Kill Your Lawn Release, Sweat Ceremony, Chicago Museum Scam, etc

Good afternoon, Welcome to the crime page. But Byden, it doesn't podcast
nice coming to you for the first time in two years now, coming to
you from beautiful Crook County, Illinois, where everything's a scam, everything's a
hustle. But you still got some of these nice, working class Catholics out
there that got some good ideals in them, Okay, and I'm thankful for
that. You know, I just went to the zoo with my daughter and
I was complaining about everything's a fucking record. Thirty bucks they want to get
into the zoo. Now I understand it's a private, nonprofit institution, but
thirty bucks is a little steep. So when you pay thirty bucks to go
to something that provides an educational resource and as build as a nonprofit anyway,
you gotta swipe something from the gift shop. Okay. Everything was a hustle.
The only thing that was affordable still was a merrygorround. It took her
on the merryground. It was three bucks, okay, which I was amazed.
But there was a nice you know, there was a there's an archetype
I remember growing up in Chicago. There's an archetype of the very loving gentle
uh you know, probably somewhat Christian, but a true Christian, not just
these phony fucks. You know that comprised most of a religious populist I am
ho uh in the United States at least, and you know, a little
Catholic, little Catholic worker style going on. And uh, you know they
were just these like older, like really kind women like it's a it's a
figure I remember from my childhood. You know, it's like someone you could
trust, who wasn't there to punish you, who like genuinely carry a listen.
And it was one of the ladies that was selling the margaround tickets.
You know. It's like you ever watched that show Roseanne. Okay, I
know she's a fucking nut now, but that's because she's a you know,
a wealthy actor and it was fake. But the show that that the the
the fucking gestalt that that show was aiming for, and it was based in
Chicago, was based on this kind of you know, just like working class,
lower income uh persona, whether it be white or black or fucking Latino
or whatever. You know, right, there's there's a lot of that in
Chicago, you know. And uh, and I'm I was grateful to see
that again, to have my doing, to be engaged with that that demographic,
like the working class, maybe a little catholic, but like also a
little street smart, a little fucking progressive, you know, just genuinely like
just a good person, you know. Uh So anyway, but other than
that, I was just fucking it's just a little angry thirty bucks to go
to the zoom all these fucking museums. I will never stop ranting about what
bullshit this is. You know, I'm surprised that the library is still free
in many places in this country. I mean, I remember, you know,
these museums when I was younger, and I'm not that fucking old.
I mean, I'm but you know, like the artist too used to be
free, was suggested the donation. Uh is it still? I think they
actually charged. Now all these the museums used to be free or low cost,
and now all they are as theme parks for the rich. I know,
I fuck, I've ranted about this before, but it's just so fucking
angering. It's just it's such a warped style h that has just happened to
all these all these institutions in the United States, and it pisses me off.
So you just gotta steal stuff from the gift shop or sneak in if
you can, all right, because in reality, this stuff should be supported
with Think of all the dumb shit the tax money goes to. All right,
this shit should be supported with tax money or you know, it should
be. It's it's it's for the people, God damn it. Anyway,
Welcome to another episode of crime pace body doesn't. I'm here in Crook County.
I got in Uh fuck when was it last night? Drove for three
hours, absolutely terrible driving. Then long. It's so horrible to sit down
for such a long period of time. But I've been doing a lot of
it lately. Um, I had to go to the release for Kill your
Law and what was I don't know. It was weird. It wasn't my
thing. I'm not like the mingling type. I don't drink booze and I
don't mingle uh, and I can't fake a smile and I'm probably you know,
I come off like the autistic kid with like a bad attitude, you
know. But um, but it was still fun. Uh, it was
nice. They put they put us up at the Hilton, which was ridiculous
too. I've just you know, the fucking Hilton. My kid loved the
pool, which was fun. But uh, but obviously I would never be
staying at the Hilton. You know, obviously do you stay at a fancy
He'll tell like that, you gotta make off with a couple of towels,
take anything, you know, towels, soaps, hit the cart, you
know, when the ladies, the cleaning ladies out, of course, you
tip her really good. Um, you know. And uh, they were
having a bunch of banquets and ship they had like a they were having a
real estate conference there too, which was pretty nauseating. Um, you know,
a lot of the like get rich quick type uh and uh and then
we just rode the elevators a bunch. And it's fun. I have so
much with my daughter. You know, she's gonna be better behaved than I
am, you know, in a few years. And uh, you know,
it's just it's it's like a whole new excuse. Plus you can get
away with a lot of stuff when you get a kid, you know,
you really can. We're having fun. It's so much fun. Man.
She's like two, she's gonna be three. Um. But yeah, but
anyway, So her hair is coming back from the chemos. She she lost
all her hair last was it September? You know, she looked like one
of these family law attorneys or these you know, a personal injury attorney as
you see on a billboard, you know, with the bald spot in the
middle. But her hair came back, her beautiful hair, and so now,
but people always just confuse her for a boy and then they get really
offended and I'm like, I don't care. You know, she doesn't care
either. It's just it's it's she. You know, she had luke kemia.
What do you want? Um? And then they normally get a little
uncomfortable and shifty and it's like, now she's doing good, but um that
I don't know. I was weird. Whatever, it was cool. We
went to the you know what was nice. So it was the Dallas fucking
Museum, the Natural History Museum in Dallas, which I had a pass for.
It's like a it's like a get you an everywhere pass, and so
we went there for free, and hopefully we'll go to a Field museum for
free. And it's all about the natural history museums, you know, getting
in free like you should so we did that, and we we checked out
the dinosaurs and she was you know, she loves nine assaurs. She had
a blast. And then we stopped a little prairie preserve and saw a bunch
of but you where I was, it was like east northeast Texas, somewhere
I forget, saw a bunch of stuff coming up. And then stopped at
Missouri Botanical Garden and I did a hour and a half interview with Tom Croat,
and then I guess I'm gonna release that, probably as a podcast,
because I wanted I wanted to like look at all the different roads. Tom
Croat is an aeroid wizard, Okay, a Racy, the family A Racy,
all the philodendrons, the mind stas, you know, the etheriums,
all this stuff that people have gone nuts for trying to recreate, you know,
aeroid habitat, jungle habitat, tropical forest habitat in their apartments. But
uh, you know that's obviously hard to do if you don't have the humidity.
The aeroids can tolerate the low light, but you need the humidity as
well and the temperatures. You know, what is it? What's like?
What is a normal apartment temp in in like New York City in January,
like fucking sixty degrees. It's not gonna cut it, Pale, You've got
to turn that heat up, and then you've got to deal with the energy
bill. You know, if you got your apartment at seventy five degrees when
it's you know, five five degrees, fare kheut outside. But the family
is totally fascinating. Four thousand species supposedly, quite likely twice as many of
that as that, just many indescribed. And we talked with this about Tom
too, or we talk with Tom about this, excuse me, And it
was a good It was a really good you know, I wanted to I
wanted to showcase a bunch of different species go from table to table. We
didn't really do that. His back was hurt, and he's an old you
know, he's an old guy. He's an old fart. And so he
just sat on a stool and we talked, and man, he had so
much good shit to say. He was just he was just a fucking just
Encyclopedia of Knowledge has been like one hundred and thirty different countries studying these things.
