Cornell Herbarium, Brooklyn Cactus, VA Buckwheat

And so that's what I said to him. I said, any number of
hot spicy fots baked into a car like this, you know, in a
little pinto. You're baking it into the seats. Okay, you're guessing out
all the person Just all right. It's a goddamn crime against humanity. And
that's kind of thing we don't want down here in Bingampton. All right,
So you take that ship. I don't know where you're from, but you're
not welcome here. And I don't want any of this stuff popping up in
my town. All right, got a nice, pleasant community over here.
You're gonna come here, You're gonna fuck it up. We thought your weird
sado masochism bars and your filthy language. All right, it's pretty nice.
Look at all those those juicy fruits in that little biscuit he love, mind
my hand one of those. Welcome to another episode of Crapper. His body
doesn't pockets. I've been having so much fun, just the cacophony in my
own mind, of fucking with the New England accent. Ah is it New
England or is I don't know? I don't fuck. I haven't actually heard
anybody here in western New York talk like this. Well, no, I'm
in Central New York. Now I'm in fucking Ithica. Now I'm on the
what is this Silurian Shale? Devonian show? What's the age of this?
They're fucking old. They're old rocks, Late Devonian, the Genesee Group,
the West Rivers Shale, all those gorges that comprise Ithaca, Colne and pleasant
Ithaca. It's really it's nice here, man and everyone. I got invited
to speak at Cornell. I can't believe they had me, but it was
a wonderful time. And I actually didn't go over the hour, the allotted
hour they gave me, and I showed a bunch of cool fucking plants and
everybody was stoked. Me a little Q and a shot the ship with a
bunch of students and professors afterwards. It's funny when you're talking to someone you
know they're ten years old, and you're like a professor, someone who's a
teacher. I just I've got so many friends that are professors, you know,
friends. My friend is a my friend, Matt's the head of the
body department at Kel Polly, which is now no, that's they did that
humble Kel Polly and the original kel Polly and fucking San Louis, and I'm
you know, got friends and whatever. But it's funny you're talking to someone
and you look them up later you're like, oh shit, this is like
this is like a well known uh you know, evolutionary biologist or a chemical
ecologists or whatever the fuck. Just really really, that's why the conversation was
so good. I suppose that's why I learned so much talking to this person.
But yeah, uh it was. We had a really pleasant time,
went on a couple fucking hikes. Uh just locally. It's it's late fall
here in New York and uh saw I must have seen eight different Solidago species.
You know, the diversity is somewhat low. There's no prairies here.
It's all woodland. It's all mostly woodland and wetland. So the only openings
are in wetland, which it's you know, theorized that's where Solidago altissima,
the now very common golden rod you fuck, uh once inhabited. You know
it was it was nowhere near as dominant. And then is the forest clearing
happened with you know, European European sieve arriving and clear and land for agriculture.
That's when Solidague altissima kind of you know, exploded those openings in the
forest. But there's a lot of understory species of solidagos. Uh. And
I was hanging out with my friend Andre Kessler, who's a chemical ecologist.
He's it's fucking great hanging out with them. I'm gonna have him on the
podcast hopefully. But You're hanging out with this guy and he's like, smell
this, and he's like telling him. Then he breaks down like the chemical
composition of that smell, like, oh, those are phenolics. You know,
that's a six six carbon ring with conjugated double bonds with a hydroxyl group
and just fucking whoa, okay, and then you know it's just nice and
you're like, okay, now, explain to me what that means. And
then he, you know, breaks it down for you. And really fun
and uh hanging out with a lot of entomologists too, so people talking about
all these different bugs and stuff. And uh met this lady that studies tarantulas
and she showed me, uh, oh my god, what is it,
amblow what the cave pseudoscorpion things that move incredibly fast. They don't. I
guess they're generally harmless, but they just look fucking wild. Their long their
legs alone are like, you know, eight to ten inches long, the
bodies maybe four inches long. They lie completely flat against the rock wall.
And uh, they're just weird looking critters. Man, that's so cool.
And then uh, this gentleman, robber Goso, who had been in he
was in California for a while and he had been studying Clarky a brewery which
is a member of the evening primrose family, with big shield like flowers,
four petaled pink flowers and really bizarre. It's generating. I'm gonna have him
out of the podcast to hopefully generated. You know. It's one of the
it's the most pungent, smelling and easily detectable species of Clarkia. And it
admits this this really strong scent because it's pollinated by moths. And uh,
I've remember looking at photos I have I naturalists that I took like three or
four years ago. It's a common, you know, annual species. Well
it's common where it grows like it pops up by the hundreds on these serpentine
talus. You know, Serpentines is specific type of rock really rare on the
surface of the earth. But you get these talus piles out west in California,
and that that coastal chaparral environment that merit that, you know, the
coast range mountains. And this was and I think where I saw it was
Alameda County, maybe it was Stanislaus, but you know, it's right where
like the the like Alameda County, which is what Oakland is in starts to
you know, you go in over those coast ranges, it gets a little
methy little you know, some tweak or ships, some like angry fucking uh
you know, don't tread on me flags in the back of a oversized truck.
Shit. And then it turns into like the Central Valley, which is
all just a toxic accessible from all the monoculture agriculture going on air, but
was surely beautiful two hundred, three hundred years ago, like so many places
in America today that are now hideous car slums or mono culture slums. We
gotta keep it real, all right. I don't want to hear any of
these people. You need everything to be positive, all right. That's not
my You gotta work on your own sense of you know, existential existential coping,
you know, or just read about the geologic time scale. You know,
you could still be real about this shit without having to try to glaze
over everything or talk about how you're depressed from climate change. It is fucking
depressing, you know what, But h embrace the chaos in a way,
not deny it, embrace it and express sadness and sorrow for it. But
by god, you know, these things happen. You know. It's like
the time I was kicked in the balls really hot when someone was wearing golf
cleets. We were just playing around. I was supposed to be safe for
it, and I audited that safe wadsix or seven times and the person I
was with, my partner, I didn't listen and just kept repeatedly kicking me
in the bulls. And by that point, you know, I realized,
you know, Daniel, do you have some sort of under you unseen rage
against me? Is there's something some kind of resenting? There? I go
with the new England accent again. What the fuck? Anyway, you know,
you figure out a way to cope. Just maybe that just comes with
age, but or maybe there's other things causing anxiety in your personal life and
you're blaming it on philosophical dark circumstances in the world. I see people doing
that a lot. That's real. But either way, just deal with your
ship journal, go to therapy. What the fuck anyway? So, uh,
but yeah, we were I was, you know, hanging out all
this understory stuff. I saw a Nablus altissimus, which is a nodding chickory.
It's got like nodding flowers, gets about three or four feet tall,
grows in the understory of these forests. I don't even know what the fucking
trees were here. It's because it's mostly oak and their broad leaf, you
know, and really cool terrain too. I didn't realize nowhere in nowhere is
New York State flat, Like it's all montane or it's got topography to it
at least maybe montane is the word. But you know, those glaciers were
here just gouging, gouging out the landscape. But but here, it's all
shale. It's all really old mudstone, unmetamorphosed, so it hasn't been cooked,
it hasn't been exposed to any significant amount of heat and pressure and depth
to harden it. So it's pretty you know, pretty easy shale and UH,
and I guess there's fossils in it. It's like trilobytes and stuff.
You can because you know, trialobytes were doing they were doing a lot of
stuff back then. They were doing a lot of pot back back in those
those days, you know, four hundred and however, many million years ago,
right around the time UH plants started to move onto land and evolve.
Land plants evolve, so you know, you can get it. It's a
geologic you know, it's a geologic landmark on your on your chronological time scale.
They're four hundred and forty million years ago, give or tacked and you
had to fucking Cambrian explosion. One was at five five hundred and forty million
years ago. I'm just saying these so if you're not familiar with them,
they'll start to knock into your thick skull. You stopped looking at these tic
tak videos of these kids dancing, take your pictures of their food, you
know, doing that duck lips thing. The people still do the duck lips
thing anyway. So yeah, the geology here is kind of cool. No,
no granites. I did find a glacial erratic though, the other day
when I was filming. I just looked at I just saw a rock outcrop,
and I've been fucking driving for like twelve hours. I went through Ohio
at night, so I didn't have to look at it. No offense to
anybody that lives in Ohio. Did see some cool shit in Cleveland and drove
onunder a road overpass that was mighty overgrown. See there I go again with
the fucking New England thing. Why am I doing that? Is that prejudiced?
Is there anybody in New England out there who's offended? It's because you've
been huffing fast. I get pressy, little tarret im. It's not my
problem, you get offended by the anyway, this rabbit overpast was complete overgrown.
I drove under it in Cleveland and looked at all the nice stuff up
there and thought, God, wouldn't it be fun to do? Do bodany
up there? You know? See a nice healthy mix of invasives and natives,
very aggressive natives. And the thing I've noticed about these urban environments where
they are often so dominated by invasives, or at least half or sixty percent
dominated by invasive species from Europe, is that the natives that grow there also
tend to be invasive on the other side of the ocean, which is no
surprise. So these are highly competitive plants that can take the you know,
human disturbance, toxic soil, and very very you know disturbed growing conditions,
which is pretty remarkable. Like solidago and astern agodno boxel there are very invasive
in Europe. So if just from an ecological standpoint, it's pretty interesting.
But uh, what was I telling you know what? I forgot stopped?
I forgot, I forgot the one I keep talking about, Rob because that
wasn't So he was studying clarkey at brewery there Brewery Brewery out in California,
and he had seen the videos I had done out there, so we shot
the ship for a little bit about that and chemically the oh god, he
was on the podcast, but he was talking about basically, you know,
none of the other clark species. Clarkey is a dominant, a very common
genus out west, is in the evening primrose family. You don't get any
clarke y as as far as I know, in the eastern half of the
country, and not many outside of California in Oregon. But they're very beautiful.
