Brazil Atlantic Forest & Cerrado Vegetation Rants

Good afternoon, and welcome to another episode of Crime Pays. But Biden,
he doesn't podcasts. I'm coming to you from the what is it Mata Atlantica?
How do you say that? The Atlantic Forests of Brazil. Okay,
just just north of Real Dejian, everybody about three hours in here, a
little town called Nova Free Burgo. My Portuguese is fucking terrible. I've been
able to use a Google translator app. We had a friend who spoke Portuguese,
but he just dipped out Fabiano and uh. He's one of the few
people in this country that's not a student that seems to have a passion for
plant diversity, especially bromeliad. So we're in a pretty wet forest right now,
as you can tell since I'm kind of winded. I'm on a hike,
but um going to this rocky escarpment at the top of this granitic knob.
The landscape here looks otherworldly, but I'm going to the top of nice
hollipoor, going to the top of this granitic knob to check out the flora
that's growing there, which is gonna be The play community up there is gonna
be much different from this rather music forest which is covered in tree ferns and
lots of native bamboos, which I didn't expect. And so we'll get some
more diversity up in the rocky areas. But I was not prepared for the
Asterac University here. I mean, I knew it was nuts. I've read
some of Vicky Funk's work rip on a diversity here, but fuck man,
it's just it's overwhelming, and it's so understudied, and there's not much of
anything on a naturalist and there's not Oh fuck me, what is this?
That's incredible? God damn it is that a salvia? Hold on, I
gotta, I gotta photograph this thing. Yeah, to salvia. God damn
it. It's got a pink hood, you know, because Salvey's got that
bilateral symmetry, two little yellow anthers poking out. He got a style up
top behind it, a white bottom lip to the flower salviaceous kalises, you
know, the typical calyx form that salvia flowers have opposite leaves, and it's
got those lever mechanisms inside the flowers. But they're small enough they don't look
like they are potted by hummingbirds. Leaves don't really have a sent to them.
Anyway, man, I'm taking botanists past to a whole new level.
Anyway. I'm here with this kid, Dylan Zolar. He's fucking twenty and
he's like obsessed with Bromeliads, knows his shit really well, with Bromeliad's works
at a botanic garden. He's got, Oh, here's that weird fucking eupatoria.
I'm sorry, I hope you can stand my disjointed self conversation. But
this thing, there's another plan here, looks like a chromolina. It's astrac
sunflower family Stevia tribe upatore, and it's got these long ass styles. The
white flowers to smell like like feet like kind of like a sugary and like
a molasses across between molasses but kind of stinking that pleasant disc floor. It's,
of course, so no linguals, no rays, and these long ass
little antennas. Pokeno got opposite leaves. I mean, the leaves look like
chromoline. I can smell it from three feet away, and you know,
one one plant will have five thousand, may maybe two thousand flowers on it,
and it's just it's a really common component of the forest here. Walking
up this trail. It's been hacked because it's very dense forest. But it's
cool. It was got down to like thirty eighth degrease fahrenheit last night,
like three three degrees celsius maybe, so it's kind of like a cloud forest.
Anyway, This kid, Dylan, who I have known for a while,
over to interweb and uh just met super nice kid. Man. I'm
so jealous that he's fucking young kids that are getting into botany now, you
know, and get your whole life to a explore and nerd out on a
ship. And as long as you don't go to college. Just kidding.
College college is really for some people, you know. I think you should
go to college later on in life, like when you're thirty, now,
when you're fucking twenty, you know, go to a community college, take
a couple of classes and plant id Fuck me, are you kidding? Here
is a fourteenth foot tall littlebelia. There's three lobelia species here that look a
very similar Braziliencis, fish jealosa, and faft sorties. I can't even reach
the fucking flowers out of this thing. Man. The leaves stink, of
course, because they got they got toxins in them. But the flowers are
just epic. Man. It looks like an echium almost, which is a
non native plant at least in the US. But if you live in California
probably know what it is because it's invasive. Fucking that's insane. Man,
Black vultures with white strips on their wings flying above. I'm gonna be all
over the place. Hope you hope you can stay with me. If not,
you want to skip this episode. I'm not going to be a fended.
I don't give a shit. I'm just putting this information out there because
I want more people to know that these places exist. And it's sad because
shit is getting cleared. I mean, you look in a satellite map of
real estate and everything has gone except for a strip of very high elevation mountains.
So I gotta I gotta get this fucking little bilia horn. You know,
is it possible for something to rule too hard? I wonder. I
mean, I just it's like a fifteen foot tall, no exaggeration, little
bilia And there's liking on everything. How many species are liking It's just intoxicating.
Man, It's nuts. There is so much diversity. There's a fusha
I think it's fusha reggia. I mean, here's a sad bunch of sedges.
Here's a fucking leggium, no idea. Oh there's fruits. I don't
have to get photos on that. Mimosoi leggium almost looks like a lucana but
probably not got russ the orange hairs on it. And then there's tons of
coyote bush here too. There's tons of backerus diversity backers. Dracunculifolia is here
to a real cool coyote bush. There's a nice fushil with those bright red
flowers. Yeah, man, I can't. I just it's haven't been the
silverwhelmed in South Africa. Here's a leather fern that almost looks like a cycad.
It's got spoa fills, almost looks like it might be a black numb
spora fills with revolute margins. The spora fills on these ferns aren't photosynthetic.
They're not they're just you know, they're not vegetative, they're just you know,
for reproductive purposes. This thing has a fucking stem, though it's not
that really looks like a pycad. Looks like what they call the cinnamon fern
or the leather fern in South Florida. I don't know why I decided to
do a fucking podcast. There's a nice pseudo and a filium it's about four
feet though, and a hike. There's no way. I just there's too
much shit to see, and I'm already moving so slow, and the sun's
gonna set on me. It's like three or four pm. Four pm.
There's zychopeddelum. It's not too There's a fucking terrestrial orchid here that I believe
it's epidendroid. It's got an anther cap just knocked off. I was looking
at the Pollenia, big landing pad of a Labellum, incredible grass species here's
about six seven feet tall, and a crotularia, so you got a pee
yellow pa. It's a small tree right here, just the it's nuts.
I guess the story with this land is it's a it's a park now,
but it was in private hands and the guy, the private landowners trying to
get it back. He's pissed at the state. The state took it over,
made a park out of it, but there's no like, there's no
guide here. You'll go to some of some of these parks, like in
Mexico, you know you'll meet like a ranger or something. There's a giant
or rhingium that's four feet tall, same same genus as rattlesnake master, which
you get in the Midwest and the Southeast. But you know, you go
to some of these places in Mexico and that are kind of cut you out
of the way, but like you know, there'll be some ranger or some
dedicated individual. Fuck me, is that a what is this composite? I
gotta stop and get a photo of this now, God damn it. It's
mutissioid. It's got bi labby and floral florid corollas. You go to some
of these spots and there'll be a guy that you know, someone made themselves.
There's no one that's done that here. The guy that's actually in the
process of doing that, Rodrigo, who's kicking it with us right now.
I'm back at camp. I'm just up here by myself. He's trying to
put that together. But aside from that, there's nothing. There's just there's
no resources for anyone who wants to learn who's from the area. That was
nice. Just so another cyphocampellos, which is a lobeliad. It's like a
vining lobeliad, so it's got that. It's got a blue fused their column
just like you would see and aster ac lobelias our same order astrals, and
it's got that syphocampalus that I say that anyway, that's the genus. No
idea on species, but it's vining opposite leaves, you know, big fucking
red tube, big red hummingbird pinated TB trying to make itself conspicuous to those
adorable little bastards that are so diverse. And the neotropics, there's that Bacharus
again, this is Bacharus trimera, a leafless coyote bush that just has a
winged stems that a photosynthesizes with. But it's weird because it's so wet here.
It's that seems like there'd be more of a adaptation for dry exeric habitats.
Then I've just seen a fucking tree, night shaped tube that's probably a
celanium because it had poor cytal anthers, glabrous leaves probably eight feet tall,
smooth leaves, the no hairs, which is most of what I'm seeing here.
Because again it's pretty moist. But you get up into these more open
exposed there is near the rocky knobs that look just like yosemites half dome,
these granitic rocky knobs, and you get a different cast a species. What
the shit is this? Oh there's earth roxalm too, the coca genus.
Wonder if that's what this is. That looks like myrtasi. Actually, I'm
gonna have to get a photo of this guy. Oh Christ, it's getting
chili. I'm up on the granite domes right now, walking on pure granite
with the coating of various likings, tons of Viresia bromeliads that's the genus.
There's a dwarf bamboo up here that forms these thickets that gets like four or
five feet tall. And I'm looking at these granite half knobs that look they've
got a very yosemite ish feel. Here's an intherium growing exposed on this ship.
There's water here, sketchy and etherium. I think it's bolodia growing exposed
on these granite knobs. Just epic fucking diversity. Man, it is so
oh my god, what does that think? It looks amazing, but it's
not a sketchy ledge and I can't get too close. What a drag okay,
coming back down that incredibly steep and sketchy but beautiful. Oh there's an
elstromeria, not flower, I though, just didn't fruit coming down that knob
in a dark so I can't look at any plants, so there's nothing.
That's nothing to distract me. But uh yeah, man, it's weird.
You know, the society here, the larger society as I've seen in Mexico.
