2>you know on land and then and then an erbarium
<v Speaker 2>is a collection of pressed plants from you know, that region,
<v Speaker 2>you know, dating back a century sometimes two or three centuries.
<v Speaker 2>And if you don't have that, I mean, how can
<v Speaker 2>you be like a large mainstream institution and not having erbarium.
<v Speaker 2>It's insane. It's totally for them, it's totally embarrassing. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but I mean it's it goes along with like the
<v Speaker 2>defunding of science in the US altogether. Unless it can
<v Speaker 2>be used for medicine or for some other like technology anthropocentric,
<v Speaker 2>you know, but if.
<v Speaker 1>We think about it, this one, right, this weird plant
<v Speaker 1>in the middle desert, right is super adapted for salt
<v Speaker 1>salty soils and for super dry areas, And those are
<v Speaker 1>the types of environments we're gonna need to be able
<v Speaker 1>to grow crops when we think about how the climate
<v Speaker 1>is changing. And so we can learn from this plant
<v Speaker 1>and a dot and like try to adapt and like
<v Speaker 1>help our crops, like kind of a it's a cousin
<v Speaker 1>of Ourbraska crops, Like what did it do to survive?
<v Speaker 1>Can we then help our crops?
<v Speaker 2>Oh? Absolutely. I mean to people like you and me
<v Speaker 2>who see the big picture and can see that little
<v Speaker 2>you know, that that little pin of worth in the haystack.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's easy for us because we're not just
<v Speaker 2>looking for the pin. We're enamored with the whole haystack.
<v Speaker 2>But I think the people that are still indoctrinated in
<v Speaker 2>the cult of just anthropocentric thinking, they don't see that.
<v Speaker 2>They don't find anything wonderful and incredible about the haystack.
<v Speaker 2>So they have to find that little pin. They can't.
<v Speaker 2>You often can't find it until you're looking sitting there,
<v Speaker 2>taking the time to look at the whole fucking haystack.
<v Speaker 2>And that's what that's what drives me nuts man about
<v Speaker 2>I mean everything that the society we live in. It's
<v Speaker 2>just it's so it's so disconnected. And then of course,
<v Speaker 2>you know you always hear like progressive Honkey's time, like
<v Speaker 2>oh the digit is this, the digit is that, but
<v Speaker 2>they never talk about stuff like this. I feel like
<v Speaker 2>they're it's just kind of like this identitarian fetishizing of
<v Speaker 2>a culture, many thousands of cultures, as if they're all
<v Speaker 2>the same. But they like this is why I always
<v Speaker 2>encurage me. I like talk about like the meat of
<v Speaker 2>the issue, like what is what is the ideology that's
<v Speaker 2>important here? It's like you have reverence for everything. It's
<v Speaker 2>all important. It's all important, and if you don't see
<v Speaker 2>the worth right now, you'll see it later on. But
<v Speaker 2>I fucking assure you it's there. These pieces are these
<v Speaker 2>plants are pieces to a living machine that keeps us
<v Speaker 2>all alive. It's it's a yeah, I could go on
<v Speaker 2>a rant forever, but I just wrote a book about
<v Speaker 2>it's all stopped. But it's a fucking depopera worldview. It's
<v Speaker 2>very frustrating.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, yeah, that's what we talk about. Plants keeps
<v Speaker 1>this happy.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, yeah yeah but okay, so okay, moving on
<v Speaker 2>down this fucking name. This name is hilarious. M blinge ac.
<v Speaker 2>What the ship is?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know much about this one.
<v Speaker 2>Have you heard this? You've heard this name before though, right, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, let me double check what I know about
<v Speaker 1>this one. So Australia, so this one is just in Australia,
<v Speaker 1>so I should have and I have only been to
<v Speaker 1>like Ularu kind of the central part of Australia and
<v Speaker 1>eastern Australia, so it's been like more western Australia.
<v Speaker 2>What were you doing there? You were in wait, you
<v Speaker 2>were in the central Australia.
<v Speaker 1>I went to Ularu. Yeah, for my honeymoon. Whoa, I
<v Speaker 1>was giving a talk in Sydney, it was. I was
<v Speaker 1>also like give a talk at a Nebraska conference in Sydney.
<v Speaker 2>Man, that's when was that? That's pretty cool. You've been
<v Speaker 2>in the Bras. You've been doing brassicas for a while,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I said, I said, Wow, she's been into
<v Speaker 2>these most of things for a long time. I thought this,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I'm a newcomer.
<v Speaker 1>No, I feel like because you and I most we
<v Speaker 1>talk about bouradges. Yeah, funny to talk about the bass
<v Speaker 1>is now on. I think I was twenty twenty two.
<v Speaker 1>I was there. It was a conference on canola oil. Actually,
<v Speaker 1>they're interested in understanding some of these other Brassica species
<v Speaker 1>and what we can learn from them, So there's interest
<v Speaker 1>for sure.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, this there's only one there's only one photograph. No,
<v Speaker 2>there's two. Yeah, yeah, one observation of Emblingia excuse me,
<v Speaker 2>and it's by someone calling themselves botanist Bob, just north
<v Speaker 2>of Perth. But it's it's yeah, I mean it's it
<v Speaker 2>looks like it might be a marshy environment. It's kind
<v Speaker 2>of near the uh, the coast. It's near let's see,
<v Speaker 2>what the fuck is this nature preserve? Lake Lake Low
<v Speaker 2>Nature Reserve. Yeah, I'm guessing that's like a marshland. I
<v Speaker 2>can't tell. God, it's another weird Yeah, it looks like
<v Speaker 2>juicy and kind of hairy. And I can't really tell
<v Speaker 2>what the flowers are like.
<v Speaker 1>But in Blinga, right, the flowers are kind of weird looking.
<v Speaker 1>But I don't know if this is in Britannica and.
<v Speaker 2>Blingia kelciot a weird. I love shit like this. This
<v Speaker 2>is one of the coolest things about INAD is you
<v Speaker 2>can go through you go on like the taxonomy chart
<v Speaker 2>and you can just look. You go to taxonomy and
<v Speaker 2>then you can click on like family genius whatever, and
<v Speaker 2>just see weird shit you never knew existed. Oh I
<v Speaker 2>think this is monotypic too.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, it's another weird one. We've been trying so
<v Speaker 1>for that funding for the genomes across the order. We've
<v Speaker 1>been working with research in Australia to try to get it,
<v Speaker 1>but we have haven't been able to quite yet. So
<v Speaker 1>hopefully we figured that one out. Oh you have, I'm
<v Speaker 1>on a mission.
<v Speaker 2>To get samples that is you mean?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Yeah, because to get high molecular weight for a genome,
<v Speaker 1>like so really good quality DNA, it's tricky. So all
<v Speaker 1>the way from Australia.
<v Speaker 2>So what is that? What do you mean high molecular weight?
<v Speaker 1>It's just a DNA. So if you like think about
<v Speaker 1>DNA kind of the strands of DNA, just the ones
<v Speaker 1>that are very long rather than little tiny pieces like
<v Speaker 1>it's been cut up.
<v Speaker 2>Right, which is what Yeah, because you're doing whole genome
<v Speaker 2>I guess this is the difference. This is the difference
<v Speaker 2>between whole genome sequencing and just doing like looking at
<v Speaker 2>certain regions gene regions.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yep, yeah, we're trying to get full chromosome to chromosome,
<v Speaker 1>like the end to end telling you're telling your level
<v Speaker 1>chromosomes or genome issembly.
<v Speaker 2>Just piecing together? I mean, are you like doing it
<v Speaker 2>by piecing together pieces of it?
<v Speaker 1>Like, No, we're trying to get like full, like the
<v Speaker 1>full sequence of everything. You're right, but that we can
<v Speaker 1>know all the genes and all the orders and of
<v Speaker 1>the genes.
<v Speaker 2>You know. I never even thought about. But the differences
<v Speaker 2>between like PCR, like just doing gene regions and then
<v Speaker 2>the whole gene I'm like, yeah, how do you do that? Man?
<v Speaker 2>That's so massive? Like are you you're still doing PCR?
<v Speaker 2>Presumably right, you have to amplify it.
<v Speaker 1>So so PCR typically what for like in I don't
<v Speaker 1>I think this is PCR free library prep. I haven't
<v Speaker 1>done any library preps. So we're working with a group
<v Speaker 1>in Arizona, the Arizona Genomics, a GI genomics institute, and
<v Speaker 1>they are experts doing all of this, so I get
<v Speaker 1>the fun part personally, I think I think they think
<v Speaker 1>their part is fun, Thank goodness. But I get to
<v Speaker 1>go on the field and try to find these cool plants.
