Texas Botany with Michael Eason

Hello, Hello, rather than welcome to the crime page be bad and it
doesn't Pad Cash. This is Larry coming cheer from underneath the twelfth Street bridge.
I'm here with my dog Bob Kad and I just just you know,
spraying against the wall and just get a little fire going. And I wanted
to say thanks for listening. I'm here with my friend Michaelishon, who works
at San Antonio Boutenant cart. You know, Mike, I'm really I really
appreciate you being willing to come on this podcast because I know the Texas Bodany
community can be a little stiff around the edges and I'm a little I'm a
little controversial in some of those circles. And thank you for being willing to
jeopardize your career by coming on this podcast. So thank you so much,
seriously. Thank yeah. Yeah. Well we'll see how old it turns out.
We'll see if you hear about this from Admin. So welcome. How
are you doing? How are you been? I want to ask you I've
been, I haven't. I haven't had you on here in like two or
three years. I want to ask you about a number of subjects relevant to
the great state of Texas. I say that only half tongue in chic I
actually do love it here. Not certain things I don't love, but I
love the flora and the geology that cretaceous limestone. Where should we start?
I have no idea. So yeah, I'm living in San Antonio full time
now, work for work for the Botanic Garden full time. It's pretty great
there. We're growing some amazing plants, both rare and sort of uncommon in
the trade, and working across the state. I think we're up to about
like nine closing in on a hundred species of listed or at risk species for
the garden. You've done a shit done great work in the last few as
your friend, and I'm not just saying it because I'm your friend and I
care about you. I'm really the shit you've done with a sleepist prostrata this
I'll say this stuff. I shouldn't curse someone, you know, getting that
to how many you? I mean, you've just done a lot to conserve
and protect a lot of rare plants that prior to your work with them.
Not a lot of people, and not to minimize anyone else's contributed, but
not a lot of people were right, A lot of there's a lot of
institutions that are doing work here in the state of Texas, but there's not
I don't think there's anyone that's doing the amount of field work that we're doing.
And part of that is sort of a relic holdback of my time at
the Wildflower Center, when I was able to get access to quite a bit
of private property throughout the state, and I retained those relationships and friendships with
those private landowners, and so when I came on full time at San Antonio,
it's pretty easy to just give them a shout and you know, go
start visiting their properties again and doing some collections. And that's why I'm down
here in South Texas visit a few spots and to visit me because you wanted
to say hello to me too, correct, right, kind of hoping you
give that money you owe me. But anyway, well, yeah, okay,
So, like you know, in Dallas, there's a lot of people
doing great work in Dallas. In Dallas for Worth therea because Dallas for Worth
needs it. There's the human tumors growing by leaps and bounds every day,
a lot of data centers and development and sprawl, a lot of prairies,
those dry limestone prairies have been lost in the last few years. You know,
my friend of Kasha is doing a bunch of good work up there acash
Randy. But in like this central Texas area, I mean, there's there's
people doing work all over, but I just what kind of blew my mind?
And was that not a lot of people were, you know, focusing
on like actually collecting seeds and trying to propagate the hell out of a lot
of these plants that are rare and whose habitat is disappearing, right, And
that was one of the things. And it kind of is a throwback to
the landscaping stuff I used to do, is needing access to some of these
plants and not like a scleppist prostrata, but just oddball play ats like fenlaara
or you know, any Mexican red buds. You know, things like that
you don't really see in the trade, but it's always nice to have those
specimen plants in landscapes. And so the idea was to try to create more
plant by or plant diversity in the native plant trade here in the state of
Texas, mainly focusing on central, western and southern species in the state.
We don't really grow a lot of time. You love like a crape myrtle
every now and then, don't you. Yeah, you like those go to
Louisiana. When I get that, well, that's what that's that's going to
be in all the landscape. I mean that and most ornamental crotons to with
the variegated leaves. Right. But I do want to say, like you
mentioned Dallas and then like the central Texas area. A few couple of years
ago, I was when I was doing some presentations, I was like,
how much land are we losing per day or per year in the state of
Texas due to development? Because it's one of those things like if you're in
San Antonio or Austin or wherever, and you drive down it ten or I
thirty five and you're like, oh, look there's another you know, strip
mall or another buckets or another whatever, and it's like you see that slow
change, But what is that? What does that equate to across the state?
And essentially we're losing about six hundred and fifty acres per day to development.
That's insane, like two hundred and forty thousand acres a year. God
for the dumbest ship and most of it is the longest I thirty five corridor,
which then it's also like that's one of the like one of the most
diverse areas in the state because you have the Black Lamprairie coming in Edwards Plateau,
You've got the South Texas planes coming up, and all of those areas
coming together. You have high diversity in those transition zones, and it's just
it's amazing to see like what we're losing. I mean, you see it
down here in South Texas, you know daily, I'm sure, oh yeah,
or yeah, when we go out to Star County later you'll see.
I mean, you've seen it more than I am. But it's just pretty
remarkable. I've mentioned this before too. I guess when I was a kid.
I don't know why I thought this, but I thought that at some
point, like the development would stop, you know, like it would just
like people like that's enough. You know, we've got we'd like open land
and it's nice to have green space. But it doesn't. It doesn't stop
at all. And it's it's literally like destroying a museum of masterpieces to put
up a dollar general, you know, or like a porn an adult bookstore
or something like. That's what it feels like. It's because I drive up
I thirty five and once I hit San Antonio, everything north of there,
it just makes me want to die. Like I look around, it's like
Billboards for Personal Injury Attorneys. It's like a cartoon. It's like a grotesque,
cynical Simpsons cartoons, like Billboard's Personal Injury Attorneys. Dollar General, used
car lots, new car lots, apartment housing, steel and glass, and
like this landscape that you can't walk around either. You're just trapped in a
car the whole time, endless parking lots. It's so bleak, man,
you and you wonder why. I mean, people often when they do go
to the natural areas that we do have in highly populated areas are pretty A
lot of them can be just pretty trashed and overused. Yeah, because there's
no place for anybody to go. And you know we're lacking that. And
you know, in San Antonio we're fortunate we live close to a large park.
But if you want to really get out and see something that's I wouldn't
say pristine, but get out into nature and get out and hike. I
mean, we have to drive easily a couple hours. Yeah, I saw
they just opened up Devil's River like some some millionaire philanthropists or billionaire. It's
just Jack drinking water. It just sounds more grotesque than it is. You
know, he'll be pacing around back and forth for the next hour and a
half. He's got dog dementia. He's like fifteen. So but they just
open up Devil's River, which is a beautiful area. And I was reading
the comments. It was on a stupid Instagram post, which is like the
National enquire you know, of news, and I was reading through. I
was reading through the comments, and it was I couldn't believe how many like
gatekeeping comments there were. It's like, now, this shouldn't be open to
anyone, And I get where they're coming from, but it's like, at
the same point, man, for anyone listening who doesn't know, ninety six
percent of the land in Texas is privately owned, there's no access. If
people can't see this this stuff, they're not going to care about it.
Yeah, that's that's one side of the argument. But I'll say that there's
also like a respect side that whenever I do go out and I either visit
or work on public lands. You see the people that leave their trash behind
or dogs off leash or whatever it may be, and so there has to
be something else so regulate their asses. You're also not seeing the ninety however,
many thousands of people that come back, and I'm like, man,
that was amazing, that was such a good week, and other that was
so beautiful. Yeah, no, more and more people. I mean,
I consider myself fortunate. I was raised and sort of semi you know,
out out outskirts of Austin area. We had hundreds, if not thousands of
acres around us that as kids we could walk around, went camping, went
fishing, all that sort of good stuff. Most people don't have that.
And we need more public lands here in the state of Texas, and hopefully
that's changing here pretty soon, or even just like a bike path, you
know, right through, like so you have a way to get somewhere besides
trapped in a car. You know, we don't no bid oil companies won't
like that, and there's some good, good cars to the economy. But
well, and you said, it's it's like ninety six. You know,
we've always talked about as I've been doing this for about twenty five years now,
and it's I've always been told it's, you know, five percent of
Texas's land is open to the public. Sometimes you hear it's it's you know,
ten percent or whatever. Uh So, a while back, I looked
at the numbers and broke it down and looked at all the public lands in
the state of Texas, breaking it down by a National Park Service. So
you know, fish and fish and wildlife lands, state parks, county parks,
city parks, military lands, and what we actually have access to is
probably in that two percent range. And that's just park land. That's insane.
That's not like because you know, you go to some parks, you
got to stay on the trail. So yeah, you may be on a
thousand acre park, but if you only have fifteen feet on either side of
the trail that you can actually see, you know, are you really accessing
that whole thousand acre? Can I ask you one question? That's totally and
maybe I should say this for later, but I've I've but I just want
to get to it before I forget. I've noticed that there's a among certain
quote conservationists or people affiliated with the state, there's this mentality that you shouldn't
be growing endangered plants, that you shouldn't possess them, that you shouldn't be
It doesn't matter if you're just growing up from seed or whatever, which is
so to me, that's so anti conservation and just nitpicky and stupid. Is
that really, Like where does it come from? There are folks that definitely
don't want to see them sold in the sort of the commercial nursery trade,
the retail trade. I think partly because I was also doing landscaping and always
wanted to know how to grow these plants, Like I relied on people like
Dan Hostage and other nursery folks out there to like, how do you grow
these? And that was one thing that I quickly realized is as botanists,
as you go through that training through school, you're not really taught how plants
grow or how to propagate plants. It's all you know or how to read
them, like if something's dying and starting to decline or I mean, we
can terminate seed all day long on many of these plants, but how do
you get them past that seedling stage? A lot of times they tamp off
or you have other issues, And so that's one of the things that we're
looking at at San Antonio. But as far as growing them, like we
need that horticultural knowledge to be able to grow these. You know, there's
four hundred and fifty or so rare plants are at risk species in the state
of Texas. Yeah, there should there could be more. But that's the
thing, Like you know about Heena is on that list, Hesperallo is on
that list, And there's a lot of plants that are on that list that
are already in the nursery trade. And there's some plants that should probably be
in the nursery trade, like that's directs for instance, beautiful tree or a
small small tree incredible too. Yeah, and it's a beautiful tree as good
fall color. Do you want to nine alcoholic beer? I'm gonna get a
nine alcohol No, I'm I'm good with alcohol. Okay, we'll keep going.
Oh, I'll keep going while you're anyway. So, so yeah,
with with growing these, and it's not as if every single plant out there
needs to be in that commercial trade. Like I don't see people wanting to
go out and buy uh, you know some of the camisis or you know,
some of these little bitty plants, know, like we're well, there's
definitely some plants out there. And I get this all the time with the
Esclepias prostrata, like hey, I want to have that. And then a
lot of times people will say something like well, all I can start a
conservation garden in my backyard. It's like, well, that's not really what
we're doing here right now. The idea, like what I like to see
is like, Okay, we figure out how I want to propagate this thing
in great numbers. And part of that is just going through your collecting seed
getting at you increase your seed production in a place like the garden San Antonio
Botanical Garden. But one of the other things we also realize is well,
as these things get larger, and if you keep them in pots, they'll
produce a whole bunch of these tuberous roots and they're they're tip they're kind of
like a little small potatoes, and we can take those apart. Pstrata.
We take those apart, and all of a sudden, from that one plant,
now you have eight, and it's like, wow, this is a
way to quickly increase these numbers. Sort of vegetative propagation versus is going through
the seed route, and you know, if we figure out how to propagate
these and have you know, insane numbers that we could take back and put
into the wild, and once those populations in the wild are stable, you
know, once we're able to save some land and save that habitat, then
yeah, who cares if Joe Blow and Austin wants to have one of these
in the hanging pot in their backyard. Yeah, you should plant them at
thorn scrub. But we I don't know if we have any sand. I
guess we do, but it's not the it's not like the sand that prostrata,
yeah, grows, and it's more like anyway, that's a weird.