They're pink, four petaled flowers, big, you know, showy,
fucking weird. There's been a bunch of different variations on him, you know,
in the form of different species that have evolved. Clarky a brewery is
the only one that produces this notable scent and a huge flower. And like
all members of the evening primrose family, they have pollen that occurs in viscent
threads. So Onathura, Fucia, clarke Ea, Epilobium's cameirion or whatever ship
fireweed is called. Now they've all got if you look at the pollen,
looks like cobwebs, alright, it looks like like it's draped. It's got
threads, very very weird. Habit and senapamore before that family, though I'm
not sure if all of them have it, but I think a lot do
anyway, And I was looking at this photo and you could just see,
I mean, it was fucking weird. The filaments at the distal end.
The filaments are kind of bulbous, so you know, like the base of
a bowling pin. And then they've got this anther that just opens up and
the hisses all this threadlike almost hairy looking pollen really weird. But he was
studying out there for a while, I guess in the eighties, and then
we kind of talked about all the crazy shit you see out on you know,
the Mines Road del Porto Canyon area, which is right on that Stanislaus
Alameda County borderline. I remember I was up and look because I was fucking
out there looking for Fertilaria folcata for I'm not looking for it enjoying Fertilaria folkata
had the illegally trespass and and uh, but you know it was just on
like some fucking cattle land whatever. Can't do that in Texas. Goddamn you
try and do that in a small time. You try and do that in
a small town. Can't do that in a small town. Now with all
these sato mescus and bas uh and uh the f I was out there looking
for frid Larra folkata and then Hesperosiperus sargentia sergeant cypress. There's like a there's
a single population of this really cool cypress that only grows on serpentine soil on
top of Cedar Mountain. And it's called Cedar Mountain because there's a Juniperus Californica.
It's California juniper everywhere. Remember no true cedars in North America. Fuck
and uh yeah, I think I figured what it was. Anyway, there's
a lot of poison oak. I ran through some poison oak by accident coming
down this like ten mile hike from this mountain, and I heard some fucking
couple talking out there. I realized later they were screaming at each other.
They were Caucasian, and uh and I asked the guy. I asked the
dude. I was like, hey, man, can I just use your
hose really quick? I was, you know, up on Cedar Mountain and
I got poison oak all over me. I just want to wash it off.
And the guide and then went on some unhinged rant about about how he's
gonna stick a shotgun in my ass because Cedar Mountains private property and blah blah.
I forget what it was. He was fucking it was fucking nuts.
And then later on, I, you know, met this dude who whose
family owned Cedar Mountain. Like I think we figured where we met, and
we bumped into him on one of these roads, and he's like a rich
kid, rich kid. He was like a forty five year old fifty year
old man. But either way, and he later gave us permission to be
there. It's kind of weird. It was a little weird, but he
was a nice guy. You know. I suppose if you grow up in
your family's you know, fucking multi millionaires, it's gonna derange your mind a
little bit. But anyway, so but yeah, it was it's a weird
region. It was nice to you know, that whole area of coast Ranges
just didn't land from Oakland, California. There's a lot of fucking really rip
our livermore, a lot of really interesting body in geology there. So anyway,
but but we met up with Rob last night after this talk, and
then I went to you know, go talk with this tarantula lady. And
then you know, we went to the library and ship. It was like
I just hung out of college all day. And we met up with Rob,
and then we went and looked at this other species of impatience down in
this little ravine, this of you know, of shale that had been carved
out by this river. And uh, it was one. It was impatience
palette. I said, everyone in the Midwest knows impatience campensus Midwest and East
Coast knows jewelweed impatience capensus, which actually produces a muselage which is supposedly there's
actual science behind this, is you know, an antidote to the you rushy
all dermatitis caused by poison ivy poison oak, poison sumac. And about a
third of the plants in the family Anna cardiac, the mango, cashew,
pistachio family, and this muselage that in patience, the North American in patients
produced because most of the family uh baal salmon ac is you know, in
the East and the East Coast and Europe, or not East coast, excuse
me, in the East is in Asia and Europe, so that most are
not in North America. And there's two species in Central America, one in
Mexico, one in like Panama. And then you get two species in the
Pacific Northwest, and you get in patience capensus in the Midwest and the East
coast, which is a kind of a disturbance plant, like a weedy native
great plant. And then you get in patience palada, which is a relatively
large flowered in patience species that grows in the understore here and I saw it.
We were we saw it actually getting hit by this seerfid fly of the
specific kind of fly from this family seerfid a your fitty, I don't pronounced
that anyway, it's a family of flies. And and if they got a
really weird you know, impatience have a really weird pollination biology. They've got
their pro tandrous so their male First, they've got this anther cap. It's
like a little cap that covers the female parts of the flowering. On top
of that cap are the anthers, which hits the pollen and uh, and
then that anther cap once it's once the pollen's all gone from it, the
anther cap falls off, and now you've got the pistol exposed the female part.
Pis tim not pistol like I'm gonna hit you in the back out the
head with his pistol. I'm only saying it's for you know, beginners,
and it's just tolerated. It's fine. Everyone's got to learn. And so
once the other camp falls off that now that stigma and style and ovary are
there going down, you know, towards the planet's stigma. Style over he
stigma receives the pollen. You've got the style, which is the stock that
holds the stigma. Sometimes it's barely noticeable. And then you've got the ovary,
which what turns into the fruit. And you can see you could see
it, so you could see that it becomes you know, goes into the
female phase pro tandrous as a pros to proto guinness or protogenous as time Crow
calls it. And uh. And then you know, if it's pollinated,
that ovaries matures to like six times its size. You get this little capsule
and then that capsule violently the hisses explosively. The hisses so it just pops
and shoots seeds everywhere once it matures. But this fly was I mean,
they knew about searf it flies, but I didn't know this. I don't
think I've ever seen this specific species before. But they got this weird It
looks like an underbyte, Like it looks like a little you know, check,
like a check you'd make on a fucking you know, like if you're
like graden the paper or some shit and it or some sort of weird garden
tool or something like weeding tool, and this little check it's just like this
pronounced forgive me for not knowing the fucking name the actual technical term, which
would be helpful. But this check just you know, juts up into this
uh, into this anther cap into this uh, you know, the whole
Andrew, we seem kinnaway, seem like the sexual actual sexual parts of the
flower which on the roof of this this enclosure not enclosure, but this this
you know, by letter with symmetrical tunnel that's been created by this flower and
uh and pokes it a bunch of times. It gets the polott. It
was cool to see the thing was. I'm so glad it didn't move.
It was cool to see how this thing gets hit. But yeah, I
just didn't know it. Really pretty flowers to like big white. They can
also be yellow, so their phenotypically plastic. He gets some variation in the
uh in the population. But yeah, it was it was nice to see.
I mean again, the diversity is not not wild here. Remember this
was all under ice, just like the Midwest twenty thousand years ago, but
not a stuff. We also saw actia. Oh god, it's ronuculacy.
What is the fucking I just I have to look up the species means with
the pa you get Actia rubra, and then you get their ronuculacy. The
flowers are not that, you know, the flowers, these little white flowers
with staminodes, not even petals when they're going off, kind of you know,
easy to look over. But then the fruits, holy shit, the
the fruits or something else. I mean, you get this stock with these
big white berries on it with and then the stalks that you get you get
a shoot with a bunch of big white berries on it, and then the
actual like little peduncles that hold those white berries. They look like I didn't
check if they're probably droops. I don't know how many seas you get inside.
But the little peduncle that holds what looks like a yogurt covered raisin is
then like a hot pink, like a bright fucking pink, and you know,
no, they're not edible. They're incredibly toxic, of course, probably
not to the birds that disperse them, which is you know, the big
different. That's why a lot of berries are toxic because birds have a much
different you know, biochemistry than in digestive system than mammals. So things that
would be toxic to mammals are can be harmless to birds so you know,
if something's bird dispersed, it's not meant to be eaten by mammals. That
thing probably tastes terrible. Yeah, Actia pacapoda, but really noticeable, really
cool looking for I mean that the structure of the peduncles a little red stalks
that hold these these yoga covered raisins up, you know, are inflated at
the base that kind of look almost like an exclamation point. But notable things.
If you've ever been in a New England forest, you've probably seen this
planet. I think it grows all the way down into Appalachia. What is
the distribution Actia packapoda from the buttercup family renunculation? Oh shit, you get
in Illinois. It's not fucking I've never seen it in Illinois. Is it
out there? Is it in Illinois? Yeah? Maybe it is. I
don't know, you can tell. I don't get out here much. Spent
spent the last twenty years of my life in the deserts of the Southwest.
Yeah it doesn't. It goes into like northern Alabama. None in Texas,
barely any in Louisiana, Florida anyway. But yeah, I don't know.
It's been good. We saw I saw. I stopped and did a little
video on a Rubis odoratus the raspberry out here. Really beautiful flowers on these
things. I guess there's a lot of is there a lot of rubis diversity
and uh in New York State, I don't know, you know, it's
slim pickats. Man. I saw a lot of simpio tricham and a lot
of solidago on the drive out here, and there was not much besides that.
And then I realized, oh, yeah, that's not you know,
prairies are not a thing. There's not these open spaces. It's a lot
of a lot of woodland understory. So but that Rubis odoratus is really fucking
really pretty flowers on it and really cool habit too, I mean large leaves
and uh kind of large you know, decent spacing between the nodes. Just
coming up on the side of the road here with all these you know,
boulders and granite granite boulders, a glacial erratic. I found that that glacial
erratic, well that wasn't a large boulder. It was a small There was
a large boulder right there. You know, the glaciers just dumped all these
things trans you know, that's what these glaciers do, these goddamn illegal alien
glaciers, they come down here from up north. They just dump all these
fucking you know, in trups of igneous rocks everywhere. You know, I
don't clean up their own goddamn mess, a bunch of intrups of vigneous rocks
and sediments and sands and sails and shit. But I found this this nice,
perfectly almost like a you know, like a giant softball, perfectly rounded
glacial erratic, a piece of granite. And there's no granite around here,
mind you, at least not in the bedrock and not in the country rock.