<v Speaker 1>And then they take the tissue that I send them,
<v Speaker 1>so taking some leaf tissue, some different parts of the
<v Speaker 1>plants flowers, and then send that tissue to these folks
<v Speaker 1>in Arizona. They extract the DNA and make sure it's
<v Speaker 1>per They have like in house protocols that they do,
<v Speaker 1>and then they send that now DNA that's been extracted
<v Speaker 1>out of the plant to the sequencing team at Hudson
<v Speaker 1>Alpha in Huntsville, Alabama, and they do the sequencing. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>it's a full process, takes multiple years.
<v Speaker 2>So this is not just like this not just like
<v Speaker 2>Alan Rockefeller doing PCR in the trunk of a fucking
<v Speaker 2>Nissan or something. This is like a more a more involved.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. But what's cool about it is then rather than
<v Speaker 1>just looking at like a few genes at a time,
<v Speaker 1>or you know, we're able to look at the whole
<v Speaker 1>genome and so try to look at every gene, every
<v Speaker 1>like the order the genes are in, but not even
<v Speaker 1>just the genes, the like repetitive elements, like just everything
<v Speaker 1>about that genome and then we can compare it to
<v Speaker 1>all of the other families in the order and try
<v Speaker 1>to underlook at patterns.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so you look in at everything, coding, non coding regions, repeat,
<v Speaker 2>all that shit. Yeah, and so all that data is
<v Speaker 2>that's got to be millions of base pairs and that's
<v Speaker 2>just stored on I mean, how much storage space does
<v Speaker 2>that take.
<v Speaker 1>I'm probably not that much because it's just code, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>but it's it's once we have it all, it'll all
<v Speaker 1>be publicly available through like open source data basics.
<v Speaker 2>God, that's cool, that's so cool. But basically, then at
<v Speaker 2>the end of the day, you're taking this code, like
<v Speaker 2>the code from one family and then holding it up
<v Speaker 2>against the code from another family and saying where do
<v Speaker 2>they differ? Where are they the same?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Exactly. So there's like just like each of these
<v Speaker 1>plants are have a book, and all the like letters
<v Speaker 1>in the book is the code for making different genes?
<v Speaker 1>Are the words in the book? Are the codes the
<v Speaker 1>different genes? Then we can ask how are the books
<v Speaker 1>different from one another?
<v Speaker 2>And then each and then that information tells the story
<v Speaker 2>is how did how did this family you know, evolve
<v Speaker 2>differently under different conditions? In a different place than this family,
<v Speaker 2>which then tells a story about the land that it
<v Speaker 2>grew on itself and the climate and the period of
<v Speaker 2>time when they were thought to have evolved whatever. Very
<v Speaker 2>totally interesting shit exactly. Yeah, Okay, Well, in this podcast,
<v Speaker 2>I've learned what in Blingia is, which is fucking cool.
<v Speaker 2>I had no idea. That's weird monotype monotypic plant from
<v Speaker 2>West Australia. Okay, but now moving right along tovari ac.
<v Speaker 2>What's up with tovari ac?
<v Speaker 1>Another kind of like near monotypic depending on what taxonomy,
<v Speaker 1>what taxonomy you want to use, But I another one
<v Speaker 1>that I am less familiar with but would like to
<v Speaker 1>learn more about because it is another weird one. But
<v Speaker 1>it is more more like Central and South America and distribution.
<v Speaker 1>Uh huh.
<v Speaker 2>I'm looking at how many.
<v Speaker 1>Not too much information?
<v Speaker 2>Forty five observations? One another fucking monotypic? Is this monotypic? Two?
<v Speaker 1>It's nearly It depends on how who you ask, like
<v Speaker 1>sometimes two species, sometimes one species. There's one species. I
<v Speaker 1>think it's if you're using this taxonomy, I think it's pendula. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that it's only in Jamaica.
<v Speaker 2>What the fuck Colombia. These are from Colombia. Wait, only
<v Speaker 2>in Jamaica. Okay, so there's there's like a there might
<v Speaker 2>be some speciation in Jamaica.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, so at least it like has some sort
<v Speaker 1>of different morphotypes or characters that folks have been using.
<v Speaker 1>But there is no documentation I believe of that in
<v Speaker 1>I not. I think it's only kind of known from
<v Speaker 1>her barium records one.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, yeah, there's nothing. Nothing from Jamaica. And it's Ecuador, Colombia. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so like Central America.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's only like a specimen.
<v Speaker 2>Cool flowers though.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they're weird. They're really like flat kind of.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well but they've got they have this like stigma
<v Speaker 2>that looks like a poppy stigma. Yeah, it's bizarre. It
<v Speaker 2>goes up into Mexico supposedly, if those identifications are correct. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>northeast of Tawakan. Damn, No, that's probably bullshit. That's just
<v Speaker 2>a photo of leaves. I don't know who. No, No,
<v Speaker 2>it does look like it. Fuck wow, shit.
<v Speaker 1>From ars super tropical this one.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they like moisture. This this thing's grown in arracrus.
<v Speaker 2>That's fucking humans. So god, damn, I didn't realize it's
<v Speaker 2>another another monotypic Okay, okay, moving right along. Uh pented
<v Speaker 2>did plant? Dracy? What's what's this?
<v Speaker 1>Oh? I was so excited. This is one that like
<v Speaker 1>I have my sights on. I'm hoping to figure out
<v Speaker 1>a way. But it's a really interesting one to me
<v Speaker 1>because it's a it has a really huge history in
<v Speaker 1>the United States. So a researcher from Wisconsin, uh I
<v Speaker 1>believe was, Yeah, University of Wisconsin scientists firm that collected
<v Speaker 1>the plant in Gabon, so it's kind of all across
<v Speaker 1>Western Africa, and they extracted this protein is brazen that's
<v Speaker 1>like a protein based sweeter, so it makes everything you
<v Speaker 1>eat very very sweet, but it's protein based, and they
<v Speaker 1>patent it, but there was no benefit sharing in agreement
<v Speaker 1>with like Gabon or the Gabanese people, and so it's
<v Speaker 1>kind of been blacklisted as a biopiracy issue, and so
<v Speaker 1>it makes it really complicated. Want and I want to
<v Speaker 1>know about this plant in terms of its evolutionary story.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not that interested in being any sort of you know, chemicals,
<v Speaker 1>So then we have to figure out and I've been
<v Speaker 1>working with a researcher in actually Cameroon to try to
<v Speaker 1>figure out like what we could do and how we
<v Speaker 1>can manage benefit sharing where like the folks that this
<v Speaker 1>plant is native to have all these benefit sharings because
<v Speaker 1>you can imagine the type of money someone can make
<v Speaker 1>from a protein based sweetener, and like, how can we
<v Speaker 1>do this ethically when then our goals are the genomes
<v Speaker 1>are open source. So it's like I don't have answer.
<v Speaker 2>So some guys, some guys basically what do they do?
<v Speaker 2>Did they sneak this thing out or something and then
<v Speaker 2>are using it for this?
<v Speaker 1>I don't think it was like an intentional I would
<v Speaker 1>like to think, I guess I'll say I'd like to
<v Speaker 1>think that it wasn't necessarily an intentional like misuse, but
<v Speaker 1>that you know, they were setting this plant and brought
<v Speaker 1>it back and like you know, it was just different
<v Speaker 1>in how people were going to countries taking plants and
<v Speaker 1>bringing them back to the US. Like the whole history
<v Speaker 1>of colonialism is like strong with this history of going
<v Speaker 1>to different countries collecting plants and bringing them back and
<v Speaker 1>they were lucky found this really interesting sweeteners. If you
<v Speaker 1>talk to the folks that are native from this region,
<v Speaker 1>like this is every single human there knows this plant.
<v Speaker 1>It's like so ingrained in the part of the culture,
<v Speaker 1>so maybe they did know or had some suspect because
<v Speaker 1>it's like part of the what I've learned from these
<v Speaker 1>friends and collaborators is that you like can eat the
<v Speaker 1>berries and then like everything you eat after tastes really sweet.
<v Speaker 1>So you could eat like like I think this is dramatic,
<v Speaker 1>but like a fish, the fish would be sweet or
<v Speaker 1>like something like.
<v Speaker 2>You could eat a dog. You could eat a dog
<v Speaker 2>turn But I mean either way, you know, colonial lizard
<v Speaker 2>or not, you're like taking like a plant that's culturally
<v Speaker 2>important to people and not hooking the people up when
<v Speaker 2>they're broke as fucked, you know, compared to you. It's
<v Speaker 2>just kind of a dick move, you know.