That's such a weird milk weed do Like I wonder, I don't think it
evolved. I think it was just prostrate because it could be. I don't
know if there was necessarily an adaptive benefit in doing that, but it just
grew. I mean, you look at most of the Rio Grand Valley around
here before all these invasive grasses, it was barren, like there were barren,
just barren soil areas because it was so hot, I think, and
they would the dry season would be so long because I think it's smothered so
easily. Like that's the concern you know, someone would have in a garden
is trying to keep things away from it, you know what I mean hanging
baskets and I yeah, actually that could work. You could do a hanging
basket, you know, maybe put some little you know, ornamental stuff from
the Home Depot garden center in there and put it on petunias. Now there's
got to be a yeah, I guess pots is the best way to do
it, like tall pots, you know, yeah, and there they can
be finicky. I know Adam Black, you know the ones he uh he
got from us a long time ago. Uh, he's growing North Carolina and
you put him in one of those crevice gardens and they're doing really quite well.
So there's ways around it. Adam would be the type to create a
creviced but yeah, there's other ways, Like we have some in the garden
at San Antonio and we have to keep it weeded because, yeah, it
gets overrun and it gets overrun by another endangered species, the ambrosia, which
we planted. Oh yeah, that thing is that? Why is that going
on? That's weird. It's just habitat loss. So habitat loss, probably
a little bit of drought, but it's it's so vigorous in cultivation Ambrosia Kayani.
Yeah, and it makes a great groundcover. It's got really nice color
as well. But so that that is Scleppius is interesting because when I was
working for the Wildflower Center and I was down here working quite a bit in
South Texas for four or five years, and I never saw it. And
so when I started working for San Antonio in twenty seventeen, I that was
like, that was one of our target species. It's one of the cp
Center for Plant Conservation plants that we have under our charge at San Antonio,
and so I wanted to find it. And so eventually I had known about
some populations on some private land, but having access to roadside populations or public
or populations where it's very easy just to dry by and you can see whether
or not it's there or not and just keep on driving. So that was
that first year that I ever saw flower found it and then at that point
public it was public or it was on it was on both both sides,
and it was just one of those things that at that point then like we
knew that it was up, it was doing well, and so then we're
able to check on some of these private land populations. But due to you
know, this is late March, early April. Up it's some flower.
There was some decent rain here and then drought hits no more rain, and
those things go dormant. And so it took about five years essentially for us
to go from you know, finding some good populations in the wild, to
start monitor room, to finally collecting some seed and finally getting mature plants,
getting seed of frustration and then propagating that seed. And we tried it at
work. There were a couple of people there and this was before I was
there full time that propagated and like I said, it was pretty easy to
germinate, but to get it beyond that ceiling stage was a little difficult.
They kept damping off really wow and sorry. Ken King had introduced me to
someone down here that knew a lot about growing milkweeds, so he grew some
out for us. He grew them in like a vermiculate and native soil mix.
His soil mix is crazy, and at that point like, okay,
cool, now we have we have I think we ended up with like one
hundred and fifty or one hundred and forty around there a little ceilings that were
well rooted out and gave some to Adam for his creb is goodness. Yes,
and at that point, you know, that was kind of like almost
right at five years from you know, finding it in the wild. And
so that's the story, like to tell people like it's not as easy as
just going out and like, oh, we're gonna collect some season. Man,
can you imagine coming I've met I've seen people that were like milkweed fanatics
that came down or to see that and drove this long ass way because this
is way the fuck down here and it just wasn't up or was like just
a few leaves. Man, that was such a mythical plant to me when
I first saw like it took me a year and a half the first time
I saw leaves and then I saw buds, but they weren't open yet on
the flowers. And that's the thing, Like you're assessed about a genus,
you want to see all the different species and you want to see that variation,
like what this species evolved with, like what evolution did with this certain
lineage, you know, and that was had a huge flower. Yeah,
and I was like, I just want to see the fucking flowers. And
and then I went to Western Australia, like I missed. I was there
like two days later. I was going to Western Australia film stuff and I
was and the flowers didn't open. I was like, fuck, I'm gonna
miss it. And I came back and sure enough, like it had already
flowered and they were already done. I was so bummed and that no,
you know what. I came back in the road got graded. Yeah,
they like it was a good time to grade this road even though we don't
really need into and uh god, I was so bummed. I was just
like I didn't know, and I didn't know, like, oh, the
tubers are probably fine. It's just you just fuck them for you know,
they're not going to produce seed or anything. But but I wonder like that,
like when you guys grow it, do you guys let it go dormant?
Then that the sleepiest strata do you let it go dormant? Or because
I've had I've got two on the ground here and they just stay up.
Yeah, like I water them. If I don't water them, they dry
out. Yeah, if they have water, they'll be fine. Sometimes they'll
go dormant. It really depends. We have the ones in the garden and
the garden our dormant. The ones in pots and in the back of the
house they're still up because they get watered every day. So it just really
depends what's the best. I don't know if they like the native soil here
too much unless they can get watered a lot. Yeah, so we they're
at work, you know, there's there's a watering schedule that we have some
of the things like we're learning, like what do these things need because they're
getting watered as much as everything else around them. But when that heat came
out, you know, they just they just went dormant. Yeah, that's
that was really cool. And then the other like really there was like two
years ago, two and a half years ago. So that population and we're
not going to tell you where it is. People can figure that on their
own. That population is really widespread. It branches out onto all those private
properties. I can't tell you how many hundreds of plants I've counted. It
was on the property that we were going to initially buy for thorn scrub,
and so it's it's pretty big, pretty widespread. And one of the sites
that we went to. As we pulled up, there were two tarantula hawks
working. There was about a dozen plants though, and they were just like
walking. You know. God, I love those things. The cruising around
was that when you got that wonderful money shot. Yeah, pollinating it.
Yeah, yeah, So we were able to get some photos of the Pollennia
on the on the legs of this one of its main pollinators, because it's
got to be it's got whatever plinates that has to be big enough, you
know, because it's got to be without getting the legs stuck in the stigmatics
or I mean, butterflies. I can't think of anything. I guess butterflies
could. Yeah, but yeah, the whole thing of it is just being
prostrate. I mean it had to have like no competition. Well that's the
thing. It needs water. But then if you water it, then all
the other stuff around it grows up and it shades that because they're like kind
of shade and tolerant, Like I've seen them growing on the margin of a
road in shade. Yeah, the leaves get huge and they look you know,
they look like they're trying to collect more light. God, it's such
a cool plant. But that's a that's a great case. I mean,
there's so many species like that that are just so rare, and it would
be great if more people were propagating them and someone cracked the code. How
do you get the seed to germinate? What does it need? How do
you get it to thrive? And then you just ship to produce a shit
and a seedy and then I mean it's not it's not a band aid.
I mean, that's all it is. It's a band aid for the fact
that habitat is all getting crushed, you know. Yeah, But then what's
I would argue, what's the point of you know, one hundred people here
in the state of Texas having a y scleppias prostrate in their backyard if we're
not doing anything to protect the habitaty you need both. It cures the spiritual
wound of you know, it makes me want to puke a little bit less
when I have to go drive past you know, a billboard that says millions
with a personal injury attorney and his shit eating grin on it. You know,
this is like the personal injury thing. I really rate that when you
see that many billboards for ambulance chasers. I really rate that it's like a
gauge for the cultural zeitgeist of wherever you are. You know, well,
you can tell how low the culture has gone. God, it's depressing anyway.
What are some other rare plants you tell us? Okay, let's talk
about the quircus? The quirkus? How did you find that that was that
was kind of known to already be in that region or was the last place
that was collected in big Ben? First off, tell everybody about the oak.
Tell us about it. So quirks tartefolia, that's the lately folk.
It was sort of this plant, this tree that Mueller had named, discovered
and name back in the thirties, I believe, And it was never there
were never a lot of the Apparently he only found the few or one or
five or something. I'm sure exactly how many. But by the end of
the two thousands are beginning of the two thousands, there is essentially just one
tree known as my understanding, and that was up in Boot Canyon in big
Ben National Park. And when I was there in twenty eleven, i'd been
asked to go take a look at it, and I couldn't find it,
and apparently it was supposedly really close to the cabin there. We never found
it. And then you know, sort of fast forward a little bit later,
this work that Morton Arboretam's doing. There's guy up there by the name
of Andrew Hip. He's doing some work with oaks throughout the United States,
northern Mexico, and this was sort of this larger red oak project. And
Adam Black we mentioned earlier, he was heavily involved. And we were out
collecting different oaks, red oaks throughout its range to sort of determine, you
know, what are we actually looking at here? Are we looking at five
species? Are we looking at seven? Or are we looking at three?
And this was the one that no one's seen in you know, ten years,
fifteen years, whatever it's been. And so it's presumed because there was
only one known and it wasn't there. It was presumed extinct at that point,
and so we put together a group of folks, nine people went out
there to look for it, sort of systematic survey of the area that we
thought where it would occur. You were sweep, you were doing a sweep
right like the same way they do for a body with the exactly exactly.
Uh, And then we ended up finding a small plant about six foot tall
that that definitely looked like tartifolia. And then we found that larger plant later
that day or yeah, I think it was later that day, which was
that mature plant that everyone sees that photo of. Since then, it appears
that some other folks, I'm not sure if I can mention their names here,
some other folks have found some plants on some private land. They got
warrants or something I don't know, can yeah, they can assume me Kelsey
Wogan and Robinson Sudan and they were out on some private land. There's a
very there's a private landowner out there that's really into the plants that he has
on his property. And they started finding some things that definitely appear to be
quirk as tartifolia, and then a lot more than what we were seeing in
the cheeseos. Uh. So we're pretty excited about that because that may mean
that, you know, if if we're finding many, many more in the
Davis Mountains versus the Cheesos Mountains, then maybe like that center of population was
further north and not down, then cheeseos still a relic species are we say
it's a species we don't know. I'm sure once all the molecular data comes
out. Yeah, I was gonna say with oaks, they're so you know,
typically plastic. There's you know, it's so hard to tell. I
mean, what do you because you know the same plant and have different leaves
like younger leaves and older broaderly depending on that tree it's located and that's where
that and this is. You know, these are definitely people much smarter than
me when it comes to to the genetic works with all the oaks and everything
else. But yeah, they're oaks can be very plastic, and they're leaf
morphology and again, like you mentioned, whether it's the you know, upper
tree, upper leaves that are full sun maybe smaller and more reduced than the
ones that are further down or in shade, and then the new leaves that
come out, and then you can, like within a population, you'll see
variability. And so that's why they we were collecting leaf samples of basically every
red oak species we could come across in West Texas throughout its range, and
then get that out there. Then what we would you know, this is
what we're calling it in the wild whether it would be quirkus, you know,
Buckley eye would collected from the from the western side of the Buckley's range,
or Gravesy eye. We collected Gravesy eye from the cheeseos from the Davis
and also from the Glass Mountains. And so seeing you know, they'll they'll
be able to see what is a true species, what matches up versus what
doesn't. I've gotten so loose with my concept of species. The more I
see plants and travel and stuff, I'm like, oh, there's eco types.
