Instagram Drug Bros & Cactus Poaching

Dude. It's like, dude, it's like fucking like Tricho serious d Like,
dude, like these instagram I can't liked these instagram Like check out my
institute. It's got like a pretty sick I've got like some pretty sick photos
of trikes and like DDE, there's like all these different like strains and land
races of trikes. And there's like, dude, I've got like a couple
of faff row two that are like, dude, they're like fucking sick.
Do you like I've got like loaf like grafted loafs, dude. They've got
like different locales, like different locales assumed you for like two hundred dollars each,
dude, two hundred dollars per plant. All right, They're they're like
I've got like, dude, I've got like so Textas, got West Texas.
I've got like DDE, Roalda co Torse. I've got like all these
different different locales, dude, And like sometimes they're on the trikes like got
the fucking cactus bros. The Instagram drug bros are bumming me out, bumming
me outt you fucking creepy collecting of They're fucking bombing me out there really is,
and I think I get it. I have a degree of sympathy,
but I just it feels like, because I get it, people want to
collect, people want to connect the plants. I think that's part of it,
all right. But I also know humans are humans, and there's you
know you can you can both things can be true. You can have that
part of you that wants to quote connect to plants to a sense of something
larger than yourself, and you can also be kind of money grubbing and sleazy,
and also the collecting thing, the primate hoarding thing. Not saying anyone
who collects plants is bad, all right. I got a ton of plants,
all right. I mostly use them. I try to get shit in
the ground and then just use it as a as a reference, as a
study source, you know, because that's a great that's a great thing.
You turn your yard into a fucking lab. You grow some fucking you know,
rare perennial shrubs from fucking uh, you know, the seasonally dry forests
of Mexico or fucking wherever you put in your yard. You can study it.
You can watch it throughout its life cycle, watching flower. I get
that you know, I'm just saying the collector thing is weird. At what
point does it, whether you're collecting fucking nepenthes or fucking payotes or whatever,
at what point does it not become about the plant and it just becomes about
hoarding and having something and being able to say that you have it. I
just then it's fucking someone sent me a photo, and this is happening a
lot. There's, first off, there's all these I feel like the weed
lord thing that was so impossibly annoying a decade ago, it still goes on,
but not as much. The weed lord thing turned into it now that's
becoming prevalent with with fucking mushrooms and and all and cacti, peyote and tried
as sirius uh, which I you know, I just fucking payote is like
such a If payote wasn't illegal, I don't think it'd be as desired this
is. It's not like it's not a compoun and it's gonna knock your fucking
socks off. It's not. It's not the fucking what Algis Huxley was taking
when he wrote the The Doors of Perception, The fucking Windows of Perception,
The stairwell of the gutters of perception. These fucking people have their minds and
the gutters of perception, these fucking cactus sellers. Anyway, Uh, what
you know, what what Algis Huxley was on was a synthetic mescal and it
wasn't fucking paoties. I feel like payote outside of the context of of the
Native American church and outside of the context of a tepee ceremony, or or
we were a kuda, any of that is pointless. It's it's just why,
you know, I mean, it's the same shit. I guess it
kind of helps you stay up a little bit. Mexican truckers will nibble on
it, uh, and you know, and still drive trucks and they can't
sleep. But you're not gonna hallusin it. You're not gonna lose your fucking
mind. You know. I'm not gonna get my pitch shaken off by you
know, nibbling on a piece of period. It's so subtle. It's such
a subtle compound. And anytime I've been invited to a tepee ceremony, the
tepee ceremony is what makes it special. The music to sing in the prayer,
the fucking fire, A sense of community, being in a tepee with
thirty other people, all right, the drum, the rattle, all that,
that's what makes it special. It's not the compound itself. But of
course the drug war made it taboo. I blame the drug war. It
really, it really did. You make something illegal and it becomes a fucking
hot commodity and it it makes it taboo, and it increases demand, it
increases desire for it. It makes people think that it's, you know,
way more psychoactive and special than it is. Like, look at plants like
scaladium tortiosum, you know, which is a member of the family isoac,
another succulent family. In order carry file the same order as peyote. Scaladium
tortuosum can get weird at extreme. It's legal too. Someone sent me,
who was it healing herbals? Shut up to healing herbals. They sent me
a bunch of weird shit. They sent me, like a vape pen and
like this weird thing that looks like a fucking the thing you put in your
nose, you know when you got the sniffles. And I they sent me
that and I took some. It's Gleatium tortuosum. It's a cool succulent I
saw when when I was in South Africa, but I you know, I
was no point was I inclined to take any But anyway, it's legal and
it's it's weird, it's cool. They gave me this nasal thing. I
put it in my nose. I took, you know, nothing happens.
I was like, ah, I take more. I put It's like a
squirt bottle. What is that shit called that you put in you when you
got the sniffles, when you got allergy? You know, I take it
when I'm like, it's someone's house, who is cats? And I put
the ship in my nose and then I hit the vape pen and I laid
down like what the fuck? And I could feel it dribbling down the back
of my throat, and all of a sudden, I was like, whoa,
you know, but that that's an extract. It's like a hundred times
the fucking what you would get from the plant. And it was. It
was weird for five ten minutes and I just kind of went away. But
it wasn't wild. It felt kind of similar to to like the onset of
MDMA almost you know, if you're if you're using MDMA responsibly and like you
know, uh, a therapeutic setting as opposed to just going to dance and
and uh you know, act like a jadrool in a fucking recreational setting for
a I mean, if you're using MDMA responsibly, then cut off there for
forgive me, excuse me. Anyway, you know MDMA used responsibly all right,
not as a recreational drug, but it's something to gain insight, you
know, disarm your fears and your traumas and really examine yourself. Sit down,
maybe with a therapist, maybe just on your own at a fucking uh
computer and write some shit, or just take a walk and listen to some
music and really think about what's going on. That that would be you know,
in like once a year or two, because it is it's a huge
serotoninum. You can really fuck up your nerve chemistry if you do it too
much. Anyway, you know, that's that that onset of MDMA because when
it first comes on, it's boom. That's kind of what scaldium tortuosum felt
like. But it was nothing to write home about, no offense. Actually
I was supposed to promote the ad. Fuck, I'm sorry, guys,
you know it's trick. Go ahead, go ahead, try it out,
healing Rubels, give him a shout out. See how it see how it
feels. But anyway, I also just did it once and I didn't so
maybe it maybe there is something there. I don't want to give them a
I just fucked up whatever. I'm sure they understand. But but you know,
if if peyote wasn't illegal, maybe it wouldn't be such a hot commodity
among these Instagram drug bros. And that is a fucking thing. And if
if that's you, I'm just don't take it personally. Man, this is
a real thing. You can laugh at this, you can get loose.
I'm just saying this is a thing. Now. This is a thing where
the weed lords. It seems like the Instagram drug bro, the Tricho series,
the Payote people. It's like another version of the weed lord thing.
Whereas like you just you're only interested in these things that are psychoactive. You're
not looking at them from an evolutionary context. You're not you know, you
haven't, you haven't been introduced to a way to not just be focused,
hyper focused on one plant, but on the whole phenomenon of evolution and natural
selection and why these things look like this, and why they might evolve a
certain certain compounds such as mescaline, or why a plant like Aerocarpus might come
to look the way it does look like a rock have an extremely thick cuticle.