Aeroids are, of course pantropical a lot of diversity in Latin America in
the New World, and it was nice for me because I'm not you know,
I'm not an aeroid nut. I like them and I appreciate them,
and I know a few things about their inflorescent structure, their evolution, what
else they're related to order elizamath Talis, etc. Okay, but you know,
obviously I'm not a fanatic. I could. It was an educational experience
for me. There's some families I go down a fucking wormhole with and I
have not done that with Aracy, so it was really helpful to me.
We talk about in thoriums like the largest genus I think in the whole family.
They're protogynus or is thom says protagenius, which means they're pistolate first,
they're functionally female first, then they become staminate, which explained helps me with
the lot because I would look at like a morphol phallus, which breaks up
my morphol faust breaks up its inflorescence, the female flowers in the bottom,
male flowers on top, and thorium doesn't do that. In Thium, they're
just the whole rad The whole spadix is bisexual flowers, but they're female first,
they're protogynus, which again a lot of basal angiosperms are the asiminas,
the magnolias, the fucking water lilies. You know, I got a nice,
nice reminder of that being in Florida doing all the Florida videos, and
I got like six still coming out, six Florida videos coming out. Saw
so much good shit. The fucking lupin's there, which I just I just
learned makes sense. I could have guessed it the loopins in Florida, at
least the ones with that pseudo unifolia leaf. It looks like it's just one
leaf and you look at the base, you got those two excuse me,
basil leaves there. Blame Topo Chico. Okay, not me, not my
fucking lack of manners, not how socially uncouth I frequently am. Okay,
but uh, you know, it turns out those loopins that's a separate dispersal
event from the one that the loopins in western North America originated from. But
I guess the whole genus originated in an old world in Europe. Again,
someone got pissed off me for saying an old world new world thing. I
couldn't believe it, man. I was like, fuck really, like just
let it go, like it's not. I think it was like a because
it's like a reminder of colonialism or some ship. But it's like, look,
this shit happened. I fucking hate it. It's obviously not you know,
condoning it, Like move along now, all right, get a fucking
hobby all right, go go go shop lifts some pens from hobby lobby.
That's a good thing to do. You know, did you ever do that?
You ever go steal stuff from? There's those companies that would feel good,
the shoplift from. I would never in a million years steal from an
independent store, a mom and pop store, but a place like hobby lobby,
run by you know, religious write nut jobs, you know, or
places that don't you know, places that fuck their employees, dollar store wall
fart. You go ahead and you do it. It's fine. You know,
you ever need any tips or pointers, you know, I'll be happy
to give you some. Going with a backpack and a hoodie. Don't ever
put it in the bag because that's what they'll check. But you could also
put it in between your back and the backpack. All right, just you
know, use one hand, hold your hoodie open, not her hand.
Throw it up there. Now I'm giving you know, criminal advice on a
podcast. Well that how will the advertisers feel about that? Anyway? So
yeah, so um, the fucking aeroid dungeon was cool. Going to MOBOs
always fun. It's I it is. I won't lie though. I go
up there and I look at how shiny and fancy everything is, and I
think about, like, I think there's like one or two people I got
into it with that was associated with that place, Like you know, these
farts sniffers, these fucking kids that have been in school for like thirty years
and forget what it was no offense to anyone who's been in school thirty years.
It isn't an asshole and doesn't sniff their own farts, but you know
what I'm talking about. There's an air there's like a little bit of classism
there and so uh, anyway, rolling up to the spot, it was
just funny. It was like I just started cracking jokes about how prestigious it
is and like what a you know, what a if you get banned from
mobot, you get thrown out of here, you really come a long ways.
You know, this is a this is a nice spot to get you
know, thrown out of, which is of course I'm just choking and I'm
just playing around. There's a lot of wonderful people that work there that I
know. And my friend Peter got me in and so we you know,
he got me into like the back reenhouses, and we were we didn't get
a chance to check out the herbarium. But um, it's a great resource
and a great institution. But it does I mean, let's be honest,
all these institutions, a lot of these botanic institutions, especially on the East
coast, Midwest, whatever, feel like places I would get thrown out of,
or like anyone fun would get thrown out of. They feel they're very
vanilla, They're very stiff. They tend to there. It's and it's not
because of necessarily even things that are going on there now, but just the
history of a lot of these joints, you know, I mean the science
was its being honest, Botany has had a history of really stiff, boring,
fucking watered down wafery honky ass you know. Uh, And I'm not
making this about race. I'm talking about you know, culturally honky, you
know what I mean? You know, you know what I fucking mean.
It's had that air about it, you know. And uh, you know
how many people there have had a bad trip, have gotten arrested, have
lit their farts on fire, you know in these institutions in that world.
Um, you know, have made self deprecating jokes. Uh, have had
to ride the bus before, you know, that kind of thing. You
know. It's a good gradation of characters sometimes. Um. So yeah,
it was funny. But once I got over that, you know, just
my initial wariness of that world. Uh and and very very uh poignant and
well learned wariness of that world. Um, it was a great experience.
They've got a great cactus collection too, and it was nice to see some
of those Brazilian genera like rojada roja, uh, which I think there's six
species money even our hummingbird pollinated cacti A r R o j A d o
A Is that it? How do you do that? Is that? What
it is? A r r Oh? Oh? Fuck? You know what,
I think I already fucked it up. They had and they hit some
Oh no, that that is a r R o ja da. They had
what was it Ludovia. They had a bunch of wild shit in there.
What's it called, their cosmotron, their climatron. What does it do.
It's a space it's a planetron. It's like a glass dome. You go
in there. And I got all kinds of goofy stuff. They had quote
unquote Mayan spinage, which is a nitaskuless species E four bas I got some
in my yard right on a right there in South Texas. They had the
tree Ristolochia. They had a whole bunch of cool uh stuff, you know,
I mean they got some nice stuff. It's no UCB. They don't
have, you know, tons of the rare stuff, but a lot of
cool tropical stuff. And of course as a research institution they've they ought to.
So yeah, it was Ludovia. What the fuck? The flowers The
inflorescence is on Leudovia, which is in Pandanales, which many of you are
probably not familiar with because it's mostly a tropical order of monocots. They call
them the screw pines. Pandanesi is in there anyway. Ludovia is in families
cyclanth say, it's an order Pandinales, and the fucking inflorescences are weird.
It's got these long white they look like hairs or worms, but they're staminodes
just spilling out of this inflorescence. So there's sterile stamens. There's staminodes that
worked to attract flies. And so I was so fucking curious. There's three
species in his genus Ludovia. Who was ludov some some other fucking European that
you know, probably had nothing to do with am I being a dick.
Some other fucking European had nothing to do with the place or the area where
these plants occur, or minimal things to do. Who knows? I shouldn't
I shouldn't open mouth. I don't. I don't know the etymology of the
word. But um, really cool, really cool plant. One lest they're
somewhat you know, they're a monocant. They've got the typical they look like
like maybe like a formium or something, you know, just just an array
of leaves looking. Um, what is the word I'm looking for? Sympodial?
I don't fucking though, but um, it's not a rosette. I'll
play you at. They come out flat, you know, they come out
and these these flat alternating sprays of foliage, and then, uh, the
inflorescence is just fucking bizarre. And then you've got these clusters of anthers up
top. So I hit up Scott Zona because he's this is his jam.
He knows all these weird tropical plants and he is very familiar with their inflorescences,
their pollination biology, they're ecology, and so he's kind of the go
to man, and he had forgotten he you know, he remembered that they
were staming osage. I already found a paper describing that. You know,
you go to scholar at Google dot com, stealing on sihub whatever the fuck,
but um, you know it was their general structure still in mystery.