Mexico has actually got a lot more least university students studying botany and a
couple just randos who are doing it as their form of escapism, which is
uh, I guess I fall into that category. But there's not that many
people here, it seems, and that's what I've heard from a lot of
Brazilians I've encountered so far. So it's weird, man, All these fucking
all these societies that you know, descend from these colonial powers that settled the
quote unquote New World. The society is today. I mean, of course
it's a sweeping generalization, but there's a good amount of you know, derelict
values in them. You know, there's materialism and consumerism when you look at
these societies today. Meanwhile, the society's they they came from over in Europe
seem to have progressed a little bit. You know, it's not as knee
jerk reactionary as you get in places like Brazil in Mexico, and Mexico doesn't
have as much right populism is either the US or Brazil. But you know,
I don't know, I forgot to give a plug, speaking of which,
for the shittiest airline I've ever encountered, which is Lattim La time.
I had no idea how much it sucked. Flying always sucks, but Lattim
was cheap. But I guess they make up for it one hundred dollars baggage
fees and shitty, shitty, understaffed service. The employees that worked there are
probably getting paid fucking peanuts because the company certainly doesn't seem to care about employees
or customers, which is what I would expect from the majority of large corporations
today. But all that aside the first day, I mean, it's it's
such a great feeling to be in a new place and have no idea what
the fuck you're looking at, and you just got to photograph everything, and
it was just constant learning experience and just looking for those synapomorphees, those traits
that unite different clades of plants or whatever organism you're studying. Cano I'm back
under forest cover, but I feel safer here than I do in any city,
of course, because people are always gonna be do know, what's the
fun with you? So there are there were jaguars here, but I think
some trophy hunter shot the last one. Just fucking hey man. But yeah,
anyway, anyway, I'm seeing bats, bats dive by dive bombing through
this narrow canyon that the trail creates through uh, through the trees to sell
a moth to probably a lot of moth pollination in the forests. But there
was a tree guck Nadia, which I know that doesn't mean anything to you,
but guck Nadia was a genus it still is a genus of astor Ac,
one of the more basal sub families. So I remember it a sunflower
family. But it was a fucking tree and I only could tell what it
was because some bird had nipped off this uh sign or panicle rather of flowers
of flower heads, it was laying on the ground I had purple anther tubes.
We get Gagnadia hyper Luca now in Nahualia hyper Luca in South Texas,
which was named after the Nahua people, but probably mispronouncing that wrong after it
was named after an indigenous tribe from Central America, which is cool. But
the whole subfamily, you know, has a really distinct floor it shape.
So the individual flowers that I aggregated together in that flower head look really unique.
They got those recurved petals. But felt that you get any other members
of a subfamily anywhere else in the United States. There's a there's a species
down in Baja California, sir. And then you get it in South Texas,
in northern Mexico, and then you get couple. I remember seeing an
Anastrophia species. It's another genus net subfamily in the Caribbean and the Dominican Republic.
But uh, yeah, man, I don't know. I guess I
should have. Shouldn't be surprised at the society here, you know, having
so much inequity, you know, just a bunch of wealth, not a
bunch a very select few that are wealthy, but lots of that materialism and
then lots of poor too, that are just being ignored by those in power,
who could you know, put into affect policies that help them. But
I mean it's kind of almost I don't say beyond that point now, but
shit is just so fucked up here like it is in the United States,
so you know, who knows where these societies end up. I just it
just seems so wild to me that if you I just the tolerance for poverty,
you know, and by tolerance I mean not wanting to affect change.
There's that cognatia again, bright white underside of those leaves by Regis and all
these trees, massive hypathetic promeliads. I just can't imagine, you know,
even if you're just a selfish fuck and I said this in the podcast before
and you don't care about the poor, it's just it's not good for the
society you live in to have these huge throngs of poor people, you know,
with no access to education or healthcare, etc. I mean, it
leads to crime. You get obviously, criminals taken over various poor neighborhoods,
and you get I mean the fucking health issues, epidemics of disease because no
one get health healthcare. You know, malnutrition, that kind of ship.
Well, what is that? This beetle? I just uh, it's always
it's a it's I guess it's how I judge societies. But how many poor
there are, as you know, as well as how many rich is,
how much wealth there is among the top, it's always a drag. Fucking
humans, man, these monkey brains. You know you should. I want
to live in a society that provides for everybody. You know, it makes
for a much more safer and intellectual and educated and healthier society anyway. But
you didn't want to listen today these fucking rants, right, you want to
hear about the plants here? Oh god, so much shit that identified.
So we're in the music forest right now, very wet, and as we
head further inland towards Minas Gerace which I used to pronounce Minas Geraus, that's
the that's the Chicago Italian pronunciation, the landscape is gonna dry out, and
we're gonna see the composition of plant families change. Lots of velosias, which
is an order pandanales, the screw pine order, which again you're not gonna
know, you know, uh, unless you you know, spend, unless
they got one at a conservatory or something. In North America, Pandanales and
Pandanas is the family namesake of the order of Pantonales namesake family of the order,
but Velosias is super superdominant here, especially further inland. Barbacinia what are
some other species? There are some other genera. Barbarcnia is the only one
I've met so far. But you have a losy a c man incredible flowers
too, I mean, just monoconts with really beautiful and brightly colored flowers.
You also get aero call ac here too, which is a gramminoid. Another
monocon forms nice leaf rosets. Actinocephialus is one you'll see on like photos of
like Google photos and shit if you look up are on Google Maps. If
you look up some of these locations like the state parks and national parks and
shit like that. Actinocephalus. I think it's brong Nearady. I don't know,
but it's it's a fucking wild looking plant. I mean, it's just
you combine that with the geology here, these very old rocks, leached soils,
you know, almost pure white quartz sand in some places, and then
these like where I'm at now, which is just these granitic domes. These
half knobs look like Yosemite, the landscape of Yosemite Valley. You like that,
you want to spend your your afternoon looking at someone's ass. The answer
the person in front of you, is you hike up half doomed to take
selfies. God, I'm kind of fucked on food, man. I didn't
bring enough up here. We had to hike two miles up from the truck.
So it's not that bad. I can hike down finding more. But
I just brought some sardines, bread and cheese, just packed really light.
I was still carrying you got like fifty pounds of weight. Uh, gotta
learn the streamline a little bit. But anyway, I heard a somewhat the
pressing story today. There was a species of drosseruf carnivorous plant drosser Of magnifica,
that was discovered via Facebook by guy just posting photos in a Facebook group
about Brazilian plants, and uh, no one could identify this species that turned
out to be new. It was named drosser A magnifica, and it was
you know, it was a narrow endemic. It didn't occur over a large
area, only occupied a small believe the places it's only how they're cestrum break
they ate them so unasy a night shape family that's moth pollinated. Um,
it only occurred over a small area to begin with. And I guess he
was going to be made into into a park by the state and he's bolts
on aristas. This is all word of mouth. He's you know, right
wing populace. Didn't want that to happen, so they burned the intent.
They burned the entire landscape. And so now there's like twenty or thirty plants
maybe not even that many, uh left, and the whole landscape is fucked.
And you know, moves in after a big burn like that. I
don't believe that landscape is supposed to burn. So what moves in is all
the invasive grasses from nearby. But that's just that kind of reactionary shit,
you know, it's it's weird. It was one thing that was nice about
being in New Zealand is that country fucking loves its plants. They got they
got native plants on the currency there. I think native fungi too, So
I wish that kind of attitude was everywhere, but it's not. You know,
it's the majority of modern society. Depending on where you are, it
just doesn't give a fuck. So that's kind of a drag. But uh,
I believe that Drosser there was one or two clones and cultivation and from
tissue culture. So someone had the sense to preserve it, you know,
or conserve it rather to you know, extract a few individuals from habitat and
then conserve them and hopefully get him into cultivation, you know, which I've
got issues of course with a lot of collectors. I think it's fucking weird,
but I guess I'm you know, support people collecting you know, plants,
more soda, good into heroin or something. But it can it's a
blessing and a curse. I mean, collectors can conserve a lot of stuff.
They can also drive the market for a lot of poaching. And there's
a shift ton of poaching here in Brazil orchids to Lanzia's other bromeliads, cactie
especially, there's a shif ton of cacti and mina your ice and Bahia State.
God, I'd love to go to Bahia, but it's just that weird,
you know, wanting somebody should you put it in a pot. You
know, the goal should be preserving habitat, you know, or collecting things
for botanic gardens and arboreta. You know, it belongs to the museum,
right like that fucking Harrison's Ford character from those those Indiana movies and eighties and
what was it called Indiana Bones? What was his name? Indiana Bones?
Anyway? Yeah, so I don't know the collecting thing though, It's just,
you know, is it better to people collect plants than those weird plastic
fucking action figures. It's both kind of I mean, they're both kind of
a depressing mentality at least if you're not looking at the bigger picture of ecology
and evolution. You just want to own something and have it in a pot,
and then what happens to it when you die? I meanwhile, the
habitat gets fucked to a coma, the thing goes extinct in the wild,
you know. I don't know. That's why universities, for better or worse,
I need to get the funding to preserve these things, you know,
for better or worse. It would be much better, I think, especially
if education was made affordable, you know, and not the racket that it
is in the United States. I will say one thing though, which is
cool, is we met this dude named Georgie Is. He's an old man
and long beard. Uh, smokes a lot of weed. Very nice guy.
Doesn't speak a word of English. I don't speak a word of Portuguese.
And uh, but he's got this. He lives in Nova Free Burgo
and he's got this relatively small yard, you know, and it's in a
city. I mean it kind of reminds me of parts of San Francisco,
like you know, imagine the mission district and mean a mission district twenty years
ago, you know, before it got super filled with the horty torties.
But this small yard he's got is just filled with with you know, bromelia
and orchid diversity stuff he's got, you know, gotten from the surrounding area.
But you know, he focuses on preservation. He gets seeds, maids
the botanic gardens, takes photographs of these things. He's got a bunch of
stuff that is now extinct in habitat. He's got undescribed species. Um.