There's but yeah, I mean we try, yeah, like we like
to make sure things are in tight little boxes. Right, it doesn't work
like that. There's populations, there's eco types, there's no Sometimes there's environmental
factors can can have an effect on what a plant looks like, right,
And distributions have shifted, so maybe they weren't as isolated even ten thousand years
ago there was more gene sharing whatever. But uh, anyway, but but
Hinkley eye is another cool one that's super rare too, right, it's just
the one from the Solitario And then there's maybe a couple other populations and Mexico
and the ones like when you see them in situ Corcus hinkley, either like
three or four feet tall or like little shrubs, but then they turn into
small trees. You got a bunch of those at San Antonio too, right,
Yeah, I think we have. Yeah, we have six at San
six historic collections at San Antonio, and historic just means they've been there before
I was there. And so those are you can if anyone's in San Antonio.
Those are right out in front of the Admin building and they're about twenty
feet tall. So in cultivation they become these really small or really beautiful smaller
trees about like twenty feet boothy blue leaves. Yeah, and it's really cool
and they are They do sucker quite a bit, so that is or can
be an issue for some people, but that sort of benefits us because we
go out and we collect those those root suckers and we propagated at work.
Are they easy to do? From cutting? You just gotta get You just
got to know what density of tissue to basically get how much when you dig
down and you start to pull that out, you'll see like you'll start to
see those fine root hair is coming off and at that point, like you've
gotten enough with that root tissue to bring up. We put it on a
misbench and rooting hormone and what mixed you use for us for meculate really just
for meiculate. Wow. And then it leaving on there for about a month
or so, and then you'll start to see, you know, not all
of them will probably have if we do it right, usually you'll have about
you know, seventy percent success. Right, and they behave the same as
trees, Like they don't grow all weird and shrubby or the same as trees.
I mean, think about the live oaks if you're driving around right and
you'll see almost like a ring of live oaks, and those are probably suckers
from an older tree that died. Oh yeah, I just saw that.
That's what the Hinkley is doing. I just saw them Guanajuato with it was
either Quircus jonesy eye or potasina, but it was you know, it was
like fifteen stems growing in a circle. Yeah, that's all one tree.
You're like, this must have been like they're in the placescen. This was
probably a huge tree, not huge, but much bigger than you know,
three four inches diameter of stem and uh yeah, it's yeah, I got
it. The oaks are so cool, man, They're wild. This is
the most diverse region forum from here south to Mexico. Yeah. I think
Mexico has one hundred and ninety species United States and I believe way Mexico's how
many speed hundred ninety. Yeah, Mexico's got way more diversity, but still
Mexico's the highest highest diversity of the oaks. Uh, United States to be
next with with most of that diversity in the Southwest. Yeah. So these
little sky islands and stuff. So does the Hinkley eye you get Does that
put out acorns in San Antonio? Yeah, the ones that they will,
but they're probably they could be hybrids. They are definitely hybridizing, and I
know one of them is definitely hybridizing with polymorpha. God damn it. I
think it's polymorpha. Anyway, it's ended up with these really large leaves.
You can't be sure. So that's why the cloning. Yeah, that's why
the cloning is good, pulling, you know, doing him from the roots.
But Hinckley is also in the Davis Mountains too. No, No,
it's just uh Solitario big beIN Ranch State Park. It's there's a couple of
populations outside of Shafter, and I don't know of any in Mexico. I
didn't know that there were any, but uh yeah, and the wild it's
three feet tall, four feet tall maybe, yeah, And it's just growing
on top of this barren Limes sky island in the desert. This is barren
limestone. You know, it's mixed in with so tall Lechugia Okatillo, uh
Euphooria ento Cyphalitica. It's like south facing harsh. I mean it's rough.
I mean that's that's you don't I don't know if anyone's seen any recruitment from
seedling recruitment out there. Do you see acorns out there? Have you ever
been out there and seen acorns? Oh? My god? Yeah. A
few years ago, again working with Adam Black, we were out on some
one of the private land populations and we collected acorns. So one there's one
plant in at San Antonio that we have that we grew out from one of
those acorns. That's in our collection. Now, Jesus, what the rest
didn't survive or what? No? No, no, just one one in
the collection. The other six or so or historic, I we don't know,
exactly right. Yeah, so this one we have GPS coordinates exactly where
they came from. The rest of those were distributed to other organizations. Why
are so many Why are so many private landowners in Texas hesitant to do work?
I mean, obviously there's a lot that are willing, and you could
test the testament to that, but there's a lot that are. It seems
like there's kind of an anti conservation slant, like people are afraid. There's
this myth and Powell talks about this all the time. There's this myth that
if if, well, if they find an endangered species on my land,
they're gonna come take it, or they're gonna tell me what I can and
can't do, which this is Texas of course, like the plants have no
right, they don't give a shit. But well, landowner rights sort of
almost trump anything else unless you know it's imminent domain, right, and then
at that point, yeah, that really sucks for them, But it's I
think you're right. Part of it is sort of this old old thought that
the government will come and dictate what they're going to do with their land,
or or Joe Biden self is going to come and take everything away. From
you and your kids. He's going to take your kids. Yeah, right,
but that's to my knowledge, that's never happened. Most landowners that I
work with, you know, when they find out they have something rare or
unusual on their property, they're pretty happy. Yeah. The first question,
honestly is like, well, what can I do to protect it? And
at that point I just say, well, whatever you're doing has worked so
far. The only main thing is, you know, if you really wanted
to fence off this area from cattle, that would probably be the biggest threat.
Yeah, but generally speaking, there's not much else. If the plans
is already there, it's thriving, it's doing the thing that it's supposed to
be doing, then there's not much else they can do to help it.
Yeah, but I do know that some landowners are they don't want the information
out to the public. Like they're happy to have people come out and do
some work, but they don't want this information to be widely available. And
in the past I used to think, you know, like I don't know
why they don't want that, But now it's trespassing. They're worried about people
trying to like sneak on there and that's become an issue, especially in West
Texas with the cactus and other people. You know, they come from another
state. They don't realize that, you know, the fences are there for
a reason, and they think, oh, we can just you know,
hop the fence and you know, go do whatever you want to do.
And the vast majority of people I would imagine that have been caught trespassing in
West Texas, you know, they weren't specifically looking for anything. They were
probably out just hiking, you know, wanting to go someplaces. They just
want to go enjoy the land. Yeah, but there are there are folks
that have been caught, like they've been out looking for a certain species of
plant or trying to find some certain type of rock, you know, looking
for that sort of thing. So you have to order Native American artifacts.
That's another thing that And I get that because you don't want because generally,
if generally speaking, folks that are gonna make that huge effort to plan a
trip to get out there, you know, they may not be fully respectful
of the land. No, I get, I get it. I mean,
obviously you and I disagree on the ethic and the ethics of whether private
property should exist or not, but there's certainly cons into that extent, you
know, and not even well, it's there's a lot of nuance there.
Like if I owned a large plot of land, then I caught someone trespassing,
I would certainly go out there with a firearm, maybe make sure it's
not loaded. Well, now, I would probably whatever, you know what
I mean, I didn't. I'd come off hard at first, but then
just interrogate them. They're just out there looking at plants, and I'd like
ease them up and invite them back into the house for coffee and shit whatever,
you know. But I would certainly want to vet make sure it's not
some dipshit, you know, it's poaching or hunting illegally or doing whatever.
But but yeah, I mean there's there's just it's a double it's it's I
don't know, there's you can go both ways because I think there's in some
ways that up preserving things. Because I've seen public land get trashed obviously,
like we all have. Like you go to New New Mexico, Arizona,
California, places where there's large tracks of BLM land, public land, stuff
gets trashed. But then at the same time, like there's that just you
know, you want people to be able to access it. You want,
like what it's all up to the to the whims of the landowner. Like
they can if they leave it alone, if they've got a rare plant on
their property and they leave it alone, they can be conserving it. That's
good for the plant. But then if they, you know, find out
it's worth money, they can go, you know, like they've done with
okatillo in spots in West Texas. You know, tell me about that.
You told me about that once you walked you drove by and some dude was
just unloading okatio from his property or sold it to someone who was you know,
taking it to go plant and tracked houses in Phoenix or something. Right,
So this I mean as a private landowner you can do I mean this
is you can do whatever it is you want with your property. And I
get it, you know, the trying to keep your land hole essentially,
you know, without having to sell it off or you know, things have
changed. You probably can't ranch cattle or whatever it is that that you know
someone would have would have raised, you know, a generation or two ago.
That's probably becoming more and more difficult as we're facing droughts, and there's
been overgrazing, all the other all these other factors come into play, and
so some some landowners will like sell you know the okato or the yuko or
whatever it may be. And if if that is, you know, if
that's a way to keep that that property intact, then you know that's that's
their choice. But I will say when I see a truck with okatillo and
there's accounted them once and it was like ten by ten high and there were
six stacks, I think so quite a lot, you know on a truck
trailer man, that's I think dumb more of it because they were they were
crisscross. I bet a quarter of those made it, and they ship them
out to Arizona or New Mexico and they sell them. I don't know how
much they sell them for. But you know, as a landowner, that's
you're right. But there's also those folks that just go out and they do
it like on their own and a lot of those properties, and this is
no secret in West Texas are owned by people that don't live there. They're
another country, another state wherever. Well they but did they lease it to
these people? You're saying this is a legal Oh well, some sometimes they
probably Sometimes some of these folks do get permission to go out and remove these
plants. Other times it's like, you know, oh well, I'm on
one hundred thousand acres, Like who the hell is going to know if I'm
you know, harvesting okatillo from this twenty acre side, No one's going to
know. And so there is a lot of poaching that you think, so
though, I mean, oh yeah, large like that like such a ballsy
thing to do in Texas because private property is such a sacrament. Here a
lot and a lot of those places there's something but everyone's fucking armed. Like
I think that takes some balls to do, man, because you're I mean,
think about the density of people out there. I mean you go down
one of those ranch roads. I mean you can go down like Chesepa Road
and you could drive that hole what's seventy something miles or whatever it is and
not see a single Yeah, but people are so on it, man,
you don't know if there's some guy a block a city block in like a
city block's distance in behind the brush, who's listening and here's an engine and
was like oh shit, and gets his gun and then I've had that happen
to me before. When I was I thought I was on a public road.
This was near a Sirah Blanca, and and this guy came out.
We drove by the house. I didn't even think anything of it, and
this dude came out and he was packing heat and he had his redneck friend
standing on the back of this flatbed with their dog. They were already they
were like cosplaying. They were fucking straight deliverance. We're gonna go get him.
We're gonna get him, you know. And and it was like,
oh shit, yeah right, you know, I just I think it's such
a risk here. I think I think in some ways that works well.
Like people are always like, that's something people say about why, you know,
well, when we legalized if we decriminalized payote, landowners would be selling
it then, you know, decriminalized so that people could grow it in other
states, you know, as a form of conservation, like what we're talking
about for like they should be doing for every plant, whether it's astrophytom or
you know, Walker's manhut or whatever. And people are always like, well,
if if we did that, then landowners would be or people would just
be coming here to poach and I'm like, man, that's I don't think
so like because the stuff around private property in the state is so insane.
It's such a religion. I don't think people from other states understand it.
It definitely happens. I'm sure it does, but I don't think. I
don't think as much as you know the it's probably with okatillo. It is
probably not the primary way that that they're acquiring those, because it does take
a little bit of work that seems like it sucks. But they're like a
sledge and ship. But with cactus, uh, you know, astro or
aerocarpus or any of the kind of serious Yeah, I mean that stuff people.
I mean I hear stories all the time of people in BigMan National Park.
You know, they're out and they're just like, oh, well,
I'm gonna take a little bit of the park back with me. You know,
it dies a slow death in a pod on a back porch. That's
such a dick move. You take an aerocarpus back to like Austin with you
and it just slowly and then people ask you about it, and the excuse
is always I saved it, I rescued it. It was gonna get it.
