Annotated, Profanity-laden Dichotomous Keys & the Fungal Ecology of Baja Chaparral

Okay, here we go. Here's the key too. From antodendron yeah,
seple pit margins lacking more or less one millimeters silky hairs, Plant erect unbranched
near ground stipules more or less four to four point five millimeters. That would
be from Anodendron mexicanum. And the next key the next key branch here that
we're selecting four to figure out what species we're looking at in the genus from
aatodendron is seple pit margins and occasionally the surface with more or less one millimeter
silky hairs. Plant erect branched near ground or decumbent stipules more or less two
millimeters. And then that further subdivides into two more key breaks. Plant erect
taller than wide flower thirty five to sixty millimeters wide seeples, yellow margins more
or less red or not from Anodendron californicum. Okay, And then the next
the next key would, of course, the next key break would be plant
decumbent. The other option here is plant decumbent much wider than tall flower thirty
to fifty millimeters wide seplus orange copery or red. And if that's the case,
everybody. Just remember, please go out there with your your ruler,
okay, and and you know, just hold it right up there, take
some good photo. Just in fact, just bring the whole fucking Jetson out
there with you, okay, all right. Weighs about fifteen pounds, or
you can read it in tiny three point font on a PDF and your phone.
What the fuck is this autistic shit? And before you get me for
punching down, it's like, I think, really fucked out, like actually
punching down. Let me say that I'm probably autistic and more fucking neurodivergent and
fucking weird than any of you. All Right, So you know, I
know everyone's doing this on the social media, trying to you know, call
people out and shame and shit, and that's the way that we're going to
change the world by shitting on each other. But I just want to say,
this is some fucking this is some weird autistic shit. That was the
key break in the jetson for vermonta dendron. And though it's important to use
keys when you're trying to figure out what fucking species you're looking at, you
want to like actually read words and stead of just look at pictures like I
like the I like the I like the books where the plants are all arranged
by color, the flowers are all arranged by color, and it's just so
easy. That's fucking kind of ship for brain too. But this makes it
so hard. I mean. And furthermore, I just think the genus from
monodendron, because I've seen all three species, the cumbents, Californica, Mexicanum,
they're all cool. Mexicana might be more of an ecotype. Remember a
really beautiful Mexicanum population I walked up on near a uh columet mesa. What
the fuck is is that? I forget the name of the spot, And
let me get this straight. I was confused in caliumet in Colinet, Punta
Colonet in northern Baja. We walked up on a marijuana girl. They're super
sketchy. Those idiots have probably destroyed that entire population. There was takaate cypress.
There probably a wealth of really cool fungal species which decompose that cypress doff.
Because cypress have all those weird resins in them. It probably takes very
you know, very unique enzyme fungal enzymes to break down all that duff beneath
the Tacata cypress or any cypress population. Really there's so much resin, and
especially since they're fire adapted, and then of course that resin which makes the
cypresses smell so good. The twelve different species of cypress within the California Floristic
Province, it probably takes a very special enzyme to be able to break down
that duff, as we saw in Baja yesterday. But more on that later.
But you know, I remember that from Mono Dender in mexicanan population I
saw there composed, you know, comparing it with californicome. There's differences,
but they're small. It's hard, you know, you go to shit like
this. I feel like so many species in California, that California is exceptionally
biodiverse. But also, you know, at a certain point you just fucking
I think, like shit, just what point does ecotype just you know,
what time you get? What point do you get just too liberal with your
designation of species when might just be an ecotype or whatever? I don't know,
I don't know. Let's look at the DNA, let's do full genome
sequencing on plants. Fortunately, that's kind of hard. It's not just like
with fungi where you look at the its losi, you know, or the
is locus and uh, you know, with porns some green to hear excuse
me, you know what plants. You gotta look at a number of different
lo si that is, locations on the genome gene regions to compare DNA bar
coding. But hopefully, as technology improves, will be able to you know,
my my ideal would just be to get a full genome sequence. It'll
be a little plugin at for your phone. You know, if the world
hasn't collapsed by then, and humanity hasn't done some stupid shit entered World War
III, you know, the wealth gap will surely widen a little bit more,
will have a you know, very small percentage of super rich people and
a whole throwing mass of poorer, distitute people climbing all over each other.
If that point doesn't happen, maybe it's some it's some point here we'll have
a little thing you can plug into your phone and do full genie sequencing in
the field. But either way, the point is with a key like this,
I can see why some people have a hard time getting in to uh
to this aspect of botany into using a key. It's so important though,
it really is. But I would like to compare something like, you know,
a really dry and a really dry flora, like a really dry key.