You know, two hundred and fifty what was in micrometers? And then
I figet what it was unit of measurement, but it was two hundred and
fifty I think micrometers to five micrometers thick, nine micrometers thick. For most
plants the area coveras has an extremely thick fucking cuticle. Do you even know
what a cuticle is? Might be good to learn, You can learn,
and you can you can vastly expand your knowledge of the world around you,
versus just hyper focusing on this one plant that gets he fucked up. It's
like, this is teenager shit. It really is. I'm not trying to
knock anybody, But there's a better context here. There's a bigger context here.
There's a lot of fucking important education that can make you a better person
and more knowledgeable out the world that you live in. Instead of just another
fucking drug bro who wants to experience a high, which, to be honest,
is kind of shitty. No offense to peyote. It's kind of shitty.
No offense to any of my friends in the Native American church who love
it and view it as sacred medicine, which it is, all right,
they would probably agree with me. On its own, it's a shitty drug.
But so that makes me wonder, why the fuck are people poaching the
shit out of it? Why am I getting photos sent to me from people
who purchased plants for one hundred and fifty dollars each from sketchy fucking drug bro
in Dallas who's got a fucking no offense to him either, whatever, Maybe
he's fucking searching for something he hasn't found yet either, who knows, But
why am I getting these pictures sent to me? You know someone who sent
plants, who's selling plants for one hundred and fifty But why would why would
you sell, not to mention, purchase a plant for one hundred and fifty
fucking dollars? That's deranged, that's so weird to me. I'm sorry,
I'm fucking sorry. And there's other motherfuckers that buy. You know, some
of these aeroid assholes, no offense to them. I'm really offending the whole
gamut of my fucking audience today, not the whole gamut, but the whole
gamut of quote unquote plant people. Actually, I think these are pretty small
microcosm, but still, some of these aeroid people spent upwards of five ten
thousand dollars on a fucking philodendron. That's obscene. That is a disease.
That's a diseased value system. It's a value system that's been tainted. It's
a value system that doesn't know any better way yet and how to look at
things, and it makes me sad. But either way, the point of
this whole rant was, which is not ten minutes into it, is that
people are poaching peyote in South Texas and they're selling them. I don't know
if it's under the guys the Native America church stuff, or or with the
proper paperwork, under the guys having the proper paperwork or what, but it's
going to people who are just Instagram drug bros, who then later resell these
for insane amounts of money to suckers, no offense. And I have sympathy
for the suckers too, because everyone wants to connect, Everyone wants to bond,
you know. I think that's part of it. Even if you're just
hoarding these things and you get the fucking monkey brain collector complex, I think
there's a small part of every human out there that wants to connect to something
larger than themselves, whether it's the plants or it's the habitat. But my
point is is that these plants are not just autonomous entities. You can't just
have a plant in a pot and it looks pretty and you post a million
photos in your dark apartment and you get I don't know, I don't even
know there's the point of that. Like all these accounts look the same.
It's like potted fucking plant. I don't want to see potted plants. I
don't give a fuck about potted plants. I don't give a fuck about your
weird fetish for these things. But I'm not kno gonna throw I've got fetish
for plants too, obviously, but I want to see plants and habitat.
I want to see the context that things, these things evolved in. I
want to know what the average annual rainfall is what the what the mean summer
temperatures are? I want to know all this stuff. I want to know.
Is there a mountain belt that created a rain shadow and that's why it's
a fucking desert here? Why are these Why are these beds of sedimentary rock
that were originally laid down horizontally, Why are they now flipped almost ninety degrees
vertical in the air like you see in the Sierra Madre Orientell near Monterrey.
Why does this exist? Why is their gypsum on the surface? Why are
there gypsum endemic cactuy? Like Gio Antonio, I want the big picture,
and you should too. Don't fucking deprive yourself. Don't settle for these weird
poodles, which is what they end up becoming, these weird poodles that you
fetishize in pots. Look at the bigger picture. Don't be fucking afraid to
get heady. Okay, Pirate textbooks online, Pirate fucking papers online. Start
reading research papers. Go to scholar dot Google dot com. Type in something
like cactacy phylogeny. Learn what a fucking phylogeny is. It's pretty cool.
It's pretty cool stuff. It'll fucking blow your mind. It'll reshape the way
you think about the world. It'll reshape the way you think about your own
species, It'll reshape the way that you think about everything around you. Learn
learn that thing. Go look out. Seek out plants and habitat, not
to take them, just to observe them because it's fucking cool. It's like
going to church. I fucking hated church as a kid when I was you
know, my mom, I was raised Catholic. When my mom would take
me to church, I'd sit in the church and look up at the fucking
rafters and imagine, you know, fucking airplane dog fights up in the fucking
you know, all kinds of weird shit, people parachuting. I had a
wild imagination. I would imagine all this stuff. I would get so fucking
bored. I would write little stories. That's boring. Church, Okay,
go to habitat. Go to the fucking real church. Go view these things.
Go view the living network of organisms that you're a part of. Ask
questions. Don't overlook anything. When I when I'm out in habitat with people
and they only want to look at one plant and they ignore everything else,
I know it can be overwhelming when they ignore everything else. You'll see if
I'm telling them information about it, it makes me fucking depressed and it's irritating.
It's like you only hyper focus on this one thing that's cool. Let
that serve as a gateway though, to caring about other things and seeing the
importance of other things. That's the shit that happened to me. Used to
never pay attention to certain families and genera and lineages of plants. But then
I would learn, Oh, there's this cool thing that I'm interested in that
pollinates something that i'm interested in, and it also uses this plant. It's
larva use this plant as a food source when they're young. That's fucking cool.
Okay, now I'm interested in this plant. Start noticing things, start
paying attention to things like geology. Do you get the point? There's a
bigger picture here, And I just wish these drug bros would stop fucking purchasing
and selling poast plants. Man, you can tell it's a poached plant when
you look at it, all right, versus these routed up astrophytem or peyote
or fucking whatever other plants kopia pola's that people grow in Thailand and Japan,
of course, where they're it's coming from town in Japan. They're not native
there. It's a good indication it's probably grown. It's probably ethically produced,
okay. And you look at like a peyote that. You could see these
Thai greenhouses too. Some of these fucking guys, man, I don't know
what they're doing, but they're growing these things. They look roted up,
they look like they're on steroids. They're clean. The fucking roots are air
dusted off. They don't have soil on them. They're not cut, they're
not scarred, they're not weathered, okay, scarring, weathering damage, you
know, really, they especially the scarring, like you could tell a habitat
plant from a you can tell a poached habitat plant from a cultivated one.
You know, someone sent me a photo once there's some plants that were obviously
cultivating. They were like, are this person's poaching? It was like,
no fucking way. Those I've never seen plants like that. In Habitat plants
and habitat don't look like that. Plants and habitat are much older than they
look. Those things are probably six years old. They look like grapefruits.
They're just these big green grapefruits. Plants and habitat don't look like that there.