So that thing was brought. But I guess it could have been brought
by you know, people too. Maybe is ballast in some sort of I
think there was a spot along the railroad when I was working at guilf in
California, in that route between San Louis Obispo and Los Angeles. I worked
as a conductor there for a while, and we would stop only only railroad
in North America. I think you could see whales from the train, but
along with fucking a bunch of oil rigs, and that's nice, oh god,
But we stopped there was a spot we wouldn't stop, but it was
you you know, because of the curvature of the track and the grade,
you know, the incline you would we get down like twenty miles per hour
was a speed limit, And so there was a spot you could see all
these these uh same thing, like big chunks of granite, big like you
know, big in the sense that they were you know, to a to
a human hand. They weren't huge bowlers, but they were basically used as
ballast, or at least that was what I was told by one of the
engineers I was working with that they were basically dumped there. I think,
why the fuck were they carrying balanced on that? Some about this story's not
checking out. This was fifteen years ago. But they were noticeably different.
I mean, it was a noticeably different type of rock from what occurred there.
There wasn't any granite on the coast of California in that section. It's
all marine, sedimentary and relatively young too. But there were these big chunks
of this dark granite that I think had been brought I think he said they
were brought from how at East? I forget where the fuck? I wish
I could remember the story now because it was really interesting. Yeah, so
I'm forgetting a piece of it. I shouldn't have even told you. I
shouldn't have even brought it up. But they were just dumped right along along
the rail side, right there on the sunny bluffs over the beach. Guy,
that used to be a nice railroad. Nice day. I think it's
all Amtrak now. But I both rode freight trains on it and worked freight
trains on it. I was on the pool out of San Louis Obispo,
and now I don't even think that pool is there anymore. That pool freight
there was two nice union. If they had to get rid of it,
like it gave its employees too much joy, they had to just, you
know, shut the whole fucking terminal down. But that was a nice they
used to send. Yeah, those those Manifest trains from Los Angeles up to
Portland. Actually was from West Colton up to Portland over everybody saying Burdoux,
San Bernardino, And they'd ship them through West LA and then go through right
through downtown LA, well just on the east side of it by the river,
and then you catch it at the river and then ride it north and
it was a really pleasant pool to work to. It paid really good,
but you know, you pe shut the whole thing down and like, don't
two thousand and seven and then shipped everything despite it being longer. They shipped
everything through the valley because I think it was technically faster. There was higher
speedling it. I don't know, but that was a nice Remember the first
time rolling into San Luis Obispo and a freight train and getting out and like
looking at this fucking this is like early two thousands to it's Sand Louis Abisbos
like grotesquely wealthy now, but back then, I'm sure it was wealthy back
then, but not as you know. I mean, the whole fucking country
is you know, it's gotten way more h what is the word I'm looking
for, Jesus christ Man. You know, the middle class is fucking gone,
right especially now everything is like everything is way more expensive than it should
be, probably scouging, the fucking more hoarding at the top, much more
poverty down below. But but I remember walking out of the or getting up
out of the little well that I was in type of car, and looking
out the rail car and looking out at the the the train yard there,
and I was, you know, just like right in this residential area with
all these beautiful houses, like the woods siding, like the kind of like
weird California Victorian style of house, and the the Canary Island palms everywhere,
which are you know, kind of a pain in the ass. But also
I kind of like him. They're fucking They're just such a Southern Pacific used
to at them at all its depots and train stations and even in its yards,
and and just being like, what the fuck is this Steinbecky? And
I'm just thinking myself, what is this Steinbecky? And setting before me?
Steinbeck was of course a friend of the working class, so it would have
been, you know, really want to see the real Steinbecky and ship up
to go up to Salinas or or Hollister or something. You know, there's
some nice stuff up there, but a little further north than Sand louis supposible.
Either way, it wasn't a nice time. So but yeah, that
was It was cool. So I found a glacial erratic here in western New
York and then made a little video about about raspberry fruits because it was so
it was so cool to see this, you know, because raspberries are compound
fruits. So to see the way that this this it's not even really a
burr. It looks like a little cap sitting on this receptacle, this curved
receptacle, this or concave. What does the fucking word Jesus Christ, I'm
r I'm at a loss for words today. You know this, this half
globe spherical receptacle, and then you can see all the individual fruits, which
are actually I guess it would be the they're called drouplets. Technically it's just
like a strawberry, you know, like the little beads on a strawberry or
on a raspberry. Even better are the individual fruits, and then together they
compose an infratessence of compound fruit. And those little hairs coming off a raspberry
are the old styles through which the pollen was transported to the ovary, and
the ovary is those those little drouplets. It's had a great you know,
I just picked one of those fruits. It was like a great illustration of
it because of this particular this. You know, these didn't look like normal
raspberries. They looked, you know, a little bit different, at least
in their shapes. So you can really see all this stuff. You know,
they weren't as as bulbous. They were more more just like a like
a lens cap, you know, like a curved a curved dish, A
little bowl popped off this receptacle really nice. So and then of course you
got the stamens all around that centerpiece with you know, that center receptacle with
the fucking five the five kalises after the pedals have fallen off. So anyway,
and a totally unrelated note this this uh kid I just met a gosh
is his name? Really? Really fucking smart kid from Dallas? God,
I feel bad from growing up in Dallas. What's it gonna be like?
It's just like a suburban suburban culture slum. I don't know, it's gonna
be rough. But no offense to anybody in Dallas or who's growing up in
Dallas. My heart is with you for ever and always. Just don't get
into sado masochism anyway. I don't know where they came from. I don't
know. I don't know why. I am picturing a fucking New England crab
fisherman who's into sado masochism and paranoid about homosexual communist fluoridating water supply. I
don't I don't know where. That's probably a thing. I gotta give it
to him. It's probably a thing out there somewhere, right. Is that
a regional flavor at some some point in the Northeast. I don't know.
But he got me in. He's a young kid. God, I fucking
I get so jealous that these young kids who are into botany that early.
I mean, I think you need, you need, everyone's got to get
out there and like get into some like crazy shit, like maybe not even
that good crazy, like you know, you gotta have like you gotta get
into some fucking chaos when you're young. And then you learn from and you
get but but but which is kind of what I did, but still to
to you know, have a baseline understanding of the natural world around you at
that age and then have that you know how that affects your entire interpretation of
of of life. I just feel like you have such a when you've got
an understanding of natural systems of biology, you know, basic chemical uh,
chemistry, basic chemistry education, whatever. I mean, it's you really start
to really it helps foment a more structured understanding and much you know, much
more real and beneficial understanding of everything around you. You know, you basically
understand how the world works. If you know, if you've got like a
conception of the geologic time scale or or how evolution works, or god,
I can't imagine what it'd be like that. I don't. My chemistry sucks,
but they have a basic chemical understanding of you know, how different compounds
work and you know, composed basically the building blocks of the physical world.
I just get so jealous, you know, I'm like, fuck, if
only when I was eighteen I had When I was eighteen, I was into
you know, I I mean, I was still I was reading a lot.
I was more. I was more of like a what's the word I
was. I was more like the liberal arts, you know. I just
think that's science, having and having an interest in passion for science in the
natural world when you're young as god, you just save yourself so much bullshit,
you know. And there's such an ingrained humility that everybody I know who's
into biology or actually does field work, you know, spends time in nature.
There's such an ingrained humility that people get, even even the pricks,
you know, even like you know, it was fucking you know, know
it all like you know, young men in their early twenties who were fucking
assholes or even the old stodgy you know, professor or whatever the fuck was
kind of a turret, which are again, those are rare my life.
I really encounter those people, thank god. I mean I intentionally avoid them,
but you know, even them, I think there's an elements of humidity,
humility, excuse me, maybe humidity too. I think there's elements of
humility that people gain from just working with this stuff. So but yeah,
but that'd be fucking eight to god. Man. I wish i'd gotten into
the stuff younger. I was probably like twenty seven when I maybe like twenty
five when I finally when I started really you know, getting in By the
time, I wasn't until I was like thirty. I started reading research papers
and textbooks and shit and and going deeper. But anyway, A Gosh got
me into the cafeteria here at Cornell University, and I was fucking blown away.
Oh my god. I was like, I was like, I'm already
making plants to come back, come back with a bucket, you know,
sneaking food up for the dog. Too, louis eight like eight turkey sausages.
They got healthy shit, healthy shit too. They don't have any they
don't sell any fucking name brand sodos. You not sell. I mean it's
you just pay this card, you get in, you know. And he's
got like a guest thing he got me in. Oh it was so nice.
I'm gonna pack some food for the road too, right, wonderful,
wonderful for colon health. Like you got all this fancy shit, like fancy
healthy food. These fucking kids. It was crazy, but I was what
did make me nervous. So you know, it's a petriot dish. These
colleges, they don't got a good age vac system. There was like a
student lounge we went through. We were chilling in. I was like putting
together more photos and and doing some presentation stuff and and uh and I was
like, fuck, there's no airflow here, Like I don't feel any,
I don't hear any, like there's no vents, there's nothing. What the
fuck? Like, I mean, I'm sure they haven't. It's just not
on because it's late fall. They don't really need it, and maybe schools
trying to save money. And then I was like fuck. I can people
sniffling and shit and just dick off, and I'm like, ah, fuck
god, this gnarly. I don't want to get fucking sick. So last
time I went to New York, I got sick. I got COVID.
Last time I get it again. Fuck, probably have some immunity, you
know. Matt Burger got COVID. We were in Tasmania. We were sleeping
next to each other in the back of this fucking van. I was probably
doing rails of COVID particles. And I got sick for like a day,
never tested positive, and then got better because I had just had it two
months before, so still had some immunity up. And so that's what they're
doing. And they just paying you to fiddly fuck around. Hi. You
just shot over there with your thumb up your ass, pretend you know what
you're doing. Huh trying to fly a plane in the goddamn DAC Huh.
God if I had a job like that, You know, you really are
lucky. You don't understand. You know. Interesting thing is, you take
all this shit for greenning. You're just fucking up there slapping each other around
with the hot mops. You know, I don't know what. It's not
my goddamn business. But I will say I've seen a lot of sick fucks
in my day, and you're certainly on that list. Sir. What's up.
I'm back. It's been a week. I'm back in Texas now.