Compare that with the annotated Baha Checklist. Shit, let me turn this
fucking phone off's calling me, No, buddy, No, I call you
on your time. You don't call me on your time. I call you
on mine. Anyway, we've been playing phone tag all day. You know,
I just wanted to check in with him, see how he's doing,
you know, see how weather over there in Cook County is. But the
annotated Baja Checklist, if you get it, because it's a great example.
Even if you're now even if you're in fucking Kentucky, you're nowhere near Baja.
Get the annotated Baha checklist. Uh. You know it's it's just typing
annotated Baja Checklist into uh into the Google and you'll get a PDF and look
at what who wrote. I think it was mostly John Redman, and maybe
it was Soula and I forget who will let me see. But it's just
a great fucking example of you know, everything's listed by family and then genus
and then species and uh. And it's annotated, so it's not just the
checklist where it says, these are all the plants that grow within the peninsula,
within this region, the entire Baja Peninsula, which is a fucking wide
birth. It's a wide birth of a species diversity to encompass. But it's
annotated, so it talks about differences between you know, like three sentences,
not not a lot, but it's a it's a fucking work of art.
Man, it's wonderful and it's so much more helpful than a key, though
not always. He's in if you're looking at arctostaflos, which is a general
clusterfuck with very minute and subtle characters separating the species character traits. So with
that, I want to talk about the whole concept of a floral key,
because when I was first getting into it and using them, I would I
assume that keys were written. I don't know why. I assume it's the
keys were written the same way that modern taxonomy is that there's some sort of
indication of evolutionary inheritance or grouping, and there's that's not necessarily the case.
It's really just in some cases a flora or a floral key is grasping for
straws. There's not a lot there, you know, they're just fucking throwing
a bunch of Okay, well, these you can't really say. I mean,
if you were to ask someone what are the differences between Fermonodendron mexicanum and
fucking Fermonodendron californicum, you might say Mexicanum's got a larger flower. The region
it grows in a is a huge indicator of what species you're looking at,
I mean, region primarily more than just character traits, there's also many different
ecotypes of Fermonodendron californicum. You got that thin leave one up in fucking Napa
County. Just just hearing the words Napa County makes me cringe. I'm so
fucking glad I moved out of California. No offense to anybody who still lives
here. More on that later, you know, But you got you got
fucking people paying five grand to live in a closet, just packed ash to
neck. Everyone's in a bad mood, shit getting jacked everywhere. There's like
no middle class anymore. The hopes of owning a house here are fucking gone
out the window. Five years ago. It's just an investor's paradise. I
you know, if I live there still, I'd just be shitting under a
bridge, living in a box. It's the best option you got here.
Don't play their fucking game. It's not worth it, you know, Just
give up all hopes. It just makes sure you stay off all the drugs
and shit, because once people end up on the street, you end up
on a fucking method of fennel and you're fucked. But really, when it
comes down to it, just don't play the game. Just go live under
a bridge, or go fucking you know, get on a freight train,
take it somewhere else, away from people. I don't know, man,
don't it's just such a fuck. It just it's crazy. Man. I
just see people struggling here and I remember what it was like. It felt
really uncomfortable, Like god, damn, the land I'm standing on is so
overvalued. I want to get out here. But anyway, that all aside,
back to back to floral keys. So anyway, if you were talking
to someone and you were trying to say, well, how is Fermana dendron
Mexicanum different from Fermna dendron California? Come and for anyone that doesn't know if
you're on the East coast or in another country or whatever from Ana. Dendron
is a fucking awesome genus in Malvasy, the cotton family. It's in the
sterculioid E formerly the Sterculiace, which all got lumped together. It got reduced
to a subfamily, the family Seculiace. They got reduced to a subfamily and
then grouped in lumped together in the general Malvasy along with a number of other
former families like the fucking Baobab family which is also pseudo bombacks and they were
like five different families they got lumped together in Malvasy. Holy shit, I'm
glad I checked. I was giving you back dope. Okay. First off,
Ferminodendron is not in uh Straculioid. It's in malvodi that subfamily. And
furthermore, there's like fuck nine nine different subfamilies in Malvasi, which is a
fucking spectacular family. You got subfamily Bombacoidy brown low Brown low eody bitin Areoide,
which is Hermannia is in that the genus Armannia, which we all know
from South Africa, and a couple fucking wonderful species from North America. This
junctions this junk species from North America. In Mexico and the southern United States,
you got the Dambia dombioidi, which is dombeya. That's a genius.
Kitts use a lot in California horticulture, helic terroity, malvoidi, straculioidy,
and Tillioidy fertilia for the fucking lindens. Anyway, sorry about that. I'm
glad I checked, though. That's what we do here. We try to
check. I don't want to give you bad dope, and if I ever
do, I apologize. But yeah, it's I fucking love this family.
