Watering Before a Freeze, Goliad Gravels

But you go to the store and you get yourself a pop. Okay,
go to the store and just get yourself a pop. I hate enough for
this, and I know, I know you're trying to messare with me because
I got the hypertension and you know you're good. You're trying to kill me.
So why don't you just go through the store and get yourself a pop?
What's going on? Welcome to the crimepace of Bondy doesn't podcasts. We're
gonna just do a little short one today. I'm here sorting Salvias seed,
picking salve up a lot of florist seed out of these tiny kalisses that I
got yesterday during a lovely run through the thorn scrub habitat here in South Texas.
Got back from Tucson long drive, you know, long drive broke it
up trying to go on a fucking run, which is so important now and
so doable since the it's chilly in most places, you know, I forget
off. And how fucking hot it is where I live. I know,
I talk about this shit all the time, but it was like eighty degrees
today. We're supposed to get a freeze this weekend. I think Sunday,
so I'm gonna be bringing a bunch of stuff inside. I got one of
those little you know, expandable greenhouses. It's like an eight foot by eight
foot greenhouse. It's just a wire frame. You set it up in like,
you know, a minute and a half and then you throw a cover
on it and you get a little fucking space heater throw it in or you
know, because I don't got much stuff that's uh, it's that sensitive.
But it's gonna get down to thirty one here probably for a few hours in
the morning. So I'm gonna, uh, I just figure why not,
you know, if I can make it easy for some of these things,
I might as well. Remember when plants are in a pot, it's much
they're much more susceptible to the freeze than if they're in the ground. You
know, for plants like payota or astrophyt them, for instance. A lot
of people forget that. I know, there's a lot of you guys growing
different weird cacti and stuff out there, and uh, you know, just
always remember it's gonna when plants are in the ground, they're insulated. It
takes a lot more uh time for that ground to lose heat versus if something's
in a pot, you know, and same thing. It's about volume of
soil, you know, same thing with water, of course, temperature and
moisture behavior, you know, are much different issues once something's in the ground
versus in a pot. So But anyway, but most of the stuff I'm
worried about is like, you know, I got some fucking weird orchids.
I don't even know why I'm trying. I don't. I don't really grow
a lot of stuff except you know, things that I can plant out.
But someone gave me a couple of weird orchids and some other stuff that's kind
of sensitive. So I don't want it to get below forty, you know,
at nights. So yeah, I just put up this little tiny greenhouse
thing. But anyway, but yeah, man, it's like I was in
Tucson it was fucking freezing, and I was in West Texas stopped in Alpine
for a few days. It was fucking freezing there, just like windy and
crispy and dry, like the high desert, you know, once you get
over that Edwards Plateau, that beautiful limestone escarpmt of Edward's plat. Yeah,
I got a buck on the fucking Edwards Plateau. It's like a natural history
and it's not great, but it's all that's out there. But it's actually
pretty. It's it's decent. You know. They talk about all the karst
formations and these massive limestone caves and the ecology of some of these caves.
And you know, of course some of these caves behave like you know,
the islands and the Goopagos and the finches or the different lakes, you know,
the lakes in the African Rift Valley. Each different lake has its own
little species of it. What is it? What do you get the cyclids
out there? What is it? I don't know. You know, weird
cases in one large population of an organism due to tectonic events or isolation whatever,
any any kind of vicarians, a large population being split up into smaller
populations and then eventually speciating. And it's my jam. Okay, mostly with
plants, but with anything, all right. That's how you get so much
biodiversity, And the same thing happens with some of these caves. You get
a lot of weird organisms, especially arthropods. I think there's a couple maybe
you've got a couple of blind catfish. Does everybody need a blind catfish in
their life? You know, it's just this like a you could name it
Larry the blind catfish. You know, it's like a fucking mascot. Is
any is there a town in Texas that has a blind catfish named Larry?
Is? What about del Real? They gotta they got a blind catfish in
the cave systems down here, and they'll reel, don't they an albino blind
catfish. It's a nice metaphor. You well, the terrible shit going on
in the world today, just remember that there's such a thing as in albino
blind cave dwelling catfish. But anyway, uh so, the Edwards Plateau man
a lot of interesting shit, a lot of endemics. It's that, you
know, it's the middle ground between the more music east eastern half of the
United States and the more arid western half. So other than that, I've
just been writing this fucking book two hours a day. I try to spend
on this, and then you know, I get sad and I missed my
daughter and I gotta go pick her up, you know, and go hang
out. She helped me make a pizza last night. She doesn't even like
pizza. I don't know how to fuck she doesn't like pizza. You know,
I'm a little dish disappointed. But it's fine, you know. She
I gave her some milk and some cottage cheese. She ate that she doesn't
like pizza so much, but she still got upset when I put a rugol
on it. She didn't like the fuck. She's not a big brash of
caffe. I think she sees the greens and she gets bummed out. But
uh anyway, so so yeah, it's just, you know, it was
fucking eighty degrees here. It's gonna freeze, little bit. I gotta take
some mild prep, you know, through some mild prep to uh uh,
well, there's a little I got. I'm using tweezers. This is some
tweaker shit that I'm doing right here. I'm like crouched on the ground trying
to to you know, each one of these fucking kalises on this Salvia blata
flora klys of course, just composed of sepals. Remember I uh, some
of these plants were still blooming. But one flower spike will have like thirty
you know, yeah, maybe like ten ten to thirty flowers on it.
And the bottom flowers will have you know, will already be done flowering.
The ones at the top are still flowering. That got that beautiful purple corolla
again composed of the petals, remember corolla petals, klyx sepals. The petals
are still on it, beautiful purple, you know, with that bilatterally symmetrical
sage flower. And the bottom's already lost the corolla. And so I'll go
in there and I'll just you know, pulling my my you know, foreman
taking four fingers and pinching the fucking the inflorescence and then just pulling my hand
up, just zipping it up the the spike up to where the flowers are
still blooming, and just pulling, ripping off all those kalasses. And then
each klyx will have one to two seeds inside. And that's how you harvest
salvias seed. And it smells fucking great. And then you just so I
don't even I don't even take the seeds out there. I just take all
the kaloses, put them in a little paper round velope and uh and then
run off. And I did it on a trail run yesterday. It was
nice. I went on like a nice uh illegally trespassing trail run, but
it wasn't I mean, it was private property, but it wasn't like someone
lived there, you know, it was on by a fucking gas company or
someone. Shout out to whoever got me at that free uh onyx hunt subscription,
who signed me up with it, thank you very much, because it
allowed me to check who owned this property. And so I looked at the
satellite and made sure that there were no houses on it, and then I,
uh, I saw a large parcel of land. First, That's how
I got I got sniffing on it, and then I saw that it was
owned by a fucking gas company who seems like they apparently sometimes leased it out
to private hunters, which, of course, in Texas doesn't actually mean scouting,
you know, going out and scouting for a hunt and having to walk.
It means just sitting in a fucking blind and dumping corn out for deer,
and uh, you know, and then I just was like fuck it,
I'll just you know, I just did a little fence hopping and I
was great. It was fucking worth it. It was really cool to see.
Man, it's these these lomas out here, these hills, composed of
of cobbles and pebbles, and so they it's not all flat. You get
these lomas where it's a much different plant community. Even down below it's it's
you know, being that there's not much soil there. It's just rock kind
of cemented together with caliche. It's part of what's known as the Goliad for
formation g O l i a d roughly five million years old. But what's
interesting to me and always has been, is that these fucking all the rocks.