He's kind of working, you know as a kind of like doing what a
university should be doing at University Greenhouse, but just out of pure love for
these plants. And he's got a nice little light box set up in his
house to you know, photograph these things when they flower. Say, oh,
wait till they flower, and then get excellent photographs with the tripod and
you know, light the fuser inside this box and then you know he's now
got a photographic record of that species and flower. And thank god he's doing
it too, because the diversity here is insane. I mean, someone needs
to catalog it and document it, especially at the rate of extinction that people
are causing here. You know that the modern human society is causing here.
I'm sure it's the same in most places. Just you know, the tumor
just won't stop gabbling up land and what it preserves, our mere crumbs,
which is not enough for many of these lineages of organisms to not go extinct.
They need, you even plants, they need bigger gene pools, they
need larger populations, they need more land area. But you know, that's
that's the anthropocentric worldview. Everything was put here for us, you know,
whether your religion tells you that, or your culture or society whatever. So
anyway, this guy was fucking cool and uh, you know, with the
help of Fabiano, we translated, and you know, I knew a lot
of the genera and a few of the species. He had. The fucking
Bagonia's here in Saint two Bagonia Luxurians. There's another Bagonia that looks like a
gunnera just you know, leaves two feet across. Bagonia Luxurians can get upwards
of I think I saw one that was twelve feet tall yesterday. It's just
it's fucking maddening. Man. I've seen like four species of Begonia. So
you know, that dude. Seeing what that dude Georgie was doing in his
backyard was inspiring to me because it makes me realize anybody could do that,
you know, as long as your focus is on conservation and collecting data for
education as opposed to just electing plants to have them, which is kind of
a fucking weird monkey bring kind of habit if you ask me. Okay,
took a little break there, took I took about a five day break.
Pardon the reverb in the room too, because I'm I'm in his fucking hotel
room. It's like twenty bucks, twenty dollars hotel room down here in Nice
they got the breakfast, you know, with like six different kinds of bread
and some fruit really big on the bread. Here. I've just been constantly
having my bind blood. I've taken like fifty five hundred photos so far because
I gotta get decent money shots of all the plants I see, you know,
close ups, macro shots, habitat shots, all that ship, and
then put them up on I AT. So if you want to see the
plants I'm taking pictures of, just google Joey santaur iinat and you should see
a list of everything. I obscure every location because I don't want I don't
want any of the locations being known, and even locations of common plants can
be used to decipher the rare ones. And there's a lot of poaching and
other ship. But of course I give locations to researchers if they contact me.
On that note, I've I've had to contact a bunch of well maybe
like three or four different botanists in Brazil, especially the ones that study asterac
the aster Racy University here is fucking insane. They look nothing like our North
American species in the family. I saw one yesterday that looked somewhat like you
know, like an our base perennial coming back after a fire that I that
you could you know, you could envision seeing in North America. But aside
from that, they all have this kind of sclerophyll habit, you know,
this hard leaved, plastic, leaved, imbricate leaved habit that you see among
a lot of the plants here, which is which is nuts. We're in
Minas, your ass now, the state north of Rio State, Um got
fucking Rio, man, It's not a city, no offense to real you
know, I'll go hang out there for a day or two, but it
just seems like just just tons of materialism and fucking people can be assholes.
And that's of course what other sort a lot of Brazilians say about it.
It's just just a big city thing, you know, just disconnected from from
nature, from anything really important to just fucking weird, you know, postcolonial,
fucking whatever. Anyway. Um, but Minas Geraias is like this,
you know, mining and farming state. Now like mining's you know, they're
great. There's still a lot of habitat instruction here, but people are just
generally Friendlyer. I'm up blown away by how you know how chill it is.
Uh, And Mina's aside from not being able to speak any fucking Portuguese
and having to us a translator. And I have a reason to learn Portuguese,
very beautiful language too, you know, the the colonial culture. I
wish I could say the same for that, you know, the a lot
of hani shit. They finally outlawed slavery in eighteen eighty eight. Better late
than never, there's only twenty years past the US. Um. But uh,
the fucking language. It sounds almost like French, but not as I
don't like French, you know, but not as obnoxious as for that,
as pompous as French kind of rolls lots of Jeu and and ow and that
kind of stuff. You know. It's I have to say, it sounds
sounds prettier than Spanish, and you know I speak a decent a decent level
of Spanish, but the but still, um, but yeah, Menas's just
uh, it's so chill. You know. I'm used to traveling in Mexico,
especially like right over the border where I live in South Texas. It's
fucking hot. You could just feel a vibe of pension and sketchiness in a
lot of places, you know, especially in Tamolipas. Also in the label
I own an acquaintance of an acquaintance of an acquaintance was just murdered in Sonora.
Who the fuck knows why? He was studying cephalanthis you might have heard
about it, um cephilanthis which is in Ruby. As you know the quote
unquote button Willow and uh and he was found shot seven times? Who the
fuck would do that to? Like a harmless, very kind of botanist.
I don't know who knows what happened, who knows what went down? But
fucking a man. Another friend of a friend was just murdered and by actually
which I think I think she might have been murdered as a result of some
sort of human trafficking. I don't know. I man, it's all fucked
up. Mexico so fucked up, man, I've been. It's like one
of those things I've wanted to like, Hey, you guys fucked up too,
And it is. But Mexico's fucked up, Like the cops will just
fucking stort the shit out of you. Your cartel's run a lot of shit.
You have to be. You can be in one location where it's still
and like the next location over, it's just super fucking hot, and it's
just just just as sketchy. Man, it fucking sucks. It really sucks,
you know. And it's not even like just cartel shit, like there's
just there's like you just never know, you know. Um, I mean
yeah, Like I've got so many friends that live there that have experienced violence.
You know. Another friend has been shot just randomly, like as a
in crossfire. Very got a very nonchalant, positive attitude about it. He
was just in a bar where I guess there was a shootout. But um,
you know, and of course the US is a fucking dunk till.
I mean, it's you know, it's got a lot of fucking violence.
You get shot going to a fucking movie theater. You can get shot going
to school. We've got this this gun horny culture. But anyway, whatever,
we're not talking about that. But Brazil is super chill and uh and
well, it depends on where you are. For the Amazon can be a
little fucked up. There's a lot of illegal mining and logging, et cetera.
But um, and certainly the city's like any big city where there's a
lot where there's a lot of class inequity. But um, aside from that,
yeah, people have been extremely cool and kind and uh yeah so uh
and it's it's it's fucking like relatively clean till like you don't see like the
the can the litter confetti that you see in you know, some places in
Mexico or you know even I think there was some of that in Chila made
anyway, um but uh but anyway that aside the fucking plants, they have
been insane. I mean, we're in Minas Geraias, which is drier than
that Atlantic force. You've got this coastal strip of Atlanta, very wet Atlantic
forest that parallels the coast, and then you go in in a little bit
and you get this fucking savannah vegetation, which I'm just totally in love with
this like lower, you know, down low, it's it's seasonally dry subtropical
savannah. They call it Sahato. It looks like Serato, but the rs
are pronounced. You know, it's like sehato vegetation by Portuguese. That it's
a whole other. It's not like Spanish at all. People say it's like
Spanish. It's nothing like Spanish. There's a whole other level of pronunciation you
have to get through. There's a whole other, you know, classification of
pronunciation others fucking cooler is gonna go on now, which is gonna ruin my
gibe. You're gonna hear it in the bay. Be fine, you don't
care. You can hear me being all winded for the first thirty minutes while
I was on a hike, which was epic by the fucking way, hiking
up to this granite dome. God damn it, that was cool. All
kinds of Anithereums. You know what's been blowing my mind too, is the
fucking zero aeroid diversity here. Because I normally think of them, I don't
really think get aeroids. You know the plant daity covid craze where everyone was
trying to fill their house with aeroids, and you get all these like plant
influencer accounts that completely ignored evolution in ecology and just just focused on something being
attractive to put in your apartment, which I get, I got, I
get it. That's you know, some people did some really nice stuff with
their little living situations while you were stuck inside for two years. But um,
I don't really think at aeroids is being you know, humid and needing
these understores humid understories of jungles and tropical force. But here there's so many
that are just growing exposed, like the Ubomania pectiniferus spot, this really cool
cactus we went to the sadly like ninety eight percent of the populations gone due
to poaching. There was philodendrons and antheriums just growing exposed on these rocks.
You know, these these quartzitic sandstone rocks which would normally be white or gray,
but they were instead they were like a a black color due to the
crust of lichen that is somehow living on them and covering completely covering them.
So these these black rocks and there's just like philodendron and thium that I mean,
it's nuts. There's um that aeroid diversity is nuts yet. But anyway,
so you've got these sahato vegetation. Then you go higher up onto these
rocky outcroppings. You've got campus for pastres, which are are basically like rock
fields, you know, so um and a little bit a little bit cooler
because they tend to be a little bit higher. Sometimes they're not so high.