And they've got I mean the whole the whole order of pan and aliens I'm
not very familiar with. But their fucking flowers are bizarre. So uh,
you know, I love this. I love I love looking at an inflorescence
and not knowing what the is going on because then it's a puzzle. It's
like I gotta you gotta figure out. Okay, Well, I know,
I know there's like multiple scenarios that could be or it could be monoecious it
could be perfect flowers that could be dioecious. Uh. You know, stamens
are always generally more in number than the guido see him. The style and
stigma the pistol style, stigma ovary or stigma style over excuse me, but
the ways in which they're arranged, and then seeing how they're arranged, of
course, can give you clues about what pollinates it. Um, there's I
don't know, it's it's fucking fun. I love this stuff. I've been
doing this for a few years. Is why I'm always dissecting flowers in the
field. You know, usually leatherman scissors to cut that shit open. Look
in see what's going on in there, you know. I mean it's not
enough to look. When I look at an inflorescence and I'm stumped, I
can't fucking let it go, Okay, I'm like, you know, yeah,
I'm like, it's like a Larry David moment for me. I can't
let it go. I can't get off. But I gotta fucking hang out
to what I gotta figure out where what's going on there. I don't know
how some people can. If you're a plant person and you look at flower,
I mean you gotta look at these fucking things. Man. They'll tell
you clues about the plant. They'll tell you clues about its evolution, they'll
tell you clues about its psychology. If you look at a flower and you
don't, you just don't know what the fuck is going on. I've got
friends that will, you know, I'll be like, what's going on with
that? They're like, I don't know. I've never really looked at I'm
like, how the fuck have you never really looked at that? You're you
know, you're out here a lot, you're in the field, you're a
botanist, you know your shit about all these other things. But you've never
looked up close at this flower giving it a good rectal exam and tried to
figure out what the fuck is going on? You know, how do you
do that? Um? It was so funny. We were with we were
to Zo. It was me and my girl and my kid, and my
girl was like that man, there was like two dudes walking from She's like
that guy sounds like al when you guys are sucking around, And I was
like, yeah, he does. That's that's the Chicago accident. She's She's
like, I'm like, you didn't think it was realists like, it's fucking
where do you think we get all this ship from. It's like a funnel
or my are like funnels channeling the collective fucking existential pain of the Tristate region
into a funnel and spewing it back out into the world. But also with
you know, weird idiosyncrasies and you know personality traits, reality flaws. I
should say so one of the plants. I should talk about this one too,
because this was a fucking weird one. One of the plants that I
saw at this let me crack open this fucking topo. Actually, one of
the plants I saw at that, this prairie preserve we went to in East
Texas. They say, I think we were trespassing, and they said,
you know, they want you to. They want you to get permission before
you go in there, but you don't need to do it. They said
it's fine, or they would have said it's fine. I'm sure they would
have said it's fine. Um, all this stuff was just waking up.
But this plant I had never encountered before. Marshallia says Potosa. It's a
fucking composite that's trying to be an onion. It looks like an onion.
There's other there's alium growing around there, which I didn't. I don't think
I even photographed it. Maybe I didn't. I didn't. I didn't the
idea yet. But it's it's like a It's just it's got a couple of
base of leaves and then a single stock to like two feet tall, and
it looks like a fucking onion. It's so weird. It's so bizarre when
you see plants doing that, mimicking each other. Uh, it just makes
you wonder, what's the evolutionary benefit or is there none? Is it's just
something that that we as humans are imagining. It's a coincidence that we're trying
to put something there when it's actually not you know, who knows. You
don't know. Could be in the case, maybe not, but I don't
know. It was. It was a fucking cool plant. I got some
nice money shots put them on I naturalist um and you can see these elongated
florets, you know, like a a capitulum. Obviously this one has I
don't know what, probably a hundred flowers in it, maybe eighty, and
there's the you know, these the florets are just these tiny they're they're really
skinny. It's like a skinny tube. And then the corolla lobe. Five
corollas just open up, you know, they're like the corollas almost as long
as the fucking floral tube. And then you can see those cute little purple
anther tubes in there popping out, you know, doing her pollen presentation and
with the ship. So um, that was a new one for me.
I've never seen any members of that genus. I think it's the whole tribe.
Let me check, is that is that a tribe? Marshalia, says
Potosa Plexcuse me, let's see over. Yeah, fucking composite. It's amazing
how much variation there can be on the theme of a sudantium, a pseudo
flower that's composed of many tiny flowers. I eat the capitulum, just the
sunflower, I mean, the sunflower family just has so much fucking variation.
I can't wait to see some of those weird vernonias in Brazil. I'm going
to Brazil, I'm going to Minas Horeas. Is that how you pronounced that?
There? Might pronounce that like a fucking hockey Minas Horeas. How to
fuck you. I don't know jiraus jure. How do you say Portuguese?
I'm gonna. I can't wait the butcher Portuguese. Holy shit, going there
in July, which is the dry season. It's the winter, but um
should be some really good stuff. Stuck to see it. Yeah. Subtribe
marshall Yonnie from tribe Hellini Hellini A if you want to pronounce it like that.
Uh? And it's god? What is it? H species? Nine
species in it? What a fucking weird one, man, What a weird
one. Marsillia graminifolia Marshallia la grandie more. I had no idea Barbara's but
what a fucking stupid name. Barbara's buttons? Really, what a dumb name
for a plant? Who the fuck would Why would you come all this way
to learn botany and actually learn the name of a plant that grows near you,
only to end up calling it Barbara's buttons? I don't understand it.
Isn't it easier to just learn the g Just call it Marshllia, learn the
genus name. It's fucking oh god um. Unrelated note, I did a
sweat with my friend Benny and his family and his uncle Rick, uh Navajo
brother, and uh that was fucking great. Oh my friend Haab here too.
We Um, it was a great experience. I hadn't done a sweat
in a long time, like fifteen twenty fucking years or some We went in
there and uh, the stones were so fucking hot, you know, they
they've been they prepped a beautiful fire, and they prepped that fire for christ
I don't know what, but must have been going for like six hours.
The stones were so hot, you know. So you go in there,
got the tarps all around it. Beautiful night in South Texas. The fucking
parokes were out those little night jars, uh singing to us. An owl
showed up halfway through saying to us, um, and uh, you know
it was the whole thing was probably like an hour, maybe forty five minutes,
but it was just it was it was cooking in there, and only
one person when we came out. Um. But it really it's, you
know, you sweat so much, man, I forgot. I mean you
kind of always generally sweating in South Texas, but when you're really purging it
like that. So you go in there, you say some prayers for each
other. You you fucking you know, introduce Uh, they're not even introduced.
I mean I knew everyone there except for maybe two people. And you
just kind of say good wishes for people and just you know, it's a
it's a very healthy and pleasant form of collectivism. Um, and you undergo,
you know what's a very uncomfortable experience for the most part, but you
roll with it, you know, you roll with it. And yeah,
I was always always like, I always envisioned worst case scenario. Can you
die in here? You know, when it gets too hot, what if
you do you pass out? You die? But um, you know you
can always just get down and avoid the heap of christ. It was nice
and they were they were throwing U. Rick had some osha you put on
a fire like Goosta comporter eye. Apiaceous plant from the high elevations of the
Rocky Mountains, somewhat hard to grow, probably needs some sort of micro risal.