You know, they look weather, they look old, they look like
they've been through a lot, because the habitat is fucking stressful. That's why
they evolve mescaline in the first place, or why certain plants have evolved,
you know, spines and thick layers of farina. Remember farina is different from
cuticle. It's epic cuticular wax. Farina's epic cuticular wax. Cuticle is just
a it's like a thick cuticle. And Aerocarpus is that yellow shit that when
you find a dead plant in West Texas that probably died from drought, but
what's left over looks like a dirty fingernail. That is the cuticle. That's
the Aerocarpaus has the thickest cuticle. All plants have cuticles, Aerocarpus. There's
cuticles on leafy plants in the rainforest, but Ariocarpus has the thickest cuticle.
I think of almost any plant, there's probably I'm probably leaving somebody out.
There's probably someone who's got a thicker cuticle. But anyway, the point is,
there's just there's so much more here to look at And that's what I
hope to do with people is get them to look at the bigger shit,
get them to find interest when they see the context that these other things that
they formerly may have just looked over occurring. Okay, that's why I make
fun of drug bros. That's why I do it. That's why I make
fun of the Instagram, payote and Trico, serious accounts and all this shit.
It's just we lord stuff. To me, it's funny. It's funny.
I'm not don't want to make anybody feel bad, but it's funny.
It's like lowest common denominator shit, all right. And they use worry rather
than use words like phenotypic variability or a different phenotype. They use strain.
It's a strain, it's a Lendrys. All these fucking words that just tell
me this person has no clue what the fuck they're talking about. Okay,
Like go go go fucking stealing Pirate, Carl Zimmer's evolution book, Go Stealing
Pirate, Michael Simpson's Plant Systematics textbook. You could get all these things on
libgen dot is. You could go. You can go get them for free.
You have a fucking whole you know, eight hundred page textbook. How
big is plant systematics? I don't know. You know, you can have
that on You can read it on your fucking phone, get a little tablet,
read it on a computer, do whatever if you don't want to.
I mean, I would just buy the hard copy and carried around with you.
That's a great way to learn. That's nice. I like the hard
copy. I bought a hard copy of Jessica Gervich's Ecology of Plants, third
Edition, which I wish someone would pirate. Sorry, Jessica, I wish
someone would pirate, you know, put put into a PDF format and put
online because a lot of people could benefit from it. It's fucking great.
It's a fabulous, fucking textbook. Jessica Gervy. I want to have her
and the guy she wrote it with I always forget his name, Shiner.
She wrote with two other people, Shiner and Fox. I got a shiner.
When's the last time you got a shiner? You push somebody off BD,
you got a shiner? Huh? Maybe some Instagram cactus bro is gonna
come at me and try to get me a shiner. Then I'll hit him
with a pipe. Anyway, The point is I mean, I've said it
before, I don't know. Just fucking read. Just educate yourself, look
at a bigger picture, you know, get it. Let Let that one
thing you hyper focus on, even if it's just having a bunch of potes
in a fucking manglepot. Let that one thing serve is what inspires you to
look closer and deeper and learn more. Right, don't satisfy, don't be
satisfied. Don't settle for just being able to have a pretty looking plant and
you don't care where it came from and put it in a pot. That's
fucking sick. That's a that's an illness, that's a disease. That's a
diseased value system, and it's part of what's destroying the habit that down here.
I just can't I just can't imagine spending that much money on one hundred
and fifty dollars. I know, one hundred and fifty is nothing. There's
probably some of you that have spent one hundred and fifty bucks on a plant,
Okay once in a while, yeah sure, But growing stuff from seed
as always, that's so rewarding. You know, Go fucking go get some
lights, Go fucking learn how to do it. Look it up. You
know, you know there's a great on that note. There's a fucking great
you want to learn of, like the light intensity is enough. There's a
great. Alan Rockefeller turned me on to this. It's called it's an app
called GPS Space Status. The space not like the word space, but there's
a space between GPS and status because there's all these different fucking apps on like
the Android Play story that can just be a fucking pain ass. But GPS
Status gives your GPS status and the pitch and the roll and the magnetic feel
all that shit. Your latitude launched too. But it also has a light
meter in there that measures the unit of measurement is lux and so you can,
you know, you can you basically have a light meter on your phone.
You can you can read how much light you're getting outside and then compare
it to what maybe a light that you have inside. It's growing. Like
Spider Farmer, they make the bright lights. They had a fucking they they
gave me a fucking light. I can't they what. They gave me a
light and then told me the promoter. It took me nine months, but
I finally did it. But I forget the promotion code. I think it's
crime pace twenty. I don't know if you put that in, maybe you
get or it's Rye pays ten. I don't know. If you have a
problem, you can email me if you actually try to buy one. But
either way, they make good lights. Spiderfarm makes good lights. Sun Blaster
makes good lights. But you want you want to, you know, you
hold the little GPS status app out under there under your lights. You can
measure how much, you know what the like the lights I got from that
measured like sixteen thousand lucks. I go outside, it's like fifty thousand lucks
depending on what time of year. But on an overcast day, it's only
like ten thousand lucks, you know. So it's it's a useful you know,
so you at least have something to work with if you want to grow
gross you know, veggie seedlings inside or cacti ceilings inside or whatever. It's
a fucking there's all this stuff to consider, but it could be really helpful.
And of course you got to get some airflow whatever, but uh,
you don't get a fan in nice soil mix. But you start thinking about
this stuff and then it's actually you're actually learning something, and you know,
paying attention to what you're doing, picking up on the you know, the
picking up on how things are picking up on the feed. But there's a
feedback effect. You're paying attention to what you know, you're interacting with something
rather than just purchasing it. You know, you grow cacti from c Why
are they doing well? Do I need to get the condensation off the lid?
Shake it off? Do I? You know? Maybe I'll try this
out. Maybe I'll try this out. What's with the soil mix? You
can learn, You can pay attention, observe and learn versus just buying expensive
fucking plants because you want to collect shit and post it on your your Instagram
drug bro account. It's such a thing too, the drug bros. Leo,
uh paloty lorixes even he's been using that word. It's just such a
like, it's such a thing, the drug bro, the Instagram drug bro.
Do you trake a serious deed? Land reyes, deed, strains,
trikes, deeed tracks, graphs and graphs like do you like big bend deed?
Like big Bend, I mean like dede, like fucking South Texas deed
like rail to cotorsid like deed, Oh god, God, it kills me.
But uh you know again, I think at the root, it's just
that it's an urge to connect to something larger than yourself. And so that's
why I wish that there was just more habitat accessible for people, you know,
to experience, so they could see, all right, maybe it's you
know, that's how that's how some that that is that feels so good for
some people to be able to just grow these things in their little apartment whatever,
all right, and they can't make it out the habit that I can
get it. We're all we're all slaves of the fucking retail retail consumer hell
that we let the low wage retail consumer hell that has become most of the
United States and most of Australia and New Zealand, many places in Europe,
most of the First World and in other places too. But uh so,
not everybody can get out the habitat. But at least if there was,
you know, if there was a way to or a Texas doesn't even have
any fucking public land. It's like five percent public land. You have to
pay to get in. It's a pain in the ass. It's you know,
always try to get out to quote unquote nature, you know, as
opposed to UH don't know. I don't know if people spend their weekends,
but just always try to get out and experience things, and eventually you'll get
bitten and start paying attention. You know, you get bitten by an interest
in an enthusiasm for this shit. Remember when I was starting to get into
plants, to all this shit, It just started. I would I was
into quote unquote hiking. I never used that fucking word anymore, but I
was just int the hiking. I just wanted to go out to quote unquote
natural areas. Is like twenty ten or something. I was working for the
railroad, living in Oakland, and I would just want to go out and
look at the world around me. It felt good to be in these places.