It was going to get demolished to build a road. Yeah, and
that's yeah, it's slow death out there. So when people do that.
The funny one I like is when of the uh yeah, the purple prickly
pair that you see out in West Texas. Yeah, and like they're just
oh, there's taking a couple of pads. But then they you know that
purple is from stress, and you know, they take it back to Austin,
Dallas, h And and they put in a pot and it greens up.
Now you've just got this really mean spiny plant that was I had a
little cylinder puncha. It was an a Punthia from the Dominican Republic. I
forget what species it was. It's not my I naturalists, but it was
the meanest thing. And I said, this little pet because those things break
off readily, you know. And there was one that had fallen in my
camera bag. I mean I was at one point I was covered my arm
was covered in these things because like you there's thickets of them. And I
was going to look at the stino serious and so I was like, I
fuck, I'll propagate it. So I put it in soil and the thing
took off and then I within like a month, I immediately regretted it.
It was fucking everywhere. It's like, it's one of the mean it's got
barbed spines, it's one of the meanest. Which which genus? I think
it was a Punthia, but it behaves like a Choia. It's an actual
Opunthia, but it's got barbed spines. Yeah, it was one of its
cylindro Puntia or a Punthia. But this thing was a motherfucker man. It
was. You can tell this thing evolved with some really yeah. I mean,
I don't see people bringing back animals Brysonia. Right, So there are
some beautiful grows Sonia's out there right off of that stretch of it ten west
of Phoenix. There's like a spy you hit and you look to the south
of the highway and there's just all these cool little clumps of this larger grows
Sonia species. All right, I'm gonna go pee in the yard and then
we're gonna talk about I want to ask you about Edwards Plateau. Okay,
I'm big. That was nice. This this rain we got down here is
so good. Everything's taken off. Okay, So okay, Well, following
up on the private landowner thing, and I noticed, I mean for you
especially, it's really important and it is entirely understandable to maintain good relationships with
landowners and not piss them off, and especially the ones that are on the
side of conservation, to not piss them off, like to keep them,
you know, on your side, so that they can continue protecting these plants
and working with you and sharing data and allowing you access. So let's talk
about because there's a thing obviously, I mean people share GPS points all the
time. I'm an organizations, I mean individuals do. But then organizations especially
will need collection data for a you know, for to put to put with
a certain AC session that they have in their garden or whatever. But uh,
fucking put my stickers. I got a d D man, I'm distracting
the dogs pacing around. You're droning anyway, Yeah, I got I'm good.
Good video games. Let's go. Well it's TikTok so okay. So
anyway, the point is you got to maintain good relations with these landowners.
You get really protective about locations I I do. I mean I obscure everything
on IAC because I don't want people going to my spots unless I know them.
But what's your take on that, I'm just protecting location info? Yeah,
protecting it, Yes, that is that it is something so one one.
I think one of the ways I have been able to sort of keep
those relationships for a long time is I don't just you know, like,
oh, I've found this plant and then here it is, and I give
out that information to everyone. Now, if I go back fifteen or twenty
years when I was at the Wildflower Center, we recorded GPS on everything we
collected, right, so all those voucher specimens when I was working for the
seed Bank project. But at that time, there wasn't an I Naturalist or
Facebook or any of this other stuff to where you could very quickly, you
know, post GPS coordinates and share that you were always hating an I naturalist
and I it's it's not just finaturalists now, it's and this gets back to
this sort of realization that I had later on with those landowners. You know,
back then, you know, they were like, oh, yeah,
sure, come out and do this, you can collect, And now I
feel like we have to also say, hey, what do you want us
to do with the GPS coordinates. You know, like I'm perfectly happy saying
we collected this plant from you know, let's say southeastern Bear County, right,
do not have to have the GPS coordinate. It's like like as far
as like conservation produce, but on an organization, I mean you're saying guarding
it be I mean, is it is it going to be publicly accessible?
Like guarding that data? No? But so why not? But here's the
thing, Like if you if you have that relationship with the landowner, and
that landowner is giving giving me personally permission to come out there, right,
and then all of a sudden, I take that information and here I've shared
it, like the plant part. They're okay with the GPS coordinates or location
data, name of the the landowner, all that sort of stuff. They
a lot of landowners are like this. They don't want any of their name
attached. They don't want any other information. It's good to put this in
a pockast because a lot of people don't know how fucking weird and situation.
It's not that they're being like super sketchy or anything. They just they don't
want that recognition. No, I don't fault them for it. I mean,
I think it's weird, but I don't fault them for it. I
get it. It's Texas, has is. Texas is almost its own country.
Man, this was like the Republic of Texas. That ship drips through
every facet of life in this state. Well, on their side, it's
not. The private property thing is just so foreign to me. It's not
that they're it's just that they they don't want that that potential follow up.
No, I get it. I get it, like, oh, hey,
we heard that you had this on your property, and I'm a grand
and then they're like, who the fuck are you? I don't know exactly,
and so then they have random votes start calling them up and they're like
or approaching them about something, and they get a little weirded out. Well
that's because people are so nice here on the surface. You know. Me,
someone calls me and I don't want them. I down the fuck off
politely, but I tell them no. But you know, I think,
yeah, I think people. I get it. I get it. People
are what's the word insular, and so thank you. You know, I
get pro to these mail of proptisms. You know, I'm like mayor daily
to first, you know, I but that's that I and I get it
because there there's properties that I have access to now uh in the hill country,
and some of them are along county roads, no fences, and if
if I put that information out to the public, and these are areas that
are really pretty, I mean they're you don't see trash, you don't see
lots of invasive species. It's I wouldn't say it's pristine, but it's it's
up there. You don't want Chad and Stacy out there taking selfise and drown
footage. Yeah, and you get people that because they're you know, did
they just start going out there and doing whatever it is they want next hundred
likes THEYD Yeah, exactly, doing it for likes. But but that it
sort of has on on through the garden. It can cause problems because other
institutions may require that GPS coordinate or location day. You got to say,
oops, I lost it all right, just saying that you're not getting it.
That's not how And it's like, well, you know, it's like
if you want the plant like, you'll get you know, like I said,
Southeast and they say, we're not inviting you to our fundraiser the next
season. So thank you, Michael Easton. Now it's protecting those relationships and
it's protecting the landowner. And there are some landowners that don't care. There
are some landowners out there that are perfectly willing to have that information out there,
and they don't you know, they don't care. But others are a
little bit more reserve. I get it. Well, I mean that property.
I was at that property on the Edwards Plateau. Hint, this is
a good segue into talking about that that ecoregion. But I was at that
that property in the Edwards Plateau and it was you know, I don't even
know the status. It's owned by millionaires. They're doing some locally sourced bed
and breakfast. I don't know what it is, but it's a fucking phenomenal
piece of property. And it was I know the history of that, you
know what Parson I'm talking about, And I don't know what the history was.
It was they it was originally grazed by the previous owners and probably somewhat
disturbed but not too much, and they're kind of restoring it and just just
the wealth of diversity, of plant diversity. Yeah. I was just being
there and you're like, god, man, this is you can get an
idea of what Texas may have looked like even one hundred years ago, you
know, yeah, before the BUCkies and the Dollar General and the Walmart and
yeah, autun Zone. So what's funny about that property is adjacent to it
is an old shooting range that when I was like ten years old, like
and this was like the sticks outside of Austin. That's where we'd go inside
in our guns before you grew up in Austin. Right outside of Austin,
not too far away from that property. Wow, So it's kind of funny.
Like I was trying, I was like, this is where that shooting
range was. Yeah, some old military guy out there. But anyway,
yeah, Edwards Plateau, Wait wait, wait, hold on, can we
talk about this property because I'm just I want to marinate in the the loveliness
of having been there. I mean that is like, that's like an experience
I remember forever, like just seeing that this you know, this this hill
country with the limestone that's eroding, and then we're roading and weathering, and
then there's probably caves everywhere beneath it. There's those sinkholes what do you call
those snothees or something, and then there's Taxodium ucrenadum everywhere in those little ravines,
like these little cypress woodlands, and down in the ravines is like a
little you know, there's all these paleo relics, like it's like a little
refuge for plant species and a number of them that you see from further east,
from more music areas. And that's what's still cool about Edwards Plateau is
like it's right where the continent starts to dry out as you move west.
And also because the Edwards Plateau itself is little elevated to the west that drops
down, it gets super dry. You hit the Chiuahua Desert to the east,
it's more music, woodland, all the black land, prairie stuff.
It's you know, you get there's so many endemics. Like how many endemics
are there that just grow on Edwards Plateau. I have no idea. A
lot a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of endemics there. Yeah,
that site when you and this is one thing and I get what you're saying,
like it's something that sticks with you for a long time. And I
think a lot of people here in the state of Texas, you know,
you think, oh, I've got to go to I don't know, China
or Africa or South America to see something special. No, you're in Austin.
You can drive forty five minutes outside of Austin and see some of like
the most some of the coolest plant life and sort of habitats that you'll see.
People don't know how to appreciate where they are. I was on a
podcast, some guy in Australia's podcast a few days ago, and I was
telling he was asking me about cac Diane. I'm like, man, fuck
cactie. You're in Australia. You got all this, you got King of
Australia's you got xanthoria, you got all these cool carnivorous plants. You got
the trigger plants, the stylidiums like you got prote ac. Fuck me,
you got so much cool stuff over there. You can go see giant ancient
bunya quote pines. They're not true pines in Queensland, like you got Why
are you worried about cacti? Like I get I get it, I get
part of it is. But but for folks to think he was cool,
I'm not knocking them. I'm just folks to think like like that. I
think the vast majority of people that live along that I thirty five corridor like
have no clue, like what amazing habitats and plants that we add. It's
so cool in central Texas. It's so incredible, and that's it, Like
people from around the world want to come here to see what we have.
I mean, you live in Austin. You live in a region where there's
dozens upon dozens of plant species that don't grow anywhere else in the world.
That's phenomenal, man, Like they've evolved to that specific set of conditions on
this chunk of uplifted Cretaceous limestone that is bordered by a very dry desert to
the west and like a wetter more humid area to the east. Yep.
Yeah, So that site and this that's you see lots of those, uh
throughout the whole country. It's that upper plateau, that sort of ridgeline and
then it drops down into a canyon and it could be a slow drop or
it could be a quick drop, like if there's that eroded limestone shelf that's
fallen in. Uh. But you get down in that that covered canyon with
those balls, with those cypresses, the monsoono cypresses that that sort of protect
everything below it from the sun. And you get down there, there's orchids,
there's ferns, there's the spice bush. You have borbonia. There's a
population of what is spice bush lindera lindera Yeah, and California spice bush is
kalakantus. And then it's what else do you have in there? I mean
the the asculus uh arisima arisima, and you have in that asculus and you
know it's if you go further east, you're hitting mostly red. If you
go further west, you're going to start to see yellow. And so in
that area you're starting to see the hybrids that happen between the yellow and the
red. What species is it? Uh, Pavia flabescence is yellow than Pavia
pavi is the red one? Wow? So what they're different varieties or something.
There's just basically ecotypes of different populations that. Yeah, And someone actually
pointed out a while back I posted on the yellow one that we've come across,
and and they're like, wow, that's so cool, Like you know,
what, what why do you think it's yellow and not red? But
but really the red is the oddball. If you start looking at all the
other sculess in North America, they're all yellow. So the red one we
have is the oddball. It's the hummer pollination. Yeah, but the yellow
one. Yeah, yellow ones definitely hummer. They both get hit. Yeah,
yeah, I don't know, but yeah, it's such a cool site.