It's theorized that needs some sort of micro rizal. Symbiante and cedar aka
juniper, because no true cedars grow in North America. Oh, we gotta
point that out. It's just a it's just the botanical stickler in me and
some other herbs and so Yeah, it was just it was good man,
it was you know, I can get down with that, you know,
I'll say prayers like that, you know, just just wishes of hope and
love for the people in the land and the things in your life that make
life worthwhile, you know, the relationships you have, and the relationships you
have with the land and the fucking plants and the birds you hear singing to
you, and oh that shit, that's what matters, you know, that's
the nice stuff. Do you like nice stuff? You know? I wish
I wish more people did that kind of praying, but uh, you know,
I don't know. I think they what do they do to go to
megachurches? Can you imagine me in a megachurch? That'd be a fun place
to get fucking banned from. Holy shit, they got the band, you
know, you get banned from for trying to steal some of the symbols from
the drum set, you know, for the rock band. You get banned
for trying to steal from the band at the megachurch. Where do they have
megachurches? I don't want to know. Let's not think about that. That's
a very unpleasant thing to think about. It isn't it? Moving right along,
here we go. Another pleasant experience that I had recently was an experience
with MDA methylene dioxie amphetamine, a precursor to methylene dioxie methamphetamine. These are
mild psychedelics. Of course. MDMA has a history of clinical use in therapy
until the DA got win that was being used recreationally in a Dallas club in
nineteen eighty five and bandit at it made it a schedule one substance. But
hopefully it's coming back. Rick Doblin is doing a bunch of work on that.
He was just recently on the Joe Rogan podcast, which if you can
stomach listening to Joe Rogan, uh, you know, it's it's not.
It's a good episode to listen to because Rick Doblin is you know, he's
done a lot of good work and it's um, it's it's interesting. You
know, he's basically an old hippie that really believes in the potential that this
compound has when used responsibly and intentionally for therapy and them MDA is the precursor
to that, and it is not. It's it's got a lot of insight,
but it doesn't. That was my first experience with it, it doesn't
feel like, uh, there's not as much of a overwhelming sense of like
love and compassion and self forgiveness if you're trying to work through some shit or
work through some trauma, etc. But you could definitely still do some good
thinking and get some insight out of it. And so, uh, a
friend of mine who's an old payotist m whose you know, Native American church
and you know old hippie has been has been using uh psychedelics, you know,
with that kind of intent for probably thirty or forty years at least,
mentioned to me at MDA is probably the closest synthetic feeling you can get to
to mescaline, to payote um, and uh, you know it was I
guess he said he knew Shulgan back in the day, Sasha Shulgan, which
if you don't know who that is, you should definitely look that up.
You should read up on it. But um, but yeah, for me,
it was a really pleasant experience. It was it was in it was
in a long leaf pine forest, and I just remember laying on my back
and looking up and and watching this quirkus geminata and this pinus pollustress just kind
of like, well it comes on for it takes like an hour to come
on, trying not to eat anything beforehand, and you know, we just
went on a walk and all of a sudden that window, that like two
or three minute window where it just it's like just someone turns up the dial
really quick you and it hits you, and it's a little alarming at first,
and then you just go and you you know, laid down somewhere or
sit down and the sun had just gone down. Just laid on my back
and looked up at the long leaf pine and this this oak and one of
the few desolate places in that region that you can still get to and not
have to hear fucking car traffic or people or any of the bullshit from modern
human society. And so and yeah, so we just sat there and talked
and I you know, intermittently talked, and I just watched these trees just
moved gently in the breeze. I was laying on my back looking up at
them, at the silhouette, and it was so pleasant. I remember at
one point I said, you know, it seemed like these things you could
really feel they're alive almost you know, feels like they're sentient to get a
little booboo for you. That's okay, you could fucking move along. I'm
not concerned about it. Don't give a shit. Just bear with me.
You've heard dumber ship before, okay, I assure you in the last week
and so, and my friend was like, yeah, they are, and
you you know whatever I've obviously, you know, there's fucking that's not a
scientifically accurate statement, but feeling that is really important. It was a really,
you know, wonderful experience. And then yeah, it just kind of
drifted in and we stayed up talking and you know, just sharing good fucking
insight and shit about our past. It do with a friend that you care
about a lot. It's nice, you know, and I was with a
good friend and so um, it's it's definitely only got that therapeutic effect.
And it does indeed feel a little bit like peyote, like mescalinum. And
then I just started to drift in and out of sleep, and then and
then woke up just feeling a little tired, and then you know, by
like within five or six hours after waking up the next day, felt great.
Gotten some cold water too, But it was a nice way to cap
off a week of you know, botanizing and doing field work and making videos
and recording observations, taking notes, shit like that. So and learning a
whole new flora, the flora of the Panhandle, the Florida Panhandle, which
was really fucking cool. I did not expect that much sand or that much
dry land flora. You know, the Loopin's the fucking shrub mints out there.
Really cool. That conrad Dina. We saw how many different species of
Conradina we see. Didn't see any dice orandra, but uh um god,
the Conraddina. It's like a native rosemary. Smells very pleasant, like a
native lavin. They're very wooly. Uh. You know, there's this whole
cast of species. You think the American Southeast and you think humid music forest,
but of course there's this whole cast of dry land species that have a
lot of hairs on the leaves and have narrow leaves and are just adapted.
I mean, they look like they'd be more at home and uh in the
deserts, you know, the Chihuahua, Sonoran or even Mojave desert. So
that was really fucking great to see it. Like the loop ends like Lupinous
velocis, Loupinus diffusus, Lupinus westianus. I love to know the name,
but the name between the name behind that species epit that probably some of these
it's got to be a person. It's gonna be name of their person.
Some of these fucking you know, named after people plants just sound so ridiculous
when they're that that the name is put to Latin. There was a paper
that came out that generated a lot of heat. I was getting a lot
of research gate emails about it called what was it? Eponyms have no place
in twentieth century? Twenty first century? Let's see, let me get the
yeah, eponyms. Oh, it's already on Google. It's already a Google
suggestion. Hilarious, but it was. It was amazing how many people this
pissed off. And it was mostly men because it's you know, which makes
sense. It's like a it's like a primate, a male primate thing to
want to establish your territory in your name out there, and I guess that's
you know, there was a paper just basically saying that, you know,
plants shouldn't be named after people. And it was coming in and from this
whole colonialism and blah blah blah, and yeah, yeah, fuck, we
know, all right, but that's not even my reasoning for it. It's
just, you know, a human lifespan is how long compared to the life
of a species. What constitutes a species? Of course, that species is
a loose word for anyone familiar with species concepts, and you know how fluid
they can be, and how change in a genome can take place subtly or
drastically or suddenly, um, you know, on the other end of the
spectrum. So but this is, you know, how long? Why are
we naming things after people like people? It's just it's testament the human ego
and the number of fucking emails that this paper generated, because you get a
notice every time. I still get notices on research game, and I haven't
turned them off because I never get notices that someone actually responded to a paper
that was put out there. But this caused this was such a shit stir,
it was kind of Funnyum, So you know, fucking eponyms have no
place in twenty first century biological nomenclature. I would argue they do in the
case of like naming a stinkhorring fungus that looks like a dog dick after you
know, a famous shit talking politician, you know, who everybody wishes would
croak. I could, like, I could see it in that case,
like if it's you know, with the sense of humor. But um,
you know, why not name the species epith that after you know, a
notable trait ecologically, evolutionarily, morphologically, or otherwise about that particular organism that
seems a lot more relevant? But whatever, you know, like peyote,
even l loaf of four Williams the eye, who the fuck was Williams?