Eventually, it felt so good I wanted to start looking closer. And
I was never satisfied with the amount of information I got. I never got
enough. There were so many questions I had. I was so curious,
and that just expanded into Eventually I started reading you know, papers on Google
scholar learning to steal them via si hub, PSI hyphen hub dot se or
PSI hyphen hub that WF. I would read these papers. First, I
would just read the abstract it you know, there was that was all that
was really digestible to me at that point. There were a lot of big
words I didn't understand. Then finally, when I had more time, I
started and more interest. I wasn't satisfied with you know, not knowing,
So I started looking up these words and I realized, ID probably need to
get fucking textbooks. Started just started pirating textbooks. Then when I had,
you know, more money. I was working for the rail at the time,
when I had a more sustainable income, then I would just go fucking
purchase a textbook. It was devoted to my own education whatever. Then I
started I would take pictures everywhere I went to create a little log right started
using eigh naturalist. I was like, I didn't start using a EI naturalist
to any large scale until like twenty seventeen probably, And it was it was
at Alan Rockefeller's urgent. He was the one that got me into doing it.
I'd used to not. I thought it was fucking first off, I
naturalist is kind of a corny fucking name, just be honest, no offense
to it. I love it. I used the shit out of it.
I just used it as a way I obscure the locations on nearly everything I
observe, and I just used it as a way to keep track of my
own observations because I'll remember sometimes what was that plant I saw in Chile that
was a member of euphourbiac But I can't remember what the name was. You
know, I can type in Euphourbia c Chili view only my observations and be
reminded of it was Euphorbia lactive fluid. It was this giant bush Euphorbia that
upon the slightest touch, would bleed latex out of the stems. It was
incredible, It was amazing. Well, that's a really cool bird outside.
What the fuck is that little tiny, little tiny guy. Oh my yard
is so nice. It's like a fucking nature preserving to itself. It's thick.
Sounds good at night too. The tree crickets are back. But uh,
you know, so I started doing that, and then I just it
just became it just consumed me, you know. But taking pictures was really
important because that's how you remember things, that's how you record that. I
started looking closer at flowers, learning about different breeding systems and plants a right
like gino diis says gynodioecism, you know, learning what monoecious was, and
dioecious and all the holy shit. And you know, eighty percent of flowering
plants to produce perfect bisexual flowers, both male and female parts in them.
What about the twenty percent that don't? What do they do? They're dioecious
or they've got their you know, in case of gynodioecious, it's a fuck,
what was it? They only produce I'm gonna fuck this up. There's
andromonecious, android, dioecious, and all these fucking words. But basically it
implies when you know a plant will produce both perfect flowers and also female or
male sterol flowers, like like you know, male or female flowers only there's
all these different breeding systems. What's the point of it? Why do they
do this? The point of it is to promote outcrossing. That's the thing
that like Schizophyleum commune. I just want to go on this rant too,
because it's that's that that fungus that's got supposedly twenty thousand different genders, but
they're not. It's not they're not gen It's a fucking really dumb way to
think of it. They're twenty different It's like twenty thousand different mating types.
Maybe it's more than that, but it's mating types. And the point is
to promote outcrossing. It's to promote outcrossing, or that what I presumably would
be the benefit of it, because if you don't outcross, if you're just
self fertile, you get a lack of genetic diversity, you get reduced fitness
for the environment. But I just I hate it just because you know,
people will use it to justify their weird ideologies about people. Now, weird
idea, you know that's not it wrong, you know what I mean,
their own ideologies about people that are anti scientific. And I'm not talking about
identity. Whatever people identify as obviously is fucking fine. I don't care.
It's you know, it's it's a part of who we are. I think
focusing on identity can get a little weird sometimes. I don't think these two
dimensional characteristics about ourselves necessarily define who we are as people. What we love
to create, what we love to surround ourselves with, that defines ourselves as
people. But regardless. You know, a lot of people grow up and
fucked up households that associate different traits with a different gender and fuck their heads
up and you know, make them feel bad because they're not behaving a certain
way. That shit is wrong, it's fucked up. But you know that
said the fungus an organism like schizophile and communities are just mating types. It's
like a lock that can only fit a certain key. And that's just to
promote outcrossing. But when you don't get that outcrossing when up, when an
organism is is self fertile, it can be beneficial in the short term,
but you know, very maladaptive in the long term, right because you're not
going to have you can have reduced fitness in the face of environmental stresses and
even you know, catastrophes that might hit your population. So that's the point
of promoting outcrossing, and that's why a lot of cacti are ab will get
outcrossers as well. He's fine leg on the way of a crazy old Italian
man. Yeah, I see him pissing in bottles. Now why is he
saving his pass? He mixes it with some water and then he dumps it
out on his true story True story. Sorry, I had to get up
to get a fucking a forty of green tea. That Trader Joe's green tea
ever been banned from a Trader Joe's. I'll see if I can pull it
off. See if I can pull it, I like going. I'm just
kidding. We don't have him down here. You know, you gotta go
to San Antonio for that stuff. You can't get that stuff on a border.
But anyway, I was, I actually, did you know I started
doing it. That's where I'm sharing that with you because I feel comfortable with
you, with you as a listener. She don't really give a shit either
way. I've got no filter. And people want to judge me for pissing
in a gallon jug and saving it and diluting it with water and using his
fertilizer. That's fine, But you know what, I wouldn't be the first
to tell to do that. And I'll tell you that. My friend Anna
told me Anna sir Niglia, Sir Niglia from the South. She's a dark
Italian, she told me years ago. I haven't talked to her in a
long time, but I hope she's doing well, I thought she listened to
this podcast. She's more of an artsy type. But if you do,
Anna, I hope you doing well. She told me once that her dad
made her sit in a back seat. Wait no, that's a different story.
That's about he was transporting a basil plant and he had it buckled into
the front seat, so he made her sit in the back. He was
giving her ride somewhere as in Chicago. But there was another time she told
me that she went to his house to visit him, you know, check
on your parents like you do sometimes when they get old and senile. And
this man was storing his piss and she asked them about it because she was
pretty revolted and I also bewildered. And he told her that it was for
his garden. Had a lot of Italians put a lot of work into the
tomato and basil gardens. An eggplant too. But eggplant's fucking gross, man,
it really is. Shout out to solin Ac, shout out to the
genus so Lainum, but no thank you, and the egg plant. I'll
hold back, I'll refrain. But anyway, the point was what we were
talking about. Cacti are obligate outcrossers most of them are. I always confuse.