Some are the size of a golf ball. Some are the size of
a basketball. Well maybe not. Yeah, the diameter the width of a
basketball, the diameter, not the not all the way around, you know,
and even that's kind of big. But there some are are you know,
large enough that you I didn't want to carry them on a fucking run.
But anyway, they're all rounded, which is really bizarre. So they
show evidence of having been tumbled in water, these big pebble beds, and
uh and you know some of them, God, they must come I don't
know where to fox someone come from, probably quite far away. And for
the amount, for how heavy, for the size that they are, it
must have taken a high energy river or body of water to move these fucking
things. And it's just so goddamn it. I've I haven't looked that hard
on research gate or Google, scholar or anything to see, you know,
any information about these uh, these rocks, Like if anyone's you know,
looked into the material that they're sourced from, the parent material, where their
parent material is, you know, where they because they were obviously transported.
They didn't they didn't come from here, They didn't come from where they are
now. They were transported and then uh, you know, sometime in the
last five million years and then uh, you know, no one's that,
no one's actually that I know of his, you know, found a significant
thing. I mean, man, everything is understudied down here, so much
is understudied. There's a one guy at u t r g V, which
used to be called Pan American University. God damn it. What was his
name, One gun Zalnce. I think it was one gun Zaluce. But
he wrote he wrote a small book on the geology of South Texas. But
it doesn't go very deep. It's just very it's pictures with very short explanations
of how these rocks got here, and it talks about the Gliad Formation,
the unconformity, you know, the the twenty million year gap between some of
the tofacious sediments, the volcanic ash that you can find in Star County.
Then there's that twenty million year old gap. It just goes from that twenty
seven year old, twenty seven million year old volcanic ash, then it boom
hits the five million year old Glion formation. So everything in between was either
not deposited or was deposited and erased. So what was going on in Star
County between twenty five million and five million years ago? You know who knows?
Probably a lot of weird fucking mammals. But yeah, these little lomas
are cool. But I was surprised I didn't find that many cacti. You'd
think on a drier site there would be more cacti, and there weren't.
And I don't know if that's because they were you know, removed or fucking
who. I found a couple horse cripplers, you know, homlocephalous Texana or
homoocephalous text census used to be a kino cactus tex census. I found a
couple of kino Sirius any acanthus, you know those multi stem little kindo serious
known as the hedgehog cacti. Uh. And then I found Mortonia excuse me,
I think it was gregory I. It's Mortonia gregia, which is a
cool Mortonia is a cool genus in Celeus tracy, which is a family that's
not very well known, but you do get a couple of cool uh members
of it. Kenoshia hallacanthus, another cool desert plant, colloquially known as the
crucifixion throwne. It's Celeus tracy. But Mortonia, I know for Mortonia utah
insis, which you get in the Mojave deserts. It's a limestone lover.
And then Mortonia sempervians, which is another limestone lover that you get in West
Texas around places like Shafter and uh. And then you know growing sympatrick with
plants like peyote and in Celia. Oh god, what the fuck? What
I just forgot in celia? Hold on, it was Scaposa. I don't
know why I just blanked on that. That species name. It's one of
my favorite desert asters desert cops. But uh, but yeah, anyway,
it's more Tonia gregy i. It's got those imbricate leaves. It'll roofing shingle
like leaves like snake scales, leaves like snake scales, and uh and then
just little white flowers when it goes off, and you always find it growing
on the same I mean it grows in Sierra Madre down Aaron in Monterrey.
Uh, growing right out of the fucking rock wall. I'll see it growing
with uh, you know, a gave u uh oh jeez, why am
I having blanks? Goddamn it? A gave elbo pelosa. That was it?
Yeah, just spaced on the minute. You know that real unique one,
that' said A narrow endemic known from the limestone canyons that were flipped vertically
looking looking like a fucking a rug on a hardwood floor just outside Monterea,
Mexico. But I'll see that moretonia that greg I growing just out of rock
walls there. But here it grows out of these uh you know, these
rocky hills. I mean you could see, you could see where the hill
has been cut into in some places, and it literally is just a conglomerate.
It's a bunch of fucking you know, rounded cobbles cemented together with caliche
it is the weirdest shit. It is so mysterious to me. And uh,
lots of cool plants. None of the cool cacti that you find farther
west in Stark Star County, or minimal amounts of them, Like there weren't
big clumps of Mammalaria hider eye, which seems to actually like it kind of
wet, or Hamado cactus Hamata canthus. But uh, but there was still
a lot of cool stuff. And anytime you find that Moretonia, that's pretty
cool. So just going through the kalus is here looking for any more seeds.
But it was a nice fucking time. It was. You know,
I just wanted like a little five mile run. It's so the weather's so
fucking nice. All the American snouts were out, the little butterflies, you
know, fly. I was just getting smacked in a face with all the
damn butterflies. They were going on a fucking yeah. Every in every ten
seconds, you'd walk into and you get a whiff of citerox line cell As
strinum, the coma trees sapotasi with the little edible fruits. The flowers are
kind of funky. They smell kind of funky. They're good, they're sweet,
they're pungent, but they smell kind of funky. And these trees,
that's one of those trees that I'm like, why the fuck the people not
why these not planted more in cultivation? Here they get upwards the thirty feet
tall, they grow kind of slow. Sure, they're spiny at first.
They got branches that terminate into sharp points that'll stab you. But uh,
but they fucking they smell kind of pleasant. You could smell the tiny flowers,
tiny tiny flowers. We're talking like quarter inch in diameter. You can
smell the tiny flowers on they're blooming from ten feet away. But of course,
you know, you'll have like thirty flowers all grouped together, so it's
not like just one is a super powerful but it's you know, either it's
pretty fucking impressive. And then the fruit is edible. It's a little gummy,
juicy, fucking latex emitting fruit, which is actually you know, you
could probably breed a could probably probably breed a fucking you know, select for
a pretty uh delicious cultivar pretty easily. But they just they take the heat
down here. So well, they're such a good tree to have around.
They should be planted as a street tree more, just like so many of
the cool native plants on here. But it isn't not the same story everywhere,
Like every fucking region has got its own cool native cast of plants that
would do great in cultivation or a street trees or whatever, and they're always
maybe one. Maybe cities and municipalities will use one species, but then they
put they bring in all this tacky shit from other places that requires more maintenance
and more water and doesn't do that well. And it's just the fucking you
know, I don't know. Hopefully we'll come around at some point. There's
a lot of people. I'm so glad that all this nature communications got to
hate that word. Uh, it's become more prevalent, I think, you
know, as we move forward into our cartoon dystopia that we're all living in,
right, and every nation's got its own version of it, right.
Ours is now you know, dominated by retail strips and parking lots and an
entire generation lost on their phones as we all are. You know, they've
really gamed our They've really these tech overlords have really gained the human mind.
They've really learned how to how to manipulate and fuck with people's dopamine levels and
uh and and no one fucking daydreams anymore. No one just has a moment
where they stare off into space. I mean all of us are guilty of
it, right, Like you're sitting at a fucking light. People can't even
just not look at their phones when they're in traffic at a fucking light.