Nobody knows, nobody cares. The species epithet doesn't say anything about the plant.
There's no there's no hint that it's what it looks like or what it
does or or anything notable about it compared to other species of loaf of foora,
other species of cacti anything. It's just you know, and you see
so much of that, and it's fucking annoying too. It's like, this
dude's been dead for one hundred and fifty years. He might have been a
fucking asshole too, Who cares? Why why is this thing named after him?
But um, you know, once it's already there that it's stuck.
No one wants to change get yeah whatever. Anyway, was just funny.
Holy shit, there were a lot of comments on it. You know,
you try to get a research gate? How do you get a research gate?
The account? I forget how I got mine. I got a picture
of a rat poisoned bait boxes my profile pick on research gate, which I
thought was, you know, somewhat cute, but I forget how I got
it. Um, But uh, yeah, it was funny to see that
that stir up so much controversy. You know, how could I talk about
dry land habitat too, and I'm related to note of the Florida panet without
talking about ariagonam toment tossum. You know. And my friend Lily, who
I was traveling with, was what she wasn't even aware that there were over
two hundred species in this fucking genus out west. They're like they're ubiquitous out
west, that buckwheats, the Ariagonams E. R Io g O and U.
M. Polygonec. The buckwheat family, they're so ecologically successful. We've
done podcast on them before, of course, on Crompeizum went to the buckwheat
conference. You know, we had to go fund me for everyone that got
arrested at the Buckwheat conference in Alcohoovada two years ago. Just kidding. Um,
So yeah, it was nice. I mean she didn't even know because
she's, you know, the Florida bott and she's spent most of her time
out east. I mean, she didn't know that this was such a huge
genius out of West and so learning I was like, yeah for me,
I mean, to see one in Florida's so so bizarre. You wouldn't you
wouldn't think that, what do you got? You got some in Arkansas too,
You got all the way up there in Arkansas. I only say that
because I passed through Arkansas recently. Damn, what if you live in Arkansas?
Is anybody would live in Arkansas? What do you do? You gotta
you gotta do something, man, You know, you gotta just keep your
head down because it's you know, it's gets fucking weird out there. But
uh, oh you know what, No, you know what, I take
that back. Little Rock's fucking cool. There was a punk band called Chaos
Lru and I had a song called I Saw My Baby in the Arkansas section.
It was about seeing your girl in the police blotterer, he's gotta feel
nice, right, depending on what she did, okay, or vice versa.
He they whatever the fuck, ending on what they did. You know.
Um but aria gandam, tom and tosam. It's got those fucking wonderful
they're like all leaf rose out with those wonderful white ad axial surfaces, those
white undersides, with the with the indumentum, the velvet. Just I mean,
this is a dry land genus. And to see one in the fucking
Florida pananal so cool, so much sand. Where'd all the sand come from?
Is it just millions of years the Appalachian Mountains being ground down and weathered
chemically and mechanically and otherwise. Okay, just just slowly being you know,
that's why all that sand is there. And then you've had the coastline going
in and out, all right, meandering back and forth. Is the sea
levels rise and fall over the last five six million years? But that sand
is a big reason for these uh you know, this, this habitat for
these plants, for these you're getting dry fucking plants. Clin of Podium dentatum.
That was another cool one, A rare little mint, all right,
clin of podiums. The genus Erbasanta, not not urbasanta. What is it
your ba boena is in out west? What was that? Clanopodium? The
glassii right, little crawling mint likes the shade doesn't tolerate drying out too well.
But here, you know, in the Florida panet it was just fucking
nuts. It was so cool to see all this stuff. I loved that.
I was foaming out about it. Lily want to go to the bogs.
I should have just and we did do that a little bit. Not
the bogs, but the creeks, the aquatic environments. She wanted to see
it at the odon what is it odonte Rontium aquaticum, another aeroid, wonderful
area with the little dog dick inflorescence, the yellow inflorescence. Is that is
rontium? Is that a bisexual spadex or is it a monecious spadex or is?
I would think I was sucking it up. I think it's a I
think it's a bisexual spadus. It's just female versus protogynus. You gotta ask
these questions, man. But the fucking area agonam aerogonum tum and tosa wasn't
flowering yet just the rosettes were up. But goddamn it was cool. We
saw that with Conradina glabra growing on the margin of a long leaf pine plantation,
like a planted long leaf pine, all planted in in you know,
in lines, all right. Remember I used to see you see those those
kind of pine plantations up north northern California all the time. It's such a
bummer, you know, you think it's a forest if you don't know anything
about plants or botany, and then you realize it's it's just a desert.
It's just a monoculture of pines set to be harvested and then whatever you know,
uh, plants, whatever, perennials or can come up beneath it.
You know, if it was like barbarous or whatever you know it was,
you get cool mushrooms there, I guess, at least in the forests of
Cisku County, the pine plantations excuse me of Cisku County, but um yeah,
real cool, fucking have that Toxico Denver and Pubestans too. That was
another cool and a hairy poison ivy O hairy pubbessans. So you see hair
is coming up on these plants. That's that's this election of growing in these
sandy assid environments. Sandy assid environments dot com. All right, when you
go out and you're gonna go look at this stuff. Okay, you say,
I'm gonna go look at the sandy shits, all right, go say
that right, doing a botanical survey, and I go look at the sandy
shits. I'm gonna go do some bottom. I'm gonna go botanize the sandy
shits. So cool though to me it was fucking because I love all that
dry shit I have. I obviously I have a fucking predilection, a disposition
towards deserts. But I think I just totally use that word the wrong way,
which is hilarious. You can keep that and run with that. We'll
just pretend it then actually tell someone to happen to laugh for your ass off
at me about it's fine. So but anyway, the point is you get
these fucking sandy sites and what you think is a generally wet and very humid
and is a very humid environment with a lot of rainfall, and you can
still have dryland plants. We were. Crimaria was another one. Cremerio lanceolata.
It wasn't flowering. Crimaria is a desert a desert genus. I've seen
it in the fucking out of Comma, for Christ's seen a bunch in South
Texas, Southwest Texas near the Payote gardens. Cremaria ramo systema is a common
shade plant for payote and for star cactus and theolocactus and all these really cool
cactus species that don't corny walls in the United States except South Texas, and
a bunch of wis just got fucking murked for that stupid performative fucking lay Mass
border wall. But you know, so anyway, the point this Crimaria likes
it dry. What the fuck is it doing in a state like Florida?
So cool? I love it. I couldn't get over it because it's I
remember reading axel Rod paper. Was it David or Daniel? Always get that
guy confused with the fucking dude who was the spokesperson for the Obamaman administration.
Anyway, axel Rod was a famous paleobotus in the seventies at UC Berkeley.
He wrote a paper, and a paper was called hold on, let me
get it for you. It daffic erridity is a factor in angio sperm evolution.
I put a link to it up on my website, on the fucking
blog, which I'm trying to update more often than I have been. It's
a Google drive link where you could just download the paper and we'll we'll just
leave it up there until it gets shut down by someone for a because I
think it's just the pay for it, even though it's a paper from nineteen
seventy two, but it's from journals dot U Chicago. That ed you fucked
them steal everything anyway. Dapic aridity is a factor and engines from evolution.