I don't know how to fuck it's one hundred and five. Well it's not
one hundred. I'm being a little melodramatic. It's like ninety nine. But
it's still impossibly hot out and you just don't want to go outside during the
day. I don't know how people live down here in a decade at two
they want. All it takes, I say this all the time. All
it takes is one heat wave where the power goes out because the fucking you
know, the state grid is privatized, you know, Republican wet dream.
Not like I'm a Democrat, but I'm just saying, say is just be
honest. You know, one party is really good at fucking the poor and
the working class more than the other. But Republican wet dream. Privatize the
electric grid, right, get a middleman involved who you know, twenty different
companies now, so you know you're not only just buying from the state,
the state run electric grid. Now you're buying from a middleman that's buying from
the state run electric rids. So you know you're getting you're getting shaped down
twice, you're getting shook down twice. Fucking a man. Anyway, It
just makes me so fucking man. Privatized electric or what a scam. It's
such a fucking ripoff. And I think they put in like a bunch of
like disincentivized solar here. God, it's such a fucking joke, man,
this state. I really there's some wonderful people here, wonderful plants, wonderful
geology, but they're some fucking ignoramusis some big egos, and fucking ignoramusis arrogant,
stupid motherfuckers. No offense. It's not you, it's the people that
run the state. But that is like that is a trope, man.
That is like it's like something out of a cartoon. You know, like
some big dumb, bruno fucking meathead driving a seventy thousand dollars truck that doesn't
have a scratch on it, you know, just taking his fat ass the
best buyer to go buy a fucking you know, seventy inch you know,
uh, plasma TVs. They still make plasma TVs. I don't know what
are the TVs made out of these days. Not the plasma, you don't
they're They're just like a big thin screen, you know. Anyway, So
we got a bunch of shit to time last night. Departed when I did.
When I left you, I was in Ithaca. I ended up.
I ended up going to the fucking or burying that day, and it was
amazing. Oh shout out to Anna, the lady who runs the h She
was so sweet, you know, look the same age as my mom.
Really just sweet woman, very tolerant of all my bullshit, which was kind.
And when I said thank you for tolerting me, she said, oh
I knew. I knew what you were like coming in here, like she
already just like I watched your show. Let's go. Thank you Jesus Christ.
You know, I almost don't want to know who watches much. I
don't want to be making, you know, crass jokes. I mean,
apparently she gets that she's on the level. But you know, there's some
people you don't want to offend. You know, I don't think I would.
I don't think I would. It's just it's a flavor. There's a
doctor Powell's wife, I think, surely wonderful woman does not approve of my
the curator at the Steel Roster Berryam and Alpine. She's so kind, but
I don't think she approves of but she's been she doesn't approve it at some
of the videos. But doctor Powell loves watching him. He likes watching him.
But I musch to the dismay of his wife. But she's always so
kind to me, and she doesn't make it known, which I really appreciate.
So anyway, those yea, those fuck that though. That's a power
couple right there, doctor you know, doctor Michael and Shirley Powell. But
uh, anyway, so yeah, so I went to the your Barya.
It was fucking incredible. Cordell has like one million specimens, you know.
I just like to go to her baryams and look, they say, what
do you want to do? You just make up a bullshit I'm researching.
Really, I just want to go look through, you know, I just
want to go sniff your cabinets, is what I'm doing. I just go
in there, I sniff all the different cabinets, you know, just randomly
opening the cabinets. It's the smell of paper. Have you ever smelled in
or berrying before? Oh, the smell of paper and mixed with you know,
whatever VOCs are in the plant tissue that's dried within there. You know,
the Valerian cabinets smelled absolutely fucking horrible. Penstemons do too, reportedly,
reportedly the penstemons stink whatever those VOCs. I should have asked Robert Goso.
You know, I liked the podcast I'd do with him, but it wasn't
I had to go to the library to do it. I was got like
a study room at the library and there was some ladies. It sounded like
they were having a fucking telethon. I don't know if they were just having
like a real estate meeting or whatever, but they were. They were next
door and the walls are really thin. I'm sure they could hear me too.
I was being very loud, but they was just distracting, and I
didn't, you know, I wanted it to sound more like a conversation,
like let's just talk about these different plants. But it wasn't as smooth as
I'd hope. But hopefully, hopefully you still got something out of that.
If you listen to it. That guy is man. Yeah, I studied
Clarky a brewery for a while. Great fucking conversation. And you know,
when we were in the field together, just go we wouldn't the field.
We're just done a fucking hike in the field. We were just done a
fucking hike, all right, you don't even make it sound more technical,
and drink from my forty of green tea and uh, you know, we
just we It was one of those people you meet him and you just you
have such a fucking great conversation right off hand, and we were talking about
so many different things that it was I was like, oh, I should
get this guy in the podcast. So but yeah, I don't know,
I will have to do another another podcast. I wasn't, you know.
I'm sure maybe you thought it was fine. I wasn't. I was not,
you know, I thought I was a little disappointed, mostly with I
was kind of out of it that day, and I didn't ask all this
shit I had. The conversation wasn't structured that the way I wanted too.
It was mostly it was all my fault. It was my fault. I
blame I blame no one but myself. God damn, I blame no one
but myself for this catastrophic failure. I have yet to meet anyone who actually
talks like that. I assume that's just like that Kennedy and Massachusetts accent,
but god damn is it fun to talk about. So anyway, I was
over there sniffing the Irberian cabinets at Cornell one million specimens, not like Missouri
Botanical Gardens seven million, but they had shipped from all over the world,
and uh so we you know, we went and I was just picking random
shit. Oh, let's go look at chuki iraga. That that basal member
of the sunflower family that's all spiny, and a lot of them are hummingbird
pollinating. Let's go look at that. Let's go look at uh you know,
uh fun what else do we look at it? I did a video
on it. But the crowning moment for me, which which made me so
stoked on that that herbarium was the Hiddnorra Africana and the proso Panky. Both
are in They used to be in hidden or a c I guess they're in
Aristo Lochiac now, but they're they're these incredible parasites just fucking weird looking looks
like the eggs opening on a you know alien that moved that fucking hr Gigar
movie with Sigurn Weaver, you know, and uh, you know, she
plays that tough, super tough lady and she's she's just kicking ash and taking
names. And then you get the little alien with the fucking mouth that comes
out opens and there's another little mouth inside. It's like a mouth inside a
mouth sometimes. That that's what I feel like, you know, being such
a fucking wind bag all the time and just not being able to shut the
fuck up. But h but Prosapenky and hit Nora. It was so cool
to see. It was almost as cool as seeing the dak t Lantis at
the New Zealander burying dak t Lanthis my friend Aaron Forsyth just sent me a
painting. I bought a Paris at Taxis painting off her. You could order
Prince actually if you want to. It's Aaron Forsyth. Like forsythia h Aaron
Forsyth, e er I n She's on Instagram. Just look hers. She's
one of the best botanical artists. I know. It's fucking it's fucking incredible
man. For a minute, she was like, I probably shouldn't share this,
but I was so shocked. I was like, what the fuck is
going on in New Zealand. She was like, I don't know if I
should keep drawing. These aren't even my plants, blah blah blah. And
I was like, what do you mean. It's like, well, they're
all Maori plants. I'm like, they don't belong to anyone. The Maori.
We're only here for and no, no, you know, no shade
that the Maori. There fucking awesome culture, but they're only here for,
you know, five hundred years for the Honky's got here. Race doesn't exist.
This is stupid. They're brainwashing it with identitarianism. It's class. It's
not race. Come out. What the fuck? But she was going on
this, She's like, I don't want to. I don't know. I
was like, don't you ever fucking stop, don't you ever stop painting.
I'll ship my pants and start crying and then I'll send you pictures. Never
mind. But uh, you know, I don't know why I went there.
I just you know, you gotta make shitting your pants and crying isn't
enough of a threat. You've got to add up to it. You know,
if you threaten to someone send someone pictures of yourself shitting and crying,
that's a whole other level. Then it's the threat actually packs some because nobody
wants to see that. But you know, she I don't know what she
was. I don't know why she was saying that, but I was like,
but it's a big thing. It's like over in New Zealand, no
one uses the Latin taxonomy. They use the Maori names, and like,
that's great, that's really cool virtue signaling. That's awesome to mari of an
awesome culture. That's great. But like do they even care? Why don't
you put the Maori name is like a footnoll. You can call it that.
Sometimes it's the common name, your Latin name. You know, no
one outside of New Zealand knows the Maori names, just like no one outside
of New Zealand knows what aoi aoa is or however you pronounce that. Like,
it's just it's fucking New Zealand. I'm sorry to disappoint you guys,
but come on, but I get it. It's good, you know,
and of course I'd rather have that than like you know, fucking neo Nazis,
you know, shooting up Walmart's and like we have in the United States,
but well we have both. The United States has both flavors of dystopia.
But anyway, but she's just a fucking incredible, incredible orders. She
sent me a fucking painting of this dac tilanthis which is bat pollinated. What
the fuck it's a fucking parasitic plant that it's in Blanofores, which is you
don't know blano fores, you should, it's a really We looked at some
Bolanophoraes too, We looked at the sick Billian Jimmy Kents, which these are
all cool parasitic plant families. So I didn't know we're still lochiac head some
up until a few years ago that hit Nora, the prosa panky. Bolanophoraces
are very common in the tropics, at least you know, you don't see
it up here. Makes these things that look like cones, A chlorophylis cones.
They don't produce any chlorophyll. I don't think they even produce genes for
chlorophyll anymore. The fuck is that noise? Don't some weird whistling inside.
I don't know what's going on on here. How the fuck is it ninety
nine degrees still, it's fucking late September. I slept in the mountains of
Virginia when I was looking at that shale buckwheat Ariagon Ellennia, which yes,
we're going to talk about, and uh, and I was just, oh
god, it was so fucking I see why people fall in love with Appalachia.
And I'm sorry, Thanny, you and Appalachia for not having visited your
wonderful region. But we'll be in Baltimore, which isn't really Appalachia, but
it's close enough in October. But anyway, Doc tolanthis is is uh Jesus
Christ, I'm all over the place. Dac talanthis is in blanophores. It's
a really cool family pantropical. I believe I remember seeing blanophores in New Caledonia.