Oh Burberus Swayze. True, God, that's a cool one. That's
such a weird yeah, Berbers Swayze eye. There's the I didn't see any
on that site, but other sites there's Clematis tex senses. As you get
over towards more Cerbill area, you start to see that Clematis tex senses quite
a bit. Although it's it's goes all the way Travis County. Let's see
what else. Just lost my train of thought with those with it's rare odd
balls. We were just some of those little canyons. How they act as
these you know, refugia for species that like it a little bit more wet,
a little bit more rainfall. The Agua Legia canadensis, the red Columbine,
you know that pocket. If you look at that map on bownap you'll
see, you know, seven or eight counties Central Texas only and then it's
like Arkansas, So somebody should go out there, because I'm sure that's probably
I remember seeing a similar spot in southeastern New Mexico near to Texas border,
where there's like a little canyon with like maples and madrones and everything. Everywhere
around that it's desert, but you drop into this canyon and you've got bearricorn.
It might be McKittrick. Yeah yeah, yeah so and also in those
canyons. This was in New Mexico. Is that in Guadeloupe. Yeah,
this wasn't in Guadala, but it's the same things some thing. Yeah.
Yeah, you got the big tooth maple, the we have that here in
central Texas. Yeah, they call them the lost maples, right yeah,
yeah. But the Arizona walnut's another one. You come across cuircas Meleanbergiana or
Bergie, the chickapano. What's the Arizona walnuts in that same spot we're talking
about west of Austin, right, Yeah. I don't know if it's there,
but it's in other cans. There was a jugg lunt, yeah there
was. Yeah, I remember seeing the jug lands. So yeah, you
have all these we call them relic species of when the area is probably much
wetter, much cooler, and you can see is like the is the place
is seen dried out, started to dry out. These things got stuck in
these little canyons. Yeah, so it's yeah, it's cool to see because
it is central Texas. You have that influence of Eastern species and the only
place that they can are still sort of hang out is in those canyons.
And then you have like some Western species that are coming in. You see
those up on sort of that plateau. But pretty amazing stuff. What's this
direx that that uh plants? I think in that region it's probably the variety
of plantannafolios. But there's Texana. I think that's a little bit further west
out towards Del Rio Uvalde area, maybe Bear County or what's the north of
Bear County Kimball uh and then Stillada that's further north, I believe, and
then Young Yea is west Texas in northern Mexico. Apparently what is what's one
of your favorite and I guess just one of the endemics that kind of fascinates
you the most. It's from the plateau, from it from the hill country,
from the hill country. Man that Clematis Texans's is pretty badass. Really,
What's what about it? It's just I mean just that red, that
deep red color, that or vibrant red color the flowers. Yeah, no,
ship, I don't even know. It's uh look it up on your
compute. Look it up. I'm looking at it. I'm looking I'm checking
it out. That's always a treat to see because when you find that,
you know that you're in an area. Uh. But another one, hell,
I mean the co tiness that we have. Oh yeah, that's another
one. Growing a ton of those, I don't know. We've we've got
a few going out the garden American smoke tree. Yeah. Another cool one
is to forest the area reticulata. We've got a rare one. It's not
rare, but it's uh hill country endemic, I believe it is. We've
got a couple of hundred coming up at the garden. Uh. So we're
hoping. Where was that? Look, I can't remember. I just spaced
out on the name this is. I know, I'm getting old. What
is it? Clematismatis text? Yeah, there we go, you know,
give me a break, Okay, I'm trying. Well, is this it's
still I got the filter from I get this out there. But yeah,
there's so many cool plants when you're out I mean there's the premiulague. God,
what the hell that's so weird. And the cool thing is you got
those photos taken up on the eastern side, you have the flowers that have
sort of this creamy center, and as you go further west it switches to
flowers that are all red. What is pollinating this? Is this hummingbirds or
fun bubble beads or really generally I know that the plants that I've had,
I mean they're in Alpine there were look at that. I look at the
map and it shows it. It's like shows it growing in Massachusetts. And
shit, come on, man, someone's got to curate this stuff. Those
are obviously not wrong. Yeah that's a beautiful. God, there's so there's
just so many cool nooks and crannies, and it's all because of that geology.
Like if it wasn't that cretaceous limestone or just limestone, there wouldn't be
all these little divots and places for things to hide and grow out of rock
walls. And also because of limestone and has a capillary action for water.
Damn that's cool. What about Amorfa morpha A marianna. I've never seen that
in a while. Damn. Really, I've seen it in one spot,
but eric Age is another one. Eric Knight took me out there. It
was yeah, big red sage Salvia pens them noities. That's got a that's
just a Edward's pletoandemic too. Yeah, that one's not long for this world,
I think, really why. I just think development is going to catch
up with it, you know. But how's it doing? Cultivation? It
does, okay, I mean it's I've known people that have had it in
their gardens and it seeds out in their garden. I've known other people,
including myself, who've had them in their garden and they last for about a
year or two and then they just totally crater. Yeah. I got a
friend in Austin who's growing a bunch of them. They just pop up in
his garden. It hates it down here. He gave me one and it
just doesn't. What is the Where does it grow on prairies or more so
along like sort of cliff faces or well we say that not really cliff faces,
but shelves areas that typically deer can't get to it probably was more widespread,
is my guess. It just slowly got eaten out. So what's going
on with the is the deer population kind of it's exploding down here and there's
nothing that really even hunters aren't can't keep them in check. I mean,
I hit one in January, thank god it was in a rental. I
still owe the dealership a few hundred dollars, which happy to say, I'm
not going to pay. But I had a height of duck? Is that
is that going to affect your credit rating if I gave a shit? But
no, I added to like the fifteen grand of medical death and I'm also,
god, this fuck, don't even get me started. See I just
I break into like a heat, like a heat sweat when I started thinking
about like a health American healthcare fucking pig sleeves bag corporation. Anyway, But
the deer thing is nuts, especially in the Austin area and in Edwards Plateau.
Why is that just all the protors have been wiped out? There's a
good I mean, people hunt here. Why is this? Well? But
around when you get around high areas of like higher population, I think I
use that term with you like synanthropic plants and animals, they've adapted to living
with us. And like where we live in San Antonio, any given day
we're going to see thirty plus deer wander through grazing. How there's a park
next to our house and we go on to walk in the park and one
one year we were out on one of our little hikes and I counted well
over one hundred deer. God, that's insane. So yeah, that's eventually,
you know, a disease is going to come through there and sort of
wipe them all out and they're going to die. But don't call them or
what I don't think so why not call them and turn them into veniceon or
something for give it to a food pantry. Yeah, but but you go
other places, you know, as those ranches were bought up and and sort
of divided, and so now you know, a thousand acres all of a
sudden became you know, a bunch of ten acre tracks or whatever. People
are like, oh, yeah, we'll get out there and hunt. But
the reality of the situation, people don't. You know, it's it's a
messy business. You know, people think, I this is my perception.
You know, they think, oh, we'll just you know, go shoot
some of the deer. It's like, you know, it's, yeah,
do you really want to go outside and in your backyard and shoot a deer
and then have to haul it up to field. It's gonna ship when you
dies too, and you know, explain to your children what you just did.
You know, I mean, I think I'm not against hunting against certainly
against eating factory farm meat. I think that's disgusting. Not only that,
but it causes as cancer. But we got to tell Adam that too,
because he's been eating a lot, I know, eased a lot of that
fast food stuff. But but hunting is you know, I think it's good
for the kids. I think, you know, yeah, I mean,
like I said, I grew up. I have no issues with hunting it
and we need more of it. You teach him to be grateful for what
they just killed. At least they pay respected animal and stuff. I would
think that because the insurance companies are paying out so much and probably hit deer
damages, that maybe they could figure out a way to Oh god, yeah,
I know, And that's not if you that's not you don't pay anything
for that either. If you've got the insurance for it. What is it
called? I don't know. If it's not collision, it's the other one
I forgot and even though there were two different things, it's collision cover,
incidental coverage, whatever the shit is when accident. Yeah, so anyway,
cut off the rails on that one. I don't know what it's called.
What is it? Oh, comprehensive? Yeah, well anyway, Yeah,
how much stuff I got rattling around inside my brain? A deer? Yeah,
the deer definitely an issue. It's yeah, there just needs to be
more hunting. I mean, you go out, even on properties that I
have access to. You know a lot of a lot of ranchers or landowners,
you know, they there's just not enough people out there hunting, or
they don't know enough people out there hunting to to have a decent enough impact.
And then you know, the other thing is a lot of landowners like
they don't want to necessarily have to deal with people they don't know coming out
on their property. It gets back to that point of like, you know,
are you going to be respectful of the property, do you know what
you're doing, or are you gonna assum you later on because you and your
buddy's got drunken flipped or jeep, you know that sort of thing. So
you have to be careful with that. And I get it, but they're
they're causing. I mean, the point is the deer are doing major damage
to somebody's plant population. Yeah, especially just can't especially areas. And then
you think, like where those where the big Red Sage is a couple of
populations that I know about. It's it's at that urban wildland interface. And
so as that as those houses and strip malls and everything else are coming further
and further out, you're pushing that that deer population, you know, further
to the edge. And then of course now we're we're those populations of big
Red Sages. You know, like there's a higher concentration of deer because you
have that interface, you don't have people hunting, and then you have and
they know they're safe too. No one's going to be discharging a firearm.
Yeah, close the house of a psychotic teenager with a bow and arrow,
you know, right, Yeah, well, thank god for the teenagers with
bow and arrows and the suburbs of Austin and San Antonio. Really quick,
if we could just switch we could just go ahead and switch gear theory real
quick. They'll finium carolina aum. I want to ask you about this,
what's up with that? The larkspur grows further east? But then you see
populations with white flowers here. Yeah, there's a handful of different How is
that not a different species? There are different varieties, Like one of them
is Carolinian caroliniana. It all looks so different. Some get four feet tall,
the ones on the Edwards Plateau limestone get a foot and a half.
I think, uh, the more that. So if you go back to
the big Red book you got out here on your shelf Carell and Johnson,
you know, you go through there and you start reading about some of these
these plants. So let's say either the larkspur or like the Aguilegia canadensis,
and it's like, you know, these isolated populations, you know, like
the witch hazel that we have in Central Texas isolated population And are they really
isolated populations or do they just not have the tools way back then to say
hey, this actually is a different species, right, And now I think
that there's more and more people coming out and saying, hey, these are
different species, and you're seeing a lot of that with like these wide range
plants, so plants that cover you know, half of North America or half
the United States. It's like, whoa, maybe these ones over here are
actually you know, isolated enough and have been and they are a different species.
But yeah, I think there's like three or four different varieties on that.
They look there's nothing like I'm so disappointed when I look up what it
could be and I'm like, it's just Carolinia andum really like, it's not
same thing with like the tax sodium here. It looks it looks nothing like
I mean, I guess to a novice it well, but it looks nothing
like the disticum from further reaves. Now it doesn't know the growth form there's
yeah, there's a lot of the habitat limestone. Cold water, yeah,
cold running water, creeks. It's versus swampy, acidic you know. It's
just it's like it's just a different kind of districum. That whole thing.
I mean, that's been like such a pet peeve. I mean, friends
of mine are probably tired he in me talk about it. But it's such
a pet peeve that that's just labeled as distacum and no one realizes this is
the northern end of a population that goes through the same kind of have that
same kind of geology all the way down into you know, Central Mexico,
Southern Mexico. Right. Yeah, I think more and more people are starting
to realize that and looking at those the Hill Country and the western western populations
and things like definitely mrcroaranadum or with mucrenadum jenes as you go further west,
So when you get over like Uvaldi area, Real County, and like you
just look at some of those and it's like, yeah, this is definitely
mucranadum. As you get further east in the Hill Country, like some of
us like probably go either way. Yeah, so I could see that it
could certainly be a grade. But why are you trying to put it in
the box. I mean, I'm not. I just it's pretty clear that
it's it's not disticum. But uh, yeah, no, it's not.