Man. There's there's super diverse in the tropics all over the fucking world.
Hibiscus family, et cetera. For some I don't know why, I assume
for Monodendron was not in Malvoidy, the Malvoidy subfamily which cotton and Hibiscus are,
and I assumed it was, you know, I get I don't know
when did this chicken you know, one of this circumscribe recircumscribe you got,
oh, the Hibiscus tribe in subfamily malvoid you got the Hibiscus tribe, the
Malvoid tribe, the Gossippi tribe, the cop that's the cotton tribe, the
di k Shisti dk shisty, don't know that one, and a tribe Carantho
dendri, which is from Anodendron and Caranthodendron, which are both fucking incredible Genera.
Caranthodendron is a really cool cloud forest tree in Mexico at the Curson elevations
of like eight to ten thousand feet, just fucking incredible. I've grown a
couple from seed. The monkey hand tree they call it because of that.
The Androecium arrangement looks like a little hand. And then you get the the
guina we see him, the stigma and style, the female part. Remember
Andrew, we seems male, kind of we seems female. The guy that
we see him is just like this little looks like a little, you know,
papered rat that pokes out. So but anyway, yeah, so fermnodendron
it. You know, if you were gonna ask the differences, you would
just say, you talk about the region, but you know, between Mexicanum
and Californica, because they can look a lot alike. The Cumbans is easy
that's adapted to a fucking weird soil gabbro soil, maffic, the ultramafic soil.
It occurs in like one or two places in a El Dorado County on
a really unique soil type, and so that's obviously evolved under the selection pressures
of that environment. I mean, you go up there, it soils like
it weather's to like this very bright red like an iron almost. It almost
looks like a serpentine. But it's it's not. That's a cool habitat though.
God, the guy that lives up there is a dick. Oh,
there's this fucking family of like I'm really all over the place. You gotta
forgive me. You know, I haven't been taking a meds the last two
days. Now, I just I'm back on it. I'm sitting here with
a cup of green tea and so we're you know, just took my fucking
eighty d meds all over the place. It should settle down here in a
minute. It took it kind of late today. Oh wow, I's got
some amazing what the fuck plant is that? I don't know what the fuck
that is. It's an incredible prostrates matted Melvodie taken by a loocily Vilca Bousta
Mante. I wonder if that's in Chili or some shit or what. I
don't know. I don't know what plant that is. Anyway, it's on
the tax on page for subfamily Malvody. Anyway. Yeah, I was the
doctor that lives on Pine Hill, and I don't feel bad it's slandering him
because I'm sure he's not listening to this podcast. But he's a fucking thick.
It's a public road up to the top of this hill where there's a
big race antenna and uh, and this guy just trips out if he sees
fucking any anyone, you know, and you're obviously like you're a fucking nerd
if you're heading up here. I mean, you could tell if it's like
a couple kids going up there to smoke pot and set shit on fire,
if it's someone with a camera going up there to take pictures of a fucking
rare plant. There's a couple of rare plants that grow up there on Pine
Hill in Eldorado County. Everybody go trespass, Well, you're not trespassing,
you're just on a public road. Park park on the public road. You
got to walk around this gate, walk up the hill and fucking go look
at some shit. But the guy's a dick. Remember he was coming home
for I know he's a doctor too, because he was coming home from work
once, big jolly motherfucker too, and he was wearing his little his doctor
suit, and he just went on this fucking tirade. He's like, what
are you doing. I'm like, oh, I'm going up there now.
In my mind, I'm probably I probably in my mind, I probably didn't
say it like that. In my mind, I probably was soft, you
know, But how I actually sounded was probably maybe a little gruff. Is
I've picked up on. I always think I sound kinder than I do,
but it might just be the you know, the little bit of like a
caustic, inherent causticness in my demeanor. But either way, you know,
he was he was hop from the start. He's like, what are you
doing up there? I'm like, I'm going to take pictures of plants.
There's a bunch of really cool plants, blah blah blah, and he's no,
this is not a public right. And I think it was actually I
actually after I was coming down and the guy was just a fucking dick off
the cuff. And I've encountered him like two or three times, and he's
like, I'll call the sheriff, and I was like, call the fucking
sheriff. I don't care. Call the fucking shit. Get him out here
that you know he'll ask me what I'm doing. It's a public road.
I can clearly see it's a public road. I can see the fucking property
lines. I got a map that shows the fucking property. You don't own
this road. Why do you give a fuck? You know, you're a
dick. And so it's just, uh, anyway, it's a wonderful spot.