And of course, because our whole landscape is devoted to cars now, it's
you know, we spent a lot of time sitting at lights. But yeah,
just anyway, But anyway, so sit a rocks on cellistrine, and
the coma trees were going off everywhere. Everything just smelled good. The air
smells good, all the fucking all the terpenes and volatiles being emitted out of
the stomata on the undersides of all the leaves. It's just such a nice
time. I mean, where I live, it really summer is really like
the dormant season. It's like, if you lived in Alaska, winter was
just a dormance season. You don't do much, you don't plan to do
much. It's kind of what summer is like here. I mean, it's
just so fucking brutal. But this summer, I'll probably be traveling around doing
research for the second book i'm writing that I got. I didn't get conned
into it. I wanted to do it. I was approached. I was
approached by a man in a trench coat in a park and he just grinded
me. And when he opened his coat, I saw he had a sausage
dangling from his penis on a piece of yarn. Sorry it was it was
a fucking scene of a John Waters movie. Excuse me. I was approached
by a publisher and I don't know why I agreed to it, but I
did. And so now here I'm writing two fucking books, and so it's
put everything else in my life on hold. I'm not going to be making
as many videos, I'm not going to be selling as many shirts. But
I'll have a fucking book and maybe you'll have a little bit of insight into
botany, and you'll have a little bit of, you know, some nice
eye candy in a form of these fucking pictures. I'm putting one of the
one of the books is gonna have like four hundred photos in it, showcasing
however many plant species, I'm almost there's not enough. I mean they limited
me to too eighty eight pages. I could do probably five hundred and ninety.
You know, I've got so many goddamn photos. So maybe what I'll
do is just you know, I'm learning how to use in design, so
maybe whatever's left overall, just put a little picture book together and hock those.
You know, always gotta come up with the hustle right in this fucking
this uh world we live. And I mean I like doing it too.
I like making shit, I like publishing stuff. But you know, the
fucking always trying to Hawk said, wait, wait, I don't fuck everyone's
gonna make money somehow. You know, if if people didn't, people weren't
into it, they wouldn't sell. So whatever. But uh, you know,
I maybe I'm just overthinking it. You know, I'm just doing a
self guilt thing. You know, I'll take this up with my shrink.
But anyway, but yeah, this fucking man, God, that that landscape
was so cool. I think I'm gonna go back and do a video on
it tomorrow. You know, dwarfed blackbrush. There was dwarfed blackbrush everywhere.
Blackbrush another plant, another shrub that can reach upwards at twenty thirty feet here
on these harsh gravel deposits. These just got there was like no soil there.
It was just rock. It was like rock and colliche and that was
it. Some of these blackbrush they had, they were probably ten twenty thirty
years old. They topped out a two feet tall and just sprawled out on
the what I guess was kind of like pavement, you know, and it
was I guess some of it maybe was quarried at some point their mind.
Maybe they were using some of these pebbles for road bay. I don't know,
but the history of the land super weird. I mean, I'm sure
it'll be tracked housing someday down here anyway. So, uh, that was
cool. I took a little microdos and acid, which was nice to microdosing,
you know, because you don't want to be in there for that twelve
hour commitment. I've fall in love with acid again. It's been it's been
a few years since the days with me and Evan Spech. Evan Special will
go paint murals on acid, bike around, laugh our asses off, and
uh, you know that was a fucking guy to do acid with rip super
fun and uh you know, and not as heady, not as emotional,
just you know, it's a nice time acid in nature, especially God.
I remember doing acid with the Ivy and Tara Ones during the fucking super Bloom
super Bloom hashtag super bloom. Yeah over there Corrizo Plaine National Monument, And
I just did that voice, I guess, because I think it's super the
word I try to just not even use the word super bloom, but I
just always picture there's like some fucking influencer taking selfies, like crushing a bunch
of poppies, California poppies and just taking selfies and you know for fucking social
media her. It could be a he too. I don't know why I
do it. You know, you gotta be we go to be sexist or
something, you know. Uh. Anyway, the same way that you're never
gonna see you know, some You're never gonna get passed by some fucking jacked
up truck that's just spewing a black cloud of smoke and makes a big show
to go around you, almost cutting you off and taking your front friend er
out so it can stop at a fucking red light two hundred feet down the
road. You're never gonna pull up to that, and it's gonna be like
a soccer mom. The same way, you're never gonna see someone standing crushing
a bunch of flowers and taking a bunch of fucking selfies in a super bloom
and it's not gonna be some kind of stuf. See you probably actually you
can that can happen, but you know, more often than that. Let's
be real here, there's some stereotypes exist for a reason. Okay, it's
just good to be aware of the ones that can be bade about yourself too.
So uh, Anyway, I went on. I took a little micro's
asset, one of those fucking five or six mile run on these old trails
on this gas company land of God. It was so fucking nice, man.
It's so nice to get just to get outside, and now is the
season to do it. I forget, you know, sometimes because it's just
so hot here, especially if you're doing field work in the summer, you
gotta be you gotta have an ice an ice cold fucking cooler of water nearby.
You've gotta you can't go on on any long hikes. If you start
field work, you gotta start at six or seven in the morning. I
mean, it's just and be done by noon, even noon is pushing it.
So, you know, it's just nice to be out and to enjoy
outside again. So and it makes me wonder what's going to happen, you
know here with as we move forward in the climate change, the whole climate
change part of our our cartoon dystopia. You know, at what point are
people going to realize it's just fucking insane to live in places like this in
the summer? You know, I give it a couple decades. I think
we got a couple of decades left. Maybe now, who knows, Hi,
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Got a split and freaking headache, so I popped a couple bays.
Does anybody make Baity? Could you still get Bayer? Was it? That's
like the caffeine with the fucking what is it? Aspirinit of metaphin paracetamol?
Pair of what y'all? Goddamn it? I got a fucking headache, though,
I really do these fucking shit bag dirty I signed the I I tried
signing up for healthcare. I made the mistake. I've given my fucking email
address to somebody's fucking health insurance companies two years ago, and I still get
these goddamn emails, and they're all scrounging like pigs at a trough to try
and fucking get at my insights, you know, saying Tony, it's time.
It's your last chance to sign up for healthcare, you know, before
the window closes. And now then you just have to go to the emergency
room with a fake name, which remember you could still do due to a
nineteen seventy seven law that forces emergency rooms to fucking give you service even if
you don't have identification on you. And that's what you do. You just
say I don't have it all right, my name is Joe Blow. Do
you have ID no? And they just fuck I think even I think everyone
knows. I think most doctors even though that it's a fucking scam. I
remember I fell off a train in Picos, Texas once a year was two
thousand and six. I was. I didn't fall off, I was dragged
trying to catch a train out of Fort Worth by the Old Tower fifty five,
trying to illegally ride a freight train on the old T and P route
the West going to West Texas, and uh, I think that was the
first time I ever spent time in beautiful Sweetwater, Texas as well, where
they have a painting, a mural of the rattlesnake roundup uh on the fucking
wall the grocery store. Goddamn, we're gonna come out here. We're gonna
shoot as many goddamn these little slithery bashroods as we can. Uh. Anyway,
fucking socio paths. Uh Oh. And then I met some lady in
a grocery store who told me how disappointed she was that her son married a
Muslim. He was she said that he was in the service because this is
only three years after the fucking Iraq mistake. Remember that, remember that thing
at that big little mistake that god I came up with twenty one fucking years
since the Iraq War. Anyway, her, I guess her son. Her
name was Sherry something. She was an old, old, very nice.
I'm surprised too, because I had a little bit of a tan at that
point. I was looking a little more, you know, on the darker
inside of things, but I didn't have any tattoos yet, so I wasn't
the I guess I wasn't then to Anyway, The point is, she fucking
told me how disappointed she was that her son married a Muslim, and I
just kind of sat there like I was standing up. Actually it was in
the grocery store in Sweetwater. And then I went to a fucking subway sandwich
shop, which is always the like, the total mark of shame. The
last time I ate subway was three months ago, and every time because there
was nothing else. I was on the road, there was nothing else to
eat. Every time I eat subway, it's always like, you know,
I just I feel so bad about myself afterwards, you know, I feel
like I you know, I feel like all that Catholic guilt style shit comes
up, you know, because I was raised Catholic, you know, and
that self hate. You know, Do you hate yourself enough to patronize subway?