<v Speaker 3>Like go to Disibler's day, bro, this is really great,
<v Speaker 3>Like we could we could, you know, turn this into
<v Speaker 3>a boutique coffee roastere and with without any consideration of
<v Speaker 3>the repercussions.
<v Speaker 2>Like it's just kind of shitty. It's just going to
<v Speaker 2>being disrespectible.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, And I don't know these people. I
<v Speaker 1>have no idea who they are, and I don't know
<v Speaker 1>you know, the reason or how this all happened, but maybe.
<v Speaker 2>They're fine that they might be fine. When did this happen?
<v Speaker 1>When did it?
<v Speaker 2>Now? I'm interested in it, pentadip Plandra. I mean because
<v Speaker 2>it's you know, if anything like this, like no, no
<v Speaker 2>culture owns a plant, but it's just if you're going
<v Speaker 2>into someone's area and region, it's good to like just
<v Speaker 2>fucking be respectful and cognizant of you know, of hooking
<v Speaker 2>them up too, instead of just taking someone shit and
<v Speaker 2>being like, oh, look local, we just found.
<v Speaker 1>And now there are laws right with the Nagoya Protocol
<v Speaker 1>to provide benefit sharing.
<v Speaker 2>What was that? When is that? Tell everybody what that is?
<v Speaker 1>So the Nagoya Protocol is like just written laws that
<v Speaker 1>helped prevent colonialism and these buyopiracies from happening. It's just
<v Speaker 1>an agreement to the nineteen ninety two Convention on Biological Diversity.
<v Speaker 1>It's called the Nagoya Protocol because it was signed in Nagoya, Japan,
<v Speaker 1>and I think it started officially being enforced in twenty fourteen.
<v Speaker 1>But importantly, the US is not a signatory on it.
<v Speaker 2>But of course I was gonna say if it was Trump,
<v Speaker 2>that would be like, you know, Trump signs and executive
<v Speaker 2>or as like fuck this, but it could.
<v Speaker 1>I think what I've heard is that they didn't feel
<v Speaker 1>like it was enough. That's why the US wasn't a signatory,
<v Speaker 1>not because they didn't want to play by the rules. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know one hundred percent sure, that's just like
<v Speaker 1>what i've heard on that what I've been told, But
<v Speaker 1>it's really focused on genetic resources, specifically the Noglia Protocol.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, I still try to just basically follow it.
<v Speaker 1>And so we tried there, but I believe most of
<v Speaker 1>the countries are signatories, so you have to play by
<v Speaker 1>those rules. Yeah, you're supposed to do at least, but
<v Speaker 1>it's such a it's it's such a cool one. So
<v Speaker 1>right now we're trying to see I have to actually
<v Speaker 1>send an email to this field botanists in Cameroon to
<v Speaker 1>see if you can get in chart touch with the government.
<v Speaker 1>So we had, like our legal team kind of look
<v Speaker 1>at it over and see like what we could do.
<v Speaker 1>And so the next step is to get in touch
<v Speaker 1>with the Cameroon legal team to see what they would
<v Speaker 1>request as benefit sharing. And then how can we when
<v Speaker 1>we already know there's this patent for this sweetener, how
<v Speaker 1>do we protect that when we release the genome that's
<v Speaker 1>open access. I don't know if they can. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Oh shit, Wow, I didn't know that. Okay, I mean
<v Speaker 2>I guess you said that. I just maybe it didn't
<v Speaker 2>hear it. But man, that's yeah, that's kindpplicate Jesus. So
<v Speaker 2>this is already so they patent. Is it being sold
<v Speaker 2>or something or what?
<v Speaker 1>No, it's kind of been as far as I understand,
<v Speaker 1>like not like blacklisted because of the biopiracy. But I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if they like retain the patent or if
<v Speaker 1>like because it was biopiracy, like the patent goes away.
<v Speaker 1>I don't I'm not sure, but it is I mean
<v Speaker 1>from someone who just wants to like understand the evolutionary biology,
<v Speaker 1>having to learn all this like legal part is like
<v Speaker 1>something I did not prepare for or like have the
<v Speaker 1>skills to do, and like truly it's like a whole
<v Speaker 1>nother career. So it's been an interesting one for me
<v Speaker 1>in that sense of like wanting to do right by
<v Speaker 1>the people or this plant is native too, but also
<v Speaker 1>really interested in the evolutionary biology story.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but I mean, presumably there's there's no one growing
<v Speaker 2>this like in any conservatory in the United States.
<v Speaker 1>No, but like even if there was, like what, we
<v Speaker 1>would sample it, But wouldn't that still be like I
<v Speaker 1>would not have benefit sharing to the people and you're.
<v Speaker 2>Still bound by the requirements for benefits sharing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, technically it probably maybe you wouldn't, but like me
<v Speaker 1>my personal I feel like I would.
<v Speaker 2>Well yeah, and if anything, then you're yeah, now you're
<v Speaker 2>like involved in this thing that's sort of that this
<v Speaker 2>ugly story you know.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, isn't that so interesting? Though, Like I really
<v Speaker 1>don't know what to do? Yeah, anyone have any ideas.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like up for learning.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean I could see. I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 2>at the end of the day, it's like it's you
<v Speaker 2>didn't have anything to do with it. You're just sampling
<v Speaker 2>the genome. But then like, yeah, you know, you're someone
<v Speaker 2>could come at you in a weird way.
<v Speaker 1>And like the sequence for that that like sweetener would
<v Speaker 1>be in the genome. And if it's open access, what
<v Speaker 1>does that mean? Like how do people like if then
<v Speaker 1>they turn someone takes it and then synthesizes this sweetener
<v Speaker 1>and then uses it, Like how does the folks so
<v Speaker 1>this plant is growing, like get any of that benefit.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, yeah, they don't get shipped of course not
<v Speaker 2>of course, you know any any company you see it
<v Speaker 2>like marketed in like a six dollars drink in a
<v Speaker 2>health food store. But none of that goes back to
<v Speaker 2>no I hate it here anyway, the h but this,
<v Speaker 2>I mean so, but being a protein based sweetener, what
<v Speaker 2>does that? What does that mean? Exactly?
<v Speaker 1>Like it just lasts long, so instead of like a carbohydrate.
<v Speaker 1>So I think it would be very useful as my
<v Speaker 1>understanding for like folks with diabetes, or it could be
<v Speaker 1>like a more slow release, like just would digest it differently,
<v Speaker 1>the sweetener think a protein is.
<v Speaker 2>It's a fucking cool plant either way. I mean it's
<v Speaker 2>a tropical broad leave, tropical plant with these giant baseball
<v Speaker 2>sized fruits that then open up. There's only one observation
<v Speaker 2>on a naturalists too. Yeah, this is a It opens
<v Speaker 2>up and then there's like, how what is it? Five carpals?
<v Speaker 2>How many are in there? I can't even see the
<v Speaker 2>thing just stopped anyway? Yeah, six six carpels?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Okay, So it says here that the brazen, which
<v Speaker 1>is a chemical, is a brasin useful as a low
<v Speaker 1>hllary sweetener, but is not yet allowed as a food
<v Speaker 1>additive in the United States and European Union.
<v Speaker 2>Because it was ganked.
<v Speaker 1>Basically, that's what I'm guessing.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, damn oh, it's a sad story. Yeah where Cameroon.
<v Speaker 1>It's native to Cameroon and Gaban.
<v Speaker 2>Mm hmm.
<v Speaker 1>It says that it's five hundred to two thousand times
<v Speaker 1>sweetener than sucrose.
<v Speaker 2>Jesus, I know. I'm just curious about the plant, man,
<v Speaker 2>I would want to what's the the leaves look? Are
<v Speaker 2>they like pinnate? No? Alternate?
<v Speaker 1>I can't tell in the way alternate? I believe.
<v Speaker 2>Two basic forms. It can be a much branched shrub
<v Speaker 2>that can grow up to five meters tall, or a
<v Speaker 2>climbing plant with stems up to twenty meters tall. What
<v Speaker 2>the fuck? Oh? The root system in shrubs is a
<v Speaker 2>branched complex of bulging roots, whilst climbing plants have a large,
<v Speaker 2>fleshy tuber. The root is a very popular traditional medicine
<v Speaker 2>in Central Africa, where it's commonly harvested from wild for
<v Speaker 2>local use. In Portraye. The plant also provides an edible fruit,
<v Speaker 2>which is attracted wider attention because of the very sweet
<v Speaker 2>tasting protein it contains all right, wow yeah damn. They're
<v Speaker 2>sold from medicinal purposes in local markets and a fruit
<v Speaker 2>is supposedly used as a fish poison. I guess I
<v Speaker 2>don't know anyway. Okay, so oh yeah, I didn't know
<v Speaker 2>about that poor fish. Okay, moving moving along, Uh, Gyros,
<v Speaker 2>We're gonna do the whole file line. We've got six
<v Speaker 2>families left, gyro stem and.