I think, how many what's the percentage of cacti versus the percentage of
flowering plants angiosperms in general? Go download the phylogenetic tree from plant gateway dot
com forward slash poster and what is the I always confuse it. I confuse
the percentages. The great majority of flowering plants are bisexual and the great majority
of cacti our obligate outcrossers. I always confuse those two statistics. I've been
writing a fucking book, man, and it's I'm losing my mind. But
I finally got a hold in my publisher today and we spoke at length.
I'm writing way too much. That's the issue here. I'm writing way too
much, and it's more than they want. So maybe, you know,
maybe we'll make some cuts and all off for they extended version, you know,
at a at a twenty dollars price tag. I'm just kidding. Ah,
sounded like l Now. You know, he's always got that Chicago.
You know what we could do if you want to go in on some shirts.
He's always got that Chicago you know that that hustler mentality, man,
And he's good at it. He's good. Okay. Anyway. The point
is, by the way, if you ordered shirts, if you ordered kill
your Lawn hoodies, they're going out this week. They're getting printed Alan John
or printing them in a garage on the northwest side. Now's going to be
mailing him from the divinity, the sacred divinity of his garden apartment, his
basement apartment next week. Okay. Anyway, So most cacti or I will
get out crossers, all right. And that's why I could be very frustrating
if you've only got one and you're trying to get seed, because you're trying
to do something like a restoration project like we're trying to do down here in
the Thorn Scrub Sanctuary. And so if you are, if you've only got
you know, one individual, you're not going to get good seed. And
if they they don't flower at the same time, you're not going to get
good seeds. So that's that's the whole freezing pollen thing. You know.
It's so you could did that video. I did that video. You could
take stamens off you you know, put them, try to get the pollen,
not just try to get the pollen, not the anther in the filament
wish together are the stamen. You just want the pollen. You just want
that yellow, juicy stuff. And because that can take freezing, that doesn't
have any water in it. The pollens already dry. And so anyway you
put that in a little put in a little polypropylene tube, or you could
put it in like a little drug baggye. I guess too, but it
might be harder to get. I think the polypropylene centrifuged tube. You know,
they're like an inch long that that's probably the best way to keep pulling.
You could order them online from Amazon for like eight eight bucks, you
know, but you can really store it anyway. Try anything, try just
doing some stamens too, But I think it's always safer to just get the
palm first. Either away, get that and put it, you know,
put it in a freezer, wait for the other flower to open. I'm
not sure how long it would last at room temperature, I think, especially
since most cactus flowers only bloom for a day or two. The horse crippler
has been going all week though beyond it, I can't tell if it's different
flowers are the same ones opening, but you know they open during the day,
close at night, and then they'll open another few days. But most
flowers, like the pencil cactus, the kind of serious posselgorai astrophied and mysterious.
It only lasts for a day or two. So if you don't got
two going at the same time, you're a shit out of luck. Pal.
But so that's what I've been doing for like the past three weeks,
trying to get seeds off these obliged outcrossers. And curiously enough, peyote is
not an obleget outcrosser. So that was the point that I was getting at.
Is this the short term benefit of being a self fertile plant that is
not an oblgate outcrossers. And no matter what, you're going to produce seed
all right, may not be highly diverse seed, it may not have a
lot of variation among the ceilings that you grow from it, but you will
still get seed. So anyway, but of course that's the key to evolution.
Being an obligate outcrosser too, that's what increases the phenotypic variability that you
get in a subsequent subsequent population of ceilings that you that you grow. That
you know, the more genetic variability, the more the more phenotypic variability you're
going to get among the seeds you get. So that's like by a plant
like astrophytem, I mean, I guess it makes it. It's no wonder
that a plant like Astrophytum the star cactus is an obliged outcrosser because when you
look at some of the ship that the some of the different phenotypes that you
know, the Japanese and the Thai and and you know people like madame Kacti
jarel, all these astrophyt and breeders are able to get is insane. You
know, from from the same batch of seed that has the same two parents.
So it's pretty fucking wild. Like, no wonder that's an apple get
outcrosser. Connect the dots. That make sense why there's so much probably one
of the reasons why there's so much variability. But then I wonder if you
were to do that same, what other cacti species have so much variability,
uh, you know from the resulting ceilings besides Astrophytum. It's wild because astrophytem
is really I mean that some of the shit that it's some of the fucking
different cultivars, the forms that these breeders get is nuts, man, they
get. I mean, I've seen astrophytems that look like peyotes. They've got
the same kind of uh rib and lobe morphology. It's pretty wild stuff.
Do you Tricho Serious collection, Tricho, Serious Collection, deed LANDRZ stream landeasee.
Anyway, Ah, it's fun. I think this is gonna be my
next I need to get I need to work on this this person I'm channeling
though, this character. You know, I need some more materials, more,
some more key words, some more key phrases, which I guess maybe
that would require, you know, just pouring over different Instagram drug brow accounts.
I don't know. And again, no offense if this is you,
no offense. If you're an Instagram drug bro, no offense. I'm just
imploring you to look a little deeper, you know, expand your horizons the
range of shit you're interested in. You know, pirates some textbooks, read
some research papers, learn some words you don't understand. If you don't understand
a word, that's good, look it up. That's an opportunity for learning.
Anyway, we could stop talking about cact now. I went to San
Antonio over the well twice over the last week, and I found there's this
population of I could tell it was vestigial native flora that was occurring. That
occurred on a limestone embankment above Highway two eighty one in beautiful San Antone.
And there's limestone throughout this whole area, but this was like a steep limestone
rock wall, somewhat like the limestone rock walls you'll see along the freeway in
places like Missouri or even Illinois. And so my interest was a little perked.
So and I could tell there was native flora going there. It looked
like there was dasillyria and some other cool you know, there's spiny, mean
monocots. So I found a way to home my ass up there, found
found access, and you know, it's all it's like homeless camps and you
know, graffiti, it's gonna be like homeless people in graffiti who are primarily
graffiti people who are primarily the demographics that that would otherwise be and maybe the
odd maintenance worker. These are gonna be the demogra demographics that are going to
be frequenting these areas. And so I was already you know, those are
kind of my natural habitats because as a young child is a teenager, those
were those were the places I like to lurk and kick it and hang out.
And whether it's paying graffiti or just lurking along the fucking tracks looking for
cool stuff, getting away from people, those were the spots that were fun
to hang out at. So it's cool to return to them. Uh fucking
what twenty five years later, twenty years later and look there once again,
this time to botanize and so, and that's actually what the second book that
I'm writing, which I can't believe I actually agreed to do, is gonna
be about. Fuck oh god. I called that publisher asked for an extension.
I felt kind of pressured into it. I'm not gonna lie. They
were like I was like, ah, I don't really have time to do
this right now. I'm already working on another. And they're like, no,
you'll be fine. Okay, are you sure? I don't really know.
No, you'll be fine. Hey. You know, I got fucking
problems focusing, and I'm doing like eleven things at once, and have you
know nine thousand things ping ponging around inside my head at any one time?
You know that right now, you'd be fine don't worry about it all right,
okay, But anyway, so that I went up and you know,
have the fence checked out this little legend. The only reason that this little
parcel of land is still there is because it's sam between two freeway on ramps
and it's right above a precipitous cliff above the freeway, and god damn,
the Agave colony at the base of that cliff is fucking impressive. Man.