Ancient terrains of granitic and metamorphic rocks regularly form steep sided mountains bornhards. The
fuckers a bornhard domes, ridges and planes. They provide dry dafic sites and
climatic regions ranging from wet tropical to desert, enabling dapic deserts to occur in
proximity to tropical rainforest. So this is what he's talking about. It's talking
about dry arid micro sites where you get a completely different cast of plant species
in a region that's otherwise very wet. And that ship is fascinating to me
because you get it just shows how how natural selection works. You can you
can get a complete change up in plant communities based on something like geology.
So you got the sand everywhere in the Florida Panhandle, I mean really many
places all over the South? Is it? I mean, I assume it's
just from the Appalachians being weathered down. Someone fucking correct me. Don't let
me put bad dope out there. Okay, if this is wrong, it's
if it's from something else. But I mean, I can't think of anything
else that would be. It's those mountains are old, they've been fucking obviously
ground down. They're they're not that tall anymore. They once were four hundred
million years ago. But you know whereas like the Rockies are a newer mountain
range. So the sand. You got to thank the sand. So you
get so many cool plants, So we get a scleepiest human strata. What
a fucking cool milkweed? Huh? Look at it? You growing You live
in Florida and you're not growing a scleepiest human strata. There might be something
wrong with you. You got to get that checked out. You know,
you gotta get your fucking uh you you're gonna give some raiki or something,
have someone do some tantric massage on your ass or something like that. You
know, what do they do? How do they do that? One of
my friends, I'm friends with this hippie guy, real nice guy. I've
known him for twenty years. He helped me when I was living illegally in
this building in San Francisco. He helped me move a couch in there once.
Real sweet man. He's a total hippie. You know, he's got
he's got a whoo woo and stuff, you know, and he does reiki
and stuff. Now he does reiki massage, and I say, good for
him. You know, that's good. I'm glad he's doing that. It's
better than doing heroin or something, you know, or drinking yourself to death
like a lot of people doing the Midwest with these long ass winters. Can't
say I blame them, just kidding. I guess I could boost sucks,
boozes fucking whack, you know. Um. But anyway, yeah, check
out that paper. It's Daniel assl Rod, not David what I always call
him David, And then I and then suddenly I say David, and I
started thinking of the fucking my pillow guy, the guy with the mustache,
that schmuck, that fucking asshole. I did it. I did a drawing
in him that was kind of funny a year or two ago. The my
pillow guy with that little Hitler mustache. You know, the fucking mustaches is
scary sometimes, man. I could never do it, and not even ironically,
and I just get worried. Sometimes. There's a lot of nice people
with mustaches. I'm not saying it. I'm just saying sometimes every once in
a while they can be indicative as someone you know you don't want to be
around. It could be what these people call problematic. They say that you're
really problematicum So, anyway, that was my fun in Florida. What wasn't
fun was the fucking chiggers. Lily had the ship called the Sayang Pure Oil,
and I was just dumping at on my balls and my fucking ankles and
shit, you know, just anywhere I had chigger bites. I pulled a
tick off my nuts. I'm not joking on I really did it off my
nuts, off my thigh. Those little bastards were everywhere. We were fucking
crawling. Man. Louis, my dog had chigger bites. I went to
Petter, I could feel a little bumps everywhere. She wasn't itching that bad.
But you know, this is why you burn. Okay, sure,
it's ecologically good. It creates h you know, it clears out all the
dead stuff, makes room for new things to grow in german eate or come
back from the roots. So these landscapes are adapted to fire, et cetera.
But the main reason I would burn is for the ticks. Okay,
fuck the ticks and the chiggers. You burn everything. Oh my god,
there was a croton out there on those sandhills that I love too, Probably
as I had a fucking parade of chiggers running excitedly up my shoes into my
ankles. I was looking at croton argoranthemus. Do you know about croton argoranthemus?
Oh my god? Scale like scale like I guess they are scales,
they're not. Try them scales on the stems, on the fucking leaves,
russety orange on those beautiful silver stems and leaves. And who doesn't love a
croton? You gotta ask yourself that too. What the fucking you know talking
about a You know, most most of them. Of course they're they're flower.
They're flower rhythmetic a right there, flower structures. You get the male
flowers up top, staminate flowers of the top, female flowers, pistolate flowers
on the bottom of that spike. Um, you know, they're fucking great.
We saw I think we just saw those. We saw one or two
different croton species, but Ourgoranthemus was everywhere. It's a sandhill croton common in
the Florida Panhandle. It's fucking great. Man, God, if you live
in that. That's what blows my mind. How many people are doing native
plant gardens in the Florida Panhandle. Do you live in Pensacola or something.
There's so much cool shit you could be growing. Fuck you just gotta find
those little bits of habitat that are left and there's not much. But guy,
there's some fucking cool stuff up there. Really loved it. I really
had a nice time out there. We saw a moth pollinated rhododendron that was
cool. A white flowered rhododendron. I mean it's diurnal too, so it's
could be just an lepidopter and it could be butterflies too. But oh god,
what was this species again. It was Rhododendron holan. Yeah, it
was rhododendron, Sarah sarah latum. It wasn't flowering, but Lily was telling
me all about it with its white flowers, white tube flowers and uh it,
you know it flowers sad to stay open at night. So boom,
who's going to argue with there? Saw a fucking um. This was cool
too. Jesus Christ looked like the thing from Metroid. You remember that video
game. It was a Hercules beetle dynasties titious titius. It was the eastern
Hercules beetle. But the thing was like four inches long, huge larva.
It's man, the thing must just must must have all kinds of things trying
to eat that, you know, poor bastard. How many different magnolias do
we see? God damn? So like four or five? Um? Talk
about a proto ginus flower, all right, just like Nymphaea odorado the water
lily, right, and then Fay of course traps the beetles inside for a
day. They have their orgies. They you know, fucking ride around.
And this the fluid, the stigmatic fluid that's secreted which washes the pald grains
off them, hopefully gets them onto the stigma boom. The things pollinated,
and then at that point the beatles are let out of the trap. The
flower actually opens and um, and it becomes staminate, so it's female for
us. Then it becomes staminating those laminar stamens, those those very broad stamens
um start releasing pollen for two or three days, and the you know,
more beetles fly in there. They maybe they bang inside the fucking thing.
How many beetles? How many plants to have, you know, lover hotels
for beetles, That's what I want to know. I was learning about fucking
intheriums that do that yesterday. Um. If you want to again, if
you want to watch that aeroid video with time quote, it's on the Patreon.
I don't think I'm gonna release it publicly on YouTube because it's like it's
fucking long. I might do it as a podcast, but either way,
how many plants do that? So many beetle pollination? Man, So many
magnolias are in there getting you know, doing having beetles banging there all right,
they're eating some of the pollen or just getting away with all kinds of
crazy shit. Beetles are cool. I like the beetles. Do you like
do you like seeing I would prefer beetle pollination above bee pollination probably oil collecting
bees, you glossin bees, scent collecting bees whatever. Um so then Fayadorado
Protogyns female first, a lot of the basal andrews worms again, Protogynus Magnolia
ashii. Holy fuck, so you could smell those flowers and endemic magnolia to
the Florida pananal with these giant ass flowers and really beautiful huge leaves. Doesn't
get that tall, at least not the ones that we saw. I gotta
work on that video so I didn't put that fucking video out. That was
a video where I got marked by the Chuggars, you know. Um.
But the yeah, the Beatles were just I mean, you open a flower
and I just buzil. These beetles would just dip out take us. Some
were like drunken there, like writhing around. It was really cool to see.