Anyway? God, the smell that fucking bread. Anyway, I went
into a subway sandwich shop in Sweetwater, Texas, and the cops showed up
because I had been making small talk with the lady behind the counter, who
was like forty or something like she was. And that's I'm not being ages.
I was like twenty one. But it was like very obvious that I
wasn't hitting on this woman. I was just being nice. I'd been on
a fucking transmit lonely. I was like, oh, yeah, you gotta
work late tonight, and you know, it was like five pm. I
was just making small talk with the working man or woman or person whatever the
fuck, and I guess she called the cops on me, and the cops
showed up, and I was like, They're like, they said, you
were asking her when she's off work. I'm like, oh my god,
Jesus Christ. And I felt I felt like so fucking bad. I'm like,
was I Did I creep this woman out? Like what the fuck?
But there were other people working there too. She was just the lady that
wrung me up. So not only was I in a subway sandwich shop,
I was getting mistaken for a fucking sex pest and and uh, and then
I was eating a subway sandwich on top of that, which being mistaken for
a sex pest and eating subways seemed like two things that go so well together.
Or actually being a second pest and patronizing a subway sandwich shop, wasn't
it. Yeah, Jared's never gonna live that one down. Did you see
the documentary and that guy he's fucking oh god, it's it's dirty. Anyway,
this is a botany podcast. And I forgot how I got here,
but that that moment in that subway sandwich shop later showed me the great dichotomy
of Texas because I still got that music playing. Because I, you know,
the fucking cops came, you know, took my name, searched my
shit, and I just told him, like, no, man, I'm
on the road. I was really just trying to make I just you know,
I was wondering if she had a shitty day at work, that's all.
Like I I was just one. It wasn't like trying to fucking and
not like it matters, but like I was in no way attracted to this
woman either, but you know, it just it was like so mind boggling.
I guess she got who knows, who knows what what shit she had
to deal with? What someone's story is. I mean, obviously she's been
fucking harassed or freaked out or something. But anyway, so the cops just,
you know, I felt really bad and the cops just you know,
took my name, searched me and then left. And then after that,
some guy came in this store and I had a big bag with me,
like a big backpack. I was kind of dirty, probably too, but
I've always tried to keep it clean. When I was riding freight trains and
this fucking guy was like, he gave me twenty bucks. He's like,
hey, man, I saw the cops hassling you. Just want to let
you know, like I feel for you. And then he gave me twenty
bucks and left, and I was like, this is Texas. This is
fucking weird, man, Like everyone's so paranoid and suspicious. You get that
feeling at first that everyone is and then there's like there's really really kind carrying
people. You know. That was my f I can't forgot that happened.
Shit that was to yeah, two thousand and six. Another time we were
in Beaumont. I'm really going off the rails here, no pun intended.
Another time we were in Beaumont, Texas, and this dude who lived near
the tracks saw us. We had bags of we had a you know,
big backpacks and shit, and we got dropped off someone else because we got
on the wrong train. End up and stilled me Beaumont's in East Texas and
uh a little cool like, uh, you know, East Texas, working
class town. And we were waiting by the train yard and this dude that
lived near the train yard saw us and came back like an hour later with
his kid. We were still He rolled up in a truck, we were
still waiting there and gave us like three bags of food and a joint and
I was like, damn, that's you know, all the fucking kind of
shit. Another time, I was in fucking Kirby Yard in San Antonio and
this other dude came up. I was in a burrito shop. He saw
me traveling. I had just gotten back from Mexico, ridden in from Laredo
actually, and this guy gave me a fucking like twenty dollars bill. I
like, there's so much fucking kindness out there among the working people of Texas.
So I hear any u California shitting on this state. All right,
you're gonna sound like an ignorant elitist. Fuck Okay, it's don't blame the
fuck people that live here for some of the deranged views of people like Ken
Paxton or Greg Abbott. Georgia. What the fuck is the governor's name?
That pig? I don't know all these fucking politicians, the dirtiest of the
dirty too, all right, so dirty their fellow Republicans don't even like them.
Anyway. The fuck was I talking about? How did I get here?
Oh? Yeah, we were talking about healthcare and how I got dragged
by a trade in Fort Worth. Anyway, somewhere out there, the emergency
room in Picos, Texas or Sweetwater, Texas is still trying to claim three
grand from a fake name I gave him fifteen or sixteen years ago. Anyway,
here's a quiz for you. If it's gonna freeze tomorrow, a light
freeze, not talking about like single digits, but if it's you know you're
gonna be hovering around twenty five degrees fahrenheit, thirty degrees fahrenheit, Do you
water the plants you have in the ground or not? Right? All right?
What do you do you have fucking water? Give it a good soak,
because remember water, it's a high heat capacity, all right, four
times higher than air. I think it's like four jewels per kilogram is it's
the fucking unit they use four point two jewels per kilogram for water and one
point three or something for air. The point is, water retains heat,
all right, and it takes a long time for it to lose heat.
Of course, on the on the opposite end, so if you put a
lot of water on the ground, it's gonna take longer for that water to
lose heat and cool down, especially and that's good, especially if it's you
know, you're like me in a place in South Texas, you know,
the furthest you can fucking go south in the United States without being in Florida,
which no one wants to be in Florida. No offense to anybody who's
actually in Florida listening to this. Uh. So you know here, it's
only gonna it's gonna get down like twenty nine for an hour or two.
Uh probably at five or six in the morning. So I'm watering everything because
you know, that's why hurricanes are so much stronger where you get actual warm
water, because all that fucking heat energy, all right, it can be
you know, can be held in that water in transport. So it's the
same thing with like, you know, have you ever seen those those solar
systems that people have. This is before photovoltaic technology was really uh you know,
really you know where it's at today, But they used to be there
were hot water systems that would just have black tubes on the roof that would
heat up, run through like a black panel, heat up, and then
that water would later be pumped down into the house. And so that was
you know, because that water holds heat so long. So you know,
uh, there you go. That's like my half ast explanation of why it's
good to water, you know, very in the ground. Granted, like
the ground is still the ground's going to have soils, going to have a
higher heat capacity than air, but there's still air pockets in there. Nothing's
gonna be like water, right, You want that water to fucking really hold
that heat. So water this shit out of your plants. That said,
I still got one of those folding greenhouses. I'm putting the fucking cover on.
It was like one hundred and forty bucks on Scamazon, you know,
because I got some goofy stuff, Like I said, I got these orchids
and shit, I got other stuff. I just don't want to freeze,
even if it may not die, I don't want the fucking things to freeze.
I gotta go. I gotta pack a serious weber in my yard.
Those giant cacti from you know, Puebla. I got neo box Baniah in
my yard, which is what is it now, Cephalo serious? I gotta
go put little snow hats on them, you know, little nit hats,
frost cloth and shit. Because that fucking cold air. And we only got
to do this once, you know, once or twice a year. You
still not have to do it at all. You'd have whole decades go by
without it dipping into blow you know, the freezing temperatures here in South Texas.