Parasitic plants typical hostorial root, and I think, Dac talanthis actually it's
got our storial root, which is the route that parasites plant parasites, not
mico heterotrophs, not plants that parasitzes fong, plants that parasitize plants. Hostorial
roots are the roots that they use to tap into their host but dac talanthis.
They call them wood rows because it forms this gall on the host plant
that then it I guess, comes out of that. I don't know.
It's got a weird fucking morphalacy, but god damn it, it's a cool
plant that it's pollinated by bats. And I would have loved to see one
in New Zealand. I'm gonna have to go back. New Zealand was so
nice. It was such a nice It's almost a little too nice. You
know. You take a jaded, cinical American over there with a sixth sense
of humor like me, and it's it's so nice. You're gonna fucking get
into you start feeling weird. I start getting like the fucking nervous ticks.
After a while. It's too nice. I'm not used to it. I
need some social decay. I need some stranger on stranger hatred. I need
uh, some really fucked up shit in the news at least once a week,
like terrible shit in the news. Uh. You know, you just
there's a level of dystopia you become accustomed to, and then when when it's
not around, you know, you start your creativity starts to decline, you
know what I mean, in your sense of humor and all that. You
know, It's like when I did psychedelic therapy, I didn't. I didn't
killed my sense of humor for a week almost. It was very tragic.
The only bad thing about it that in dealing with you know, thirty years
of pent up trauma, oh, in one sitting, Holy shit, got
that mocking bird though. There was a mocking bird outside the window when I
did this psychedelic therapy session. And you know, the guy who was sitting
there with me was just watching me paced back and forth. Hilarious, and
no one ever did that before. People just want to sit down and go
inside. Not me, sir. I'm gonna pace and just spit it all
out of them. To be I like kneeling over and like I'm gonna puke,
you know, on my knees and just getting it out. But that
mocking bird was just going off. Holy shit, there was a mocking bird
outside the window. Such a lovely, such a lovely cacophony to listen to
while I just went through it. Mushrooms are always work, but excuse me,
but but yeah, the the doct lantis. Uh, it's pollinated by
bats. How the fuck you know? Because there's no other mammals in New
Zealand except bats. They were the only mammals. So God, I would
like, yeah, I would love to fucking go back there. But yeah,
New Zealand's it's too nice. You know, it's too nice, and
you start to feel weird after a while. It's so weird to me that,
like the fucking pine plantations there. God, I remember this. There
was a time there was a spot where you know, me and Miguel.
Miguel drove the whole time. Alan was just lurking in the back of the
van and I was sitting passenger and we uh. I don't know what.
I don't know what Alan is doing back there. He's running DNA sequences with
his you know, space laser or sometimes, and he's always on his computer
doing technical stuff. I don't know what he's doing. I d and mushrooms
for people. I called him last week. I miss him. I wonder
what the fuck he is. He's in Wisconsin, He's in fucking Mary.
I don't know where the fuck he is he, Where the fuck is Alan
Rockefeller. He's in fucking Maryland. He's in goddamn upstate New York. Ninety's
in Alabama or something. What is he doing down there? I don't know
what he's doing down there. But we were driving through the central New Zealand,
the North Island and just looking at miles miles upon miles of pine plantation
Pinus radiata. He's cool. What must have been just the coolest forest.
It's replaced with Pinus radiata. But anyway, so all right, so,
oh, you know, we fucked around at the Iberium at Cornell looked at
some old books, like fucking four hundred year old books. I'd never seen
it before. They were called herbals because they were like an herbal calonic,
because in case you needed an herbal calonic. Back then, you know,
the doctor, the quasi doctor, the European version of a witch doctor,
had to know what to give you. So they would, you know,
consult these these books that were you know, the old pigskin four hundred year
old tomes that were that were clothed in pigskin, and just you know,
they just consult what what the what plants to give you, you know,
And I think I just had a list of all these different but they had
really beautiful plates in there, you know, or woodblocks. I guess that
just really intricate, really beautiful books. And that was just a treasure to
see. Two a friend of mine. I don't know how to pronounce his
name because I'm not Dutch, so if he's listening, I apologize, er
van Gut. He's a really sweet guy. Out of fucking I think he's
in Denmark. I don't know. I think he's Dutch. Yeah, I'm
mistage a piece of shit. How did I not even know someone's ethnic back?
I don't even know what if you know, I'm just so constantly disappointed
in myself. Not really. Uh oh, there's the Kopa Uncle Rick gave
me Uncle Rick my Navajo friends. Seeing on my desk, I wonder where
it went. I think it's what is kopal? It's a member of the
Pea family. It's for BASI I believe so oh god, it smells so
good. But anyway, the the four hundred you know, these four hundred
year old books. It was so great to be able to see. And
then my friend Roger, I'm sorry, brother, and Denmark, who's always
we've been communicating just over the internet for like three years. He sent me,
He's like, I've got some of those. Actually, he works in
a botanic garden in Denmark and sent me a bunch of videos of these just
these these really old books, man, four hundred year old books. It's
nuts. That was high technology back then, you know, you couldn't just
Wikipedia something. But it was cool to see in one of these books that
they had at Cornell an old illustration of Yucca and it was still called Yucca,
like I think that's obviously just the the indigenous name for it, and
that's where you know, the whitey's picked it up from, you know,
so that was pretty remarkable. I was like, oh shit, they were
calling it that back then. It's not. And then it just got adopted
into the genus name, which is cool. So but yeah, anyway,
it was funny. The Herberyan Akash was like, oh, the smells like
your car. I was like, oh, yeah, that's right, it
does. It's like the smell of paper. I think it was because I
had paper bags and and here berry impressed in some newspaper in my car,
and then all kinds of just the old plant matter stashed everywhere. You know,
seeds in the fucking glove box and the fucking whatever. Like, I
got some Yucca cernua on my desk right now that Adam Black gave me that
endangered yucca from East Texas. Anyway down here. I know it's it's cooling
off where you are, but down here it's starting to be planting seasons.
So I'm gonna hopefully be fine that I got a whole bunch of Seba pentandra,
really cool kpoc trees, those bottle trees with the thorns on them that
are malvaces, the family big giant pink flowers. There's quite a few different
species in them, in the genus Seba ceiba. But I got a bunch
of those seedlings I germinated. I'm gonna go try to find, you know,
some old grannies that want to treat plant that in their yard around here,
just trying to plant as many trees as possible. But being from a
tropical, seasonally dry environment, which again is a result of the itcz the
and the angle of the earth, you know, they're they're droughted that so
they have a long dry season. That's why they get that bottle structure and
they can they're kind of almost not really like a baiobab, they don't get
that big, but they're in the same family as baiobabs, so they're kind
of you can think of them like that. They're just you know, any
anything that's we all think of deserts, right, things have to be adapted
to deserts. But but remember there's a whole you know, area around the
globe, a whole latitude around the globe on both North and South Hemisphere,
caused by the angle of the Earth where you get you get really warm,
you know, because the low pressure zone fluctuates seasonally between uh South and Northern
hemisphere according to what you know, northern Northern Hemisphere winter is the Southern Hemisphere
summer, and vice versa. And so that zone fluctuates that low pressure area,
and of course with low pressure you get rainfall generally speaking, and so
that causes the rainy season. And so that is what causes a lot of
a lot of these really drought tolerant traits and plants to evolve, which is
what I did the presentation on a cactus or in Lower Manhattan. Also during
that seminar at Cornell, which was cool. Cornell was so fucking great man.
It was so nice. They were so there was this really mean lady.
She's sure she's got her own issue she's working through, but she's higher
up who hated me because it's some like fucking stupid twitter war. I got
in with one of her colleagues over taxonomy and and I didn't even see her.
I thought she was I thought she taught a Cornell or somewhere, one
of those fucking I don't know, one of those Ivy League colleges. But
uh, you know, so I was a little intimidated. I'm like,
oh god, this lady that fucking hates me as I've just got a uh,
I've just got you know, trauma from from mean older white women.
I think it's from living in the Bay Area. I don't know. They
no offense tech. Everyone's going through their ship right, no shade to them,
and I am a pain in the ass. I'll give them that.
But she was really mean. So I thought she was gonna be there and
she wasn't. Maybe she wasn't. I don't know. Everyone I encountered was
so fucking lovely and nice, you know. It almost maybe want to go
to college, just kidding, I do want to go to college. I
just don't want to pay, and I don't want to enroll in any class.
I'll go sit in and I'll go, you know, find these kids,
like, hey, let me give you five bucks. You get me
into the cafeteria and I'll come out with a couple of buckets of food for
me and the dog. I want to do that. It was so cool.
They didn't have any fucking soda too, fucking hate the soda, useless
shit. They had fizzy water and then like healthy drinks in the soda machine.
You know. So those kids, those activist kids, whatever they're doing,
I guess that's why they did it. They said, get these fucking
soda companies out of our school. We don't want them. But anyway,
Yeah, so Cornell was great. But then I drove to where the fuck
did Oh yeah we went. I hiked and I drove to uh, Lower
Manhattan or no. I drove to Brooklyn and park the fucking truck at Joe's
house. Joey Valley, Jove, I just call him Joe, but Christian
was calling him Joey Valley. I like the way that sends. Joey Valleys.
Really sweet guy and a friend of mine. But where the fuck did
this camp go? There? We go? So I parked it. No,
no, I went the cact the store dropped a bunch of shit off
at the hotel. They got me, and then Joe took my truck and
drove back this house and then I stayed with him afterwards. But it was
just cool to fucking walk around. Man, had too, you know.
I wanted to spend more time on the subway, just walking around lurking,
but I didn't have time. I had to I had to prepare some shit.