Everybody should go trespast there. And Gabbro is cool. I mean,
just you know that kind of Gabbro's more of like a maffic composition magnesium and
iron. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you really should just
look up intrusive or look up igni's rock diagram and you'll get a list of
all the different rock types that apply to these terms. You know, intrusive
rocks, extrusive rocks, gabbroe, basalt, granite, rhyolite, all the
intermediates andesite, etc. But anyway, uh yeah, So for Amuntodendron,
the cubins evolved in this really weird soil type. It's the cumbent that kind
of creeps along the ground. It doesn't get too tall, you know,
really unique flowers. The petals have more of a tapered point to them.
Or I guess it's unisseriate flowers here. There's not really petals and sepals.
It's just it's just the teples. I guess they're calling them. They're calling
them seepals, not peoples. They're petal like sepals. But either way,
it's unisserit. So it's only got one series in the fucking perianth. But
uh, anyway, the point is that's yeah, for Amuntodendron, the cumbents
is obviously a distinct spe not just an ecotype. Mexicanum is. Obviously they're
listed as a species, but it's kind of an ecotype either way. It's
a fucking beautiful plant. But if you were to ask someone what are the
differences between them, you know, you'd go through a They maybe go through
a list of characters. If they were educated on the subject, as opposed
to me, and you look at a fucking you know, a floral key.
It's just Jesus Christ, like real, you have me to get down
to measure the fucking stipules. Really are we going there? Is that?
What we're gonna do here? Is that what we've been reduced to? The
seple pit margins are lacking more or less one millimeter silky hairs. The plant
is erect, unbranched near the ground. Well it was branched either the ground
at some point, wasn't it. What the fuck? It just it just
sends a shoot up and doesn't branch at all to the fucking branches. Don't
just ebb size as the plant ages. Huh the fuck? You know?
I mean it just it's like I give it to him. Though, writing
a floral key has got to be a pain in the ass, you know,
shout out to Scott Ward. He's doing it. He's writing a floral
key up there for the East Coast, you know, with that guy Weekly,
they're doing it. It seems like a fucking hard thing to do.
But if I was gonna write a floral key, I put all this shit
in there, you know, I'd put like no offense. The autistic version
the fucking just like really dry. Someone's gonna write me really angry about that.
I'm fucking not. Please don't, please, fucking don't. Someone's gonna
call me ab list. I'm not. I'm fucking not. I promise you
I'm not. I've just come on anyway. Look it's me. I'm fucking
nuts anyway. You know. I'm neurodivergent too. But uh, there'd be
like a dry version, and then I would do the annotated fun version,
which just talks about, you know, just like if we were having a
conversation. It would be more like the annotated Baha checklist Floral checklist, which
again, thank god the John Redman and the the Sula vanderplink Rite there too.
I don't know whoever whoever else wrote that that I'm forgetting. I apologize,
but there's gotta be something like that, you know, And then you
keep this ship. You keep the really the really hardcore dry shit for the
super nerds, which everybody should aspire it to be at some point. But
when you're using such minute and subtle character traits, it really turns in to
a cluster fuck, especially when you're crouched down there in the hot sun trying
to figure out, you know, trying to like shade your phone so you
could read the fucking key the PDF, trying to figure out, well,
this is this four millimeters or is it more like a one millimeter? I
think I see a silky hair, but it might just be I can't tell.
Is it silky or is it more of like as the late trike?
A fuck? I don't know. Is it the is it branch near the
ground? Not see it looks like it maybe had branches at one point,
but now there, I mean, it sounds like a fucking mess, you
know. And nowhere here on this floral key does it say that there's a
fucking regional difference. F. Mexicanum is only in extreme southern California right by
the border and Baja Mexico on F Californicum is a more widespread species with money
different types that extends all the way from southern California from Kern County up into
northern California. You know, just at what point do we And then if
you get an anotated checklist, you can mention the fucking fire adaptation, the
fire, the pyrofitic habitat of this genus too, So annotated checklist all the
way around. Anyway, moving right along. I just got back from Baha.
I learned a lot of botany there. It was nice, you know,
when I was first getting into all this shit, you know, fucking
roughly. I started going there twenty twelve, twenty twelve, and then hadn't
been there since twenty nineteen, so it's been five years, and it was
fucking great to be back. Man. It's so nice. It's so pleasant
down there. It's basically what southern California would look like if it hadn't been
turned in to just a fucking huge parking lot in freeway. It's so nice,
like there's just and make no mistake, it's not because of any amount
of altruism on a part of you know, the Mexican government or developers down
there. I think it's just been you know, it's just a simple fact
that costs a lot of money to fuck your landscape into a coma to develop
it. You know, I have not met, I have not encountered any
large human society that has an innate respect for their landscape. Maybe, sure,
we all know there were indigenous land ethics. Those were relatively small groups
compared to the fucking megacities we have today. Of course, it was also
pre industrial revolution. You know, when you give you give us bipedal primates
a shit ton of technology, and we're certainly going to take it. It's
not like it's a you know, there's not like I've not encountered it.