I think people are realizing that now. Uh, there's that information starting to
get out, and it takes time. You get some graduate student going to
work on it. Yeah, I'm surprised no one's done DNA sequencing on it.
Looking at you know, five or six different Geen regions or whatever,
you know, just trying to figure it out. Okay, moving right along
Lano. Let's talk about beautiful Lano. Okay. They got a nice public
square, they got the courthouse there, you know, and it's just a
wonderful spot to get arrested for public urination if you're out there at the right,
you know, during a county fair or something. Is that you say
you say Yano, No, it's Alanto. You should say you should pronounce
it yano. But I think for some reason, like look that up,
it's not actually a Spanish origin, So I think it's Lano and Yano.
Really, but there's two l's. Yeah, got that? Okay, Well
I was up there looking for Prudence tax say it because it's the northern as
of the range for Prudence Taxana. And that's a sporadic plan. I mean
it's and it's all like granitik stuff up there too, which of course is
odd for Texas because most of this region of Texas is limestone. But you've
got this old you know, pluton that basically bubbled up, didn't bubble up,
got uplifted. Why has no one grown prunas tax Ana and what other
cool I mean, I've seen a whole bunch of cool plant species up there.
It's like you see stuff from South Texas, but then you see all
this northern influence too in the composition of the flora. I don't know why.
I know you gave us some seed, so we're we're growing it.
I know there's some other folks growing it. These are more sort of your
smaller nurseries. But yeah, there's a lot of plants out there that should
be more widely available in the trade. Did it kind of serious freak in
Bakiya? I man, that thing is Yeah, there's the a sculess.
What's the other species? Are Glabra? I don't know the other one that's
up there, it's at Edward's Plateau or enchanted rock. Yeah, that's another
one that we should definitely be growing as a landscape tree. But yeah,
that Prunus texana. I know it typically likes sandier soil, so that may
be an issue with people. They need full sun and they get a big
ass tap route. Like I've had people because I've everyone I sent seed to,
right, it's free out of fights. But I was like anyone I
sent seed to and also no competition because it maxes out like three feet tall.
Hates competition, no shade, no cover around it. But I had
people send me seat because I was like, or send me pictures. I
was like, tell me your success with it. A bunch of people told
me, actually two or three told me that if they mechanically cracked the seed
code open, it germinated instantly rather than having to wait six or seven months
for it to rote away, which I just thought was like a warm stratification.
And then it sends down a roote like the top will be an inch
and a half tall and the root will be nine inches deep, which is
nuts too. So it's good to know. But it's all part of cracking
the code on some of these plants so that we can preserve them amidst the
death out of sprawl. Yeah, that's that's one of the things we're working
on at the garden is sort of recording all that information, like what what
we're doing to get some of these plants to germinate. For instance, amarexia.
Do you know that guy? Yeah, righty eye, Now it's cocklos
spermum or something. What'd you say? You know you are? Well,
I'm gonna go with amexia. Yeah it sounds nicer, It sounds nicer,
It sounds like love. Yeah yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's so I
collected seed a few years ago and we was told, oh, it's really
really difficult to germinate, like blah blah blah, you had to scarify it.
And I was like, well, let's just some germinate out here in
my friend let's just throw them out to see what happened. And we had
like eighty percent germination because insane. Now that was fresh seed. And then
the next year we germinated some more of that seed I had collected, so
it was about a year old, and we probably had less than ten percent
germination. So do you think it went at the dormant in the dormancy,
So if you're doing dormancy dormancy because it's these drought, these plants from arid
areas don't Yeah, so yeah, there's definitely an issue, like some sort
of dormancy issue that needs to be sort of cracked. If you're going to
be going out and collecting seed and you're you're holding that seed for several years,
that one's probably just a simple scarification, is my guess, because of
that hard seed coat probably Oh, like it hardens, it continues to Yeah,
it could be a mechanical dormancy, or there could be a mechanical and
a chemical dormancy going on. But I think you know, rolling that thing
through like a rock tumbler or gibberellic acid or something soaking it or sandpaper,
sandpaper, sandwiching it between two sheets of sandpaper, all sorts of things you
can do. The uh styres yuga that we grew, we had some very
very old seed at the garden twenty thirty years old that we tried and we
did scarification. We did the same thing with some sorex tech the Texan variety
and the young Yea variety. The young Gay variety was freshly caught or freshly
collected seed from my garden in Alpine, and we had nearly one hundred percent
germination on that one. Uh the Texana old seed again twenty easily two decades
old. We haven't had a single thing come up and it was the same.
So your seed's fresh. Yeah, that's the thing, that's what I
but but there's that also could have been storage issues with that seed, and
you know when was it collected. A lot of people. You know,
when you hear about people collecting seed and we're going to grow it, it's
like, you know, seeds are like this guy you have here on your
table, Yeah, senegalia. Yeah, like you probably you could probably grow
it out pretty quickly when it's fresh, but as it sort of sits for
a while, that dormancy's going to sit in. And then a lot of
people like, oh well just stick the seeds in a cabinet or in my
garage, in any place that's going to have like changes in humidity or changes
in temperature, you're going to age that seed. So like that seed of
that styrex that we had at the garden, it you know, it stored
in a building for a while, in a refrigerator, was probably in a
sealed container. It's probably pretty good. But then through all these changes that
happened at the garden, it went from one place to another, probably sat
outside for a while, ye got too hot, got put back into a
refrigerator, too cold, maybe pretty humid in there, absorbed some of that
water, and it just it causes that premature aging and it loses that viability.
Right, And these are well also, I think a lot of these
things are survival mechanisms for the seed that have been selected for over natural you
know, eons of natural selection. Yeah, but from a conservation point,
what what I want your listeners to know is that if you're collecting seed,
don't leave them in your car you're baking them. Uh, keep them cool
and dry, so upper cabinet, in a in a kitchen or someplace.
Don't expose them the sun. Keep them in paper envelopes generally, so you
don't get mold or any Do you think rainwater versus tap water affects them too,
because well, rainwater's definitely better, right because especially in plays with limestone,
the you know, total dissolved solids is like through the roof in some
of the fucking tap water. Yeah, rainwater is slightly acidic, so that's
gonna help break down that seat coat as well. So I should take my
little TDS meter and measure that there's all total particulates of rain. Bet it's
nothing compared to it's like five hundred out of the tap here, it's insane,
five hundred ppm. Okay. She and a call on text saying we'll
just do it just for another twenty minutes, then I'll let you go I
could see you fidgeting over there. All right, you think you're like a
ten year old and you know in English class, so we would normally do
this over the phone, and I just sit there and just I can do
whatever I want. Now you're staring be on zoom calls. I know what
you're doing on zoom calls. You're gonna be like one of these guys who
ends up in a New York Post. Have you grown China? Call on
text saying him, Yes, that's a fucking great plan. Why the fuck
that's another thing? Why is nobody growing that? It's I don't know,
is it tricky? Is it hard? It cos it's easy. It's fucking
I mean, it's amazingly easy, like the monicots. I'm so. I
just so folks have a little bit of my background, like I do not.
I did not go to school for growing plants. All this stuff is
self self taught. It wasn't until about two years ago that I started picking
this up. But I'd call and reach out to a bunch of friends of
minees that have grown plants for for years and years, decades, and they
give me some hints and honestly, like monicots, so all the agavees that
we've been able to grow, all the Yucka's we've been able to grow u
the feather shank who named it that no Lina. It's like all of those
things are so easy, Like they come up and like we'll put out a
flat and we'll have like one of those flats. God, we have the
two thousand come up. It was insane. It was not expected, it
didn't come up. But yeah, they're pretty. They're a little slow growing.
They have to form that little bulb first, but as far as germination
goes and then getting them out to four inch, they're perfectly fine. From
It's cool to see a member of that family here too, because that's that
family in Melantheece is like it's like the toxic lilies, Like it's in the
order of lily alies, but it's more of the toxic shit like the corn
lilies that you see in like Serra Nevada of California, the same one with
toxico scored. Yeah. Yeah, or it's like a Danis or whatever they're
calling it. Yeah, toxical, you know, the yeah, Like it's
the fital chemistry in that family is often pretty death chemists. You know,
it's like, Okay, we get it. Yeah, that one's cool.
H So we are growing that one too. There's the other one, Gills
Brecky Eye, which is the fall flowering one. I've always seen it a
couple of times. It was down by Alice, Texas, and there's or
up by Alice, Texas. From here, there's another one. Some other
populations seed, but they flower at different times of the year, and there's
slightly other differences as well. So God, it's yeah, man, there's
so much good stuff. What about it's DELINGI a Texana. Have you had
luck with those? We haven't grown any of those. I do have a
few u forbes. We're growing from cuttings and seed. You already know about
the Manahat Walkerway. We're also doing Manahat subspacata, which is from the Corpus
Corpus Christie area. There's limestone hills out there by Lake Corpus Christie. We've
had pretty decent success with it from cuttings, but now we have some seed
that we're going to propagate. And you're gonna think I'm crazy, but I'm
also doing the Ndosculis Texana. I love that. I love mean spiny plants
that can hurt you. So we'll be doing that one. So I would
imagine like the trick is just collecting that seed. That's another thing too,
Like that's a great plant. It smells really good. It's moth pollinated.
All moth polinated flowers smell kind of perfume me. But not too many people
want something that's gonna make you wrench and pain. There's sissies, but the
seeds are edible. The plant is edible too, if you cook that stuff
down. There's a species in the genus that you know for my food.
There's yeah, I can't whatever. We actually we're big the fooidge community.
No, there's a species that I will eat. Is grow here. You
can get at the pulga that gets like six feet tall. I just lost
mine and died in the freeze. But it doesn't have stingers on it.
But it's the one that's in it's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
we actually I think we have that one at the garden. I've heard it's
got oxalic acid. You don't want to eat Martin, my friend Martin Simonton,
he grows out. So what happens if you eat and is you get
a kidney stone. You're gonna have to pass the stone. Yeah, I
guess there's something. So what's your So the work you're doing with San Antonio
mainly focuses with sant Antona mainly focuses on collecting seeds and cuttings and propagating these
things that sit to because the habitat isn't safe and a lot in half the
cases for a rare plant. Maybe you don't want to put a cynical spin
like that, but I do. I think no, the habitat that's our
biggest threat. Habitat is we are the biggest threat to the plants out there.
It's not the deer. We are the cause of the deer popularly overpopulation.
It's not the hogs. We're the ones that brought them over. It's
not the China brier, We're the ones that brought it over. Not that
the havelinas are thriving down here because we eradicated all the yeah so so,
Yeah, it's habitat loss is by far the biggest threat to everything in most
cases here, at least around you know, South Texas, Central Texas,
when you get out the West Texas, it's you could make that argument habitat
loss due to you know, ranching, whether that was a sheet that was
done back in the fifties, or cattle what have you. Goats. Now,
it's odd ad big competition from those guys. But that's rare plant stuff.
But and that's all fine and dandy, like going out and collecting those
and bringing those back to the garden and putting them into the gardens so people
can see them. Uh, But what I really like doing is bringing in
those things like that amarexia or salviable lot of flora orfolio all these other plants
to try to get more of that stuff out into people's gardens. You guys
don't have salviable lot of flora growing, No, we do. We do,
but it's not something that's that's super common in nursery trade. Yeah,
Aloysia macrostakia from down here is pretty bad ass. And that's all these plants
in my yard. You want to say, I got a little salvious ceiling.