There's quarts. Everywhere there's quarts. I mean the I haven't been able
to look at the exact age of the rock, but you could tell it's
very old originally sedimentary rocks, sandstone, at least in this area where it's
not like the granite closer to the coast, those granite domes and the mouth
Atlantica, the Atlantic forest. And it was laid down probably a very long
time ago, like before life moved to land, or before you know,
plants of ald. Rather. I'm sure there was life on land, but
it was you know, very small chrobial mat forming. Land plants evolved four
hundred and thirty eight million years ago, roughly one billion years ago. I
think these are like one billion year old rocks. You know, you had
the Great Oxygenation event two billion years ago. You know, you got to
get your your you know, chronological landmarks on the geologic time scale. You
know, first the first evidence of life that we know three point eight billion
years ago. Great oxygenation meant two billion years ago, and all the cyanobacteria
you know, produce an oxygen, and the oceans and all that iron gets
when you get the band that iron formation start and form, then you get
eukaryotic life forming. Uh first yu karyatic life you know, roughly one billion
years ago, and then fucking Camerad explosion five hundred and forty million years ago
plant life form and forty minute, oh that kind of ship. So these
are very old rocks, like a billion years old, originally sedimentary, then
they were metamorphosed, they were later cooked. That's where you get the quart
site. So they were hardened and you get these just big chumps of quarts
everywhere, and I think that's where all the mining comes from. And of
course when this stuff weather, since it's relatively iron rich, everything else is
leached out of it. It becomes very nutrient poor, and you just get
these red, red soils, red dust coating everything. We have red dust
all over our cars. I probably got a shit tin in my lungs et
cetera. Fuck. I think Dylan got me sick. The kid, the
kid I'm traveling with fucking twenty men and he's at these twenties like a romeliad
expert. I'm so jealous. If only I had had gotten into botany at
age twenty instead of how was I like? I guess I was like twenty
six, you know, I found like my one or two like things.
I just obsessed about euconifers or fucking names and news or whatever, and then
kind of started getting into everything a much broader perspective and just getting into how
all the ship's related and then you know whatever. But yeah, god damn,
if only I could have found that hyper focus earlier on. I'm jealous.
But yeah, anyway, he got he got some sort of respiratory infection
and was coughing. He's been very considerable. He was wearing a mask when
we were in the car with the windows down and shit, which I don't
even ask him to do, we just offered. But I think nonetheless,
I'm still getting it, so hopefully I'll get over it in the next two
or three days. It doesn't knock me on my ass, my old ass.
But the sajado vegetation is so fucking cool, and I'm just surprised.
I can't believe I didn't know about it before. I mean, I've read
about this stuff where you read about like Brazilian subtropical savannahs, but I didn't
know. You know, the vegetative characteristics are so many of the plants,
the sclerophyll of vegetation glaucous, there's wax or hairs, either one of the
two. You gotta have wax or hairs. Like, there's no flimsy plants
here. There's everything's waxy, coreaceous, leathery, like a piece of card
stock, you know, like like greeting card material that kind of texts her
to the leaves. A lot of portfoliate leaves or auriculate leaves, you know,
no petiol just kind of almost imbricate on the stems. Sometimes everything taking
on the habit of some of those maritime chaparral manzanitas, those maritime chaparral acto
stapylos that you see in California and coastal California. I mean we saw members
of ruby as you know, four petaled purple violet or in some cases bright
blue flowers, but coming off of glaucous, imbricate leaved stems. Oh.
Monocallis the monocollist habit too. Instead of having a bush, you'll have one
three or four foot long, maybe it forks once or twice branch that just
emanates from a fucking rootstock Like it's it looks like that New Caledonian ship too.
You get the monocollus habit New Caledonia, which also has iron rich soil,
but it's ultramphic in that case toxic nutrient por sool. So I think
it's a combination of the dry season here, which is produced by the ITZC,
the ITCZ basically the tilt of the earth, you know, since the
winter is the dry season here and win at this latitude. Winter's the dry
season at this latitude in North America too, So it's winter here even though
it's summer in North America. And so the those those areas of low pressure
of rising air move north and then and when it's summer here they'll move south
again, and then you'll get the rainy season. As you get low pressure
rain remembered that you know it already, don't do high pressure. You get
dry. So you've got a dry season here, but it's it's the cooler
season, you know, and the warmer season is the wetter season, which
is the opposite of what the Mediterranean climate is in California. Right when you
get the or Chile or Australia, or the Mediterranean region or South Africa,
the five Mediterranean regional climate zones, you get wet winter's dry summers. These
seasonally dry subtropical forests. It's the complete opposite. You know, wet summer's
dry winters, but you still got that dry season. So that's where you
get cacti and fucking spiny plants and toxic secondary chemistry and hairs and waxy leaves,
you know, sclerophyll vegetation, et cetera, root tubers, you get
a storage root, sahato vegetation being savannah too. Is also there's fire here,
so there's fire adapted traits of a lot of these plants. We went
to a fire area yesterday, low burning fire stopped at a rock out cropping,
and of course up on the rock out cropping that we're fucking. This
was blowing my mind. Bogonias, a fucking bagonia that's adapted to seasonal dryness.
So like coreaceous leaves covered in hairs, nine feet tall, succulent stems.
It's nuts. I always think of Bagonias is very humid, completely intolerant
of drought. But here's one that's evolved to drought. It's up on the
rock. And then there were like three different species, five different species of
fucking bromeliads. Probably one that's undescribed because this is a very understudied area.
I mean, there's bondness studying this stuff. There's just not enough for them.
And the popular culture here doesn't value plants enough. It's certainly non native
plants, you know, plants that are just like you know, in a
lot of these like you know, these where mainstream society has derived from like
colonial European ship there's just plants are just like can you eat it? Is
it pretty? Or does it isn't medicinal? That's it. Nothing else.
No one gets fucked. They shouldn't say no one. There's of course always
you know, it's it's a very small minority, just like it is in
parts of the United States, you know, but of course that's United States
seems to have a much more faster or growing native plant enthusiast population. You
know, there's a lot of people starting to spread awareness now, which is
cool down here. There's just not that much interest comparatively and like a you
know, proportionally. But anyway, this shato vegetation is fucking incredible and I've
just seen I mean every plant I see, I don't know what it is.
I have to document it. I have to fucking get it, have
to get good shots because I don't know when I'll see it again. And
this is these the photos I take. I'll take fifteen photos of the same
species if I have to. You know, it's remarkable enough because I don't
know, yeah, I don't know why I'll see these again. I can't
collect enough for barium specimens, certainly if something's rare, I won't collect shit,
you know, just pressed plants. I've been reaching out to all these
you know, botanists universities who have been really cool and helpful ninety iraq roque
and probably fucking pronounced that wrong. Another gentleman named Marcello. Really fucking cool
guys, super helpful with the Asters University here because there's there's so little online.
I mean, it's really like you got to be going on Google scholar
and at least snowing the subfamily or the clade or something of where you are
of the plants you're interested in, you know, like vernoni oidi, the
ironweed subfamily Lichneforna, tribe Lichneforna, which is incredible, which is in it's
in the ironweed stubfamily of asked racy and then you type in you know like
minas Gerais or whatever state you're in and hopefully you get some hits. But
there's a lot of people studying asked to racy here, which is cool.
Compared to other plant families, velosiac is another family that's blowing my fucking mind,
just completely insane. I mean, these things can dry out. They're
a family of monocots. You got two genera and like two hundred and fifty
species in Brazil. Velosia and Barbacini are the main ones. They're a little
you know, rosette forming monocots. Some of them can be eight feet tall,
some of them can be prostrate. Some of them, I think a
lot of them are poikilo hydric poi kilo hydric, which is a mouthful,
but basically what that means their resurrection plants. They can completely dry out.
You know, you touch them and these things are crispy. They look dead,
but with water they can spring right back to life in a matter of
like thirty minutes. Which is you know, merial Thamnus, which is in
the Gunner alias the gunnera order. That plant is from the mibia. That's
a fucking incredible plant. I mean, you cut a sprig of meroal thamnus
off. It's the same same way. It's a resurrection plant. You put
it into glass of water. Within thirty minutes the thing is greening up,
you know, whereas it's all crispy and and dead when you see it.
Um, it's just nuts. It's a it's a really cool habit. Not
many plants do it. There's a there's a puiculo hydric cactus Blaspheldia that supposedly
does that. That's from Bolivia, another hyper arid region. Um, this
is an hyper aria. But you give what I'm saying. Um, So
yeah, I'm just I'm just in love with the shado vegetation. And so
like where we were yesterday there was ubomani a pectiniphra, really interesting cactus species
been poshed to shit. It occurs on these rocky air at microsites that act
as a depic islands, which are surrounded by much thicker, tick infested subtropical
seasonally dry forest and tick infested I'm not fucking around ticks and chiggers. You
get the worst of both in both worlds. I found a tick in my
groin the other day. Little one fucking made it. I don't know how
I made it in there. Man, I was so bummed. I was
like, are you're fucking kidding me? Really? So I pulled the thing
off and then within like an hour it started itching. We got some ivermectin,
and fucking docs is cycling too, because where Ketsia, the genus of
Rocky Mountain spot of feverbackteria is really bad down here. Not take any fucking
chances with these weird illnesses, which half the times, you know, doctors
in the United States don't want to believe exists. Just started so many horror
stories from friends. So I fucking dosed myself with the ivermectin for chiggers.
Plus I just want to see what the ivermected thing was all about, you
know, I want to be able to say I took horse paste. It
was fucking oh yeah, give me that ivermectin um and I the DOCS is
cycling, and I took like a preventative dose, like one hundred milligrams.
I fucking hate taking DOCS of cycling, but I would also hate getting ROCKETSI
And so I took a preventative dose in case that tick did have anything or
any of the other you know, dozens of bacterial things that are out there
in the environment being harbored by rodents which these takes feed down and then fucking
buryingt you and bury you know whatever. I'm not taking any fucking chances,
so I took the docks of cycling fucking um and uh so anyway, so
there's yeah, it's it's it's nuts man, it's it's um that I remember
reading a paper by AXL Rod in the seventies that actually talked about this phenomenon
of these these adapic islands surrounded by forest, and you get the same thing
in the Amazon, where you get, you know, like an outcropping of
rock with a completely different cast of plant species on it than in the surrounding
force. So they act like islands. It's it's the island effect. You
get essentially gene isolation on these rocky outcrops if they're big enough, if they
can harbor plants, and you know, if I presumably if the seeds of
the plants are bird the spurts which Ubumani a pectiniphro man that is, a
fucking beautiful cactus looks like a copy of poa spines on the ridges on the
ribs, and the ridges of the ribs, nice patterning of farina and tricombs
on. It probably drives those fucking those cactus collectors nuts. That's why they
poach the shit out of it. It's gonna look so good in my collection.