But being that the Arctic is warming and the jet stream is now so
destabilized, you get these these you know, you get that meandering jet stream,
you get those dips of cold air that come all the way the fuck
down to where I live and bum out all these winter Texans that are living
in a fucking trailer park, you know, like over there by Benson State
Park where I took my kid yesterday. I got one of them little jogging
strollers for thirty bucks. So I'm one of those guys. I'm one of
those fucking those yuppie looking pushing my kid into jogging stroller. Oh it's so
nice though. The American snout butterflies are out everywhere, and it's just a
fucking great It's just been so nice down here this time of year, and
then by May it'll be completely fucking unbearable again, and it's you might as
well be living on the surface of Mars, even in Tucson, in Phoenix,
and shit, it doesn't get as hot as it does here, and
they don't know that humidity. You're done listening to me complain anyway. Thorn
Scrub Sanctuary is doing good. We've raised upwards a sixteen grand and we are
nowhere near where we need to be at. But we're getting this fucking land
no matter what, and so it's gonna happen. It'll be nice. And
then we just got work on trying to get fencing and eradicating buffalograss and building
a building. And when we get a building, hopefully it can act as
kind of like a community center, a little island here moored in the remote
wilderness figuratively speaking of southwest Texas, because I mainly what I want to do
is just get more people down here to study the plant communities here and appreciate
it and put this stuff on the map for people, because not many people
know about the plant communities and ecosystems and geology down here, and it's so
fucking cool. And on that note, we're going to talk a little bit
more about the goalie ad formations in those gravels. I was talking about running
around well microdosing acid, you know, on a little trail run here,
because they are so fucking cool. And you know, I was reading there's
a book called Texas through Time, which I suggest you get if you got
the funds for it. I don't know if it's on libgen yet. For
the PDF reader crowd, does anyone actually read those people? I've been recommending
reading PDA reading textbooks on PDFs for fucking three or four years now, is
anybody actually doing it? You better, because that's the easiest way man to
do. You Just get a pdf, Go sit your ass down, get
a fucking script for adderol or something if you can't focus. It seems like
every botanist I know is on fucking adder all these days. They need to
be everybody. There's people I know, you know who are you? Well
known influencers on Instagram and TikTok, who are on fucking ad I know they're
on adderall I'm not going to out them because I don't know if they want
me to say that they are. But everybody's on adderall right. Friend of
mine, he's a botanist in Utah. He told me his girlfriend threatened to
break up with him if he didn't get on adderall because he was so fucking
all over the place. And I know, what is the evolutionary what's the
evolutionary adaptation or adaptive benefits of ad D? Is it being able to focus
on multiple things and just pay attention to direct what's directly in front of you.
Is like a way to prevent people from thinking too much so that they
can know fucking focus on just surviving or I don't know, it's weird,
it's so weird, But all I know is if I want to get any
writing, then I got to get the fuck out of my house because I
got too much shit. I got too many pictures and stuff to look at.
And I just set up a nice bookshelf. It's just shitty particle board,
but it was forty bucks and it can hold you know, one hundred
and twenty books that I can now take out of storage, you know,
books like The Cactus Family, that Totara book on Potocarpus Totara from New Zealand,
et cetera. So anyway, speaking of New Zealand, my friend,
the friend of mine is coming to visit. She's she's one of the best
botanical artists I know, she's from there. So she's gonna hopefully I can
get her to draw some fucking South Texas stuff, South Texas stuff, paint
some South Texas stuff for me. So she's passing through the States, so
we're gonna fucking hang out a couple of days and then yeah, I don't
know. I'm stoked though, because news. Yeah, it's gotta be so
weird to grow up on a fucking island, like a entire country that's an
island, you know, I don't know. I mean Australia is different because
if there's so much land mass there, but New Zealand is so it's so
skinny tiny. It's also being ripped apart tectonically, Is it being ripped apart?
Yeah? You got two what kind of it's just you know, you
got two subduction zones going opposite ways in the north and South Island anyway.
So the Goliad Formation named after the beautiful city of Goliad, Texas, which
I've never been to. There's actually some interesting history there, you know,
during a I think it was like eighteen thirties, eighteen forties, you know,
to Spanish in the fucking Yankees there were killing each other. I don't
know what the fuck was going on, and who cares. That's not my
time frame. More interested in shit that happened four million years earlier. Goliad
Formation is composed of all those cobbles that was again these rounded cobbles, pebbles
from the size you know of little baseballs golf balls, to the size of
large bowlders, Beautifully round that beautifully polished in some cases. I just put
the video out today and all different sorting sizes. But obviously they spent a
lot of time being rounded in a river, tumbled in a river, and
also have been transported hundreds of miles from the parent material to mountain ranges that
they originated from, whether it was in West Texas, in northern Mexico,
or about forty different places throughout some of these rocks. I mean, I
was finding fucking that West Texas limestone, you know that really like rough sandpaper
like limestone, the darker gray limestone, the kind of limestone you get in
the Mojave Desert. And in West Texas, I was finding beautiful yellow cobbles
of chirt, the most gorgeous yellow cobbles of hirt probably you know, precipitated
and avoid in some limestone in West Texas and you know, millions of years
ago and then weathered out millions of years later as that limestone eroded and then
carried down. I'm just so fucking into the limestone here, man, it
is nuts. It is so cool. West Texas. You get that that
Cretaceous limestone, that that early Cretaceous limestone, which if you don't know when
the Cretaceous was, you should just get get there. They got these Like
there's an app called smart Geology. There's probably a number of geologic timescale apps.
Just fucking download one and become familiar with some of those time periods and
key events, right like you know, evolution of flowering plants, the KT
extinction, when the dinosaurs got knocked out, you know, uh, some
of those chronological landmarks, because every different time period is marked by an extinction
of some kind. Whether it's a large one or in many cases just rather
small ones. But I think extinctions are what punctuate the intervals between you know,
say the fucking Ologacine, Miocene, EO Seen whatever, which are all
tertiary, Oligasine e is Seen, Miocene, all age of mammals, all
post KT extinction, you know. So that West Texas limestone is very very
old, not not that old, but it's Cretaceous. It was the dinosaurs
were still around, whereas most of the formations in South Texas like Goliad,
Ctahula formation, et cetera, are tertiary, which I don't think they're using
the word tertiary anymore. What is it? I fucking forget, God damn
it, you know I should obviously I'm not up to date on my on
my jam right here, right, yes, we'll go. But that's why
we can look up. Oh yes, Cenozoic, it's called the cenozo We
don't use they don't use the word tertiary anymore. Mesozoic was Triassic, Jurassic,
and Cretaceous. That was the age of the dinosaurs, and then you
get the K T extinction. Then you get the Cenozoic, which is uh,
you know Paleocene, ecene ologacne Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and then
Halocene. Then of course now Anthropiscene, which is some people are still debating.
Some people don't think the humans can have enough effect. Then Earth's climate,
atmosphere, et cetera. Fucking but anyway, most of the most of
these South Texas formations are pretty young. Kata Hula formation is really interesting because
that is what lies beneath the Goliad formation. But you have an unconformity,
and an unconformity is basically just a break in time. It's a break in
the time that should be there, you know, moving from bottom to the
top of a stratigraphic formation, you know which should be contiguous layers, at
least sedimentary Well, I guess everything sedimentary rocks, you know where you have
the oldest and the bottom and the newest on top. But say you miss
twenty million years, which is what happened between kata Hula formation and the Goliad
formation. Kata Hula formation ends at like twenty seven million years in this region,
and you've got a twenty two million year gap, and then the kata
Hula or the Goliad formation excuse me, picks up at five million years and
that's where all the gravels are. And so the Catahoula formation is interesting because
there's that one spot in Star eastern Star County on Highway eighty three between Star
County and Hidalgo County, right by a fucking dollar General, which is not
a good landmark to use because it seems like there's a fucking dollar General every
quarter mile in this goddamn area, which is depressing but also a testament to
poverty and and also cheap Chinese goods in the ease with which they can be
you know, moved in a shipping container overseas, and uh, that spot,
it's like there's a it's near La Puerda Wildlife Fish and Wildlife Tract,
which is like, God, I would love to just go by there and
see a car in the parking lot, because I never do, Like,
there's never anyone. It's one of the few places of public land here in
South Texas where can go see some cool plants and walk around. There's a
lot of buffalo grass incursion, but it's still a great fucking spot to go.