And the talk was great. It was fucking fine thing. It was
almost sold out, was like one hundred and fifty people in this room,
uh the second floor of this hotel, and had a nice had a microphone
and tart in at the shout like last time, and it was just it
was just a fucking good time. Man. It was fun. It was
showing plants from all over the world. Just structured it pretty loosely, just
showing plants that I find remarkable, like that iris that produces leaves that looked
like they've been showed on as a way of avoiding or bivory. Babbiana Cuniata
and Babbiana Flabellia Folia, Tristan Woodburg from South Africa. Guy know from South
Africa just posted it recently and his stories. I would love to go back
to South Africa too. It was just so fucking overwhelming. I'm trying to
do already short videos, you know, just which for me means still fucking
ten minutes, but just you know, one video on one species and keep
it at that, you know what I mean, instead of fiddly fucking around
all over the place doing these fucking forty minute longer. I know some people
like those, but they're painting the asked to edit and and that's face it.
People just don't have the attention span for that, you know, unless
you're putting my voice on is you know some sort of ASMR? Is that
how you saying ATC eight A what is it? Eight a mrs? Unless
you're doing one of them, you know, then you could just listen to
the podcast. You don't need to listen to the video. I talk about
plants if anyway. But this guy, I want to have him, this
this guy I met him last year, but we really shot the ship this
year. Anthony Rodriguez. He showed up wearing a suit dude with dreadlocks in
a suit, fucking raising the bronx, really solid dude, studies bananas,
like all over there. He's got the fucking guy's been everywhere man. Him
and his girlfriend were in the Mibia. They actually saw hid Nora. They've
been all over the all over the world studying plants and uh, yeah,
he's fucking I'd love to, you know, hang out with that dude more.
It really really knows the shit, really fun guy to talk to,
really good attitude. So I'm gonna try and have him on a podcast here
soon. And then there was there was some other lady who's like a snake
wrangler and uh and the Mojave Desert. I wanted to have on a podcast
too, but I don't know she she hasn't gotten back to me. She
was like, yeah, I'm down, and I just haven't heard from her
a week, so who knows. I don't know, but she would be
a fucking she. I bet she's got some cool fucking stories to tell.
I'm sorry if that's loud. I gotta you know, I gotta consume so
much caffeine per hour, so I moved to the Green Tea. But but
yeah, so so the the fucking talk went good, and the next day
I just went and visited my friend Paul, a friend of mine. We've
been friends twenty years, and I met him in two thousand and three.
We were living in a squad called the Batcave and Brooklyn together back then,
which now is something I think it's some sort of like art. I don't
know what the fuck it is. It's like an art. It's like an
artist. It's not that bad, you know, it didn't become like condos
or like a fucking you know, indoor mall. It's like, it's it's
pretty cool. That's where I met my friend, uh Ellery too, who
does a drag queen wrestling thing in New Orleans. You know, I met
a lot of good people back in those days, pre pre smartphone. But
but me and PAULI were sharing a room with this dude unique up on the
third floor of this abandoned building in Brooklyn kind of near Crown Heights, and
so we've been friends ever since. And he's just he's just such a sweet
guy, kind of aloof sometimes like kind of out of it, but uh,
but just a fucking you know, heart of gold and super passionate about
whatever. He's into like he went, you know, he taught himself Spanish
at like age thirty. He was like, I just want to I just
want to learn Spanish. I'm gonna go to Mexico and live down there.
It's funny too, when I first met him, He's like, I hate
trees and I hate grass. Like he wanted he'd spent so much of his
life in New York that he just wanted everything to look like New York,
like that was his like deal world, Like just fucking buildings and subways and
you know, everything really densely packed. And I mean he was like a
true believer and how great cities can be, which I was too at the
time, you know, before I got into plants and uh, and then
just realized that, you know, the great American cities are very few and
far between, because everything looks like a fucking strip mall now. And also
the nice cities that are walkable are now you know, incredibly expensive, so
much so that it's not worth living in them anymore because investors have basically turned
the housing market into the stock market and treat all these houses like you know
stocks, like speculate on them, just buy up a way more shit than
you need, just hoping it's going to go up and value. Meanwhile,
no one actually gets to live in them, you know, unless they're willing
to pay up the ass these exorbitant rental prices. It's almost like there should
be some kind of regulation against that thing because it leads to such drastic inequality
that society is soon at the threat of collapsing, which you know, maybe
people want it to, maybe people, I don't know who knows, But
anyway, all that aside, I went and visited Pauli and the dude hasn't
paid rent in New York in twelve years, man, and he's living on
this old house boat on a body of water and queens and you know,
you sacrifice a little bit. There's some shit you got to deal with,
but there's a lot of shit you don't have to deal with, like landlords,
and so he was willing to make that exchange. And and yeah,
it's just it was cool to see his spot. It smelled like coffee and
books, you know. M And then we went out on this little dinghy.
He's like, I got a dinghy, you want to go out?
I was like, yeah, fuck yat's go out on the creek. So
we went out on this industrial canal, this industrial creek, like halfway in
realized that dinghy had a leak in it, and so we had to go
back because it was just an inflatable dinghy. So we had to go back.
And then he got this pump, this like Jerry Raid pump and filled
it back up with air and uh. And then he brought a gas can
because he's like, yeah, you know, some the motor doesn't hold that
much gas. It was like it sounded like the motor was really struggling.
It was having kind of a hard time. But we were just going out
and uh and checking out what's growing everywhere. I was surprised to see back
rus hellamifolia up there too. I didn't know it was that cold tower and
it could take fucking New York winners man. It's an evergreen, you know,
coyote bush, and I don't know it. I guess it just goes
leafless or something during the deciduous during the winter. Is so cool. This
East East Coast, East Coast Bonnie is such a new world to me.
Like I for some reason, I was I always thought like the East Coast
plants were kind of like I was the East Coast was kind of like Chicago,
Like it just gets so fucking frigid. It's hard for me, you
know, it's hard for me to remember, or was at first that it's
actually like a USDA zone one or two above Chicago, like it doesn't get
it gets fucking cold, like deadly cold. But nothing's like Chicago or Minneapolis.
So I don't know what that back risk grow in Chicago. Maybe who
knows is anyone growing back ris hallamifolia the East coast coyote bush in Chicago would
be so curious. So we saw that and then it was just a bunch
of invasives, you know, a bunch of invasive ship There was a Polonia
everywhere. The giant leaves almost looks like a catapa. It's it's in lamy
a c which is is what it is that right now. It's in poloniac,
which is in lamy Ali's. So it's distantly related to sages and mints,
which is fucking wild because it's such a it's such a huge treatment.
They get so fucking big. I don't think Polonia would take Polonia wouldn't take
Chicago winners. Thank god, this Chica. I mean, the Chicago's guts,
the fucking prairies there are still nice. You don't need anything else,
you know, you don't need to be bringing in all this this goofy shit.
So I'm uh so, yeah. So I went and visited him,
hung out with him that day, and then when I saw another old friend,
and then the next day we all went to a bunch of us went
out to this, to that Floyd Bennett Field, this abandoned airstrip to go
check out the New York cactus species of New York prickly pair. And it's
funny too because they've created this, you know, this, this air strip
is a is abandoned now. I think it's like a park, but it's
it's these old panels of con create. I gotta work on that video actually
today. It's gonna be a good one. It's these old panels of concrete
and in the cracks, of course is where all the plants start. But
it was like it's actually it was the perfect model for this book I'm writing
about the unintentional urban plant ecology of cities that comes up, which is the
funnest shit for me to you know, I mean, I that's my that's
my fucking gam being in the city and looking at plants, even if they're
invasives. You know, I used to just ignore them, but now I'm
kind of like paying attention to them. And I'm still not cool with them
being there. I think it's you know, it is recticology, but of
course it's a fucking city, so whatever. But it's still just interesting to
study what relationships uh come up there and what thrives and what doesn't and how
these you know, these this these unintentional ecosystems that evolve and how they play
out with each other, and if there's invasive insects, what they're doing,
you know, what's polyanning it, et cetera. There were two seedum species.
This is what was remarkable. There were two seedam species there. It
was they were both from Europe, Europe or the Middle East in Asia.
It was ho, let me get a name for you. God damn it,
Danny, No one wants to hear about your penis. Anyway, I'm
back. It was Seedam sarmentosum and Seedam album. And what was remarkable was
that some Seedam sarmentosum, and you could tell us when you look at them
Seedam album is small leaves. They're more succulent, so they're fatter. It's
got more red in it and more anthocyanid pigments, which of course would convey
more tolerance to dry areas, anti sun exposure. And it's smaller leaves too,
and Seedam sarmontosam is green. The leaves are wider, they're broader,
so you know they can heat. They obviously heat up more. They're not
going to have as much tolerance to drought or to intense heat, and they're
gonna need a little bit more moisture. They don't have that red pigment too.
So Seedam sarmontosam was growing in the center of the cracks and then out
on the margins of it, almost perfectly like like they've been planted. So
Seedam sarmatosum's green, and you had these red margins of Seedam album. The
other invasive seedam species growing further away from the cracks, but everything was growing
in the cracks. And uh, you know the old seams of these concrete
like ten by ten concrete. Uh, I don't not plates, but you
know concrete. Yeah, they the way they lay the concrete, it's like
like in a sidewalk, like a sidewalk crack. Okay, it was really
fucking cool to see. It was like, holy shit, they're like they're
stratifying according to moisture and drought toler to drought and heat tolerance. So fucking
cool. But everything was coming up in these cracks, and so it was
you know, it's easy to imagine what would happened eventually since this was just
an it's an old air strip. This must have been the area they parked
the planes too, because it was these ten by ten you know, kind
of like sidewalks squares of concrete, and then the seams had this asphalt filler
in it, you know, to prevent that, to prevent things from growing
in and whatever. And the asphalt filler this tara would just you know that
the UV would eventually destroy it and it would blow away and you'd see it,
you know, little pieces of it everywhere. Uh. And then that's
when the plants would move in, and you know, there was Queen Anne's
Las Doccus carota. It's just wild carrots really, just the ancestor of domestic
and domesticated carrots. There was there was some back risk, there not much.