I just I've got the lovely collection. I've got the best, most
important collection, and you'll never have the type of collection I have. I've
got the pab all lined up in these beautiful pots and that you know what
your's, and that's all fine. I make fun of it, but that's
all fine if you're you know, if you're growing these fuckers from seed.
But when you're when you're supporting this fever, I mean, the collecting thing
is still kind of weird. Whatever. I know, I shit on this
a lot, but it's still kind of fucking weird. I don't want the
responsibility. I don't want to have to worry about it. I'd rather have
the habitat. I'd rather be able to go to the habitat, even if
only once every couple of years, once a year, and just enjoy it,
just bathing it ambiance. Bathing the ambiance, you know, kind of
dispel the fucking misery and hatred I feel when I'm in like a shopping mall,
parking lot of a fucking big lots, or a fucking target or something,
you know, on the misfortune, the misfortunate occasion that I have,
unfortunate occasion that I have to be in that kind of environment, you know,
because I just you know, probably like you, maybe you're the same
way, maybe not, I get really negative, but when I'm in these
locations at least, but I just it feels terrible being you know, on
the freeway landscape, especially in Texas, you know, or southern California,
or the fucking suburbs of a Bay area wherever. I mean, it's these
landscapes we create which are just so fucking bleak and designed only for shopping and
driving. And just I mean, I don't know why is why is the
United States right now so good at producing these ugly ass dscapes. It's like
you look at like Eastern Block, you know, from your photographs from like
sixty years ago. I mean, it feels like the same thing. That's
almost nicer because at least you can walk, you know. I don't know,
man, but a lot of people don't seem to have a problem with
it, or they just don't have time to stop and think, because you
know, whenever, they just stuck fucking working themselves to death, because you
know, the US is fucked, and the middle classes eroding, and the
rich are accumulating everything, and you know, there's no healthcare, no time
to fucking stop and think about how you're getting fucked. I think a lot
of people have lots of time to think about how they're getting fucked. And
that's why the country is getting so hot right now figuratively speaking to the United
States, Jesus christ Man, the fuck is gonna happen. They're kind of
a dump in some ways. You know. Uh, the coffee. I
have not had a good cup of coffee since I've been here. But that's
okay. It's just a drug, but it really I do enjoy that good
yuppy stuff sometimes, you know, those nice those nice coffees. Um,
So anyway, I don't know, I'm gonna I'm gonna I gotta go out
and take pictures of plants. Say, we've just been going out every fucking
day. So I'm gonna cut this short soon and I'll get back to it.
But um, you know, there's a lot to cover. There's a
lot of cool plants. To cover. I uh, every you know,
every clade, every tax on, every species, I mean every there's so
much to talk about as an example of the ecology here that uh yeah,
it's just it's nuts. It's so cool. I mean, you've got soil
stresses, you've got nutrient poor soil um, you've got the seasonal dryness,
you've got the occasional fire, you've got elevational change. You've got specific adaptic
conditions that that you know, at least in those campus for pest rays.
Those rock fields don't have much soil, so you've got these suck traits evolving
among orchids, and I mean fun. We went to the Ancholerium veritas centrum
spot that was two days ago, and I couldn't make it to Ancolerium agaboidies.
Man, I ran out of water. That's a whole other story.
I'll have to tell you. It's really sad. Dylan made his ass up
there really quickly, just ran fucking you know. I was stopping to look
at all the plants and film everything. And by the time I got and
then I encountered the landowners and they were kind of sketchy, and I staid
that Mexico mentality in my mind where I'm like, fuck, this is kind
of hot. I didn't you know, I didn't have a feel for it
down here. Yet I'm like, damn, maybe these dudes are growing,
you know, growing weed or some shit or some forty which is I mean.
I remember walking up on an illegal weed grow and by once it was
I didn't think I was coming back down that mountain and the dudes were there
too, and they escorted us south. They didn't say ship to us,
they escorto side. When we got back down on the truck was sketchy as
fuck. Met the cartel in Sonora. So that's the mindset I came to
Brazil with. And I'm sure there's areas where it's like that. I know
they just chopped up a journalist in the Amazon, but I realized later on
it wasn't Maybe it's not like to hear, but but I met the landowners
and it turns out we were we trespassed. There's I was like a one
one percent of this trail we took up. You have to trespassed on these
landowners land. It was these kids. They were talking about the bosses in
here, but will be cool, but you can't come here. And then
this one name, this one guy named Dudu who was cool, who was
on a horse, said he would let me pass um, and uh,
you know, I trying to even give him, like I trying to give
him some cash, be like y, thank you, and he was like,
na, no, it's cool, he was all he was too proud
to take it um. I don't mean that in a bad way, you
know, but uh, anyway, so then I fucking kept going up and
I was just, oh god, I saw this sort of podium, a
dry land sort of podium growing in fucking dry scrub habitat, completely exposed to
the sun. So cool, really cool, three foot tall organ um.
But I was and I didn't know I was out of fucking water and I
didn't bring a filter and I would just fucking yeah man, Yeah, it
was just it sucked. I mean it turned out it was like a mile
away from the ancalium too. But I was like, yeah, you know
what, I'm gonna just I'm gonna turn back around, take it easy and
not not fun with this. And so anyway, I didn't make it to
the Acalrium agavoides, which, as you could probably tell, as a really
cool dry land of Bromeliad only described a few years ago. That looks like
looks like in a gave. But Dylan was he ran up there really quick.
I had a bunch of photos again, and I still did when I
came back down. Even though I turn around, I still there was still
like a twelve mile end up being a twelve mile hike, so I could
have had another two miles. I mean there was water up there too,
which I didn't fucking know, like clear drinkable water, like it was good.
There's no cattle up up on top of this plateau, but you know
whatever, it's fucking fine. And I saw so many incredible plants anyway,
I mean, the fucking Asterac universities insane. I'll be lucky if I get
five percent of the fucking photos I took identified. I mean, so few
I found a you know, this guy Marcella has been helped me with a
lot of the Asteracy stuff. But but so so much of this stuff here,
it's just, uh, it's just there's not good resources for it.
There's surely undescribed species or species that are in the works of being described,
you know. I mean some of the experts i've talked to no one,
you know, aside from Marcella, no one's been able to get anything down
to species, only only to genus. So anyway, I was gonna cut
this out five minutes ago, and I just kept talking. It's what I
do, you know. Anyway, I don't have to get back to this
because I gotta get out there and we're gonna go see some shit today.
I'm gonna check out this go cactus. But the point is, the fucking
diversity here is incredible. There's a lot of work to do here. I
would love to just come back. I mean, I would love to just
fucking you know, talk to some of the botanists here doing stuff. Got
to start learning Portuguese now, I guess. And yeah, it's just just
just incredible diversity, just hyperdiversity. I mean, it's comparative. It's comparative
to South Africa that keel myras everywhere ki e l m e y e r
a califi lacy somewhat related to clusiac another one of those subtropical and tropical families.
They get these roots, these storage roots. They're drought deciduous and you
see them everywhere, and there's they're very it's a very species rich genus,
you know, so they get these like bulbous storage roots. Um. Yeah,
they're drought deciduous. They don't have any leaves. They dropped their leaves.
Everything in the Sahato not everything, but a lot of stuff drops its
leaves or at least a semi deciduous in the dry season, which you get
in similar climates that similar latitudes all over the world. Uh. And then
but their flowers are going off now a lot of things, even though they're
drought deciduous, are flowering now, like wonder Lichia, which is a whole
fucking subfamily of asterac that I was completely un supposed to acide from reading about
until yesterday. And they look kind of like thistles, and I think they
used to be grouped in Cardioid eight is the thistle sub family, which I
thought they still were until I looked yesterday and they're not there. It's a
whole different subfamily of aster Racy than I have not seen yet. There's a
few left I haveny, I think Jim and Arena is it whatever the plant
is in the Negev desert over there in the over Palestine Israel or that whole
you know, human clusterfuck of tension and violence and occupation, of course,
but I'm not trying to talk about that shit fuck off anyway. The point
is there's some cool plants that were there too. Is another weird, entirely
owned, separate subfamily of aster racy. But yeah, wonder Likia, Who
the fuck was wonder Lick. It's so weird, man, It's so weird
these European names and on plants that are six thousand miles away from Europe.
Did you see that reshing article about EP and m's have no place in twenty
first century America, which I totally agree with, But you know, it
was funny that it it generated so much controversy. They were like nine hundred
comments or some shit. A lot of men comment thing who were really upset
that someone that someone was shitting on eponyms. But also I think it was
kind of what was kind of stupid. What I don't agree with was the
you know, their main the author's main reason for it was that epon ms,
you know, colonial blah blah, all this shit. I'm just I'm
just I have such an allergy to hear in white people whatever, regardless,
we're talking about decolonizing stem when it just comes up when especially when they're like,
you know, from these fucking wealthy backgrounds, they've spent ninety percent of
their lives in academia, like completely ignorant the class, and it's just becomes
such a buzzword. And I the intentions are really good. I get it.