Again, I've not encountered a conscientious decision to set aside land for the sake
of just setting aside land in any significantly large amount, you know, outside
of just you know, parks and preserves and fucking national parks, et cetera.
Those are crumbs. I'm talking about, like every four blocks, you've
got one block dedicated to just native habitat. I haven't fucking seen that anywhere
I've gone, you know, despite the health that would do for the biosphere
and fucking human mental and emotional health, haven't seen that anywhere. Don't think
I will anytime soon, but I can hope. Who knows, maybe it'll
happen. I love I'd love it if it were true, but regardless,
you know, being in Baha is like seeing southern California in some ways three
hundred years ago, because there's just nowhere near as much development. There's only
one main Highway, you know, down the whole fucking peninsula, and it's
like a two lane in most places. It's just a two lane road.
In ninety nine percent of the area where that I think it's just Highway one,
to call it. Ninety nine percent of the area where that highway goes,
it's just a simple two lane road with no shoulder. And so there's
a lot of intact habitat still and so you kind of get at least in
the northern part because the California Floristic Province doesn't stop at California. The geopolitical
line, of course, at the you know, the California Mexico border,
it goes all the way down to about El Rosario, where you start encountering
giant fucking cacti. I mean you start encountering giant, well not giant,
but large cacti, shrub like cacti in the form of Stenosyrius kamosis. Just
north of Ensonata. You look at that steep hill, that steep slope just
north of the city of Ensonada, and you've got Steena sirius kimosis everywhere,
looking like, you know, giant squids that have been had their heads stuck
in the mountain side and there's just these tentacles sprawling everywhere. So you start
encountering it there. That's a great fucking species too. And then you go
in huge Dudleya. You know, you can see him on the fucking bluffs
growing with the Gave Shahi, you know, basically just immediately south of Tijuana.
And so you know by anyway, the California Floristic prefence basically extends all
the way south to El Rosario. And then you've still got certain elements of
it, like there were blue dicks, Dikelostoma in the Brodea family, which
no one on the East coast is really gonna know. I don't think you
Getney, you get Muilia, and uh I think is that it? I
don't know, I think that's it. Anyway, it's a really cool monocot
family, a geophytic that it has just got bulbs or corns, a geophytic
monocot family, or now it's been reduced to subfamily in asparagacy, which is
way too big for a family. It did the same thing, the same
thing they did with with Malveasey, which maybe was warranted in that case.
APG the Anglo Sprint Philogeny group did with asparag asparagacy, and it took all
these fucking families, super unique distinct families, you know, reduced them to
subfamilies and lumped like fifteen of these fucking things all together, so that like
agaves and and fucking like alostoma and all this shit is just considered a sparagacy.
And now it's kind of nuts. I don't I don't agree with it
at all, And Michael Simpson backs me up on that, he thinks it's
kind of fucked up too, but uh, that's my qualifier for it.
The author of Systematics, which now has three editions and an upcoming fourth,
agrees with me on the on the listing of asparagacy, the inaccurate lumping that
occurred. It shouldn't shouldn't be like that. It's wrong, It's morally and
ethically wrong. Anyway, you still see elements of the California Floristic province all
the way down south of El Rosario. I mean, there were blue digs
everywhere, you know, deikelostam and now they changed the genus name to something
these I don't fucking know what they changed anyway, I couldn't tell you more
about why or how they I haven't read the paper. I don't know the
history of the taxonomy. I don't know if that's an old name or what.
But you know, you see this this shit everywhere. I was amazed
at how how dominant Ambrosia was the genus, the genus of ragweed's one of
the few wind pollinated taxa, and the sunflower family Asteraci. I mean,
there's fucking Ambrosia everywhere. Ambrosia quinapodia, which is a super dominant shrub everywhere
in this region around l Rosari or like right where Highway one turns east,
Ambrosia bryanthii. That's the northern extent of it right there. That's a spine
to the Ambrosia really fucking cool one to really really cool Ambrosia monogyra mono hira,
which is a really dominant shrub. You almost you're down there, you
see it in the washes and shit, you almost assume it's like another species
of baccarist It's just fucking everywhere. That's the one that that afflon that that
the hollow parasitic plant was growing on that we did a did a video on
last week. Really aflon coopri, which you also get in southern California,
Arizona, et cetera. It's just like a desert species, kind of wonderful.