<v Speaker 1>Ac another one that I am not familiar with but
<v Speaker 1>is in Australia as well.
<v Speaker 2>Really is this I wonder if this is monotypic too?
<v Speaker 2>Uh No, it's not gyro stem the whole the whole
<v Speaker 2>concept of monotypic, like a clamping monotypic as we're too.
<v Speaker 2>What do you think that's about? Like it just it
<v Speaker 2>doesn't speciate, there's no radiation. There's what keeps it? What
<v Speaker 2>keeps it? Like what keeps a genus from like why
<v Speaker 2>is why are there no more species of Cobralinea? It's
<v Speaker 2>just so good at what it does, Like I don't understand,
<v Speaker 2>Like what's the constraint there?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it could be either that it didn't seciate, so
<v Speaker 1>they're just like, yeah, some sort of constraint that we
<v Speaker 1>get to understand. Could be like a geographic you know thing,
<v Speaker 1>or just a really pollmic I have no idea. Or
<v Speaker 1>it could be that there was a lot of other
<v Speaker 1>species and they've gone extinct, but as of now, we
<v Speaker 1>don't have any fossils to indicate that's the case. So
<v Speaker 1>those are the two, you know, reasons it just didn't
<v Speaker 1>seeciate for some you know, some reason, or there was
<v Speaker 1>a ton but we don't have fossils to show that
<v Speaker 1>there's been extinction in that family or those fossils.
<v Speaker 2>With all this stuff though, it seems like it's not
<v Speaker 2>speciating me, I don't know, I don't under I mean.
<v Speaker 1>The most parsimonious, especially because we don't have fossils, right, because.
<v Speaker 2>Then you get families like Astoracy or like the fuck
<v Speaker 2>the genus on Nathra for christ sakes, how many species?
<v Speaker 2>Like that's a nightmare of a genus because it's like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, there's so many of them, and there they
<v Speaker 2>can the differences can be very subtle. There's so many
<v Speaker 2>of them, especially in arid areas.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, the other thing to think about that,
<v Speaker 1>it's like, I don't know, this gets into taxonomy and
<v Speaker 1>like decisions like so if you look at like salvador
<v Speaker 1>ace and bat as, they form a clade, so they're
<v Speaker 1>their sister to one another. So those are two separate
<v Speaker 1>families and if you think about them there they like
<v Speaker 1>are live in different parts of the world. They have
<v Speaker 1>incredibly different morphology. But we could collapse that to be
<v Speaker 1>one family and those are just different like genera or
<v Speaker 1>different parts of the family. But I don't know, that's
<v Speaker 1>like the decision of this the taxonomous right where, Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I guess there's that too. You have to understand, you
<v Speaker 2>have families are still a human construct. Plant families are
<v Speaker 2>still a human construct to just denote levels of differentiation,
<v Speaker 2>you know.
<v Speaker 1>But if you look at central lanthis and Layman these
<v Speaker 1>Layman thesy for example, those are just like single lineages.
<v Speaker 1>Like I don't like, you can't really condense it. So
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if it's interesting to think about that.
<v Speaker 2>You mean you can't condense it?
<v Speaker 1>What do you mean, Like they're like I can lump
<v Speaker 1>them branches on the Yeah, like you would have to
<v Speaker 1>like lump the entire Like if you wanted to lump
<v Speaker 1>Laman thecy for example, you would have to include it
<v Speaker 1>with battascy salvator ac and all the other like cleo
<v Speaker 1>acy brassa cacy because of where it's positioned in the cladogram.
<v Speaker 2>Uh huh is it? But is that according to the
<v Speaker 2>genome though? I wonder like how you know if you
<v Speaker 2>look at this codes.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, so this is based on a chloroplas phylogeny,
<v Speaker 1>but I think my nuclear phylogeny matched it pretty well.
<v Speaker 2>So do you think do you think that? I mean,
<v Speaker 2>as whole genome sequencing becomes more common, it's gonna it's
<v Speaker 2>gonna like shake up taxonomy again, Like is it gonna
<v Speaker 2>I mean, not probably at any great level, but maybe
<v Speaker 2>certain families will be lumped together or something like that.
<v Speaker 1>I think we thought it would right when you have
<v Speaker 1>like the whole book, you should be able to know everything, right,
<v Speaker 1>But then what we find is that that's not necessarily true.
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes things have speciated so close in time that we
<v Speaker 1>cannot resolve like the order that they speciated, Like it
<v Speaker 1>happened so quick that we just don't have that type
<v Speaker 1>of resolution, Like we can't look back in time at
<v Speaker 1>that sort of detail. So some things I don't think
<v Speaker 1>we'll ever be able to like, like you know, understand
<v Speaker 1>but also the assumption that everything bifurcated. That like, if
<v Speaker 1>you have a population of organism, some species that they
<v Speaker 1>always split in two, it is not unreasonable to think
<v Speaker 1>that it's split in three, are split in four. Like,
<v Speaker 1>so when we build trees, it's resolved when we make
<v Speaker 1>them bifurcating, unless we're looking at like a reticulate or
<v Speaker 1>evolution or more of a web. So my personal belief
<v Speaker 1>is that most things probably are more weblike in their
<v Speaker 1>their tree. It's more like a shrub than like a tree.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, when you say weblike, explain what you mean by that.
<v Speaker 1>So rather than just like you have a line and
<v Speaker 1>then a bifurcating note, or like things dividing into two,
<v Speaker 1>it divides into three, divides into four, like if I'm
<v Speaker 1>a single point mm hm, that makes sense.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so more in other words, it's not as simple
<v Speaker 2>as we try to make it. And I think with brassica,
<v Speaker 2>what's what's interesting is that, and especially with whole genome
<v Speaker 2>duplication with polyploid is that I think a lot of
<v Speaker 2>this might like do you think these these kind of
<v Speaker 2>events where like a new family evolves, Like do you
<v Speaker 2>think it happens overnight? Instead of in baby steps like
<v Speaker 2>some cases of speciation, do you know where like, because
<v Speaker 2>that's a way for it to happen over that I mean,
<v Speaker 2>if if the whole genome just randomly duplicates during a
<v Speaker 2>hybridization event, there's or you know whatever, whatever's produced during
<v Speaker 2>genetical combination during plant sex, or there's a mutation whatever.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, do you think that that's kind of what's
<v Speaker 2>going on here?
<v Speaker 1>For sure, that whole genome duplication can lead to a speciation.
<v Speaker 1>We definitely have seen that to be true across the
<v Speaker 1>plant on tree of life. So that could be just
<v Speaker 1>like the major mode that this group has been using.
<v Speaker 2>And then when it's got, when you've got when your
<v Speaker 2>whole genome is duplicated, it's kind of hard. Now you're
<v Speaker 2>so different from the population you just arose out of
<v Speaker 2>you can't really mix with them anymore. You can't, so
<v Speaker 2>you're you're already isolated. The isolation for speciations already there.
<v Speaker 2>This is makes sense.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, no, yeah, so basically right, so how you know,
<v Speaker 1>no matter so when you get the whole genome duplication,
<v Speaker 1>you're isolated from that progenitor you know, species or so
<v Speaker 1>sometimes you know it'll be you can have whole genome
<v Speaker 1>duplication within like many different ways which we don't have
<v Speaker 1>to get into. But I think in some cases it
<v Speaker 1>likely will end to speciation events.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, in some cases, right, not always, but that's definitely
<v Speaker 2>how it.
<v Speaker 1>I think many of them will probably not. I think
<v Speaker 1>probably more of them don't survive than survive. But we
<v Speaker 1>don't know. This is all like open question.
<v Speaker 2>Right, I mean, I'm yeah, like with the brass of
<v Speaker 2>Chailles order, how many families what twelve or fifteen or
<v Speaker 2>something and we're talking I mean, how many eighteen eighteen?
<v Speaker 2>And we're talking this I mean goes back millions of years.
<v Speaker 2>What's the what's the what's the estimated origin evolutionary age
<v Speaker 2>of the order, probably like ECN or something older.
<v Speaker 1>I know, I do know this. I am just.
<v Speaker 2>Liking fifty million years. I'm gonna just throw it out there,
<v Speaker 2>just fifty million years of and I've seen that it
<v Speaker 2>seems like a good time for angiosperm diversity, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I think I think that might be the age of
<v Speaker 2>astracy two. You know, dinosaurs have been gone what really.