I fucking get it. Equity righting the fucking wrongs. You know that
the colonial European civilization has reeked ethically on the world or the less five hundred
years, But fuck, it just comes off. It's just all that aside,
completely ideology, completely aside. It's just becomes such a fucking not always
but a lot of the time red flag for just the most obnoxious, condescending
people. I'm sorry, it's true, completely agree with the ideology. But
anyway, that was the thing about epidoms. You know, they're like,
I tell colonial, that's why we shouldn't send these names. They're problematic,
the fucking we're problem at problem attic. It's like, no, it's we
shouldn't name plants after people because the human lifespan is fucking eighty years and these
plants have been around for millions of years, and it's just it's a testament
to human ego, et cetera. Unless you know, you want to name
a plant after someone you know who is really did you know freed people like
name and a plant after Nelson Mandela. I fucking get that, you know,
something like that, but uh, you know, and I get it.
I don't like, you know, even when I mentioned any plant names
and videos and it's named after someone who I knew was a prick. He's
a dead hog, he's guy's an asshole whatever, I'll mentioned that fuck him.
But um, you know, it's just it just there's more the virtue
signaling shit that just gets obnoxious. It's like, would you be doing this
is a little different, you know, these behaviors. Would you be doing
if there wasn't a fucking audience A little's got to go? Or would you
be you know, going about this the same way if there wasn't an I
don't know anyway. Um, but all that aside, it was funny that
eponyms have no place in twenty first I don't think epinams should be a thing.
I don't think they should at all. But again, my main,
my main thing with it is you shouldn't just you shouldn't name plans after people.
It still, but name them after the plant, name them after a
culture that's nearby, like Arctostaffis alone, Arctostaffos aloniana, the alone. The
alone culture seemed pretty pretty fucking cool, pretty pretty down, you know,
over in a bearer. I'm going off on a rant here. Let's fucking
wrap it up and I'll get back to you. I'll play you were about
some of the incredible plants we're seeing here, and uh, you know,
for now, you know, we'll just go our separate ways. You can
go fuck right off and I'll go fuck right up there. Okay, it's
so I gotta go fick you supup? Okay, So I'm back. Yesterday
we had a fucking spectacular time. We saw just on a whim, we
saw this this genus that had only been described twenty years ago. I don't
know it consist of seven species. When it was described, it consisted of
three species. Is the only carnivorous genus in the family Plantagenetsi, which is
the family of pens demonds, you know, a family of bilaterally symmetrical flowers,
one of the main one of the larger families, at least in North
America. In order lady alies the order of Sages, and uh you know,
known for opposite leaves, biletterly symetrical flowers like I said, et cetera.
But this genus phil Coxie, yeah, I was only described in I
think two thousand and it had been first been collected in the late seventies early
eighties, and then it was discovered to be carnivorous. So that's pretty fucking
interesting. It evolved carnivora in response to the nutrient poor soils of the shado
vegetation. But it only occurs in these these these openings in a forest,
these edavic islands, if you will, you know, with a much different
substrate than the surrounding vegetation, These edavic islands of sand, of like white
translucent sand, you know, surrounded by this very thick sahato vegetation, which
is generally not taller than three meters you know at most. It's I mean
it's like a like an oak oak woodland style, but like a thick oak
woodland, you know. So it's I mean shadod I guess it's technically akin
to savannahs, so it's not really thick. But there's these openings of it
openings where the sand is just too deep for anything large, very large to
grow. And in these sandy openings you get all this wild stuff coming up.
That's where you get this pocoxia. That's where you get tons of cool
members of aero Colac, etc. There was you know, it was ario
Colac. I mean the diversity there was growing on the sand, on the
open sand was pretty specific. And it was only growing on the open sand.
This I'm not sure what the genus of aer Colacy was. I think
there's only like seven genera um so maybe it was a papalanthis, but it
was these kind of stock rosettes up to four inches tall. Uh, it's
just beautiful rosette leaves covered and tricoms kind of like a a glaucous icy blue
color within these long inflorescences maybe a foot a foot tall inflorescence with a little
button hat on the top, which is typical of the family aero Colac.
You know those those little button inflorescences. It's like a capitate inflorescence kind of
kind of a kin kind of analogous to like a sunflower family um Sseudanthium.
You know, a capitulum, a flower head but of course that worked.
Apiculum is a specific to astracy to the sunflower family. But it was just
fucking nuts, this totally diverse flora on this open sand, and we were
looking for this plant Philcoxia that was supposed to be growing on this you know,
in these open areas. Only in the open areas, not at the
margins, you know, by the shadier partsure like that, not shadier parts,
but you know where you would get a little bit a slightly lower amount
of light. And when I say shadier, I mean the forest canopy.
There is only like you know, it's like ten twelve feet at the most,
often just just head high. But every once in a while you get
a tree that's like twelve feet tall and there is peloso serious full vollinatis,
I think it was. How do you? I think that's how you pronounced
it, full veit lanatis. Oh, this shit is new to me.
All these species are new to me. This is what I do. I
come out, I survey shit, and this is how I learn. Take
tons of photos, read everything about this letter, do the research letter.
It's basically like a like a field trip. So this Pelosi series was everywhere.
It was like a quadrangular stem like four sides, four ribs, and
then on the margins of the ribs at the like the ridges of the ribs,
there was just intense tricombs, intense wool. Really cool species. I
mean it's like, you know, multi branched columnar cactus that gets about eight
feet tall, and so those were growing on the margins, you know,
where the it wasn't as much pure sand where there was actually maybe a clay
or some sort of rock beneath the soil that the roots could get into.
But either way, I mean this, you know, we're looking for this,
this fucking Philcoxia plant. We ended up finally finding it. There's disco
cactus everywhere too, which is this looks like a green cow petty, kind
of looks like it kind of cactus horizon or not horizontal. It kind of
Cactus exensis, which is now in homelocephala or they change the genus anyway,
what they call in Texas the horse crippler cactus looks like a little cow petty,
like a little dip like a dinner plate flipped upside down, and it's
discocactus is everywhere. The discocactus has a cephalium on it um. So it's
got this like looks like a little to pay, like a like a melocacus
would get like a shriner hat, you know, of wool that I can
just keep producing a flower buds out of the disco cactus is everywhere. And
then I noticed some little disco cactus germinating that we're not even poking up,
I mean not germinating. They were probably a few years old, but they
were the size of a quarter with their the top of their stem right at
the surface of this translucent sand. Then I realized, though these things are
this sand is translucent because it's this this white quartz. It's letting light in,
you know, probably an inch or two below the surface of the sand.
And that's that's how these so these things are able to get light but
basically remain completely buried, like the same way some cyanobacteria or lichens might do.
Not lichens, cyanobacteria and algae might do. In the Mojave desert and
some of those granite area is where you've got this semi translucent granite, you
know, slash quartz, dirty quartz that permits light in and so that's how
they can eke out, you know, in existence in place like the Mojave
Desert. You know, if you're a terrestrial algae by just growing, you
know, maybe like an inch half inch below the surface of the surrounding substrate
that you're at. You know, you'll put you'll pick up a rock and
you'll see on the underside of this quartz rock in the Mojave sometimes it's got
algae on the bottom of it. So I realized that's what these disco cactus
were doing. They were using this translucent sand is a covering to let light
in. You know, it's like a little window, and so they could
stay out of the full exposure of the sun and the dryness, et cetera.
So I was taking a picture of these disco cactus and just this cool
field. I was on the ground, you know, basically laying on my
stomach on this sand, taking a picture of these these cactus, and I
looked over and there was a fucking plant. I just looked like six feet
away from me, and there was our plant with the distinct zig zag branching
of the inflorescence. No leaves on the inflorescence, just sends up in inflorescence
with a bilaterally symmetrical pink flower on it, typical plantagen ac looking flower.
And then at the base this is the really interesting part because not only is
the carnivorous, but it sends up this inflorescence. It's maybe a foot tall
at most, with a zig zag branching and and like every note of the
zig zag, you know, produced a different flower. There only two flowers
on it at this point. The rest were gone. It was just you
know, the fruits were maturing. Seeds have to be fucking tiny on this
thing, and the leaves there's you can't see any leaves. I mean,
then as you look closer, as I got closer to the thing, I
took you know, like a one hundred photos of it, take it closer
to the thing, I realized these little green specks that almost looked like like
little globs of terrestrial algae are the leaves. And they're also growing. They're
not coming up fully up to the surface. We found later on a few
plants that they were They were actually exposed to the surface, but they're just
below the surface and they're covered with its translucent sand. So it's I mean,
the leaves basically are subterranean. It was fucking wild and so you know,
we kind of like brush some aside with a finger just to look at
the root what they're coming out of. We put it back later, of
course, very gently, and you could see right it was philcoxy or rhy
zomatosa rhizome atosa. It's got to rise on down there. It's a little
tube that it sends. These the leaves are actually like an inch inch and
a half long, but they're not producing any chlorophyll for eighty percent of their
length maybe a little bit maybe a little bit more. They're only green up
top. They're white on the lower eighty percent, you know, a chlorophylus,
because there's no there's no light down there, I guess, so maybe
the light isn't going that deep beneath the sand surface. Either way, it
was just fucking wild. And then those leaves, of course are covered in
these stipitate glands. You need a hand lens to see because the leaves are
only I don't know five millimeters eight millimeters long, and most the tiny like
ovate kind of convex m leaves and uh yeah, man, they just I
mean that's how they trap nematodes. They trapped nematodes with these leaves. There's
actually a couple of cool papers on it online. So it's in the evolution
of carnivory in plantagenecy, which is fucking it's it's wild's I had no idea
so far. I think it's the only genus in that family that's been documented
to be carnivorous. It would make sense. The soils here are really nutrie
and pour very leached. You've got that red dust on everything and so these
but then you've got these white sand fields too, so where there's no sand,
where it's an actual soil from this weathered rock surrounding weathered quartzidic rock.