There's more gregy I there, there's you might be able to find a
pencil cac this. There's a ton of cool shit there, but there's never
anyone in the fucking parking lot enjoying it. It's fucking nuts, Like the
complete opposite of you know, when I was living in a Bay Area in
California, you almost like the last couple of years I lived there, when
you had you know, this big tech, you know, invasion. You
go to a parking lot at a fucking hiking spot and you couldn't find a
spot the fucking park. You know, there were so many fucking people,
which was both good but also a bummer. I would just love to see
someone appreciating shit down here. It's so maddening that they don't. But you
know, people really like going shopping instead. So anyway you go through,
when you go through this road cut, if you pass a Dollar General and
you pass you pass a lot worth a fish and wildlife tract and all those
breta uh lomas, those littlenoles lomas just the Spanish word for nol and Barretta
is a Helietta. It's the genus Helietta, and the citrus family were tasty,
It smells fucking awesome. They're these cool little conical trees that occur throughout
the region. But as you go through that road cut, you can see
the where the Goliad formation up above the younger Goliad formation and all those gravels
that have been cemented together with caliche, which kaliche is just like a naturally
occurring calcium carbonate cement, mostly calcium carbonate. And then you've got the Catahoula
formation beneath it, which is this kind of pinkish white layer of volcanic ash,
of powdery ash. You don't want to be doing lines of that stuff.
I grabbed the bucket of at once to try and make a nice soil
mix, and it was pointless because it was such a weird powder. It
just behaved so weird and impractical in the pot. But but uh, you
know, it's still it's great to be able to see. I mean,
because it's tough. It's volcanic ash tofacious sediments. And you can see the
same thing in some places in West Texas and throughout the Mojave Desert, and
so it's just another kind of rock type when you when you see it once,
you know it forever. You know that exposure, all right, it's
a very fine particular and if you look at some of these tough deposits,
these deposits of volcanic ash, with like a hand lens, which is with
a jeweler's loop, like you should all be carrying with you anyway, you
know, even if you're just you know, eating edibles and looking at the
fucking drywall with it whoatally, you know, if you look at it with
a hand lens, you can see it just looks like little pummics grains,
like tiny little pummics grains in there. I don't carry a HandLens with me
anymore. I don't know why. I think it came out of my pocket
once and I just realized I wasn't using it that much, and I just,
you know, I should get I should get back on that train.
But anyway, so uh but yeah, you could. You could definitely see.
The hand lens helps to tell whether you're looking at, you know,
tofacious sediments of volcanic ash, or if you're looking at something like caliche.
So uh, anyway, but it's a cool, it's a cool fucking exposure
to see that. I think it was. That was doctor Wan Gonzalez at
UTRGV over there in Edinburgh, Texas that discovered that that on conformity and actually
dated it radiometrically dated that that volcanic ash and saw that twenty two million years
was missing, probably scoured out by the river that later brought that laser later
deposited all those sediments. So I would have loved to see what that river
looked like. That always drives me not thinking about this shit is like when
you hold the fucking perfectly rounded, beautifully polished cobble of like some red extrusive
igneous rock that doesn't occur anywhere near where you found it, because I know
the geology here, there's no there's no extrusive igneous rocks anywhere within one hundred
miles of me. Well maybe in Mexico and northern Mexico there might be.
But either way, when you hold this, you're like, where the fuck
did this come from? Like? How old? When was this? When
was this broken out of the mountain range? Weathered out of the mountain range
that it occurred in the deposit of lava Extrusivignia's rock that that this occurred in,
and then what was it like how long did it take to get transported
here? And more importantly, like, what did that river look like?
Like? That must have been a huge fucking river man, that's nuts.
Was it an ancestral Rio Grandees? That? Even did the Rio grand still
follow roughly the same course from the higher elevations of central New Mexico to the
Gulf Coast? Was that? Like? What? And then you know I
always go down a fucking wormhol right, like what animals were here? What
mammals were living here at this time? Like, and it's you know,
it's just it's so fucking nuts to think about. And then you think about
how small your own fucking lifespan is. You know, you're eighty years at
best, and people like fucking Trump will probably live to be one hundred and
forty because he's such a prick. But the pricks always live lived the longest.
But uh, you know, you really come to appreciate you zoom out,
you get that big picture of that perspective, you know. And when
I first learned about the geologic time scale, I couldn't believe. I was
almost infuriated that I I was only learning about it then, that I didn't
I wasn't taught this shit in first grade. It's so fucking nuts. Man,
it's it really is the origin story. It's the origin story of how
everything that surrounds you came into being, you know, and then of course
everything's tied into everything else you learn about geology. It might seem pointless.
I was listening to some fucking video today about New Zealand geology. Uh and
the guy that was talking about it, who's a good geologist, but he
was talking about how you know, He's like, Oh, I want to
know this because I wanted to go, you know, do some mineral exploration.
I was like, mineral exploration, that's fucking boring, Like for what
you want to go collect fucking minerals to sell on liners like to each their
own. I'm more interested in knowing about this stuff because I think it's just
fascinating and it eventually, you know, it ties into my perspective that you
know, is touches on other fields of science that overall just broaden my perspective
on the world that I live in. It's the same thing with like the
herbalism thing, you know, like people like Monotropa uniflora, the ghost plant,
people like, oh, it's can mega takesure out of it? That
supposedly if you put in your ass or fucking you know, swallow or do
rails of I don't know. Uh, it's got some not psychoactive effect.
I don't know what the fuck the hoople is about. Monotropa uniflora, the
ghost plant that that micoheterotrophe with the incredibly tiny seeds, which I think I
mentioned in a podcast a few months back because I collected some seeds of it
when I was in d C in the DC area. But you know,
it's a it's a fascinating fucking plant. These are these are plants that the
whole clade, because this is in the blueberry family, and it's in its
own subfamily, monotropoiti. The whole clade except for like two or three genera
steal all there. It's not even stealing it as the right word to use,
because it does really seem to be to the detriment of the fungus.
But they they quote parasitize micorrhizal fungus fungus that's symbiotic with the surrounding trees in
the forest like the oaks, et cetera. Or if you're in Mexico where
the species also occurs, the higher elevation pines and furs, which are also
ectomycorrhizyl plants, and uh, you know, like that that's the more like,
how did that occur? Like it it was obviously relationship that thirty forty
fifty million years ago was symbiotic. It was beneficial, It was mutually beneficial.