I see one that had been naught on by a cow or a donkey.
I'd like to think it's a donkey, because I don't really appreciate cows
too much, A more of like a donkey guy, you know, if
I had to have one in my backyard, or just as like a friend,
you know that you hang out with, you put a little hat and
a cloak on him, and shit, it'd be a donkey. Cows are
just a little it's not their fault, but they've been bred to be stupid.
So anyway, something and not on this thing. So I unearthed it.
I didn't detach it, you know, from its host from the ambrosia
route, but you could see the hostorial connection. You had this mass of
looked like a ball of spaghetti noodles, and then it just attached to this
this other root, this linear root that was popping coming through like this diameter
of a straw, and that was obviously the ambrosia root that it just attached
to. And then I reburied it, you know, I just took some
photos, reburied it when it was done. Didn't break the connection. I'm
sure it's fine. Maybe drying out a little bit during the five minutes I
was filming and taking photographs. But either way, it was super cool.
But but just to you know, to be down there and see all this
shit again, it was so fucking cool, and especially with as little development
as there is. But I'm sure. I mean, I see this every
where I go. And I've been doing this shit, traveling to all these
places, which I initially just started doing to clear my mind from all the
bummer shit that you know, one might encounter in many human societies and h
and then it turned into whatever the fuck it is now, this disjointed ranting
to a corner, sitting here at a desk, you know, wondering if
if people even listen to all this. It turned into this ranting about phylogenies
and ecologies and nothing whatsoever to do with the medicinal or edible uses of plants.
Intentionally is the medicinal? Can you eat it? Jesus Christ, raise
the bar a little bit anyway. H So, in the fifteen years I've
been doing that, Yeah, I've seen so many happens. I've go you
go back someplace, there's a new fucking development. Something else is gone,
something else is destroyed. It doesn't stop, especially in the United States.
Like I guess, when I was growing up, I assumed that at some
point the development would stop. Like people generally appreciated open space and quote unquote
nature word, I don't even really like it's just the real world. I
guess I thought people appreciated that, but they they really don't. There's not
really you know, the dominant cultures as a whole, in most places on
planet Earth don't. The dominant human cultures don't appreciate plants to any extent beyond
them being edible, psychoactive, or you know, having some sort of medicinal
use. There's just no there's no just appreciating it for what it is,
or seeing that it's inherently a part of a larger machine that's needed for the
fucking planet to function correctly, you know, and for human physical, mental,
and emotional health. There's none of that yet. We haven't reached that
point yet. Our fucking monkey brains are not there yet. Maybe it's some
point, likely not until there's you know, like a giant catastrophe, but
as we see occurring now with mass extinction and climate change. But Jesus Christ,
to get so negative, but it's get just be more positive? Can
you just more? It's really negative. You need to give people hope.
No, fuck it, people don't need hope. If you're doing shit for
hope, it's the wrong change. Just embrace the reality and have a fucking
sense of humor about it and enjoy breathing and respiring and metabolizing and taking shits
and sleeping and all that just on its own. Really you need hope is
the fucking fuel to exist. Really fuck off anyway, Moving right along,
you know, you see yeah, like I said, you see that development
everywhere, but I haven't seen it to that large of an extent in Baha
yet, but there was. We were at Takai Cypress Grove yesterday, beautiful
entire mountain composed of gabbro and you can see the changeover from what looks like
a metamorphic rock A nice it's like a make a beautiful countertop in somebody's Airbnb.
It's like a beautiful white and bluish and red metamorphosed rock that makes a
clanking sound when these little bits of hit each other. No bit, They're
like baseball sized chunks. But we rolled up to the spot and I've been
there before. It's Takati Cypress Grove. It's just north of Encinata, and
there was a road there. I was like the road I was walking on
had very clearly just been plowed. We were actually looking for for Monta dendron
mexicanum or I was. I don't know, Jordan and Allen and Sergio were.