<v Speaker 1>One hundred and eight million years ago is their best?
<v Speaker 2>Oh fuck? Wow? So this is an old order.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we're only seeing a fragment, of course, of what
<v Speaker 2>has existed.
<v Speaker 1>Mm hmm, exactly. You know. It's a cool cool okay.
<v Speaker 2>So anyway, So back to Gyros stemenac. So this is
<v Speaker 2>all Australian m yep.
<v Speaker 1>And it's pretty like widespread across Australia.
<v Speaker 2>Seventeen species on in app probably more. Codona carpus cotinofolio
<v Speaker 2>seems to be one of the most dominant. God, the
<v Speaker 2>habitat looks cool. Where this thing is from Gyra's stemen
<v Speaker 2>and Codona carpus and these are dry land plants. Do
<v Speaker 2>you know are you familiar with any more of the
<v Speaker 2>genera in there?
<v Speaker 1>No? I haven't. I should have looked for them, but
<v Speaker 1>I didn't. It's a cool one though.
<v Speaker 2>God, Central Australia's so fucking cool man. This isn't even
<v Speaker 2>Central Australia. This is just Inland. I mean, I've I've
<v Speaker 2>been to Australia. I've been to Tasmania, Melbourne, Perth. I've
<v Speaker 2>never been to like Inland, anywhere where it's fucking really
<v Speaker 2>hot and dry. I've never been. I want to go
<v Speaker 2>to Queensland. I mean, there's so many there's a lot
<v Speaker 2>of places I want to check out, but I've never
<v Speaker 2>been to any of the super dry areas.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's fun, gotta bet.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, all the cool cast arrhinas and stuff, and yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean and just I think the cool thing for
<v Speaker 2>me is just seeing seeing similar, like the same traits
<v Speaker 2>and plants I know from you know, nine thousand miles
<v Speaker 2>away from arid areas, nine thousand miles away. That's the
<v Speaker 2>coolest thing about traveling to sea plants. For me, It's like,
<v Speaker 2>oh shit, this is doing the same thing that. In
<v Speaker 2>other words, the environment is selecting for the same traits,
<v Speaker 2>and the environment itself is breeding the plant. The environment
<v Speaker 2>is breeding the same traits in a plant that it's
<v Speaker 2>being bred in a similar environment with a different cast
<v Speaker 2>of plant lineages and families over here. It's so fucking
<v Speaker 2>cool to see, man.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Like you're such a wealth of knowledge. It's so
<v Speaker 1>cool to be able to like see that, that's like
<v Speaker 1>because you're such a good field bonus and know that
<v Speaker 1>there's like these groups so well, that's just really cool.
<v Speaker 2>That's so it's so cool to see. It's so wild. Yeah, man,
<v Speaker 2>photosynthetic stent. Some of the leaves look some of the
<v Speaker 2>branching looks spiny, obviously resisting bevery leaves are you know,
<v Speaker 2>the surface area is way reduced. The flowers on these
<v Speaker 2>look fucking nuts. Gyrostemon Australia Australasicus australasicus. Yeah, these these
<v Speaker 2>flowers look fucking nuts. Man, you gotta get some of these.
<v Speaker 2>Have you got any of these?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? No, no, trying to trying to figure that out. Still,
<v Speaker 1>eventually we'll figure it out. They're so pretty.
<v Speaker 2>We're going down the whole list. I didn't I didn't
<v Speaker 2>intend to do this when we started to call it,
<v Speaker 2>I just think this. I'm just looking at the I
<v Speaker 2>didn't intend to go through the whole brassicle's phylogeny, you know.
<v Speaker 2>But while we're here, I figure what this?
<v Speaker 1>They're just so cool? How can we stop?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? And then okay, so and then and then residacy,
<v Speaker 2>which is that's where that weird? That's a fucking weird one.
<v Speaker 2>The only plant I know from that is Wow, that's
<v Speaker 2>got sixty two species in it. Jesus, wait, where is
<v Speaker 2>the one I where's the one I know? Aligo maris linafolia, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>which we get that in South Texas. We get it into
<v Speaker 2>Mohave and then it's in like Iran.
<v Speaker 1>Oh really, yeah, it's.
<v Speaker 2>A weird disjunct. What the fuck? I don't know. And
<v Speaker 2>I think it's like yeah, and it's not widespread like
<v Speaker 2>on iinad it's like the American Southwest and then like uh,
<v Speaker 2>like Saudi Arabia and like southern Iraq.
<v Speaker 1>Weird, Yeah, what the fuck? Oh?
<v Speaker 2>And I guess there's some I mean, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>who knows. Maybe this is like last few hundred years,
<v Speaker 2>but I don't think. I think the collections were pretty
<v Speaker 2>early on of where. Okay, but anyway, sorry, so what's
<v Speaker 2>up with this whole family sixty two? Species? Residacy?
<v Speaker 1>I like, it's definitely an understudied one. I really like residency.
<v Speaker 1>There's just like some really interesting like like stories with
<v Speaker 1>residacy one. It smells like so crazy that especially Resida.
<v Speaker 1>So I grew resident. But the first time they think
<v Speaker 1>Pliny the Elder is the first person that like us
<v Speaker 1>the name Resida. So it's like so cool to go
<v Speaker 1>all the way back then. And then I think it's
<v Speaker 1>one of the I'm trying to double check myself. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Resida or data was used by Charles Darwin. In his
<v Speaker 1>studies on self fertilization plans, so he like talked about it.
<v Speaker 1>So it has this like this crazy history but like
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of understudied in a lot of ways, but
<v Speaker 1>it's it's a cool group. There needs more attention with.
<v Speaker 2>There's like ten gen era maybe eleven? Who was Who?
<v Speaker 2>Who was Pliny the Elder? What do you do? Who's
<v Speaker 2>this guy? He was a Greek.
<v Speaker 1>Roman philosopher naturalists.
<v Speaker 2>Oh he was a naturalist. I didn't know that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, m hmm, Like he wrote the Naturalists Historica. So
<v Speaker 1>it was like this huge book on everything in the
<v Speaker 1>natural world.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, no, ship, I didn't know that. So this is
<v Speaker 2>a guy that definitely liked he was into plants. He
<v Speaker 2>appreciated him, Yeah he did. Okay and uh okay, So
<v Speaker 2>moving on down. What else do we got left? Capa
<v Speaker 2>racey the Caper family.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, who doesn't like cape raise on their bagels and locks?
<v Speaker 2>What are what are capers? They're like a pickled It's
<v Speaker 2>like a pickled little sphere. I'm not even that familiar.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they're like really like they're really salky.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, all right, yeah, how big is this? This is
<v Speaker 2>kind of a big family.
<v Speaker 1>So we're getting into the last like three. So Brassa, Casey,
<v Speaker 1>Cape Racey and Cleo Macy are the largest, like they're
<v Speaker 1>the most specios.
<v Speaker 2>Oh shit, I didn't know that. Yeah. I think let's
<v Speaker 2>see how many, how many observations of the Caper family.
<v Speaker 2>I know there's a rare one from South Texas, but
<v Speaker 2>there's so much rare stuff done here because everything gets annihilated.
<v Speaker 2>So quadrilla, oh, quadrilla, Oh, quadrilla Indica. Yeah, I just
<v Speaker 2>saw that in Costa Rica Bashia, Feta. Where the fuck?
<v Speaker 2>Oh this has got to be This is in South
<v Speaker 2>Africa Bashia.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okay, they're cool. They're all cool. I'm so biased,
<v Speaker 1>but yeah, so what was fun was on I was
<v Speaker 1>looking at Braska and the Mediterranean, so in the genus Brassica,
<v Speaker 1>and it was almost always like near a keep race.
<v Speaker 1>So they like each other, they're good friends.
<v Speaker 2>Wow. And what's the I mean the fital chemistry then
<v Speaker 2>is the same I assume for yeah, like lucosinola, it's
<v Speaker 2>probably like a pungent I mean, yeah, obviously Caper's pungent smell,
<v Speaker 2>but they're mostly all tropical or what.
<v Speaker 1>Are they? I think I think they're everywhere I think
<v Speaker 1>I caught like across global I'm.
<v Speaker 2>Not seeing them at the higher latitudes. Well, I guess
<v Speaker 2>there's yeah, South Africa, at least in the United States,
<v Speaker 2>they're not really.
<v Speaker 1>Oh I see yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's like southern like Florida, South Texas, Southwest Ooh,
<v Speaker 2>what's in Baja? This seems interesting? What is down air? Oh?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's like the south two species?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so this thing is diversified and breaking with the
<v Speaker 2>tradition of the Brassickelees. This this family has many species
<v Speaker 2>and many genera in it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yes, yeah, these ones are species diverse for sure.