It is a Gave univitata aka agave little fanta. It's a spiny, narrow
leave, the gave that we also get in South Texas and a couple of
populations that are hard to access and close to the river, so they might
have been transported by humans a thousand years ago. But it is a fucking
sea of daggers. Like right on that margin of that freeway. It is
just these spiny fucking leaves, some of them upwards the two three feet long,
and they just have those really sharp spines on the margins to those recurved
margins. It's always nice when you get one of those broken off inside you.
Oh, break it off inside me, daddy, ya know, you
get one of them spines broken off on your fucking hand. We got like
nine of them right now, and then you pop it later two weeks later,
a little bit of puss and it just shoots out the fucking spine.
Anyway, I was impressed. I was. I'm not gonna lie. I
was impressed. There was Dasillarian text saying them there so tall, which like
a gave, can be used to make an alcoholic drink. By the way,
fuck booze. No offense to anybody who does drink. I just kind
of hate alcohol. I think it holds people back and numbs them. But
and plus, who wants to only have a couple, right? I want
to have ten and go fucking steal a fire truck and drive it into a
mall. Uh. But you know, so tall the reason so tall Deasillarian
textaying them or that's just Dasillarian the genus. You get some really beautiful blue
ones and you go further out west Desalarian wheeler eye, et cetera, desillieriana
gave. Of course, they're just using their leaf blades a solar panels to
uh cook up carbohydrates and sugars and store them in that heart at the center
of the plant, which they pret with those rosettes of spiny armored leaves,
and then when the time comes, they use that massive store of sugar to
very quickly, on the span of a couple of weeks to a month,
send up a huge inflorescence that becomes the talk of the town among the local
pollinators, bats, bees, whatever, the shit moths. There's an agave
that's pollinated by hummingbirds, a gave polyanth the flora which produces those little pink
flowers, and then you know, and then they get it done. And
because it's such a massive they save all that sugar so they can send up
such a massive inflorescence a compound flower, which ensures that they're going to get
pollinated. So it's a great strategy. But of course, once you've spent
all that sugar, you can't live anymore. You die, So that's why
you monocarpic. But you produce offsets, which not all a gave can do,
but many can. When you can produce offsets clones that are genetically identical
to the parent, you ensure that, you know, even if there's no
cross pollination or whatever, you're still gonna you're still gonna have plenty of individuals
around to uh to bang and reproduce through the whole genetic recombination thing, et
cetera. And you're gonna have a diverse gene pool. Well, depends on
how many individuals you got. I get if you're just a if it's just
a clump of a bunch of clones. But these were obviously what I was
looking at down here was these were obviously many individuals. So it's a robust
population and it'll never be developed probably. I mean, I shouldn't say never,
because Texas finds a way to fucking destroy every little bit of its natural
heritage for the sake of development and making money. But it would be really
hard to develop here just because of the freeways and the fucking you know.
Anyway, I hope it doesn't happen, but it was really cool. And
then I went and spoke to couple that lived in the homeless camp. It
was John and Jillian. Was it Gillian and Jeff Fuck I can't remember anyway,
but uh yeah, they were both super chill and ni and I guess
they've been there for a year or two, but it's it's a great place
for them because the city's not gonna fuck with them, and they're not bothering
anybody. You know, all you gotta worry about is some fucking busybody with
a heart on for poor people coming by to harass them. But I don't
think that would happen, you know. I think the city likes to prefers
to keep them out of the public eye. But it's yeah, it was
fucking cool, and there was there was Loupinus tex census everywhere, not to
be confused with Loopinus subcarnosis, which is a grows more on sand, like
further south of San Antonio. I was my friend Priya, and so we
were just yeah, we were just just fucking on looking at all the plants.
You know. It was just it was great. I was so surprised
to find that agave there because that's super rare down here. I've only seen
that in one or two places down on the borderlands. But up there it's
everywhere. So if you live in San Antonio, find the spot and go
pluck a cutting. It'll be fine. It's in a fucking city. There's
plenty of clones being sent out by this plant. Go take a cutting,
put it in a pot, put it in your front yard, keep it
away from your dogs and your kids, because it will harm that, it
will harright, it's I mean, you can also cut the ends off.
I do that with the I got a yuk Atrakolian in my eyar. I
don't want my kid. I want my daughter to get stabbed on it.
You know, she's already been poked plenty by the you know, spiny leg
humes, another cacti and stuff, and I've taught her to treat it as
a badge of honor, you know, to be proud of these wounds.
But I still, you know, I don't know if she's she's adept enough
to stay away from yunger. So I clip the fucking ends off with a
leatherman. But it makes me so happy. I was just I took a
break. I've taken like five breaks during this podcast, guy, because I
just I'm trying to do too much. I can't fucking focus. I think
it's I think it's residual stress from this stupid book. But I took a
break to go pollinate some of these kind of serious posuguai. These little pencil
cac This is, you know, the three foot tall diameter of a pencil
growing scandidly through the shrir and upon it in this one, and a fucking
bee, this big cool native solitary bee flies in there, just big ass
you just do with a big ass gets in there, you know, I
kind of gotta wait from the finish she goes. He's fucking around there for
like twenty thirty seconds. I guess it was a she, but man,
it was cool. I'm starting to learn the native bees, these cool native
desert bees, because this is practically Mexico, Like we get a lot of
subtropical and tropical lineages here. I think I think it was an Anthofarula.
That's the genus which I've observed quite a few times. They they do a
lot of pollination of peoti too, a lot of the cact i. Hear.
Antho ferulia is a cool uh, A cool genus of solitary. Are
they solitary bees or what? Ah? Goad god, they said, But
you know, they all these fucking things, all these cool all these bees
look fucking awesome. They got like blue eyes like Hay's the lithe like sky
blue eyes. Fucking fuck the European honey bee. It's it's it's boring.
Who gives a shit about that? These are fucking cool Antho Faroula. Are
they everywhere? Mostly? No, They're mostly in the southwest desert from California.
You get some in the Bay Area Bay Area to Houston, little banana
banana shaped distribution, but man, a lot of them. I was at
my friend Ernest's house and he had a couple. Uh. I think it
was melesoti. I forget what genus it was. One of the native Melisotis
is another cool one too, that's the longhorn bee. Holy fuck, they
got these long ass antenna. But there was a solitary bee kind of lurking
around. We were hanging outside talking. There was a solitary bee lurking around
a woodpile looking for something to drill into the starter nest, which is so
fucking cool. I didn't even know. I think there's so much to know
about you know, you'll never know everything, but when you start seeing everything's
connected, then you start wanting to learn more. And I wonder what this
like, what does it do? What's the do It's a solitary bead,
you know, drills in the wood, deposits at you're you know, it
was a leaf cutter, That's what it was. It was a leaf cutter.
Bee. I don't even know that genus. Man, I'm not even
gonna try it to pretend I know anything about these bees. I just take
pictures of shit and I put it on in at. I take pictures of
things that I love seeing on the plants that I love so much, and
then I want to know what the fuck they are, which is the great
thing about a naturalists. You know, really opens up you know, it's
really opens up the Uh it opens up the doors of information, you know,
instead of this ship being gatekeep gate kept, or having to have a
guide or whatever. But uh, let's see complex Ago Chloropsis metallica. Where
was that? Where'd I see that? That's on a verbus scene. It's
on some sort of composite God, there's all. The thing is fucking awesome.