We're still checking out some cool saparo trophs that were eating the Takati cypress
duff. Takati cypress, of course, is a wonderful plant. Cypress is
served as my gateway drug into things like biogeography, speciation, genetic drift,
the idea that a formerly huge population of what was generally maybe one or two
species later got split up by climate change or some sort of vicarians that caused
the barrier to gene flow between different populations, which then turned into distinct species,
which is really fucking cool. You know, Hierrophytic plants, cypresses were
good in the you know, gateway drug into that. Because most of the
California cypresses are pyrophytic. They need fire to melt the resin on the cone
scales so that those cones finally open and release seeds. Cypresses don't generally live
that long either, like you know, two hundred years. We're talking about
Hesperosipprus, by the way, not tax sodium, which is for you East
Coast bastards, another great genus though, same family. But anyway, So
I was walking on this road and this Takati cypress grove and and just realized
I was like looking at it. I looked at a satellite map, and
I was like, fuck, on the satellite this this road doesn't even hear
yet like this was. And I looked around, I'm like, oh shit,
this thing just got got cleared, like all this is fresh. They
took a giant on how to fuck they did it because it's it's all this
chaparral brush. But they masticated it and then came in here with the giant
fucking, you know, piece of heavy machinery and grated the shit out of
this road. And they wouldn't invest all that time and money doing it unless
they were gonna build some shit here. It's not just for the fucking mountain
bikers that are using it. This is on the chopping block. This whole
piece of habitat is on the chopping block, and it just fucking you know,
it just made me so bumped. And that's what you see, you
know, that's what you see all over the place. It's not I wish
I could say it was just capitalism. Capitalism doesn't doesn't help it, of
course, unless you when you come up with a form of capitalism that places
a fucking value on any of this shit, which it doesn't. But you
know, I think it's just again, it's just our disconnection, which is
such a vague and subtle term. What's that mean? Right? Our disconnection
that's like something you put in a fucking piece of corny poetry. Our disconnection
from nature. That's something you hear like a fucking new age, you know,
a new age like psychedelic seminar. Disconnection from What does it mean?
Right? But that's what it means. It means forgetting where we come from,
forgetting I talk about this shit all the time. You mean to say
it again, right, I can't understand why some people don't see the value
in that, why they don't feel the same things I feel when I look
at these places. You know and why they and furthermore, why they don't
feel bad in places that are just farming you as a consumer, you know,
or as a worker, as a fucking peasant. I don't know.
I mean, maybe they do, but I think it's just whatever. I
don't fucking know. Man. You know, it's all exposure to ideas.
That's what advances culture, that's what educates people, and that's what lifts people
out out of the narrow bathroom stall of vision so that they can see the
rest of the bathroom. To use a metaphor, or to zoom out,
you know, to get out of your narrow frame of of to leave the
one to leave the room with the one window you've been looking out of,
and actually leave the house and get like a fucking and go stand on a
hill and look at everything, get the bird's eye view of everything, get
a greater perspective. It's kind of the bathroom stall thing. It was kind
of a weird analogy. I guess I'm not talking about being like a beeping
tom, but I just you know, when you're in a bathroom stall,
it's kind of it's a kind of narrow ray. You can't see you like,
you know, it's a narrow range of dude, It's all I meant.
No references to Minneapolis Men's room anyway, where that senator got you got
in some trouble for you know, doing the whole knock knock coughing. But
this, yeah, anyway, this habitat north of Encenada was just it's a
fucking lovely I was telling Sergie. I'm like, man, I mean,
we were looking for Fermana dender and Sergio lives in a Sonata's like, you
got to come back here, man and look for that from mounta Dendron,
because this is the fucking habitat when and when I was at that spot on
colon at Mesa, all these species were here, Like all the species you
see, it's the same plant community, it's the same geology, like that
Fermano dendron is here. It might not be going off right now because there
hasn't been a fire in a while, and the seeds need fire to germinate,
and plants don't generally live that long, at least not as I can
imagine, you know, more than a decade. They kind of taper off.
Iliamna bake Rye is like that too. You know, you get a
fire boom, they just they all fucking germinate at once Iliam and the bake
rye grows on those lava flats. Grows in a lot of places, but
the best population I've seen is the lava flats kind of near Mount Shasta.
They're not lava flats there. It's like andesitic sand. It's like sand from
weathered and to site, which is a volcanic rock. But you know,
the first year, they're all just going off, and then slowly as the
years go on, we kind of start to taper off. You can tell
the plants still live that long, and it within like a decade or two,
there's maybe only a few plants left, and seeds will germinate here in
there, but they generally need a fire. There might be one or two
that go off, but you know, you get a little bit of scarification.
You know, it's a lot of these fire dependent malvids are just like
that. You know, they're they'll you know, you shit tongs of seed,
and of course it's not adaptive for all the seeds to germinate it once.
Like you know, a lot of people who are just getting into body
and not familiar with you know, plant the calag yet might think that seeds
should all germinate it once, like when you buy a packet of tomato seeds
at the fucking hardware store and they all come up at once. It doesn't
work like that. That's not an adaptive benefit. Ecologically speaking, you get
that, you get a bunch of all the seeds Germany at the same time
fire comes through, flood comes through. The whole population. Is gone better
to have some seeds germinate one year, some seeds germinate three years later,
some seeds germinate eight years later. You know, it's especially plants in a
dry place. I mean, southern California is not exactly a desert, it
kind of is. It's a very unique habitat type. It's Mediterranean climate,
so the hottest and then it morphs into desert. You know, when you
get any significant amount of distance away from the coast, from the Pacific coast,
from those cold ocean currents, so you go further south inland, you
know, from coastal California or further south you get into actual true desert.