It was mostly invasives. But then it seems like that, you know,
the natives eventually start to get in. There was ellie agnes there too,
that invasive silver undersizes the leaves and red berries. I think it was
unbolatest ellie agnes umbelatest, really bad invasive. Pretty plant, but really bad
invasive. So yeah, it was fucking yea. It was just cool to
see this. But the coolest of all was the prickly pair. There was
Opuntia everywhere, Opunchia opuntia. However the fuck you want to pronounce that again,
it doesn't matter. Latin's a fucking dead language, and kick anyone in
the balls because it will be a man that tells you otherwise. So they
got to make these fucking wide mouth green tea forties. You know, this
is this thing is too small. This this the top of the bottle.
That's why I keep getting that glug, glug glug. So this, this
prickly pairer was everywhere. So they created kind of just by default, this
the perfect habitat for this cactus, which prior to this probably inhabited dunes,
you know, dry sites. That's where it can outcompete anything that can't tolerate
fast draining, nutrient poor sand, which is most of the most of the
plants that grow further inland, presumably. But now they've created this perfect habitat
for it's like a rocky habitat where there's nothing can grow out in the you
know, unless it's in a crack of this these unless it's in a crack
of this concrete along the concrete seems except you know, plants that can tolerate
the fucking heat, because this is a heat island too. And remember that
I mean this, these are just bear exposures of con read the heat up
and then it's like charging a battery with the sun during the day and the
summer, and then it just retains all that heat late into the night.
You never get the night's never really cool off. There's barely any soil.
There's you know, even when it rains, it dries out really quick.
So they've created this perfect habitat for this prickly pear to grow. It was
fucking great and there were just clumps of it everywhere, like tons of it,
like you don't feel bad about taking. If you live in Brooklyn,
go to Floyd Bennett and uh, it's at the South End. I believe
it's like near where they've got like all this, you know, like urban
farm stuff and urban gardens. Don't feel bad about going there and taking as
long as there's still ship times like big clumps, taking these fucking one or
two of these prickly pear pads, you know, and taking it back to
your if you get a little sunny spot, a little crack in some concrete
and your front of your apartment or wherever it gets good sun, and planting
them there because and when they bloom, they're fucking big yellow flowers and they
can just take a beating. They take all the piss and the fucking chemicals,
and you know, during the winter they survive. These we get the
same species human few subs. Supposing there's two species there, I don't think
so. I think it's just phenotypic variety in a population, and they're probably
hybridizing too. I don't see what's to keep them from hybridizing. Supposing the
differences are that the yellow one has yellow flowers and one has yellow flowers with
the red center and then spines. But I was seeing plants with spines on
the same plant, you know, with pads that didn't have spines. So
with the funk who knows, you know, I mean, leave it to
the you know, these fucking hi naturalist nerds to argue about it doesn't matter,
you know. And I say that as an I naturalist nerd, but
you know what I mean, like these fucking often like young men in their
early twenties who get really just hot and bothered about arguing about, you know,
inconsequential taxonomic shit among the same genus, you know, like slight very
if it's that, if if my opinion on this stuff has become so I
just not jaded, but just it's so fucking inconsequential, Like if you get
the genus down, who cares if it's a slightly different species. I mean
to me, because the some of the nuance, the subtlety between some of
these species plant species is so fucking some of the differences are so subtle that
it's it just doesn't matter. I don't care for the things that I'm interested
in. I don't care. I don't care. I care about adaptations.
I care about key innovations. I care about things that evolve that enable a
plant outcompete other plants or survive in a really hard area. I care about,
you know, higher level taxonomic differences genus, family, et cetera.
I don't care about species so much. If they look if it's two species
look that closely related, like some of these synthiotricums, I just don't give
a fuck. I'm sorry, I don't. That's cool if you want to
study that, I think it's pretty inconsequential, you know, is it Can
you use it as a model for studying evolution as a whole. If so,
then yeah, that's cool. But but it's just so, it's so,
I don't know, do the molecular work and then and then we can
talk about it, I guess, but uh, or then you'll have my
attention. But you know these that we get the same species of Opuntia in
Chicago and during the winter, these things just turned pink and wrinkly, and
they basically, uh, you know, they basically get the water out of
their cells and increase the solution, so, you know, so it lowers
the freezing point. Essentially, It's like if you've got you know, the
more solutes you have in a cell less water, the lower the freezing point
is. So you lower the freezing point, and you I did a whole
video on what happens when plants freeze, because during that Texas freeze, it
was a really good illustration of it. I mean there were just melted cacti
and melted succulents, melted pack of podiums all over South Texas. But but
yeah, a lot of the Apuntheas, a lot of the fucking and the
cylindro punches can really tolerate brutal cold. So and that's I don't know of
I don't think I know of any of the cactoid subfamily, the Cactoidi members
that can do that. I think there's only the Apuntheids, but of which
there's many fucking cool ones in South America too, like high and Ian ones,
you know. But yeah, Floyd Bennett Field, go check it out.
There was a ship ton of interesting stuff there. There was alien tuberosum
it's an invasive There was comalina. I think it's I think it was communists.
I think that's the invasive one. Yeah it is. It's from China.
They're Oh, I mean a lot of invasive stuff. But it's cool
to see just what is what's thriving. None of the ship planted just getting
in where you could fit in thriving in human disturbance, thriving in this old
abandoned airstrip, you know, surrounded entirely by concrete. There was Centorius Stobe,
which is that little purple looks like a thistle. I believe it is
in the thistle subfamily of astrac Yeah, cardioidy, it is. It's from
Italy. The whole cast of invasives was there. But then there was you
know, sky Zacharims go parton. There was a little blue stem too.
There was a whole patch of little blue stem, which was fucking cool.
I don't know if that was seated intentionally or if it was whatever it was,
but for it just showed up just you know. There was a rus
cope a line on that was a great one to see. There was heterotheca
there as well. That that aster, that composite, the telegraph weed,
a bunch of good shit. It was cool. I mean, we we
got there and rolled up with Joe Christian from Cactus Store, and then you
know we hung out like another They left like half an hour into and I
hung out like another fucking ninety minutes or something. It was just like,
you know, just just posted up. There was so much good ship to
to check out and then just especially to like make a little video about it
too. So I would love to see some other you know, native seeds
get introduced. There's some really, there was some really good stuff. Nonstock
communists was everywhere too. That green snot cyanobacteria. Fuck, that was cool
and it wasn't It was dry, it hadn't rained recently, so it wasn't
out. It didn't look like the green snot it was. It looked like
dried norris seaweed. But it's always such a cool thing to see. I
mean, it's it can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere like many cyanobacteria can.
That's why Gunnera, the plant Gunnera, among others, you know, sequesters
it and it's and its stems, you know, to help help Gunnera obtain
nitrogen from the air. Gunnera insignias at least. And it was just you
know, it just looks like like plates of you know, four foot swaths
of dried, cracked norris seaweed and it's just dormant. It's still alive,
but it's just dormant there on the ground, sitting on the on this old
pavement, this old concrete and then when it gets wet, it comes back
with then I don't know what thirty minutes an how it'd be a cool experiment
to see how quickly it comes back to life and then it just starts photosynthesizing
that I can go dormant again. My fucking cyanobacteria. Man, what a
cool photosynthetic bacteria. So that was, and we get it. It's all
over the world too. When we get it. In South Texas, you'll
see it growing next to peyote under these nurse shrubs of blackbrush growing next to
peyote, and astro find him and stuff. So that it was really cool
to see. And then I fucking I think that was. I think it's
dipped out after that. And fucking New York man, it's so funny you
pay twenty bucks for a sandwich. Everything is just so ridiculously expensive there.
But then there's still little nooks and crannies where you can get in and you
can get like, you know, a dollar slice of pizza or you know,
you go to the fucking noodle cart in Chinatown whatever. I mean,
it's there's still places where you can get you know, you can live affordably,
but there's just there's so much outrageously garish and expensive shit everywhere too.
It's fucking ridiculous. You know. I don't know. I just don't just
because people can charge that. I don't know. But so then I was
the next stop for me was I was just driving south. I had thirty
hours to drive. I fucking drove to New York. I never thought i'd
actually do that. But you know, I fucking how do you pay those
fucking polls too? I didn't have to do it over do it over to
mail. I should actually look into that, God damn it. But I
was just driving Styth and I was gonna go through Appalancha through Virginia, and
I was like, I'd be cool to look at plants, but I just
find him, get home and see my daughter. But then I was talking
to a friend and he told me about this buckwheat that grows. Uh.
You know, my ears perk up immediately, just in Virginia and West Virginia
on these shale barons, and so I was like, a fuck, all
right, I'm gonna see where it is that there is there any like somewhat
close to it was eight one, I think eighty one or eighty five.
What other fucking freeway is there? And sure enough there was. It was
like twenty miles out of the ways. It's like, all right, I
gotta go check it out. Slept, found a spot to sleep, slept
there. It was like sixty degrees. I could sleep in the back of
the truck. There were almost no mosquitoes. It was so nice. Sure
it sure beat you know the next day when I was trying to sleep in
northern Louisiana on the back of the truck and I was just getting fucking mobbed
by mosquitos, and Louise in the back of the truck with me, and
she's just panting, like hell some I'm smelling dog breath, but I can't
open the windows, and I'm hot as fun, but I can't up in
the windows because there's mosquitoes everywhere. And then it started raining, and I
was like, you know what, fuck this, I'm just gonna drive.
I'm just gonna drink a ship ton of coffee and just fucking drive. And
so I did that and just lost an entire night of sleep. I pulled
over and slept in the car for like two hours. But aside of that,
I just missed it it's so bad for you to do that. Man.
I used to do that when I worked for the railroad all the time.
Like I'd get off work at nine in the morning and I just couldn't.
I couldn't go to bed. It's even if you're tired as shit,
it's still nine am and the world is a way. You can hear the
sounds of everything. The sun is out. You know, your circadian rhythm
almost says all fucked up. So I was just, you know, that
was fucking aggravating. I said, all right, I'm just gonna fucking drive.