Um we saw yeah, Magnolia grand to Flora, magnolia ashi magnolia,
what was it? Pyramid day? Let me see this one, Let me
see this? God damn? How many oh Camis Ciprus diotes to. I
gotta talk about that. That's a great fucking tree. Camis Ciprus dioius,
Magnolia ashi pyramid data Virginiana um. And uh, I think there's one other
ones that I didn't let out, Oh, Magnolia pe lessons. Where was
that? That was that in the Dominican Republic. Now I'm going down a
fucking wormhole over here, and uh now where was that? It wasn't the
d R. I love the Dominican Republic. Man, you gotta gotta go
back there something, you know, do some do some nice stuff, you
know. Um Stillingia aquaticum. That was another fucking weird one that says Stilengia.
It's a you know, it's a genus you see in the fucking dry
lands and here it's just man, it was just just growing in mass and
inundation in the Taxodium Ascendance Swamp. What a fucking great place that was,
too. God, I wish we would have had the time to do some
acid there. That would be a great spot on that boardwalk on the holy
fuck just so so lovely. But I'd want to go out into the into
the water. You know, it's not like two feet deep, you'd be
fine. I don't think there were any gators are It was a little chilly,
all right. I have to watch out for water moccasins. You just
gotta keep your wits about you, you know. Um yeah, so Stillingia
aquatica, and um, the campus super style reader was really f cool because
that's the memory of the redwood family, one of who species in the genus
camasippers. The other one is Camas sippers Lastsoniana, which grows on the Oregon
California border, has a very restricted range compared to Camas Sipperus diotes, which
grows all the way from Maine down into Florida and likes it wet, likes
the inundated areas. But I've grown up from sea before, and they grow
slow as hell. I got one of my mom's back backyard here in Chicago
that's like seven feet tall and thirteen years old. The seed is absolutely tiny.
I mean, it's nuts that you can get an eighty foot tall tree.
I mean, but you say that about redwood steel, right, Like,
it's nuts you get like a three hundred foot tall tree from this tiny
little flake. So you know, but whatever, Anyway, it's it's a
great tree, smells good. You know, the genus Camas sippers is all
over the world, to a lot of diversity in Asia, especially in Japan
Eastern China as well. So, and I've never seen in habitat. I've
seen them before, plenty of times. They I've seen them in botanic gardens,
but I've never seen what is such an ecologically important tree. And you
know, forms the banks to so many rivers and creeks in the American South
and you know, up through New Jersey and up into Maine. I've never
seen it in habitats. So that was really cool to see as well.
Um, and uh, let's see what the fuck else? Oh yeah,
Clistesiopsis or a camporum cool orchid, which is a it's a dupe orchid.
It doesn't actually offer a reward. It just dupes bees into going into it.
They go into it, they see it's bogus, They fall a little
nectar. Guys. It's I wonder if there's osmaphores, that there's some sort
of scent, because how do you get those bees to go in there?
You know, they gotta they gotta get wise at some point, right.
Uh. And then as they back out, they pick up Pollinia stuck to
them with you know, with the visidium on their back, and then go
fly off into another flower. So the camera sippers and the taxodium both being
in the same family, the redwood family. Their their megastrobil either female cones
or maturing right now, which is fucking cool to see against some nice money
chefs today. Beautiful a beautiful like minty green, kind of bluish green color
on those. Um. Guy. There was also another species of fractionist.
There's an ash that grows in those swamps, completely inundated in water, that
is thought to be an undescribed species. It was it was lumped in with
fractionist Carolinienus before, but it's it's probably or so the thinking goes, it's
probably a new species. So um. And then there's a weird little carrot
out we see in this I saw in Louisiana swamps too, all right,
doesn't get that tall. Almost looks like it might be a fern. Linear
leaves like literally like filamentous leaves um, but tiluminium with a P P T
I l I M NIU M capillasium um. So that was a cool to
see as well too. It's a weird carrot that is basically aquatic. It's
a swamp carrot. And so yeah, Corcus geminauto was fucking great to see
as well. Opuncha messacantha Opuntia messacantha, however you want to pronounce it um
a couple of prickly per species. There was a punch of drumundi as well.
There's so much good shit out there, man, I don't know,
I just it's so it's so rewarding to just be like lurking around, you
know, taking pictures of shit and learning the flora of a new place,
especially if you've got someone who really knows it, like Lily. But I
mean, even if you don't have someone around who can tell you what this
shit is, you can still go out. You got these fucking phones,
take pictures of everything. You know, just go out and explore, man,
pay attention to everything. And you know, once you learn what something
is, you learn the story behind it, it becomes a lot more fascinating
than just the green blur on the side of the road. All right.
So um, Rapidophilum histrix. That was a fucking cool palm. Man.
I had no idea there would be that much palm diversity in North Florida,
but I think there's yeah, there's like four or five species. And this
was just growing in the understory of you know, with the magnolia and the
rhododendron on these duff filled sand hills, like sand hills with a ship ton
of duff up top oh Liatris gulsonide. It was a fucking nice one too.
We found one blooming way out of season Liatris, the Blazing Stars Stevia
tribe. Asked to Racy. There was you know, they generally bloom late
summer, the late summer bloomers. This one, I don't know why it
was going off. It was a power line cut. There'd been some disturbance
that looked like they had masticated or mote or something, but it was a
fucking stunner. I mean, all the Liatris are pretty cool, you know.
Um No ray flowers of course, just just discoid flowers is just big
pink five lobe corollas with those long ass hairs sticking out of them, those
long ass styles hair like styles, excuse me. And then the darker anther
tubes. Super fun to drown it too. I love that genus and A
Morpha fruito coosa saw a giant one of those. Of course, that's not
going to be new to anyone that lives in the region. A Morpha fruito
coosa is a great plant. Anyone should be planting that in their fucking yard,
especially if you've got inundation, if you got water, if you've got
a lot, if you got wet soil. That A Morpha is a fucking
stunner indigo flowers. It's it's a p it's a legum, but the flowers
there's they're on these relatively large spikes, but the flowers just look like tubes.
The whole genus A. Morpha doesn't have the banner wings and kill flower
morphology that most members of the P family of the P subfamily faboidy P family
for basi have, So it's just got a single petal and it's just exerts
its stainmen. It's just dumps them out there. Okay, probably, I
mean, I guess they're bee polling. It looks like maybe a hummer could
hit it too. Maybe I don't know, but either way, and the
voyage smells good too. Because it's in tribe A Morphy, which is named
after the genus a morphous, so that whole tribe, of course I always
mentioned this in videos too, smells fucking great. I think all members of
that tribe, you know, you have fucking family, subfamily, tribe,
subtribe, et cetera. All members of that tribe a morphy and you get
plenty in the deserts in the American West to smell good. I mean,
the leaves smell good or they're like the almost like the marigolds of the pea
family. So great to see that one. But we went to another spot
looking for some more rare stuff. But the pigs, feral pigs, had
just wrecked a bunch of shit, dug up a bunch of trillium. It
was just it was a bummer, man. I Finally, this is another
one I had never seen before, just seen in photos. Spigelia marilandica from
the somewhat weird family, which I don't think we have any of our West
logani ac Um, big red like ketchup and mustard flowers, big red tubes.
And then the inside of the corolla. The five corolla lobes are yellow,
so it's like an erect red tube, very noticeable with um with yellow
with yellow what the fuck am I, say, Jesus Christ? Why am
I yellow? Ad axial sides to that? So red on the outside,
yellow on the inside, And it's just a cool fucking play opposite leaves.