<v Speaker 2>And then okay, now we're going to the fun one
<v Speaker 2>Cleo may Sy which, of course bladder pod in California
<v Speaker 2>Mojave desert plant, really distinct plant. Anyone who spent time
<v Speaker 2>in the day deserts of California is familiar with. What
<v Speaker 2>is that? I can't remember the genus name of bladder
<v Speaker 2>pot again?
<v Speaker 1>Is it Clomela? I think so.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't seen it in four years, so I can't Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>maybe is it Cliomela? Goddamn.
<v Speaker 1>The group just gone has just gone under a pretty
<v Speaker 1>big taxonomic change. It was just published. They're working on
<v Speaker 1>it right now. So this is yeah, lots of folks
<v Speaker 1>are working on the.
<v Speaker 2>These are these These are some stinky ones. Yeah, we
<v Speaker 2>get polynicia in Texas. Uh, some really cool ones to Polynicia, Dodochondra,
<v Speaker 2>polynesia erosa.
<v Speaker 1>They're really pretty and sticky.
<v Speaker 2>Is it Cliomela to soifolia? Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>there's yeah, very stinky, very stick he, very glandular, really
<v Speaker 2>cool flowers. Someone who's you know, just a lay person
<v Speaker 2>might say, oh, it looks like an orchid like. The
<v Speaker 2>flowers got that kind of oh very Uh. I mean
<v Speaker 2>to me, it looks nothing like an orca. But I
<v Speaker 2>can see how someone would say that, you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>triffid trifolia leaves offen and waxy like, really waxy like.
<v Speaker 2>I don't think any of these things have hairs. Whoa carsonia,
<v Speaker 2>sparse folia? Wear the shit that I see that Manhattan, Nevada,
<v Speaker 2>it's over there a boy Tonapa to Nopa, got Nevada.
<v Speaker 2>I miss Nevada. God, it's so fucking nice being out
<v Speaker 2>in the middle of nowhere there. The whole state is
<v Speaker 2>public land. Have you spent much time in Nevada.
<v Speaker 1>Just Las Vegas?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Yeah, I learned the run freight trains in northern
<v Speaker 2>Nevada between sparks and alcohol, basically going across the whole
<v Speaker 2>northern half of the state, and it was it's just
<v Speaker 2>one of the most beautiful places and so empty too,
<v Speaker 2>and like like filled with nut jobs in its own way.
<v Speaker 2>But like their wing, that's enough. You can appreciate them,
<v Speaker 2>you know, just don't get them talking about certain subjects.
<v Speaker 2>But god, there's some cool plants.
<v Speaker 1>Cleo Macy is really cool. We had one really cool
<v Speaker 1>trait about the Macy is that it has C four photosynthesis,
<v Speaker 1>so rather than the traditional C three photosynthesis?
<v Speaker 2>Is it?
<v Speaker 1>Though?
<v Speaker 2>How many families in Brasiclees do that? Is this the
<v Speaker 2>only one?
<v Speaker 1>So true? Like C four I think is just in
<v Speaker 1>Cleo Macy. Let me double check myself.
<v Speaker 2>So it's using those bundle sheaths, uh cells, yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Let's see Cleo Macy and there is some Embrassic cacy.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow, do you know?
<v Speaker 1>Okay four?
<v Speaker 2>Since we're about to move on to the the family
<v Speaker 2>and Cleo Mace is sister to Brassa Casey, we should
<v Speaker 2>mess it to since we're about to move on to
<v Speaker 2>Brassic Casey, do you know I've heard that Brassic, like
<v Speaker 2>Brassic Casey, is one of the only families that doesn't
<v Speaker 2>associate with micro ryzel fungi, which I don't believe. I
<v Speaker 2>don't think that's true. That might be bad. It probably
<v Speaker 2>is bad inform I forget where I read that, because
<v Speaker 2>everything does a little. It's at least the Glomero my
<v Speaker 2>seeds like Glomero my coda. But do you know anything
<v Speaker 2>about that about Michael Rizel associations in the order?
<v Speaker 1>In the order? I don't think I have heard anything
<v Speaker 1>that interesting, though.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think it was just the family. I think
<v Speaker 2>it was just Brassic Casey. But then I'm curious about
<v Speaker 2>if that one. If that's true, it's I don't think
<v Speaker 2>it's true, but it might be that it's highly reduced
<v Speaker 2>that they don't associate with Michael riise as much as
<v Speaker 2>other families. And I'm wondering why, you know, like, what
<v Speaker 2>would it be that they're able to somehow access nutrients
<v Speaker 2>without what is it about their root morphology that they're
<v Speaker 2>somehow able to access nutrients without needing fungi?
<v Speaker 1>You know, I don't know that's interesting. So I just
<v Speaker 1>kind of double checked in this one paper popped up
<v Speaker 1>that is in lapidium, which is brass Casey, and it
<v Speaker 1>talks about dormancy by fun guy. I don't know, so
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. That's a really interesting question.
<v Speaker 2>I could also be entirely full of shit. This could
<v Speaker 2>be bad information, but I remember I think it was
<v Speaker 2>on a book ine on Michael Rise that I read this.
<v Speaker 2>It's either highly reduced. I don't think they would have
<v Speaker 2>said it's not there at all, because that's impossible to know,
<v Speaker 2>or maybe that it hasn't been found yet, but I
<v Speaker 2>think probably since then it has because I don't know,
<v Speaker 2>at least with Glamara.
<v Speaker 1>And Nakota, but I know it's super interesting.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, before we move on to the Brassic Casey, anything
<v Speaker 2>else you want to say about cleam I see anything
<v Speaker 2>notable about them?
<v Speaker 1>Now they're just the sea. I mean doing C four
<v Speaker 1>Khoto synthesis is really cool.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that is it's pretty Yeah, that's pretty notable, and
<v Speaker 2>it shows it shows adaptation to really hot places, which
<v Speaker 2>is where you can find a lot of them. So okay,
<v Speaker 2>So Brassa Casey, the big, the big one. Now what's
<v Speaker 2>I mean? Obviously so many food crops, human nutrition, polyploidy, rampant.
<v Speaker 2>Uh you know, cold robbie, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, all
<v Speaker 2>the same species. Technically, is that correct?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Exactly.
<v Speaker 2>It takes very Yeah, it takes very kindly to human
<v Speaker 2>domestication apparently and human selection. What else.
<v Speaker 1>There is? So the Brassa casey, it's also where we
<v Speaker 1>have like the model plant. So the first genome I
<v Speaker 1>ever got for a plant is a rabbit Opsis salina
<v Speaker 1>and it's a Brassa cacy. So like everything that we
<v Speaker 1>know about like genes and you know, how they control
<v Speaker 1>different traits is a lot of that work has been
<v Speaker 1>done in brass case in a rabit Opsis. So it's
<v Speaker 1>like this powerhouse for genetic models.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>And so it's kind of cool because you have this
<v Speaker 1>really important plant that has a ton of resources that thousands,
<v Speaker 1>if not more people work across the world on. But
<v Speaker 1>then it's closely related to all these cool plants that
<v Speaker 1>we just talked about today. So you can really then
<v Speaker 1>like kind of take what we've learned from A rabit
<v Speaker 1>oxis and apply outward to some of these really cool species.
<v Speaker 2>One of the things why was ais Why is that?
<v Speaker 2>Why was that picked as the model plant? Like why
<v Speaker 2>do you know.
<v Speaker 1>Why that is Yeah, so it has a small genome.
<v Speaker 1>So one thing that's true for most of these that
<v Speaker 1>we know so far is that they all have relatively
<v Speaker 1>small genomes, which makes doing a lot of this genetic
<v Speaker 1>work a little easier because the continue the genome a
<v Speaker 1>little easier, And so that's why it was chosen originally. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So, I mean, and when you say most of these
<v Speaker 2>have small gems, you're done about every family and Brassic
<v Speaker 2>Kyley's that.
<v Speaker 1>We've looked at so far. So we're we're we're just
<v Speaker 1>you know, we're just doing this. We're still in the
<v Speaker 1>process of collecting tissue and trying to find these plants,
<v Speaker 1>so we're still figuring it all out. But so far
<v Speaker 1>that's true.
<v Speaker 2>So how long how long do you think this whole
<v Speaker 2>project's going to take you?
<v Speaker 1>And it could be a while, Yeah, probably so once like,
<v Speaker 1>once we get these genomes done, we'll release them as
<v Speaker 1>we get them done, but kind of to have a
<v Speaker 1>full project, I think it'll probably take us a couple
<v Speaker 1>more years.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wait, did we did we talk about a Canny
<v Speaker 2>A c I don't think we did.