I was gonna plant we already. Okay, you're good, because I
was gonna plant it in my friend. I didn't really want to give it
to you. I just thought i'd offer it. Yeah, okay, no,
then I want it now. No, I'm not going to give it
to you can't have any Uh, get the fuck out of my house.
The other one is and this one, I know. There's the folks up
in Denver are growing it. But I'm surprised nobody here in Texas is it's
it's the Vernonia Larcinie. Oh my god, I know that thing's amazing.
I got my garden and al Patty Manning's growing by, but I need Yeah,
Patty has there's some folks in Denver. There's a handful of we We
grew it at San Antonio from some seed I collected last year. Did it
pop right in from sea? Oh? Yeah, we had hundreds of them
come up. God really, man, I collected a seed at that little
spot in Sanderson and I didn't if I'm offul of tough for Luca, you
guys have a bunch of those. That thing's well at San Antonio. I've
got in my yard. That's another thing that's just like, what the why
is nobody growing this? It does so well in cultivation. I got volunteers
coming up. It's dangers. It forms this cool perfect matt like. It
forms such a perfect niche in like a garden setting that you know, it
doesn't get tar and six inches spreads out. It looks really good up against
like a concrete walkway or something like. Yeah, it's nuts man, And
that I mean that large, uh, super rare. Yeah, that vernonia
is like how is that not in the nursery trade. It does. It's
drought tolerant. It's got that nice silver foliage that's purple flowers that come out
during the summer and fall, and it's you know, you cut it back
and you just wait another year. Yeah, I don't do anything to the
one for anybody listening. So Vernonia's normally got broad leaves, you know,
deep green broad leaves and more music eastern United States areas. But this is
a species. It's adapted to the Chihuahua desert limestone and so it grows in
these limestone washes and it's just narrow leaves, multiple stems covered in white wool
and then like vivid like magenta flowers. Yeah, when it goes off,
it is so cool, man. I would man, I would love to.
Yeah, that's wild. Do you what about diasporaus text in and you
see those like I wonder like why don't we replace all these shitty crape myrtles
with Diasporas taxtan just because they grow so slow or what. Oh, I
think people just have a liking for the crape myrtles. But yeah, it's
like they never knew that there was an option. Yeah, oh it has
pretty flowers because they got the same bark. Yeah, yeah, they smell
good when they blew them. They're edible. I don't know the but that's
the other argument you hear is people's like, well, you know, if
you get a female, they drop their fruits on the ground and there dicky.
But there are some nurseries that are growing Diasporus texanom We're we're not,
but some of the larger nurseries are growing those. They're you know, not
super easy to find in larger but you can get five gallons occasionally. Christy
Davis had a like foot diameter breast type one in her yard. It's just
so beautiful, man, it's so cool. He's growing a bunch of them
and they get like most of like growing up and then in Central Texas,
most of the ones I saw, you know, there were seven eight feet
tall mostly. Yeah, like there's some in San Antonio like fifteen twenty feet
easy. Yeah, that's I saw Santagela, Marianna and San Antonio is like
fifteen feet tall. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean that's I wasn't imagining
that right, Like they get that big. No, that thing smells incredible
when it goes off. Oh my god, you could smell it from twenty
feet away. Yeah, there's so many other one like the parkinsonia we're talking
about the Texano. I'm not sure how well cold tolerate that one. That's
another good one. You don't get diaspros Texan the east of Austin very much.
Huh, Grimes County, there's son Yeah, because it's a more arid
it's got fuzz on the leaves and the undersides of the leaves. It's a
more arid adapted. I've seen them growing out of limestone rock wall. Have
you seen the ones down in like northern central Mexico and Kuehula. Nah,
they're like almost like white leaves. Really, Oh my god. So it's
like a different ecotype. Yeah, God, that thing sounds like. Yeah,
I don't need as much irrigation as crape myrtles. Crate myrtles die if
you don't irrigate them, right, right, Well, it depends where they
are. Yeah, but like further west going into Austin, I know they
were dying in California. Always look like shit in California. And that's the
thing, like, yeah, having having those plants that are adapted to your
area, that you know, once they're established, and I tell people like
they you don't need to water, but they're gonna be happier and they're gonna
look much better if you give them extra extra water, especially if we're going
through like yeah, three or four minutes. Yeah, they can survive without
it. But like my point, like I put an irrigation line of water
every once in a while if it hasn't rained in a while, because I'm
supporting. I'm the only house on the block that's supporting all the cool birds
and insects and other stuff. I stop watering, and those things going to
dormancy. Only you know where's that stuff going to. It's got nowhere else
to go because it's just you know, car cultured parking lots and Dollar General
whatever. So it's I think, what's so nuts? And I'll let you
go soon, don't worry time, But I think, what's so oh,
yeah, you're looking at the money shots over here. What's so fulfilling about
all the about like native plan I want to call it gardening just because it
sounds. I think it like some old lady in a sunhat. No offense
to old ladies and sun hats, but but just native plant habitat recreation in
your yard is like it's one thing you can do to actually change the world
around you and make it less shitty. But also it's so you're planting things
that have evolved here that there's a context for that. They've spent millions of
years going through natural selection and forming relationships with all the other organisms that live
here and also being selected for according to this specific geology, the climate,
the rainfall patterns, the heat, the cold, et cetera. Yeah,
all that and that's yeah, that's one of the great things about Yeah,
I think about the garden that I put in an alpine Now, when I
bought that house, it was a crap hole. I mean it really was.
There was a bermuda grass. I think the only native wildflower that was
there was Seleanum likenofolium. Yeah you get that here too. I mean it's
just a weed and over the years basically killed all that and started bringing in
those native plants and then the rock work and almost immediately, like the lizard
showed up, the gecko showed up, and then it was like you start
seeing bees, and you start seeing like the bumble bees, the carpenter bees,
the leafcutter bees, the minor bee, like all those bees started showing
up, and then butterflies. And then it's like the birds, and it's
insects you didn't even know existed exactly. Birds you didn't even know existed.
Then you saw them in your backyard till morning over coffee. You know,
they just started coming in. And that garden that you video last time you
were there, you know, those those folks, same sort of thing,
like they're blown away, Like we just walked. We did a quick walk
in their garden once and I think we kind of counted seven different species of
bees. God, that's so cool. I love. You know. For
me, what gives me hope is watching people, Like watching when you wake
them up to that element of the world around them and they're like wow,
and they get so into and then you see them like a month later and
they're fucking ampt, like they're so into it. Oh well, they can't
wait to tell you about what they saw in there. Yeah, you know.
I mean it's so that's why I tell people this shit is so fulfilling.
And it's just practical too, Like we're trying to pretend that you're somewhere
else and plant fucking queen palms in South Texas. But they do look nice
when they die in the odd freeze. It's kind of funny, you know.
I love seeing like a tract house that's falling apart with a dead queen
palm in front of it. Yeah, and you see. I mean it's
that enjoyment of seeing whatever it is, if it's the lizards, uh,
reptiles, amphibious, whatever it is that's showing up, and you get there
and you can walk out your back door and it's not just like maybe that
that monarch or whatever butterfly that comes through, but then you also see like
the caterpillar or the eggs. Yeah, oh shit, this is this is
what they need. Oh my god, I got I got chirping frogs in
the back, I got spiny lizards up front. I've seen those aspidos Cellus
gularus. I've seen so much striped lizard sex in the last three months I
found their eggs, you know, when I was digging through because I gotta
just a dump up. You've been using native soil for a mix. I
just have to mix it with a bunch of soil condition other stuff. But
it's so nice and all these cool butterflies I never paid attention to before I
got an obscure sphinx moth I saw in my front yard. I'm like,
fuck, it's like waking me up to this, to the world or this
tapestry of cool ass organisms all around me. And I'm like, man,
if people if other people get a sniff of this or a taste of this,
they'd see how good it felt, and they'd be like, man,
fuck this like this is like a It's like a spiritual annec antidote. You
know. No, it's I think when people see if you go from your
standard sort of cookie cutter landscape that you see like a lot of new construction
with that, you know, hey, we're gonna throw a live oak,
which is actually probably from Florida or Louisiana, and we're gonna throw up a
tacoma stands which is probably from Mexico and not the native one. And then
you know, we're We're gonna throw a few other things in here and try
to make this house presentable. Then if you get and then they also have
grass, if you get rid of that and the sprinklers and the light oak,
you know whatever. You know, it's it's it's a like it ain't
that bad, ain't that bad. But you start you bring in something like
a golden ball led tree, you bring in, you know, a couple
of salvias. You start bringing in these other plants, and then almost immediately
you're seeing that and another thing that I well, because I've been saying this
for a long time, fucking plant diversity, like like we have twenty eight
thirty two something like that species of salvia or a penstement in the state of
Texas. Damn. Really, yeah, it's quite a bit. I didn't
know that. Man. You said most universities out west of thought, but
that's still okay. Yeah, And there's some eastern species that probably wouldn't do
well in Central Texas or South Texas. But in Central Texas, you know,
there's easily seven species you can select from and plant in your garden,
and they'll in succession, you'll see them come through and you know, yeah,
they'll come up bloom flour, you know, produced seed, and then
you start to see the next one coming up, and so you can plant
that diversity and provide that specific type of that genus for whatever pollinator that's out
there to go through that whole year. There's enough out there in the state
of Texas that you know, we don't need to be importing a bunch of
junk from you know, God, there's just so much cool stuff here.
I get i get defensive about this statement. People shit on it. I'm
like, man, you know, fucking clueless, you have no well because
it's run by Nazis and nut jobs. I mean, come on, there's
so much more to it than here. You know. Now there we have
fifty eight hundred taxa about six seven hundred are introduced. There's yeah, there's
so much. It's epicenter of diversity, it really is. I mean,
look at a satellite map of the state. Look at the green in the
east, the beijes in the west, the mountains, the terrain. I
mean, it's you're right on one hundredth meridian where you start getting this transition
to a rapid, immensely different climate, and you know, then you get
an eternity. Yeah, we got about sixty species of oak. What thirty
four thirty eight species of a slect diversity of terrain, of humidity, of
rainfall patterns. That means a diversity of plant species too. We don't like
most people who There's someone I was speaking to you just recently, and it's
like before he was he was a volunteer at the garden and he said,
oh, I only thought there was like a white oak, live oak and
red oak. I didn't realize we had so many different species here in the
state of Texas and insane like, yeah, I mean, it's we have
so so much opportunity to be doing the right thing with native plants. Well,
you know what I mean. I grew I grew up in Chicago.
I had no idea how cool the prairies were and how diverse they were,
because it was all gone. I had no way you experienced it, and
I would go out in no way to get access to that knowledge too.
Like I knew there was a little parcelttle prairie near where my mom lived,
and I would I went there with her a couple of times. I look
at this shit. If you wasn't there at the right time, of the
year and it wasn't flowering. I wouldn't know what I was looking at.
There was no you know. Yeah, and most of it, like the
black line Prairier here in the state of Texas that less than five percent is
still around maybe less than one. Yeah, that's criminal, man. And
what they're continuing to do to Austin is criminal too. I've watched so much
land. They just destroyed this beautiful parcel where my friend Hobby lives to put
in a fucking golf course. It was like, is this nineteen eighty Like
this is archaic? Like why are we still doing this a fucking golf course?
Like how was that? How was that legal? Like there's no like
and just not even like legality or not, Like what kind of culture does
that? Like why would you don't you want to put in like a cool
preserve or something instead or like keep the land like there's no to just have
no respect for this. The all this cool shit here is insane. It's
I think at some point we're going to realize that, and it may be
too late that many of these things like you can't my friend Hovin said this,
it's like there ain't there ain't no putting it back, like you can't
go back and and that if you had a sort of a pristine, unplowed
black land prairie and decided to put in a few more strip malls and then
later on, you know, someone else like, oh it's you know,
it's falling apart. Now we're going to just bulldoze all this stuff out of
here and recreate the prairie. It's like, you're never going to do that.