It was probably we assume a typical micorrhizal symbiosis because remember, like ninety
percent of plants are micorhizol with either am fungi our buscular microhizl fungi which don't
really produce fruiting bodies, or ectomycorrhizal fungi like the chantrelles and the the tricholomas
and the fucking you know, aminitas et cetera. You got all the fucking
what is it that glomeral mice seats too, which is a whole other,
weird, little known, huge clade of fungi that are massively ecologically important and
which don't really produce fruiting bodies at all as far as I know. But
that's what's fascinating to me about a plant like that. It's not like,
oh, because it can maybe get you make you feel funny, which I
don't even think it can I think monotropal uniflora is actually you know, potentially
toxic. It produces grayanotoxin G gray an old paston. But I just get
so bored, man, I just without being a dick, I guess you
know. I mean, I've been ranking about this for years. You know,
the herbalism or the psychoactive drug bros. You know, the fact peyotes
psychoactive is the least interesting thing about it. To me. It's cool Ethobotanically,
it's massively important. But put the ecology and how it ties into the
ecosystem and all the other the fact that can form this massive underground to this
story or roots or stem and uh lack spines and how did it evolve mescaline
and all? What are the other fifty two alkaloids inside? Uh? The
you know every cell of the plant? Uh? Is it does it self
pollinate? Is it as an obligate outcrosser? How come different populations are supposedly
have different pollination schemes. They can self pollinate or they their obligate outcrossers or
whatever? You know that that's the really interesting shit to me. It's the
fact that it might make you feel weird or you can make a potion out
of it. But again, whatever's it, whatever's your your gateway drug into
this, into this stuff, into broadening your perspective on the world and learning
some fucking science you know that gets you out of the the increasingly miserable and
dystopic and increasingly perpetually online shit culture that we move into. Where's it gonna
go? But anyway, yeah, so the uh, yeah, I don't
know, it's that fucking video. Is that? The geology it's such a
weird thing too, that like the I studied minerals, really a collect minerals,
what about just like, what about just studying fucking plate tectonics and geology
and how the continents move and biogeography and how it affects climate and how all
these things tie into each other, and how the uplift of the Himalayas might
have been tied into a global cooling event because all that uh, all that
silica being exposed to the atmosphere was suddenly reacting with mildly acidic rain water,
with the carbon dioxide of midlely acidic rainwater and then uh dissolving it into the
oceans, at which point it would later be sequestered what about shit like that,
Like you said that kind that's kind of fucking fascinating, you know,
as opposed to, uh, collecting shiny rocks. And I'm not against collecting
shiny rocks. But somebody got upset with me for I don't know if upsets
the right word. Maybe she was. I don't know. I just I
didn't respond, but she was, she said, don't collect rocks. It's
like, really, I think rocks are one thing everybody should be collecting.
There's plenty to go around, and they're not alive. I mean, I
guess some native cultures believe they're alive. They can have a spirit to them.
You could go that route. You know, people have believed sillier shit,
you know, like all three of the major world religions. But you
know, anyway, all right, we'll moving on. So the golie Ad
formation, all these cool gravels, the caliche that cements them together and road
cuts all that stuff. So download that fucking download like a geologic timeline scale.
Would you do it for me? Just learn the geologic timeline. Okay,
it's not that I'm not asking that much. Learn a couple of points
age of the Earth, evolution of eukaryotic life, Cambrian explosion, evolution of
land plants, uh Permian extinction, extinction of the dinosaurs, and then where
we are at today. You know, do it for me, all right,
it's not that much to ask. You go learn, go pay attention
to something, Get offline, or at least get off social media. But
anyway, that's that's This spot that I went to, where that the goliad
formation was in full flex, was so fucking cool. It was pretty rich
floristically two summit Zelia alagosperma, which is in a rock netal family Lois Sacey,
you know, with those scabbard leaves that feel like sandpaper. And that
was pretty fucking wild because it was growing out of, like directly out of
cracks, and these these rock walls and these rock walls of the the the
uh lomas. I think, you know, I think these areas have been
quarried for a while because they use all the pebbles for uh, you know,
road construction, or at least they used to, even though it's kind
of a shitty way to make a road. Some of those uh some of
those gravels, depending on size. There was pencil cactus, a kind of
serious passagai out there, they call it pencil cac. This is because it's
thin. But but that thing always amazes me because I'll see one and then
I don't realize that there's like I'll see one stem and then I won't realize
that there's like ten other stems. And this is a quote unquote old growth
plant. You know, the other stems are just just inconspicuous amongst the fucking
grass and the twigs of whatever shrubs it's growing in, et cetera. It's
always so fucking cool to see. And then of course if you go there
in March when they're flowering and it's lit up with these big, pink,
conspicuous blooms, you'll see plants that you didn't even know were there, even
though you've been going to that same area for, you know, four years.
So I also saw Uploka torri i. Uploka is a genus in the
borige family baragein aca kind of like a more quite a few species in Texas.
I don't think there's that many. In the first time I ever saw
Uploca was in New Mexico. I don't think you get that many in California,
or there's probably a couple, but it's more species rich in the central
West. And then there was a federal anti Cephalitica of course, which again
doesn't cure syphilis, but you know, it does have a fucking cool cone
structure. You know, a relative of wool WITCHI technically a gymno sperm Nama
hisspata was everywhere. Those little pink flowers on the ground, you know,
a little pink and conspicuous flowers on a plant that is, you know,
in some cases only two inches wide, three inches wide. That was everywhere
with thimaphulapentecheta was going off. That's a cool fucking blue feathery. Leave the
member of the marigold tribe of Asterace with conspicuous yellow, little yellow daisy flowers.
Turner, the fusa aka Damiana is everywhere, which is supposed to be
making nice tea, nice herbal tea, and nice remedy. That Oh yeah,
I forgot that. I mention that you ploka torri i. That was
a new That was the first observation for Hidalgo County, Texas. I think
it's it's not very common down here, and I had never seen it before
in this region. Looks like it's probably got moth pollinated flowers. They're small,
it'd be a small moth. But you know, all the stamens and
shit are included in that. You know, you can't even see them.
They're inside that little funnel shaped flower. There's a bunch of horse crippler cacti,
and then the most dominant plant at least on top of these little these
lomas of these goliad gravels, was Kellyandra Conferda. You know, so p
family Forbasi, which it's got petals and sepals, but it only it looks
like it's only got one series in its perianth. It's perianth, you know,
perianth of course being you know, consisting of petals and sepals. A
unisseria perianth only has one series. It's only got, you know, in
most cases sepals or petals, Like a lot of members of nic Tangenec have
a uniseriate perianth composed mostly of sepals. I think it's I think all the
flowers in a nick tagian Ac, the bogan Via family, the Mirabolous family
are just sepals. I don't think there's any petals. How do they determine
that. I guess they look at the origin of the tissue and whether it's
I don't know, you know, which fucking round of bracs, petals or
sepals that they can consider it when it's a Unis syria. But but anyway,
I thought this Callyandra, you know, a little fairy duster. It's
got it's got white white stamens, a bunch of white stamens dumping out of
this tiny little flower. But you've got those pinnate leaves and this beautiful divaricate
branching pattern like zig zag white branching, no spines. It's a spineless desert
pea. But I saw, you know, there's and there's no showy petals.
It just looks like all those stamens. The quote duster is just that
amalgamation of fucking stamens, uh, you know, tipped with those yellow anthers.
And there's a style in there somewhere as well that receives the pollen.
And uh, you know, I was looking at these fucking flowers and I'm
like, are they petals or sepals? It seems like there's one I should
have carried a handle. It's only seems like there's one round of the perianth,
and I looked closer and I could see that it was its pedals,
and there were tiny and indiscriminate sepals at the base of it. But either
way, this thing is, you know, I'm sure there's nectar inside that
little cup, that flower cup, and so whatever pollinates that, I wonder
if it's a moth actually, because something the nectar's got to be at the
base of that, and something's got to get up in it. I don't
think a bee, and those those stamens are kind of long. I don't
know if a bee going for nectar would even necessarily stand a chance of brushing
up against those stamens. I don't know. But this is the kind of
shit I think about. I love to think about, like how these things
evolved, what selected for them, what pollinators selected for them. The things
that are better at attracting a certain kind of pollinator are the things that are
going to get get a chance to reproduce and put seed out, et cetera.