<v Speaker 1>That's another just at the beginning.
<v Speaker 2>That's another Australasian family. God this thing looks fucking weird too,
<v Speaker 2>got it? Man, I'm learning so much today about plants
<v Speaker 2>from all around the world. I had no idea existed
<v Speaker 2>family of canny ac two genera a Cania and bretch Nidera.
<v Speaker 1>Which I think are both mono tipic, Like there are
<v Speaker 1>only one species and both are Mana.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, brech Nidera snensis and Kanya Bidwilli I, which
<v Speaker 2>that that species up at that bid Willy I tells
<v Speaker 2>you it's Australian. Uh, both look fucking weird and cool.
<v Speaker 2>And let me see if there's what photos are there? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>What? So?
<v Speaker 2>Okay? Going back to this one though, So what do
<v Speaker 2>you know about this? Have you been able to collect
<v Speaker 2>material for this or get your hands on material.
<v Speaker 1>This one nor one more on the list? I haven't
<v Speaker 1>been able to. I really hope we can get all.
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of like a goal. But yeah, trying to
<v Speaker 1>do it, Like it'd be easy if I just like
<v Speaker 1>didn't try to follow any good protocols.
<v Speaker 2>But you know, no, you're You're not me. You're doing
<v Speaker 2>it the right way. Just collecting, throwing the fucking notebooks somewhere,
<v Speaker 2>be fine, put it in here. Damn, this is okay,
<v Speaker 2>so yeah, like a race seam of white flower, white
<v Speaker 2>pinkish white flowers, golf ball sized to marble sized, and
<v Speaker 2>then a fruit with like an orange seed in it.
<v Speaker 2>What the fuck? Damn? I see these things and then
<v Speaker 2>I see like pictures of habitat and I'm just like, man,
<v Speaker 2>what what else grows there? It's so cool?
<v Speaker 1>Super serrated leaves too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this is what. Yeah, one species in Asia and
<v Speaker 2>one species in Australia, probably very old lineage. So anyway,
<v Speaker 2>all right, well, I guess that sums up the Brasic
<v Speaker 2>Kyle's order.
<v Speaker 1>Uh. I can always talk about Brassica more. That's like
<v Speaker 1>what I've been focusing mostly on is brascol Erasia. That's
<v Speaker 1>a whole other podcast.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah. But are you going back to Namibia at
<v Speaker 2>any point soon?
<v Speaker 1>I always hope I'm going back to Namibia, But I
<v Speaker 1>have nothing planned at the moment, have it. Maybe you're
<v Speaker 1>gonna plan something eventually try to get back there.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm gonna, yeah, definitely, definitely. It was. It's I mean,
<v Speaker 2>there's so much good stuff and I love I mean,
<v Speaker 2>it's like one of the best arid plant habitats in
<v Speaker 2>the world too. So and that's like my jam. So
<v Speaker 2>though I have been getting into the tropics lately though,
<v Speaker 2>so's that's nice. The Costa Rica was Costa Rica surprised me.
<v Speaker 2>I thought it was not going to be as fucking
<v Speaker 2>crazy as it was, and man, it was amazing. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>there's just such diversity of habitat, from paramo to oak
<v Speaker 2>forests at like nine thousand feet to the dry forest
<v Speaker 2>in the northwest where there's cacti growing with Borceros simaruba
<v Speaker 2>in the shade of these like drought deciduous uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>dry forest trees that are towering and with monkeys that
<v Speaker 2>are trying to pee on you. It was amazing. It
<v Speaker 2>was fucking The monkeys are intimidating. You could those little
<v Speaker 2>bastards if they mobbed up on you, like twenty deep,
<v Speaker 2>they could really do some damage. You know. They're cute there,
<v Speaker 2>but so weird being around other primate.
<v Speaker 1>Species and like, yeah, sometimes they're intimidating.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, man, And these were these were like the little ones,
<v Speaker 2>like the neotropical monkeys are generally much smaller, you know,
<v Speaker 2>but I saw like howler monkeys I saw and they're
<v Speaker 2>all in danger too, And so they're all because their
<v Speaker 2>habitat's gotten fucked. But yeah, I saw like little capuchins,
<v Speaker 2>those little white guy, little white faced guys with the
<v Speaker 2>fans and shit. Yeah it was funny. Man and and
<v Speaker 2>howler monkeys, which are terrifying. It sounds like like this
<v Speaker 2>gutt role. I thought it was like a large cat,
<v Speaker 2>and then I heard another one and I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>there's a bunch of them. This isn't a cat. And
<v Speaker 2>it's like because I couldn't tell it was coming from
<v Speaker 2>up in the tree or up on this like cliff
<v Speaker 2>and uh yeah, And then I saw there and I
<v Speaker 2>was like, oh, it's just you, Okay, never.
<v Speaker 1>Mind, that's scary though.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, it was really cool. Habitat though, really really cool,
<v Speaker 2>Like walking through the forest, everything's crunching because it's but
<v Speaker 2>it's like ninety degrees. You know. You're just like do
<v Speaker 2>you what are you saying?
<v Speaker 1>Sorry? No, do you feel this way with tropical botanies?
<v Speaker 1>Like so, because I live in Florida right now, but
<v Speaker 1>like you, I do a lot of desert field working
<v Speaker 1>from southern California, and so like all the plants go
<v Speaker 1>on top of one another in the tropics, I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>what is what? Where does this plant end and this
<v Speaker 1>plant plant start, but in a like desert, like nice
<v Speaker 1>and separate, you know, which is an individual.
<v Speaker 2>I've never taken so many pictures of just leaves before,
<v Speaker 2>which is really frustrating for trying to identify stuff. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know, when you've got no reproductive structures and like
<v Speaker 2>the leaves, there's nothing notable about them, like they have
<v Speaker 2>wings or they've got these like super elongated hairs or something.
<v Speaker 2>I saw this one species of Meconia. God, the mconia
<v Speaker 2>diversity like in Ecuador was wild. We were like thirty
<v Speaker 2>eight hundred feet and a lot of the maconias there
<v Speaker 2>have these swollen pettiole bases where ants live inside, and
<v Speaker 2>like the people eat the ants like you can eat.
<v Speaker 2>Everyone I was with was like, oh yeah, I tried
<v Speaker 2>eating the ants. They're really good. I was like, fuck, no, man,
<v Speaker 2>I'm like I'm not gonna Oh no, I did. I
<v Speaker 2>did not know. He's like, oh, they tastes like sweet lemon.
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, Jesus Christ has some weird chemistry there. But
<v Speaker 2>it was really cool because a number of Myconia species
<v Speaker 2>did that. But there was this one that was growing
<v Speaker 2>in the shade. It was growing in a shady, humid environment.
<v Speaker 2>But it had these really long, like stiff tricombs on it,
<v Speaker 2>like it like, uh yeah, I mean I assume it's
<v Speaker 2>just for defense, like irdicating hairs or something. But it
<v Speaker 2>had these like beautiful mahogany petioles and then like the
<v Speaker 2>deep deep green broad leaves it was, and just all
<v Speaker 2>the all the melostomes have crazy flowers. They're all fucking
<v Speaker 2>insane looking with really cool anthe appendages and stuff. But
<v Speaker 2>I remember seeing that being like, wow, this thing's so hairy.
<v Speaker 2>But it's not. It's not like high up in the
<v Speaker 2>paramo and it's not in an arid place because it's
<v Speaker 2>it's yes, I mean most of the places. Like I
<v Speaker 2>if I was, if we're going to go in academia
<v Speaker 2>and you couldn't pay me to do it, but if
<v Speaker 2>I did, I would probably study something like that, like
<v Speaker 2>hairs on plants and like different adaptations for hairs on plants.
<v Speaker 2>I think it's I know, it's just something I'm always
<v Speaker 2>paying attention to. It's so interesting.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the tri combs, the you know what the plant
<v Speaker 1>hairs are, the tri combs the so for brass Casey,
<v Speaker 1>the like we could say he's like the grandfather of
<v Speaker 1>the Rasa Casey. His name is isan Al Shabaz, who
<v Speaker 1>was at Missouri bot Oh yeah, I.
<v Speaker 2>Emailed that dude. Yeah yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>The best. He's so awesome, one of the coolest people.