You know, you've you've damaged it to that point to where you can't
recreate it. You can plant it and make it look cool. We'll just
move the plants. You could just move That's what developers always say, that
we just move them. Like you can't really do that. You have like
a one in ten success rate of that. Yeah, but there are folks,
you know, good some I would say, some development practices that coming
out that are allowing for that plant recue thing to happen. And yeah,
we're receiving a lot of those at the garden, which is great. So
yeah, there's you can't stop development, just like you know we are in
Texas. You can't stop the oil and gas. So the best thing to
do is like try to have best practices in some of those cases, or
at least if you're gonna and Kyle Liberger from Native Habitat Projects always telling about
this too. If these developers are gonna turn they're going to destroy all this
stuff, they can at least plant natives in its place, you know,
Like that's that's what I hope to see. I hope in five or ten
years there's like the native plant industry, like you'll be able to get as
much as I hate going there, you'll be able to get native plants at
Home Depot or Low's or any of these stupid big box stores, and they'll
be more native plants available, and slowly there. A couple of years ago,
I did a presentation and I went to Lowe's and Home Depot to see
what they had, and you know, they had some things like you know,
to come and stand sel Via Greggy I and you know, so a
couple of the oaks and stuff. But yeah, there's a handful of things
that are that are there that are coming out. But getting back to that
development side, like there are other developers like so there's there's definitely the ones
like if you're driving outside of San Antonio, right and you're cruising down out
ninety or something, and you'll see where they just go through and they bulldoze
everything. And then they come back and they do their grid planting of houses
and then and then they bring in the lawn and then the plants. But
there are definitely developers out there. I've worked with some folks that have done
surveys on these properties where they look at the property first and see what they
have there, and it's like, Okay, we're not going to damage this,
We're not here, and they're going to look, why would you get
rid of a madrone? Like why would you get rid of a Texas madrone?
And so yeah, they figure out a way to put their office building
or their house or whatever it is that they're going to build on that site
without damaging like the mature trees that are there or those those those habitats that
are special. So they they know that they're they're protecting something that's special.
So there is there is a change happening. One of my favorite favorite instances
of this was again going to visit a friend in Austin. I go to
where he lives. He lives like west of like the beginning of the Edwards
Plateau, you drive around this traffic circle that they put up, you know,
so you don't have to stop, so you know. And they got
these ni mansions up on the hill, and they got this slope that they
just told you could tell. They just destroyed all the juniper and all the
oaks that were growing there, which so that slope is going to start eroding.
Maybe some of those houses will fall down, you know, in twenty
years. And they've got there's a fucking madrone, and there's Vernonia lendheimrai and
Tetra neeurs and all this cool stuff in Dasa Leyrion or maybe it's in Alina,
and it's all like this just little pocket that they didn't touch. They
didn't it's like in this odd area of the hill where they didn't destroy it
yet I'm sure they probably will. But then down the way from it,
they've got like non native Mediterranean euphobias planted in a line. They've got they
just laid sod. It's like it's the most brain dead shit. It's like
you got this pellette of things that we're already here, these wonderful plants that
are so cool that people just don't know about yet. A fucking madrone,
like those are hard to get to a decent size with that beautiful smooth red
bark and the blueberry shaped flowers, you know, the ursulate flowers and the
cool berries on them, and you're planting like this garbage like it looks and
all that. What's that fucking as photolace. It's in the alo family.
It's invasive in Mexico, just one hundred miles south of here. As Photola.
It's like a European semi succulent thing anyway, and they and of course
it's all planted neatly in a line, you know, uniformly spaced. It's
just like it's the most obscene thing. And literally thirty feet away is like
Texas madrone, Vernonia LENNEHEIMRAI I think, I mean, honestly, I think
a lot of that just comes down to an education thing because and I think
we talked about this on the phone the other day, Like there was a
guy in El Paso I was working chatting with. It's like trying to get
him to, you know, sell more yuccas, and he's like, look,
it doesn't work here. And I was like, well, why why
wouldn't you want these jukkas and he goes, well, because people that live
here in the desert that look outside and they see yuccas everywhere, and like
a symbol of wealth is to not have yuccas in your yard because otherwise you're
just living in the desert and you know that's you bring in your Italian Cyprus
and all these other weird things. And it's so see but El Paso is
like similar demographic to hear and that's like you get the more of that phrase
is shit too, and that's what they want, you know. It's but
the same thing could be said for you know, Central Texas. I mean
it's like, oh no, we want that lawn to go out and and
you know, walk on barefoot right on our way to our for like it.
They don't like it. You like it? Do You like it?
Because you like the compare it to your neighbors and it makes you fit.
It's this idea and when he told me that, it kind of made sense.
It's this idea of of status and wealth like which is an idea of
a poisoned culture to begin with. You look at the properties we saw over
outside of Brownsville, like on their own, there's multiple problems with that lifestyle.
On its own, even if it wasn't killing the native flora. Like
that's why people end up on their death by realizing they live the lie and
they feel empty and it's like the same, the same thing, you know,
But what if? What if? What if that status, that paradigm
change, and that status was like, oh yeah, I could do that,
but instead I chose to like keep everything intact because I don't have to.
You know. It's that thing, right, it's living with nature instead
of against it, right. It's just and that just takes cultural change,
you know, and we're not there. I feel like Texas in general is
kind of thirty years behind the coastal areas anyway. Culturally speaking. I got
in some ways. I hope not because there's some lame shit going, you
know what I mean, But but uh, you know, like avocado toast
for instance. But but yeah, I don't know. It just takes cultural
changes. Why I think. I guess it is up to like younger people,
because boomers aren't necessarily gonna There's some cool boomers, don't get me wrong,
but I feel like boomers maybe are not. You know, people get
rude in their ways, like you're never gonna there's some people. You're never
going to convince that a lawn is just whack as hell, right, Yeah,
I mean there's that guy there. There will always be that person that
wants that lawn, and that's that's all they want. Yeah, they know
anything about it. They just like the way. They just like the grass.
They're like going out there. But there are plenty of people that are
taking out their lawns and moving towards more sort of zero escaping, bringing in
you know, more rock work, all that sort of good stuff. You
do a lot of rock work and you're landscaping. I should mention Michael has
a landscaping or used to you still do it or what? Really? Yeah,
god man, you did some wonderful Your house is one of my favorite
native plant setups I've seen anywhere. Like it's just so on point with everything.
Yeah, that was that was a fun one. The hard escaping.
The diversity, it's so diverse. Nothing's planted in a uniform line, you
know, like evenly spaced, and you know, like you've seen the landscaping,
that's that's the way you see it nature. Yep. Yeah, you
can tell you're someone who spends time out there, so anyway, I guess
we'll wrap it up. I gotta piss like a radiost anyway, So I
guess we'll head out to star counting. No, look at that, isn't
that cool? That's a that's an egg of the pollinator of epipact, this
giganthea. Wow, that's amazing. No one really knew what pollin it is.
I looked there. I couldn't find anything on research papers. It's some
hoverfly or seerfid fly. And so this thing likely emits uh pheromones that mimic
alert pheromones of aphids, which are the what which are the prey for this
fly, And so that's why they lay eggs there, because you know she's
hoping this female flies home when that egg hatches, the larvae will eat the
aphids. But it's it's bunk, It's right, bogus, it's but I
couldn't believe there weren't any pollination studies on there's a when it when you start
doing research into like, you know, what does pollinate certain plants, especially
some of these more obscure things, there's not a whole lot of there's nothing,
and like germination, like there's a lot of there's so much work to
be done botanically, not just in Texas but everywhere. Yeah, that pollination
stuff is I get that. That's one of the biggest questions I have at
work when people ask me, you know what pollinates is? We have no
idea. That's crazy, guess, but we have no idea. But yeah,
it's it's a thesis for some college student out there. Yeah. Yeah,
they can go in the debt figuring that out right systems. Have you
read that book The light Eaters? She's actually coming on the podcast then,
nice? Yeah, no, I think it's Wednesday. I'm all fucked up.
I don't know. I gotta have I gotta a good book. That's
a really good book. I'm surprised you were into that because I I I
heard about that and I was like, this seems a little woo woo for
me. But no, it's pretty cool. Or Bochilia that mimic vine and
Chile. I remember that one, that's the one that mimics We talk about
the same book. Yeah, The light Eaters. Yeah, it just came
out. Yeah, yeah, Yeahokia it's the vine and Chile that they think
can quote see because it can mimic whatever other plant. That's all right,
right right, right now. Nuts. I mean, but the idea of
of I mean, we've all known about plants emitting pheromones or chemicals to attract
whatever. I mean that happens. But some of the other things that that
she mentions in that book is pretty amazing to think, like how it's not
just between like plants are the same genus or species, but it's affecting like
throughout that whole habitat or ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, well, humans
didn't even think animals were sentient until fucking you know. I mean, it's
still a lot of people don't. I mean, look at the way we
treat them. They're fucking horrible. I mean now, like yeah, and
then now people have dogs that you know, they spend more money on their
dogs than they do with their kids. But with me, it's I mean,
the amount of religions out there and no offense to anybody's religious that believe
insanely silly shit. It's like why not. I mean, for me,
I'm just gonna go and say that I'm fucking down with it. You know,
plants are sentient. I feel it, you know, for me,
why not? I mean, I'll keep it to myself. A little bit.
Yes, it's a podcast with thirty thousand monthly. Yeah, yeah,
I'll definitely listen to her. But that whole thought process or that whole thought
of like like like if we're basing like our nervous system like for other into
other animals or plants, other beings out there on just us, then we'll
never be able to recognize if like, well that's the that's the folly and
all this right, It's like we only think of what we know, Like,
we don't think long term because we live short life span, so we
can't understand how mountains are, you know, the product of thousands of earthquakes
or any of that. So it's like if you think about it, if
you think plants sentience is going to be analogous to human you're fucked. You
can't go into it thinking like that. You have to get loose. But
they're fucking living things and they've been around for a long long time, far
longer than we have. So yeah, So I I listened to that book
on audible when I drove out to California about a month or so ago,
and and on the way back, I was planning on doing some collecting and
because of that book. You know, I'm on the side of the road
questioning myself, like like, am I hurting the planet? I just say
thank you? No, you just say thank you. They could hear you,
they could hear you. You touch them, they can feel you.
Just give a little bit of thanks, same thing you hunted deer. Yeah,
you know, give give respect. That's what the Native people. A
lot of Native starting to feel bad about taking cuttings off plants or stealing their
their offspring, taking them away. No, man, they're using us,
They want us. They're using fucks like you and me to make more of
themselves. And I'm fine with it. I'm fine being used. We look
at a rounda Donucks. They do a lot for me. A roundo Donuts
has successfully used us to spread all around the world. That's invasive as hell.
Right, you go to that, you go to that what's that hot
spring where they want you to get naked in Big Bend? Right, Yeah,
because I'm used to going you know the hot springs in Nevada where you
see old man balls. There's just no way around it. You know,
you roll up, it's in the middle of nowhere. You think you're alone,
and there's some old guy with this scrowed them out just and they're,
you know, hanging out in this hot, hot well. But you can't
do that in the big Bend one. They'll get the cops called done you
I know. So anyway, I guess we'll end it there all Mike,
thanks a lot. Let's go to Stark County. Looks some nice stuff,
A right, everybody else have a g rest of the eggo. Fuckers up. B