And the things that can't attract pollinators that well, or the things that
are eventually going to go extinct because they can't reproduce as well. So that's
pollinators selection, but being a white flower with relatively long statements, and I
wonder if that's a moth god moth or a lepid dopter and or something.
Maybe it's to be I don't know, there weren't many pollinators out God,
I'd love to do pollination studies and all this shit, and there's so little
there's so little information on so many of these plants, you know, just
because of the region that they grow in. There's not a lot of people
doing botany down here, which again is why I want to get this fucking
Thorn Scrub Sanctuary up and running and hopefully just have it be a spot where
people can come stay and study. It'll be a little research station. You
know. It's just a pipe dream right now, but hopefully it'll happen.
That said, if you want to donate to us Thorn Scrub Sanctuary on Venmo
or on cash app and the zell Is Thorn Scrub Sanctuary at gmail dot com.
And you can also just write me me and Javier at Thorn Scrubs Sanctuary
at gmail, or you can just write me a crampage. Anyway, I'm
gotta wrap this up, man, You know what I've been watching is that
I signed up for a Patreon for that Channel five News for Andrew Callighan Callahan
howeing a fucking brown Sad And there's some really good shit in there. It's
really good, just the going in. I think the border stuff is really
interesting. I'm not so much into the like, you know, it's funny
like I started off doing doing uh, you know, kind of like just
interviewing shitheads at no offense to the shitheads of course, you know, at
the like Daytona Beach style fucking you know, just kind of like filming the
social decay in modern America, well just the idiocracy more so. But now
it's he's like branched off into really good fucking journalism, really in depth,
like just you know, and some of the voiceover narration he does is really
on point too. It's good stuff. It's like it's what vice used to
be, you know, I kind of I don't know, man, it's
it's dark shit, but someone's got to be documenting and it's really good.
And it's of course shiit that mainstream news outlets will never do, like they're
never gonna go in there and just do actual investigative, good unpolished fucking journalism.
You know, you're gonna get some guy in a suit who's got like
a fucking botox treatment, you know, the week before, narrating to you
with all the perfect lighting and oh god. Whereas like they're just going to
the border wall and some of the and just talking to migrants and then also
talking and talking to like some of the fucking the cops they see, and
also kind of like, you know, I think they I wonder if they're
gonna interview the cart I think they did interview some of the cartels, because
that's where most of the money to be made is now, is in trafficking
people. All the drugs just come legally through the ports. Trafficking people's the
big money. But then they're you know, he's got interviews with like West
African uh, guys that came here, and it's so it's so wild man,
And then it was but it was funny too, because I think I
mentioned this already. He's talking about he's like, because he did, he
did a bunch of shit filming that this, you know, the social decay
of American cities, you know, whether it's Philly or whether it's San Francisco.
Just the fucking the out of control uh property crime and out of control
fentanyl addiction and just fucking it's so rough too. Man, it's so gnarly.
I saw a lot of that shit before I left California, you know,
and I think it was all mainly spurred on by property values going up
so much and rents going up so much. And then it just mixed with
this with all the drug shit that was already out there, and there's so
much money to be made preying on people, getting people addicted to fentanyl,
meth whatever. It's just, man, it's created such a gnarly scene.
I mean, human shit, needles everywhere people, I mean, just massive
tent cities. It's so fucking dark. But but anyway he's talking about that,
he's like, well, you know, seeing what shit the cities have
turned to, like how dark America has gotten, especially with like any lack
of affordable healthcare and a widening gap between rich and poor, like it makes
me wonder why so many people still want to come here and what they must
be leaving in the places that they're from, you know, and do they
just not know I mean, you know Woodson's store for him. God,
it's so crazy. I just didn't think America. I mean, I knew
America would be I knew the future wasn't going to be bright, but I
didn't know it was going to be like this. Like and you could switch.
You could change so much if you actually got any kind of leader who
was willing to stand up the fucking corporations and companies and the rich and put
in a fucking affordable just an affordable healthcare system, like fucking fuck education.
That's it. I realized that's too much, you know, that's being too
hopeful, all right, But even just like getting a decent, sustainable healthcare
system and getting rid of these fucking dirtbag middlemen, you know, just having
a functioning healthcare system to ease the despair would be amazing. And then of
course education will be nice. But of course, you know, we've got
to make sure those corporations, the CEOs of those corporations still have their gold
plated toilet seats, so we can't spend too much money on social services or
on bettering society and making people less dumb. Plus, you know, you
need stupid people for the economy we have, you do you need people who
are just gonna you know, be purchasing shit, just responding to those dopamine
responses in the brain, shopping for therapy, you know, staying addicted to
all the sugary food and all the other shit, living the lifestyle that's completely
dependent on the car. You get people too smart, they'll realize how bad
they're getting fucked and what a bum deal they're getting. You know, that
their entire landscape's been dedicated to automobiles and retail, and that you know,
investors have driven up the cost of housing, and that they're never gonna have
a chance to own their own fucking home or have any sense of stability or
security. Am I making America sound sound nice right now? From the corporate
overlords? God, it's time to get the fuck out of here at some
point, you know, I don't know just where would you go? There's
other places You're fucking Europe, South America, somewhere something, you know,
But it's obviously the system is very obviously fucking rigged uh here, and it's
it's not gonna change. You get people, especially when people when the when
the overlords get that fucking income stream, what's gonna They're they're not going to
give it up for anything. You know, it's just like the healthcare system.
You're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna tell all these health insurance CEOs
that basically own government, I mean, six hundred fucking lobbyists that they flood
government. Well, that's another thing that should be illegal is you shouldn't be
allowed to fucking purchase, uh purchase policy Like, oh, fucking lobbyists should
be banned. There should you shouldn't be able to companies, shouldn't be able
to purchase, you know, policy changes in government or politicians. If the
government or politicians need to know something about a certain subject, they need to
have, you know, some sort of impartial fucking investigators that can go or
in researchers that can go fill them in on this show, I don't know.
Maybe they should already exist. I highly fucking doubt it, though I
don't know anything about this. I'm speaking out of my fucking element here,
but god damn it, it's just it seems so fucked there and the rich
overlords are never going to give it up. They're never gonna give it.
You're never gonna have free health care, you're never gonna have affordable education.
It's all fucked So start looking for brighter shores overseas my friends somewhere I don't
know. I was getting these fucking video is recommended to me on social media
at some point of these people talking about how they left the United States and
how happy they were in places like France or wherever the fuck. You know,
just what a better quality of life they was walkable, they weren't paying
up the ass for housing, they had affordable health care. Just you know,
I don't know, man best country in the world. All right,
Anyway, I guess we'll end it there. That's all I got for you
today. Have a good rest of your day, evening morning, whenever,
go fuck yourself by. And uh, if you want to donate to Thorn
Scrubs Sanctuary or learn more about it, Uh, there's actually a draft action
plan up on the crime Pace website. Should just be a little page you
can click on in the main menu right there. And uh, I'm currently
again, I'm currently in the press of writing two books. I'm out of
my fucking mind and busy as shit, and I can't focus on a goddamn
thing. Uh. It's very hard. So so I'm all over the place.
But uh, I'll be in san Diego. Uh Februard Is it February
seventeenth or eighteenth? And then I'll be giving a talk here at the Native
Plant Project in West Licoa, Texas. When is that I'm the twenty first
or twenty second or twenty I think it's the twenty third. It's next Tuesday,
and uh yeah, I don't know. Thanks for the support, thanks
for listening. Really, go fuck yourself by