This quartzidic sandstone. It's red, it's very you know, very iron rich
and otherwise nutrient poor. But um, yeah, it was just it was
fucking I guess it's acidic too, It's pretty acidic. So this was this
was fucking cool. I just like we were, you know, nowhere that
we knew what to look for, you know, maybe one hundred and fifty
feet away we found another population like four plants growing near some weird member of
the ironweeds subfamily vernoni oide. I've asked Racy that was, you know,
and it had like you know, tricomb pubescent tricome risk leaves in brokit foliage
was a subshrub maybe a foot two feet tall and most and then it had
those distinct uh you know, pink magenta pink discoid flowers on it um,
and so it was growing near one of those. But it was just it
was just just such fucking cool habitat man. You know, you find these
daphic islands surrounded by tropical, seasonally dry forest, and uh, you just
get an entirely different plant community, whether it's in the Daffic island consisting of
a white sander and the Dafic island consisting of a big rock outcropping where there's
little to no soil, where you get the ankleriums, those really mean gave
looking bromeliads and the Ubomania pectinifra if it hasn't been poached to shit. One
population we went through two days prior I probably said this already had been reduced
by like ninety eight percent. We found twenty plants that we've talked not even
twenty, maybe fifteen, maybe twelve to fifteen, and we had talked to
people who had been there, you know, fifteen years ago and said there
were hundreds, but that that spot was also close to a road, so
it was easy to get to, you know. And then there's other I
mean it's crazy too because you could look on satellite maps and see these islands
surrounded by this, you know, this this dry forest, this seasonally dry
tropical forest which is infested with ticks and chiggers, and just a fucking corn
maze, like really hard to walk through, really easy to get lost,
you know. So it was, you know, it was a really cool
and I was a really cool thing to see, a really cool thing to
make a video of too. I just thought I could do a decent video
one it because I don't know a lot of these plants. I don't even
know the genus of ario call ac we were looking at. It's probably a
paper lanthist, I don't know. It's tiny little stocked rosette the four or
five inches tall of these, uh these xeric adapted rosette leaves covered in tricombs.
I don't know. And then so after that spot, and then there
was another there was a member of lamy a sea down here too. I
think it's called hyptodendron, but I've been seeing the flowers of it, and
I've seen many different variations of many different species having the same flower structure,
which is different from our North American lamy ac. It's like a flower that's
kind of shaped like a v still bileto asymmetrical, often pink, often very
glandular. Kalyx is normally covered in tricombs, but it's got four stamens and
they come down with this, they go towards the bottom of the flower rather
than the top like many other members of lamy acy that we get in North
America, like the Salvias, you know, those stamens in the style normally
go towards the top. I think the style maybe still goes towards the top,
but the four stamens go down. It still got the opposite leaves.
But this thing was like a you know, it was like a shrub like
seven eight feet you know, one was growing right right up kind of scanned
it through a pilosis, serious full vollinatus. So that was really fucking interesting
to see too. But the lower lip kind of folds out and creates this
little like pseudo nectar spur, like this little kind of concave cup. So,
um, yeah, I don't know, a lot of this shit,
I'm not even going to get identified until late I'm not having to reach out
to the people that study these things, reaching out to people in universities and
stuff, because there's just there's very little field museum. Like I said,
put out a bunch of guides in PDF format. I downloaded you know,
like two hundred megabytes worth of these, you know, two or three page
thumbnail PDFs. They've got like thumbnail images with like the genus and species name,
but oftentimes there's a different species, but you can still get it down
to genus um. And so then I just arrogated them into one file and
I've been using that. But there's there's so few resources, which is I
mean cool too because it's there's you know, I've taken pictures of all these
things that there's no observations of on a naturalist. I obscure the locations and
everything because I don't want people going to any of these fucking spots unless they're
researchers, etc. Um. I just don't Yeah, I just don't want
people fucking tracking me. So but either way, there's you know, I
get good photos and then if there's people researching these later they can use those
photos or you know, use them to study different characteristics between because you can
learn a lot from flowers. You know, they're there's the the key,
the distinguishing and diagnostic characteristic for a lot of the species, so and genera.
So you always get a photo of flowers good up close photo of flowers
with a depth of field is big enough, you got everything in focus.
That's why use a small aperture and a flash and then the diffuser so you
don't get high contrast. But with the sun though, too, it can
be really shitty, you know, you get really high contrasts. I've been
I've been taking a fucking umbrella out with me, like just a little like
Bodega umbrella to give me some shade so I can get the flower. And
because you can't use sunlight for a lot of it's just too it's just too
bright, too many shadows, too much contrast. So anyway, but it's
the point is it kind of feels like, you know, we're actually doing
work and documenting this stuff that's going to be important in a rather understudied area,
or at least in an area where there's not there's not a lot of
resources available to the public in terms of you know, species inventory, you
know photos that can illustrate the fort differences between evolutionary and differences between genera families
and species, et cetera. So I always gonna get a habitat photo too.
But um, but yeah, the spot we went to after this,
uh these sandfields was fucking incredible too. I mean it was we hit on
the way back, I was already kind of spent, sweaty, stinky,
fucking tired. Um. But uh, this other spot was like a sky
island, so with a much different floor up top than of course the ocean,
the quote unquote ocean figuratively speaking of seasonally dry tropical forest below, and
there was orchids up there. There was this cool Orthophytum species, which is
a really cool bromelia that was only described I think five years ago, no
less than that. Maybe listen that maybe three years ago. Orthophytum crystallians red
bracks, white flowers, hummingbird pollinated rosette, you know, with toothy leaf
margins covered in tricombs. There was a member of the Vernonioide that looks like
an Aromathis on steroids, Aramathis E R E. M A N t h
E. West if we want to look it up, which is basically like
a tree, a tree compositi a tree member of the sunflower from a tree
iron weed. But this thing had like these scapes coming off this small stocky
tree with these big leathery coreaceous leaves with indumentum and velvet on the abax seal
surface on the underside, and then like a foot you know, each inflorescence
it was a sincephalis head, a head of heads, So it looked like
a big ball, like the size of a golf ball, composed of a
bunch of different um capitula flower heads. So the golf ball itself was composed
of I don't know, fifty flower heads each with pink flowers in it,
with those pink discoid flowers in it. And then that golf ball was sitting
on like a foot tall scape coming off this stocky tree that was maybe at
most six or seven feet tall. Fucking wild plant. I saw this thing,
I was like, fuck off, you gotta be kidding me. This
see is incredible and it's growing out of sky island, completely isolated from anything
else around it. But the weird thing, the really weird thing that blew
my mind when we got up there. Well, there was a Clusia too,
clusiac and those opposite like big paddle shaped leaves three inches wide, you
know, very glabrous, distinct flower morphology for Clusiac. But the thing that
really blew my mind was there was a fucking Potocarpas up there, which of
course is a very old family of conifers that evolved in the Triassic, sister
family to the monkey puzzle family, Eric Carrias, which agath this is in
and eric Carria is in all these fucking weird, really cool looking dinosaur trees,
these these old conifers, that's eric carries Potocarpaci's sister to that. It's
also an old family. They got those little aral fruits. They look like
a kind of like a juniper berry with a little thing attached to it um
the top part it's like a you know, there's like basically two two ovate,
two egg shaped things next to each other, and that is the it's
not a fruit, it's a cone. It's technically because they're gendo sparms.
The thing at the bottom is like a fleshy stalked inflorescence, and inflorescence,
fleshy stalked bract that you know, it serves as like the bait berry for
the bird to sparcel. And then on top of that is the actual seed,
a single seed, a single uh well, these would be megastrobilie megastrobol
as a kin to a pine cone, but a pine cone, which is
also a conic or unrelated, you know, has multiple seeds, and there's
just one single seed sitting atop this fleshy stalked bract. And that seed is
like this, you know, I don't know, maybe five millimeters blue blue
seed ga, you know, glabrous and kind of waxy. Birds to be
birds, dispersed birds, they evolved with birds. A lot of these,
they're almost entirely Southern hemisphere. You get a few in the Northern hemisphere,
get a few in Mexico, but they don't go very high in terms of
latitude. I think you get a few and a few potocarps in Asia,
maybe in Japan too. Either way, they're mostly Southern hemisphere relics of Gondwana,
you know, just like proteac, the protea family. We saw a
fucking proteac up there too, which was nuts. So the genus was Rupola.
I forget that knife. He checked my eye. It just just doing
Explorer starts for proteac Brazil. There's only three genera and proteac in Brazil.
But you know, some of those some of those genera have dozens of species
in them. But this Podocarpus was fucking I couldn't believe it was. I
didn't expect to see a potocarp on top of this sky island, this mountain.
It was totally nuts, you know, and my mind was already blown.
I'm like, this thing probably grew down below at one point, but
as it got hot, as climate shifts happen, et cetera, as it
got dryer. Because you go closer to the coast, it's much more wet
forest, it would be much more conducive to this thing growing there. But
as you go inland away from the Atlantic, of course it gets Dryer's when
you get the shado vegetation, all these cool cacti, etc. You know,
drought dormancy evolving in the plants to get the dry season in the winter.
Again from the ITCZ and so this thing has just been restricted to this
mountain top. But it only grows away at the top. And of course
as the climate continues to dry out and warm, and who knows what direction.
You know, some days gonna get wetter, somemarias are gonna get dry.
I assume the shado is gonna get dryer. This thing is then restricted
to this mountaintop. It's got no higher to climb. It's even growing in
these nooks and crannies on this mountaintop because it's you know, it looks like
cher parts of Cherkawa, you know, National monument. It's got the way
this rock, this quarzidic sand stone his weathered, has created these uh oh
god, what is the word? I can't even think of the word.