But yeah, Logan is the family ordered Gentian nales, so it's a Gentian
basically. What else is in logani Ac Jesus Christ? Oh? Wow,
there's a But holy shit, where's the center of the diversity for the family.
There's like it looks like there's like fifteen different genera in the family logani
Ac Adelphakmi. Where's this? Where's a set? Oh, it's not even
it's not even on there. There's no observations of it. Wow, So
this must be an outlier biogeographically for the family logany A c oh no,
Yeah, you get okay, Logani say you get an Eastern Africa, southern
hemisphere. You get it in quite a bunch and quite a quite a bit.
Excuse me, in Brazil, Uruguay, a bunch of Madagascar, West,
Oh shit, no way, Western Australia, Eastern Australia, New Zealand.
What the fuck have I seen? Have I seen? Hold on?
See? This is why I love Nan, because I can look I can
go to my observations type in a family name Oriantha, I've seen a bunch
of oh, no shit, wild pole in West Australia. In twenty nineteen,
I saw three different species in the family logany A c Oriantha serpilifolia.
What an invaluable tool? Mitriola cesila folia. Where the fuck was this?
This was? Oh? This was Oh that was in Big Cyprus. No
shit, mitriol okay, so that was in South Florida. Mitriola cecila folia.
I don't even remember that one. It's a weird little bastard. And
the rest we're all just orienttha that it looks like I've seen in uh yeah,
in Western Australia. Jesus Christ crazy had no idea. Who knew anyway?
But what is the name for this? What's got some stupid common name?
Not a surprise? Indian pink It's called God's well. It's mildly offensive
and it's also dumb. The Indian pink or woodland pink root. Why not
you again? Why not just learn spike gilia. It's cool, it sounds
nice. By gia sounds nice, say Indian pink, woodland pink root,
that's woodland. Pink root takes twice as long to say it's spigelia. Spigelia
is kind of a weird name, but it's stride. Roots are used as
an antiamentic de warmer. Well that's good to know for my worms. Okay,
sometimes you gotta de warm yourself. The roots are also an narcotic hallucinogen,
but the alkaloid spigeline, which is largely responsible for both it's hallucinogenic and
medicinal action, can cause increased heart action, vertigo, convulsions, and death
if overdose. So if you're gonna get funky with spigelia, definitely know what
the shit you're doing in your dosage. But all I see is potential secondary
pollen presentation with those long styles taking pollen off of the anthers with them as
it elongates. So it's almost got like an asterace type thing going on here.
With the second secondary pollen presentation is those styles elongate, they scrape pollen
off those inward facing anthers and bring it up with them, bring it up
with that style. One style for flower, of course, But I'm looking
at a picture of three flowers, so three fucking styles. That's why I'm
saying. That's why I'm saying plural so interesting interesting uh pollination biology, probably
something something interesting going on there with that flower structure. Um, God,
there's so much too. I'm not gonna able to cover everything. Hydrangea cursifolia.
There was another cool one, those those four large white, conspicuous bracts
only serving uh to flag down pollinators and the the many tiny flowers hiding beneath
them. Um. The Semina augustafolia A simina flowers are always fucking weird.
That's the pawpaw genus an annanaciated family, but a semina another proto gynus um
another protogynus flower female first, then male. Um. And you've got this
globe that looks like this spongy sphere beneath beneath the exposed parts of gya weesim.
Is that the stigma? Let me see that. Let me see this
over there, honestly shitty photo. I didn't really take one. Beneath the
many carpals, and so as those stamens, those are the stamens are the
anthers, and as as a plant, as the flower matures and goes into
the mail phase, then they become receptive they loosen up. Not receptive,
they dehiss and loosen up and start letting pollen go. But oh god,
I love I love being in a new place, studying new FLOORA. And
of course we saw the Torriatacksafolia too, which would be a cool podcast in
and of itself. You know, the trees are declining. Another cool conifer,
Another cool paleo endemic, all right, another genus with only two species
in North America, one on the East coast, one on the West coast.
I'm very familiar with the one on the West coast. Torria californica aka
California nutmeg, which is not really a nutmeg at all, but a relative
of you, very spiny, tends to grow in northern California at lower elevations
like thousand and two thousand feet sometimes you know, lower than that, if
coastal. Supposedly the needles of that Torria Californica were used for tattooing. But
um, yeah, Teria taxa folia the East coast, when the Florida one
is just taking a hit. Basically it's functionally extinct. It's doing with the
American chestnut did resprouting. It dives back from an invasive fungus brought over from
Asia, like cryphonnactary A parasitica a chestnut, the chestnut light. The fungus
knocks up back, plants die back, then they resprout again, and then
they get knocked back again plant and they don't really in you know, in
habitat. They don't really get a chance to produce cones, which look like
a droope. It looks like a droope, but it's actually a general sperm.
Of course, it's it's a naked a naked evule a naked seed.
But in cultivation, I guess they do well. And I guess every tree
is supposedly infected because this fusarium is just so ubiquitous and the landscape. And
then there's people who are trying to move them north because they're saying it's this
climate change. It's not that. I don't fucking though it sounds like a
like kind of a clusterfuck. But someone's got to do. Hopefully, someone
does some genetic work with that species, like they did with Castania dentatau,
you know, just insert it with with the American chesnu, they just inserted
a wheat gene in there. They can break down oxalic acid, which is,
you know, basically how the fungus inadvertently ends up killing the tree.
It's secreting so much oxalic acid. And so this enzyme, um, this
gene produces this enzyme that breaks down oxalic acid. So to treat the American
chestnuts still getting infected, but they don't die. They just overcome it,
just like the Chinese chestnuts do. So anyway, I gotta wrap this up
soon. Oh yeah, okay, yeah. It was Magnolia pyramid data shit
osman dastrum, Cinamonium. Another cool fern, large fern with it's it's with
its own dead dedicated spora fill. It's un dedicated spore producing structure that's uh
not really photosynthetic. I guess it is mindly that that raiky's looks uh looks
green, but it doesn't produce vegetative leaves. It just produces orange spores.
The cinnamon fern. Okay, I could see that common name. Okay,
you got me a bite at that's fine. Um. Oh yeah, I'm
Sonia too. It was a nice one. Say. I'm Sonia ciliata vi
Burnham another fucking genus I'm not very familiar with. At all, because we
don't get many out west, if any viburnum acera folium, which is supposedly
a relatively rare one. But you know, you get these corems of tiny
white flowers with exerted stamens, with long stamens, with long filaments, and
what is the what is the range on this one? I don't know?
Well anyway, yeah, I gotta wrap this up. Well, anyway,
hopefully you got something out of that, and uh, you want to sign
up for that that patrion, I'd share a pre shit, it don't trip
if you don't have the funds though, and the fuck else? I got
like five videos on Florida coming out. I've still got a video or two
from Tasmania about tree ferns, some really fucking cool ones that we went on
a hunt for. And I don't know, man, I'm just swapped.
Things. Been good though, overall. How about you? You're doing good,
good, all right, even though we're you know, everything's headed for
the ship can everything's declining, generally speaking, it's gonna be a long protracted
decline. Yeah, me too. I'm doing okay, you know, just
keeping everything in context, okay, strikes and gutters being a little grateful,
Okay, being very grateful. Don't forget that they'll forget, you know,
don't forget your roots, all that kind of shit. Anyway, that's all
I got for you today. Have a good rest of your evening, afternoon,
whatever the ship, go fuck yourself, body,