Ago Cloropsis metallica. It's a metallic green bee. Jesus Christ. Oh
that's amazing, and uh, I'm just doing it. I just did a
Texas state search for bees that I observe. Melisodes is fucking six. Saw
one of those man cremeria was going off. It took my daughter. We
went and looked at some Peyoti habitat saw a there was a clump of buffalo
grass. I did a video on this because it's a really good illustration of
the protective, the uv protective nature of farina and what happens when you take
a plant that's been grown in the shade or under a clump of buffalo grass
and then exposed the sun in all the cell damage that occurs and basically,
you know the farina that I say, a peote has that wax, that
blue color, it's that farina. If you have a plant that's grown like
this plant was grown growing under buffal grass, that clump of buffal grass has
probably been there for a few years, and it as a result that shaded
the payote, so the payota didn't need to produce that much forena, and
then suddenly it gets exposed to the sun. The epidermal tissue is and then
it burns. Well, now since that shade is gone. The you know,
basically, a plant, whatever it's got is what it has, whatever's
produced, and the layer of how much farina it has, I'm really saying,
it's a confusing fucking way, and I'm sorry. The layer of farina,
how much farina, the thickness of farina, the epicarticular wax that white
stuff that's produced in the applical maristem aka the center of the plant where active
cell division is occurring, is produced. That density of farina is produced in
response to the amount of sun that it's getting at that time. If it
does not, if a plant goes from shade to sun, it's going to
burn because it can't just magic well, I think regardless, I think if
certainly, if you do it too fast, all right, which the rate
at which you know peyote grow is, you gotta it's gotta be a gradual
transition from shade or indoors to full sun over a span of probably a few
months, maybe maybe six weeks. But either way, you know that light
intensity mixed with intense heat is going to burn them, especially the shade.
But that layer of farina that's produced at the apical marastem is all that it's
got. It can't magically regrow it, you know, if if it's already
grown, like you know, the the tissue moves down the plant that's emanated
out of the center of the stem, and then it as the plant grows,
it goes further down, moves further down the plant as it grows.
If it's already. If it's already produced in shady conditions, you know,
it can't magically produce more farina at that spot if it's not still actively growing
at that spot. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying.
You catch me? So what what you're what you're born with at that
time is what you got. Now, as it grows, it'll produce is
more cells are is more cells divide at the epical marastem. They will have
that a thicker layer of farina produced in response to the sunlight they're getting.
But uh, you know, if that tissue is already damaged, you basically
that's that's what you got. You know that you're not going to regrow a
farina so and so was This was a good illustration of it. So I've
got that plant marked in habitat and I'll come back probably in a year and
see what it looks like. We'll do a follow up. But right now
it was burned. We removed the buffalo grass. Uh, maybe three years
ago. I was out there with my daughter and a friend. And then
he'll probably go check on it because he lives closer to it. But we
can go check on it and see, you know, what what it looks
like in six months or a year, which is this is why we need
to just have a fucking research plot of research station. So hopefully, I
don't know. Hopefully we'll be closing on this fucking land soon so we could
do it. But I don't know this whoever the seller, whatever sketchy owner
it is, is being and it's a number. I think it's a number
of siblings, but they're being ones down, ones being really wishy washy,
and so I don't know what's gonna happen. But hopefully i'll have an update
for you in a week or two if we've actually purchased this land or not.
And then at that point we'll have a mortgage, which will be a
pain in the ass, but hopefully through fundraising we can tackle that in a
few years get it all paid off. But we'll be able to start having
people, researchers and whoever come down to visit this year, probably not in
the depth of the hot season, though it's already fucking hot today. Oh
god. Anyway, I gotta fucking I gotta get to work on this book,
but really quick. Yes, San Antonio was cool. It was cool
to see the vestigial population of plants. Uh, there was diasporos text aina
there to Texas per simon, which is dioecious. Another good reason to look
at flowers once you grasp the general and this is a message to the drug
bros. To study flower morphology. You know andro sum guinosium basically just the
male parts of a flower, the female parts of a flower, you know,
pollen anther filament for a stamen, uh, stigma style ovary for a
pistol p I S T I L or a gynoecium as it's called. And
so you know, look anyway you look at a flower, you could tell
what's going on as a male is it female, as it bisexual? Uh?
If it's sometimes you'll see like I was when when I was in Baja,
I was looking at roos integrafoia, looking at the flowers up close.
It had both both stamen and pistol. It had both anthers uh and uh
a stigma. But the stigma looked you know, plump and juicy, and
the anthers looked very reduced and shriveled. I found out later. You know,
it looked like something was going on, like those were not good anthers.
They were not vivacious, and so looked into it more and like,
okay, this is a ended up being gino I think it was Gino dioecious,
so it produced some plants were either entirely female, and then some plants
were, Oh fuck, I'm gonna fuck this up. I gotta look this
up. Some plants produced perfect flowers, and some plants produced uh male sterile
akaa female flowers. Yeah that's it. Yeah, Gino dioecious. A Gino
diaoecious plant bears only female aka late flowers on some plants, and either bisexual
or both male and female flock just just settle with bisexual and either bisexual flowers
on other plants. So some plants will be bisexual on some plants will be
female only. So that's guy not thaetius. And then there's course there's guy
know mony shoes and andromony ishues that get super confusing. But all this shit
can be really interesting later on if you end up getting into it, because
these are how plants outcross and facilitate genetic diversity. It's really fascinating stuff.
And then you get in a whole you know, pollination biology, you know,
whole fucking pollination ecology and pollination biology and all all whole smorgasborg interesting shit
to look at when you get into how these things interact and behave in ecosystems.
Sow they interact with pollinators like our cool solitary bees here in South Texas,
or whether they're hummingbirds and cloud forests or fucking geckos uh in Mauritius and
the island of Mauritius, like that weird member of the Compania lacey Nessa Coton
mauritianus, if you want to look that up. But it produces blood red
nectar. It's a rare gecko pollinated endemic from Mauritius. That's a fucking cool
one. I've seen it at mobot before they're grown. It beautiful fucking purple
flowers with like bright red nectar. Gecko pollinated Nessa Coton n e s O
co O d O N. Anyway, I'm fucking all over the place today
and I apologize, but uh Anyway, after that, we got to go
check out the Fryess Soma breeding program because I'm gonna do a video on Texas
horned lizards at San Antonio Zoo. And I had never been to San Antonio
Zoo before. But I was pretty impressed. You know, they got a
nice fucking some really huge, beautiful old specimens of Taxodium mucrenadum there of the
Montezuma Cyprus the northern end of the range here. Of course, that tree
goes all the way up on to Austin, just growing into the rivers and
creeks and whatnot. But the whole man, there was some fucking Texas cyclids
too. They've got this little creek that runs through it. It's a natural
creek, and the zoo is built on an old quarry, and so this
natural creek runs through the zoo. And they've got like in the same place
where they've got their alligators and some of their God, they got these really
weird Asian crocodilions too, with the narrow snouts. I forget their name.