<v Speaker 1>But he believes the tricombes are the key to determining
<v Speaker 1>like the different groups in brass case. Those plant hairs
<v Speaker 1>are incredibly important. So like the some will be look
<v Speaker 1>like little stars, some will be branched, some will have
<v Speaker 1>like boldest great bases, like they're so cool looking.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, I can't Yeah, it's I can't believe
<v Speaker 2>we didn't mention that dude's name yet because he's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he's like the Brassica king. I what was I gonna say? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I had to. I reached out to him because there's
<v Speaker 2>a really rare plant called Mastelis sastrum vasi that is
<v Speaker 2>in the population. It's like known from this one park
<v Speaker 2>in Harlingen, Texas. It's it's used to be more common.
<v Speaker 2>It's super super rare, and I think I only kind
<v Speaker 2>of like seventeen individuals and it's an annual too, but
<v Speaker 2>it's uh, and it's the habitat's fucked. It's like it's
<v Speaker 2>like on the side of a mountain bike trail, and
<v Speaker 2>then everything else is like dominated by invasive guinea grass
<v Speaker 2>and buffalo grass. But it's one of those things where like,
<v Speaker 2>if you've got seed, you could probably you know, after
<v Speaker 2>a few generations, you could probably have thousands of plants
<v Speaker 2>if someone were to grow it. But you know, it's
<v Speaker 2>South Texas, so there's not many people that care. But
<v Speaker 2>but but I reached out to them being like, do
<v Speaker 2>you think that's what this is is? And yeah, he
<v Speaker 2>basically said, yeah, that's definitely what it is. It used
<v Speaker 2>to be, Yeah, what was it? I forget the name
<v Speaker 2>it used to be. It wasn't Masilla sastrum. I think
<v Speaker 2>el schabaz split whatever genes it used to be into
<v Speaker 2>Masta scilla, masta silastrum. But yeah, really cool plant, really
<v Speaker 2>waxy and glaucus. But I don't normally see brasicas with
<v Speaker 2>hairs on them. Well that's not true. I just saw
<v Speaker 2>a dimorphal karpa, which is a yeah you know that one, right, Yes, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>super worry fucking awesome plant growing on these sand dunes.
<v Speaker 1>But there's even like a genus and so the Braska
<v Speaker 1>genus itself one the species is Braska Velosa because it
<v Speaker 1>has all these like Velo's tricombe plant hairs all over it.
<v Speaker 1>So there's a lot of.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, you're right, one of my time talking out
<v Speaker 2>of my ass, That's true. There's a ton when I
<v Speaker 2>think of it. I just normally think of them like
<v Speaker 2>that that kale style, like waxy rubbery, yeah, Farina, you know. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>Like so I'm a very greasy Italian. You know, I
<v Speaker 2>could wipe off like the wax with my thumb on
<v Speaker 2>the stem, you know, like that's a common thing I
<v Speaker 2>associate with Brassica's. But uh, yeah, what a cool fucking family.
<v Speaker 2>Though we didn't even talk about order. We didn't even
<v Speaker 2>talk about Striptantus. Yeah, the whole order itself, and like.
<v Speaker 1>How it likes growing on serpentine soil.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of Striptanta's in Texas. I
<v Speaker 2>forget what common name they've got, but it's something that
<v Speaker 2>alludes to their beautiful flowers. But uh, but I don't,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I don't think a lot of texts and
<v Speaker 2>Bonus even know like how diverse the genus is on
<v Speaker 2>serpentine in California. It's fucking nuts, this thing. There's it's
<v Speaker 2>like a I think someone had said that someone who
<v Speaker 2>studied it had told me Striptantus evolved serpentine tolerance like
<v Speaker 2>five or six times independently like the genus did I
<v Speaker 2>think it was maybe Givnish mentioned that to me. I
<v Speaker 2>don't know.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, that makes sense.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but anyway, well, I guess I guess we could
<v Speaker 2>wrap it up there and listen. I mean, anything else
<v Speaker 2>you want to point out or talk about in reference
<v Speaker 2>to this very cool and enigmatic order of plants.
<v Speaker 1>It's so hard to wrap it up. They're just so cool.
<v Speaker 1>Like every time I feel like I turn around, I
<v Speaker 1>learn about a new species and this order and it's
<v Speaker 1>just a really cool place. I think it's interesting because
<v Speaker 1>it's Brassa Casey and Brassicas and the like prefix of it.
<v Speaker 1>People think it's really well studied, like the order, but
<v Speaker 1>we're just learning so many things, just like just starting
<v Speaker 1>to learn it.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, we just looked at like six families on
<v Speaker 2>INET that have like one or no observations.
<v Speaker 1>It has like this misconception that it's well studied because
<v Speaker 1>of that, but we're trying to make it so. But
<v Speaker 1>we still have a lot to learn.
<v Speaker 2>There's so many cool desert mustards. Yeah, man, yeah, nearris
<v Speaker 2>Syrenia camporum, since flips is Greggii, and then fucking Fisarius
<v Speaker 2>everywhere there's.
<v Speaker 1>Just like you gotta look up, look up Skis of
<v Speaker 1>pedal on. Are you familiar with Skis of pedalon It's
<v Speaker 1>a genus in the Brassic casey.
<v Speaker 2>I no, no, no, where is it from?
<v Speaker 1>Uh? Like the Autocama Desert, So this is where a
<v Speaker 1>lot of the borages I love are as well. So
<v Speaker 1>that's why I really like this one too. There's a
<v Speaker 1>few different species in this genus. Oh if it has
<v Speaker 1>these flowers that are like highly divided, but still like
<v Speaker 1>the cross that is like characteristic the four petals. I
<v Speaker 1>make a cross for the family. But it's like it
<v Speaker 1>just looks so insane. It's one of my favorites.
<v Speaker 2>Well yeah, it's it's damn it's okay. So there's it's
<v Speaker 2>coastal and then it's way up in the andes too,
<v Speaker 2>mm hmm.
<v Speaker 1>Just like a lot of the borages of panther.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, damn. Oh yeah, this thing's nuts. Man. They're all
<v Speaker 2>they're all like white four petals and then it's yeah,
<v Speaker 2>what's up with those liciniate petals. It's got like divided petals.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know what is this plinated by moths or
<v Speaker 2>flies or something? You think you know?
<v Speaker 1>I know, I only I grew one for DNA, But
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, like hardly anything about it than I
<v Speaker 1>think it's super pretty. It's just like a really beautiful plant.
<v Speaker 2>God, that's cool. There was a genus in South Africa
<v Speaker 2>that was everywhere. Al it's got long floral tubes. Maybe
<v Speaker 2>it is mouthpone it there was a genus in South
<v Speaker 2>Africa in Brassic. Casey, I should give this genus a
<v Speaker 2>shut up before we pour waves here. Let me, I
<v Speaker 2>can't remember it. Everything that you saw that was a
<v Speaker 2>mustard was like in this genus you know that we
<v Speaker 2>would encounter in South Africa. It was pretty. Why is
<v Speaker 2>it saying? I don't know? Okay, my eight is fucking
<v Speaker 2>up now home, let me look this up. Oh it's
<v Speaker 2>on a tip of my tongue. I can't remember. Let's see. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. This is what's up.
<v Speaker 1>I'm kind of think of what would be in South Africa.
<v Speaker 1>Was it?
<v Speaker 2>Let's see, it's it's a dominant genus down there. It
<v Speaker 2>was Heliophila. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, I saw like
<v Speaker 2>six Heliophilus species, some blue, some white, some pink, some yeah,
<v Speaker 2>some like blue with like a white center. Really fucking cool.
<v Speaker 2>Oh cool, But anyway, all right, well I'll let you go.
<v Speaker 2>Thanks so much, Mackenzie. And uh, yeah, I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>If people want to read about your work, they where
<v Speaker 2>can they look it up? I guess just the Google
<v Speaker 2>scholar research. Gay, do you have a website?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I have a website just Mackenzie Maybrey. Can find
<v Speaker 1>pretty much everything there, but it's also linked on my
<v Speaker 1>Google scholar. But thank you so much for being interested
<v Speaker 1>to talk about the Brassic halies, Like I really love
<v Speaker 1>this group and I don't get to talk about it
<v Speaker 1>very much. So yeah, thank you. I appreciate that opportunity.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, thank you. That was great. And if if anyone
<v Speaker 2>wants to see your photos that I Gano fighting, that
<v Speaker 2>weird that weirdo from the Mibia, the beautiful wirdo from
<v Speaker 2>the Mibia, just go to ain At and type in
<v Speaker 2>Tygano fighting in the explore bar and Mackenzie's photos are
<v Speaker 2>like most of what come up T I G A
<v Speaker 2>N O, P H Y the o N so Okay,
<v Speaker 2>hey thanks, thank you so much again.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, thanks so good to talk to you. Bye bye,