But basically these towers, you know, small towers with like nooks and crannies
and many canyons in between them, which creates a refuge for you know,
things like frogs. A lot of frogs came out at night. All the
moisture that collects, there's liking on everything. You can tell. This mountain
just gets bathed in fog and rising moisture at night and in the mornings is
liking and everything. But this potocarpus and all these other plants that need a
cooler moisture climate have nowhere to go if the climate keeps drying out and the
line where the the moisture starts keeps rising. So this as this mountaintop potentially
gets dried, is this species can go extinct? No idea what it is
yet, it's a potocarpets, No idea what the species is. Have to
look it up. I'm probably gonna I collected a little branch of it and
probably gonna try and deposit at your barium here or the irbarium and rio.
But uh, it just blows my mind that, you know, I mean,
I guess this stuff, this stuff has to be inbarium in urbarium already,
but there's just so little knowledge that's publicly available. You know. Um,
there's a website that's got a lot of botanic information on it in Brazil.
But it's really hard to use on a phone, and it's more really
set up. It's more like it's something you would use, you know,
at a laptop in an office or like a desktop computer. It's just not
you can't really use it on a phone. It takes forever, it's slow,
it's hard interface, you have to fucking zoom in. It's not you
know, there's no simplified page et cetera. So yeah, who knows,
who knows what that thing is, but it's really remarkable. I mean,
it grows in a in a very isolated place. This island surrounded by this
lower this sky island surrounded by this this lower these lower elevation dry tropical forest.
Fucking so cool man. And there was tons of other weird shit up
there. There was a weird number of lo racy at least like I'm pretty
sure it was lo racy kind of looked like an oakum, which obviously,
I mean, we didn't see at lower elevations. It looks nothing. It
looks like it wouldn't do well at the lower elevations, just stuck on this
this mountain. And it was also growing out of this you know, eight
foot wide, ten foot deep nook. And these rocks created by the way
that this rock weathers, this white sandstone, which is fucking beautiful. By
the way, it's sandstone that's been cooked a little bit. You can tell
it's it's had a little bit of it's been metamorphosed a little bit because it's
uh, you know, it's a little bit harder. There's you know,
big there's veins of quartz that occasionally come out of it, et cetera.
The fucking quartz here is everywhere. It's wild. They just be driving down
the road, there's red dust and everything, and then you'll see this this
chunk of quartz, you know, this like foot wide boulder of pure quartz.
So there's some really cool shit going on here, equal logically and evolutionarily
in terms of the plant life. Needless to say. Anyway, I'm gonna
wrap this up. It's already been an hour and a half, but hopefully
you got something out of that. If you have any questions about any of
this brazil stuff, please only write me if you got short questions about this,
if you need like a name specified or want to link to a paper,
because I just I'm all for more people learning about this stuff, and
I want more people to come here who are going to be respectful. And
I'm not into the fucking collector thing or people who just want to focus on
that one thing and not learn about the you know, the larger ecology and
don't want to work with Brazilian bonds, et cetera, that kind of thing.
But I do hope this inspires more people, especially well, I guess
I don't speak Portuguese, So a lot of Brazilians won't get a lot out
of this fucking podcast, but I do hope it inspires more people to work
on the floor here or just get excited about it, because it's such an
incredible biome, this ahto biome, this savannah, these and these these seasonally
dry tropical forests, and then you've got the coastal the Mata Atlantica, the
coastal forest to get more moisture and just just incredible diversity here. And it's
so important too, because a lot of it's being lost. There's a lot
of Like many places in the world, the larger dominant culture has little to
no regard for the flora here, and so a lot of shit is being
lost. And surely a bunch of stuff has gone extinct already that was never
even described. I mean, if they're this is a relatively settled area,
I mean there's farms around, and if there's still bromeliads, beautiful incredible bromeliad
species being described only three years ago, imagine what else is here and has
been here and has could be lost like that. Philcoxia is growing in a
relatively small sand field, and part of the sand fields already being mined for
sand, just just by locals, you know, for roads or for whatever.
I don't know what they use it for, but there's you know,
there's a big pit. So that population could easily be wiped out. And
the thing that can stop that is more people getting excited about this and getting
more attention on it and learning about it. But of course the double edged
sword, that's not the right word for you know what I mean. The
downside of this is that you can get that and get these poachers and these
fucking collector people that just are unethical and don't want to revere these plants but
just want to own them, and they fucking poach everything or they're look,
you know, you know, poor people around here will then get incentivized hired
by a fucking out of the country, you know, collector to collect these
things and poach them and whatever. Who the fuck knows. Man, It's
just it's really said that ublemani a population. Really, that Ublemania picked in
it for a population really struck me. I mean, you could see these
things used to be everywhere and they are fucking gone. They are like twelve
left, and the ones that were left were just hard to get to they
were, you know, surrounded by a bunch of and colirium that would just
cut the shit out of you if you tried to step in it, etc.
So, Uh, it's really sad. I mean, there's no reason
why there wouldn't be hundreds there, and that's what we were told there were.
There were hundreds at this population. Now they're all gone. So the
same shit happens everywhere with in the penties and all these Oh this shit I
get. I get the urge to have a piece of nature in your yard
or you're a greenhouse or whatever, but fucking grow it from seed, you
know. And if you're buying plants, if you're buying a fucking two foot
tall cactus that obviously takes hundreds of years or a hundred years to get two
feet tall, good thing to be skeptical about it and realize it might be
posched if it doesn't look all plump and juicy and pampered like a lot of
you know, those lofa fra do that you see in like these greenhouses in
Thailand which are obviously seed grown, or astral fight on their obviously seed grown.
If it looks weathered, little scarred, little roughed up, or it's
a slow growing cactus that is really large, it's probably and especially if it's
it's scarred and shit, if it looks weathered, it's probably poached. Don't
fucking buy it. Report be extremely skeptical of where it comes from and ask
the people to dig. If they say, oh, we saved it,
yeah, it was taking from that. We saved it because there was a
road being built. That's what they all fucking say. They all fucking say
that it's a lie. It's bullshit, And if they really cared about saving
it, they wouldn't be selling it for four hundred dollars in fucking eBay.
They would be donating it to a botanic card and trying to relocate it somewhere
or putting it in a sanctuary where it can be preserved. You know,
they all fucking say that. There's the same people that do this shit with
Eric Carpets in West Texas or whatever. They're full of shit. They're fucking
vultures and their hustlers. Don't fucking buy it. Don't support them. You
really give a shit about something, Grow it from seed, Try to find
seed online somewhere, take the time to get to know the plant. Don't
just fucking mine my collection. It's just a lovely collection. I just need
the collection. You need to have that species. Look at this very again,
it's a fucking man whatever. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to shit
or anything. It just gets so nerdy too. It's weird. It's like
this, this weird human thing, these like collector, this monkey brain hoarding
complex driving this market that's contributing, that's basically causing a large part the habitat
destruction and reduction in biodiversity. And happits with carnivorous plants, with the saracenas
in Florida. It happens with the fucking Eric Carburson West Texas. A lot
of this shit happens in West Texas. See people in Texas all the time
with dug up cacti, you know, even just like old grannies and ship
which is yeah, that's fine, I'm glad they enjoy it. But it's
like you're taking from habitat and there's there's a little being done to actually preserve
habitat. And don't even get me started on the payote stuff. All these
people who want to keep it, keep it illegal and impossible for people to
grow, you know, like you could get a greenhouse that supplies to the
Native American Church that can grow these things by thousands. You know, some
some smart ass and I mean that in a good way. We'll figure out
a way to grow payote. Super fast could set it up. But he
can't do it now because it's illegal. You know, I think it should
remain illegal in exist, but certainly be decriminalized in places where the plan doesn't
native. You may get legal in Texas, people will fucking knowing Texans,
they will, they will just allow their land to be cleared for a buck
of all the payote. But in places where it's not even native, like
New Mexico, Arizona, California, let people grow in you know, it
should be decriminalized, and then that can be used to supply Native American Church,
and you know, at least it'll get a big, a big larger
population exit to you know, hopefully someone tracks the data of where it came
from, different populations, et cetera. Anyway, all this is side.
I'll end it now. Hopefully you get something out of that. Email me
keep it short if you want, I don't. I normally don't respond to
emails until they get around an actual keyboard, because typing with my thumbs as
hell. But you know, I can direct you to resources. Maybe I'll
put like a folder on a Google drive somewhere just for Brazil stuff if anybody
wants to download this ship and then you can read it on that re read
Era app, which is a great fucking app. It's got a translate feature
too, so you can translate the Portuguese. And just keep an eye on
like any Brazilian botanists on Twitter or anywhere else who are studying families. I
need to find out who's studying Aria Callas somebody told me about. I think
it's a lady. I don't know where she's based out of which city in
Brazil. But the arial call lazy anniversity here is fucking insane. And of
course, all these families in generic can be used as models of just evolution
in general. That's what giveness does. I mean, he studies these things
using them as an example to understand how evolution works in general. You know,
why so much speciation and a certain genus or family, what drives that
isolation in the habitat like the sky islands, like genetic isolation and the habitat,
etc. So anyway, you know, we're all just from making society
less stupid and less concerned with fucking getting fancy had handbags and muscle cars and
all that kind of dumb shit that just leaves you feeling more empty and useless
that you despite trying to fill the void within yourself with material possessions. You
know, understanding life and revering life is what makes makes you feel good.
Anyway, That's all I got. Have a good rest of the day.
Hopefully this wasn't through scatterbrain. It probably was, but hopefully you still got
something on that. That's all I got. Go fund yourself by