But in that same area, it's just a natural creek that runs through it.
It's just part of the aquifer. And so God, Texas has some
beautiful man this limestone. It's just a filter for the water here, just
some beautiful limestone creeks and that's what runs through this area at San Antonio Zoo
were the little crocodile area. It's fucking cool, and there's both invasive tilapia
and some cool native Texas fish, like the Texas ciclid, which is gorgeous.
I had no idea what the Texas cyclid even was until I was there,
and uh, Becky one of the fryes so shut out to Becky,
one of the fryest SOMA member of the friend of somma breeding program. She's
herper She's a herp nerd that works there. She's friends with my guy Clint
over there too at uh at Gladys Porter in Brownsville. Shut out the Clint.
These fucking you gotta hang out with reptile people every once in a while,
man, you really do. They're really broad in your mind. You
know, there's really get you thinking about some stuff you otherwise might not consider.
But yeah, that was that was fucking why. Becky pointed out,
she said, this is a Texas cichlid and uh. And then there were
tilapia there too. Man, what's the fishing like around there? I never
had the patience for fishing and nor the ability to sit still, but I
respect people that do, and it seems like a pretty wonderful uh man,
the fishing and around the San Antonio has got to be pretty nice. So
that was fucking great to see. And then and you know the zoo,
I mean, zoos can be fucked up, right, but they've actually done
they've increased some you know, because it's like a prison for animals, but
they've got they've got they've really beefed up the fucking space in some of these
containment areas, and so animals have more space, much more space than they
otherwise would than they did even like thirty years ago. Gouts. At one
point she showed me, She's like, this used to be the giraffe.
This was the giraffe area and it was like a fucking tiny ass basically room
without a ceiling. It was so sad, Like that's insane. She's like,
yeah, now, like what the area they've gotten now, it was
like twenty times the size of that. You know, it's still not ideal,
it's still not habitat, but we all know what's happening to the habitat
all over planet Earth. So is this species that presumes itself to be the
most important one, takes more for itself and leaves little for everything else.
So yeah, it was. It was a really and it was The fucking
weather was perfect too. It wasn't hot as shit yet like it is today.
It was like overcast and just the really pleasant spring can be such a
pleasant time in central Texas, southern Texas forgetting where I am here, and
then we saw, Yeah, I stopped and was checking out. God,
I just saw this huge population of castelle and device of just getting just hit
hard, pollinated hard by swallowtail butterflies pipe vine swallowtails, which of course their
host plant is Aristolochia erecto, which is, in my humble opinion, one
of the coolest Aristolochia species. And I just found a couple volunteering themselves in
my yard, which is fucking awesome. And the one plant that I got
two or three plants, which must be why I'm getting fertile seed while I'm
getting good seed. I think Aristolochia. Aristolochia, like many basil angiosperms,
is protogynous proto guiness, so it's female first. The flowers are bisexual,
but they're in the female phase first and then become male. Another cool breeding
system that I didn't didn't mention again just to promote outcrossing. But but yeah,
that that. Uh, I got the thing volunteering, and the plants
that I have in my yard are already getting I went out yesterday and they're
getting hit with you know, apparently a pipeline swallowtail laid laid eggs on them.
So there's fucking little caterpillars everywhere, which is fucking cool because now I'm
gonna you know, well, they'll pup paid naturally, but I want to
put some just on the front of my house so my daughter and I can
see them. You know, after when they're going into the pupil face,
you just move them. You shouldn't do, but you know, for they
interests of science and educating a four year old, it's worth it. So
uh, that's really fucking cool. It'll be fun. God, it's such
a beautiful butterfly too, like black with like blue iridescent blue towards the base.
And that flower itself that you know is wild, it's pollinated by I
was. I picked one up. I cut a flower off last week and
I put a post up on a yield integram about this, and I cut
the flower open because I wanted to show the sexual parts inside, you know,
the the Androe seem the stamens, and the guyo we seem the stigma.
And when I cut it open, all these tiny flies that had been
trapped in there. I think it's just a temporary trap, because again they
have the goal is to get them to cross pollinate. They eventually have to
leave and take carry pollen off to another flower. But all these tiny flies,
tiny flies like they looked like fruit flies, but they weren't emerged and
crawled out of it. And then I spent the next few days trying to
get rid of them from my house. But uh, but it was fucking
it was really cool to see that, you know, like they were just
inside the flower, and every flower had that, And so it must be
some arisloki or pollinate by fungus gnats, and I think some are probably pollinated
by flies that would otherwise be going for rotting stuff like me, not just
rotting mushrooms, but rotting carrion. And so that's why there's gotta be some
sort of there's gotta be something going out with the speckled pattern on the flower
of Risto. LOOKI erecta too, it's like mahogany. Mahogany speckles on a
white background. Really, And I've noticed a lot of the peliads, which
were also pollinated by carrying flies, do that same thing. They produced that
same kind of modeling. But I'm just fucking stoked to have them in your
you know, in my yard. Turn your yard into a classroom, a
lab, you know, another great thing to kill your fucking lawns. So
I go outside, I get distracted. I get distracted walkingto my fucking truck
from my front door. There's just so much cool shit to look at.
It's so nice, you know. That's that's the goal. We're gonna try
to get the Instagram drug bros. And to study and pollination, ecology and
breeding systems for obligate out crossers of cacti. That's the goal, right,
Because plants just aren't isolated autonomous entities. They're parts of living networ works called
fucking ecosystems, where there's a whole bunch of other cool shit that they're interacting
with and they're behaving a certain way. Plants behave in an ecosystem, you
know, based on the way the ways in which they interact with other elements
of that ecosystem. So that's the cool shit to think about. Who gives
a fuck whether this thing you know, will make you feel slightly altered if
you ingest it. That's the last That's the least interesting thing about any plant
to me. I think I had more to talk about, but I'm gonna
wrap it up. I got too much shit to do, and I gotta
go. I gotta go. Uh, I gotta go bring fucking pollen.
Actually, to somebody that lives a few post selgaiye pollen, it's a kind
of serious post sulgar eye flowering season. So I got a friend that's got
a massive plant. It's got like thirty flowers on it right now. I
want to collect some of his pollen, and I'm gonna give him some of
mine, so hopefully we can get more fruits and seeds out of these and
then just grow a shit then. So anyway, uh yeah, if you
are one that I missed the drug bros, I'm I'm just ribbing you,
man. I really want you to just expand the amount of shit that you're
interested in and not just focus on these these narrow, myopic, anthropocentric things.
And so anyway, if you want to email me, you got any
need some advice, some reading materials. I got a reading list in my
story highlights on the shitty Instagram. And I say shitty because it's you know,
it's it's zuck It's Zuckerberg, so it's meant to distract you, and
fucking god, it's such augh it just becomes mental pollution and oversaturation at a
certain point. But I've got a reading list in my story highlights on Instagram.
You can also email me. I'm not going to write much in response,
but I will respond. I'm just my time is just so fucking limited
these days, and so is my attention spent. Anyway, that's all I
got. Have a good rest of your day. Go fuck yourself by