So but anyway, I stopped and spent like three hours in the this
shale barren. And you know, once I saw it, it was like,
it's a really steep slope. It's above this creek. I was like,
holy fuck, that looks so it looks so good. I need to
go see that. So sure enough, you know, within like right at
the bottom of the baron too, was this ariagonum and it's huge. It's
like it's you know, you get in a music environment, because even a
dry site, in a music environment, you're gonna thrive. But it was
so cool to see, you know, ariagonum, the genus is mostly out
west. It's mostly west of the hundredth meridian in the United States, which
is the dividing line roughly. I supposedly he's moving east with climate change between
you know, high rainfall or enough rainfall for the land to be green from
a satellite image and uh and low rainfall, dry habitats like the drier west,
and so Ariagonham thrives out west. It's you know, buckweed family polygon
Ac because of it's just what it's evolved. I think it's just the origin.
It's evolutionary origin was out there presumably. I don't know. The guy
that studied Aeragonham is dead. James revealed someone else needs to pull up the
reins and just become the Ariagonam wizard. You know, really, you know,
it's fill the shoes. So you could spend a lifetime studying that fucking
genus. God, it's so cool. It did a buck It did a
buckweed podcast I think two years ago, and it was June of twenty one
during the Ariagonham Society meeting in Elko, Nevada. But but yeah, so
this, you know, it's like three hundred species in this genus and they're
almost all out West, except for like four or five launge of floram which
you get in northern Texas and Oklahoma, and then I think there's two or
three more. I don't know, there's a couple in the southeast, but
they all occupied dry sites or dryer sites, and but they're still big,
you know, they're still fucking much larger than you normally see out west.
You get a couple of big species in the desert. By big, I
mean two or three feet tall, you know, or four feet tall in
some cases, but most of them are small, and there's a lot of
annuals, and they speciate fucking readily. There's like, you know, a
bunch of undescribed species. There was an undescribed species in the Bristol Mountains near
Amboy, California. That is just incredible. I haven't seen it in flower
in like five years every time I've gone up there since it's been super dry.
It's a perennial, so it's it stays alive, just goes dormant and
drops its leaves. But when it's flowering, it's got these like you know,
ketchup and mustard flowers and blue stems, tiny leaves, blue photosynthetic stems
kind of waxy. Just a fucking cool, cool species and still undescribed,
and people have known about it for thirty years, but no one's actually done
the work to describe it yet, which is frustrating. Someone should. But
yeah, this was Ariagon. I'm at Lenni and then you go up to
this, you know, you go up to this spot, these shale barrens
and otherwise you know, wet forest, music forest and wet but music and
and there's just all these these drought these drought adapt the dryer adapted species.
There was a Sedum glocophylum there, which is a fucking cool little stone crop
that was growing lower down, that was growing in like a wetter area,
just on some rocks, growing as lithopight. Uh. There was that fucking
Eliagnam was there too. There's you know, pleo Peltis, the resurrection firm
Pleopeltis Michellianna companula. The vericata was a cool one. I saw a purple
member of the lobelia family, so it's got the you know. Lobelias of
course are pro tandrous, like many things in astrelis the order, the sunflower
order, and they do secondary pollen presentation like Lobelia's have that style that elongates
through that fused anther two pushes pollen out, first presents pollen, and then
a day or two later, however long later, once the pollend's gone,
that style, that stigma becomes biffid like two lobed and opens up and is
receptive to pollen. Companula does a similar thing. You'll see flowers that are
presenting pollen that again you get this style that elongates. The anthers sty included
in this little purple you know, five fused petals with recurved petals on.
There's like little ribbons over curved back. It's the small flower. These are
pendant flowers too, which makes me wonder what insect pollinates some small flowers only
maybe I don't know, uh centimeter and a half long. And so the
the the style as it elongates, collects pollen off those those five white anthers
that are included in the corolla and then presents it. And then it later
on it opens up and it's got three lobes. It's got like three it's
a three lobed stigma, which is a great indicator when I see it.
If you see that and you see five five fused petals, especially if they're
purple or blue, and then that very distinct calyx. Look, it's got
like these, you know, like I call it a lobelioid calyx. It's
the sebals are all fused together in a cup and then they've got five points
on them, five points evenly spaced coming off the cup, the lobelioid klex.
It's just gotta look. It's got a good stalt, you know.
But if you see that three lobed stigma, white stigma protruding out of a
five lobed purple flower, it's one of the first things I would I would
think of, or you know, five petaled fused petals now they kind of
become lobes purple flower. That's one of the first things I would think of
is companula. And this thing was just covered and flowers. Then I found
out it's it is kind of rare and it occupies dry sights. And that
was a fucking I could tell it was rare because there weren't that many growing.
There was only one growing there. Let's see what's the range of that
I'm looking on at now. It occurs in it occurs in Tennessee, Kentucky.
Oh, come on, fucking I oh, don down in Georgia and
even in Alabama too, I guess, so maybe it's not that rare,
but it basically follows the line of the Appalachian Mountains, goes on up into
Washington too, doesn't know, No, just Virginia. No, it doesn't
go into Maryland. Haggerstown, Maryland. You ever been kicked out of Haggerstown.
But yeah, that was a nice That was a fucking nice one to
see. And then there was a Scudlaria that I guess was a vada but
it looked really remarkable and I only saw one of those two. I don't
know if it's a maybe it's a new species. I don't know, because
none of the scoots I was looking at. It looked like its Scudlaria of
courses in the mid family lami ac. But it had really remarkable leaves.
They were kind of I mean, it looked drought adapted. It looks like
a dryer adapted plant. And then there was Myriapterus. There there was Myriopterus
tomatosa and lenosa. I didn't know, you know, which are those cool
like fuzzy kylanthoid ferns, the rock ferns, tarod they sees the family pte
r parod they see, so they got that that revolute margin on the leaflets
that acts is like a false enthusium. You know. The enthusium, of
course, is what protects the story, which is where the spores come out
of on a fern, it's with the enthusium is it's a protective covering.
So they don't they don't have an enthusium, but they've got that revolute margin
that kind of acts like it. But this was, I mean, the
whole site was just fucking cool. It was just you know, these shale
barons. I wouldn't say they're barons. I think a serpentine bearns when I
hear barons. You know, these were like wooded with big openings and not
much top soil. You know, there were small trees, small junipers whatever,
popping up, but then it'd be you know, fifteen feet of just
opening before the next tree. I mean it was. It's the east coast,
eastern half of the United States. It's still pretty wet, but there's
no soil. It's this Cambrian shale that's mostly exposed at the surface. There's
no not much dirt, not much soil for things to grow in. So
it was just a cool I mean, you could just tell it's a cool
micro site providing a different kind of habitat from the surrounding forest. And that's
my jam. Just like those fucking inselbergs in Brazil or South Africa, or
the same granite domes in Western Australia that occur in eucalypt forests and you go
up on these, you know, forty foot high granite domes, you get
all these fucking cool species that you wouldn't find in the surrounding forest because they'd
be shaded out. They need they need full sun, they need more exposure.
You find these cool just growing in the cracks of this granite dome.
Same thing, And that's exactly what was going on over there at Floyd Bennett
Field, all right. Just fucking old air strip. The concrete acted like
the granite dome or the shale outcrop. Really fucking cool plant ecology. You
know, it's so different from the surrounding area. You find these plants that
just thrive, and they can thrive there because they you know, not a
lot of ship can grow in these areas because there's no soil, it's dryer,
it's more exposed. Because there's no soil, there's not much plant cover,
so you're more exposed to the sun, the same thing you get in
serpentine barrens in California. And so these plants can thrive there. They can
outcompete anything else, you know, because they've got a gimmick to get around
that fucked up, that fucked up habit that which I love, not fucked
up, you know what I mean. It's more stressful, it's more extreme.
Fucking hummingbirds are back in South Texas. They're they're swarming the feed are
like flies. You know, you've gotta gotta keep your hummingbirds happy. Just
they're going back down, going back south. They were up north for the
summer. So let's see, is there anything else I want to talk about
now? I think that's it. I'm gonna be in Baltimore and Maryland and
DC area for October. I might be going to Wahaka the second week of
November. I don't fucking know, man, I'm so And then I got
to write a book. I was gonna go to Chile. I had funds.
Someone's gonna send me to Chile in December. But I can. I
gotta get this fucking writing done, so just like I don't know I'm gonna
do that. Man, I think the easiest way for me to write,
especially as adds I am, is like I'm not I'm not a go find
a secluded shack type guy. I'm more like a go find a a friend's
couch you can crash on that's gone during the day because they work, or
something that lives in a city. And then so you can you know,
when you hit a block, you just go take a walk and see a
bunch of wild ship, go ride the fucking subway, go ride the l
whatever you know, and then you get your ideas there, Like I need,
I need a bunch of chaos going on around me, and I need
to be not at home in order to get all my shit together, you
know, mentally creative, create creatively. So if anybody out there, if
you live in like I don't know, a fucking fun city, I could
you know, and you you're willing to, like, uh, let me
and the dog come stay with you. Let me know you know, I'll
pay you. I'm not asking for a hand. I'll pay you. I'll
I'll fucking stay on your couch for a little bit. You know, you
just gotta or I could. I could sleep in the back of my truck
too, I can. You know we will work something out. You got
a spot I could park a truck and you don't want me in your space.
Perfectly understandable. And maybe I am a little bit of an outdoor friend.
I'm really not selling this. That's selling this well. But you know
this spot, I could drink coffee. And you got a bunch of interesting
shit around you. I don't know if you live in a college town or
something, and go, you know, find some shit to get into.
And there's like a desk somewhere I can right and I'll do your dishes,
and I'll pay you for you know, utilities and a little bit of rent
whatever. Let me know, reach out to me, okay. And aside
from that, I got he got stickers in to kill your lawn stickers with
the skeleton hand holding a little sign, the fucking I got the prairie dock
stickers, all that shit. I think I have a few kill your lawn
shirts left. I don't know, man, if you want any of that,
send me an email. I still I got prints which are basically just
like posters of drawings eighteen by twenty four inches. I got, what the
fuck books still books of drawings, so any of that stuff. But yeah,
anyway, I think i'll wrap it up there. I think we're fucking
done. I think that's I think we're done. God damn it. Go
with the fucking New England accent again, God damn it. You're ready?
All right, Well that's all I got. Once you have a good rest
of the day and go fuck yourself, boy,