But even then, and there's still a significant influence of fog, as you
can tell from all the lichens and everything. But uh, but you know
the Mediterranean climate winter, rain, summer, dry, the hottest season is
also the driest. Plants from deserts and Mediterranean climates to seeds tend to be
pretty long lived, you know, whereas the whole recalcitrant thing needing to you
know, germinate, needing to stay moist, and then you know, not
having a very long shelf life. You mostly get that, at least as
I've experienced it in more humid music or even you know, tropical and wet
environments, like things don't need to be long lived because it never really dries
out. But you know, in a dry climate that dryness has selected for
longer lived seeds that don't all germinate at the same time. But anyway,
so yeah, so going up up this route, I mean we had been
we went into the desert area south of El Roario a little bit where the
giant cardone cacti are, the Paca sirius pringle eye, the boojum trees Fulkyia
columnaris basically a tree ocatillo. Uh God, that's a cool genus to Fulkyria,
Fukiria. Who the fuck was fukir I don't know. Still, haven't
seen Fulkyria Purpussia down in Wahaka with that beautiful it's a beautiful bottle tree sarco
clescent which is the term for uh, for the habit of Fukyria and elephant
trees. You know, whether it's Paca kormas discolor of the Antacardiaci the mango
family, or whether it's burser microphylla, another plant colloquially known as elephant tree.
Best to just use the genus name, not the common name. Sarco
colescent call us refers to stem and then the fucking sarco. I don't know
what does sarko mean? Let me look that up. Okay, sarco is
uh the fuck is this Greek? What is sarco? And Greek flesh?
All right? Flesh? Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't.
I don't. That's not a good one. That doesn't that doesn't imply
thick and bulbous like some of these plants. I guess maybe with Bursra and
paciccormus, I could see if it's got a flesh, you know, it's
papery that it's not very spiny, but uh, but for like okatios and
shit for boojum trees, the cereos c I r I oh, just the
Spanish term form. I don't know. I don't know if I buy that
sarcole a fleshy tree, it sounds kind of gross. Fleshy. They're more
like a bottle shaped. They're succulent. Could you use cardia form? I
guess not not really that that implies more of like a thickened woody stem that
grows just above or below the ground, you know, like you might get
in the Brazilian Sahato, another seasonally dry environment. Remember Sahato looks like cerraro,
but it's it's Portuguese. So those ares done into hues, buddy.
So we yeah, we went to we went to the deserts a little bit,
and I'll get to that in a minute. But back to this taccati
cypress population. It was it was basically, yeah, the southern extension of
the Southern California Floristic province, the Southern California, Southern California chaparral, which
is a habitat type, and and it was Ornithos staphalos man god Ornithos stafflos,
opposite of folio already one of my favorite plants. The Baja bird bush.
It's a member of the blueberry family raic case its, and the ar
buttoid clade after our budis the madrone. So our Buddhist Kamarastaphilus Arctos stafflos,
which anybody on a West coast should know. Of course, the man's anita
is really fucking wonderful. Genus taxonomy is kind of a cluster fuck. I
had to write my guy Morgan yesterday, see if you could send me a
picture of a fucking a key to the Baja Arctos staphalos, because I don't
think they're listed on cal Flora Calflora dot org. This podcast is not sponsored
by Kelflora dot org. I was actually banned from the California Native Plant Society
Facebook page back when I used to use Facebook. Who the fuck uses Facebook?
Still no offense to the boomers. If you do, that's fine,
I get it. You gotta watch out. You get stuck in a fucking
hole. I go up to the I go on the Facebook page to upload
little shit videos, you know what the fuck? You know, playing I
figure out playing the zus algorithm. You know, I'll put some fucking plan
education on there. If people are actually willing to, you know, let
me run my mouth and uh semi educate them. But I'll go on there
and it's just you know, I really I don't use Facebook. I had
a personal account. I've kind of abandoned it. But I'll go up there
to to like load shit, and I'll just so easily get distracted looking at
the dumbest shit, like the most national inquirer tabloid style shit, and I
figure, like, how the fuck how does the fucking algorithm pick this shit
to show me? Like I have no interest. I don't watch this shit
like celebrity news fucking just the most. It's just tripe, just like garbage,
you know, like like roadside fucking trash. I don't know, Like
where does it the I don't know. Man, It's weird the stuff that
gets thrown at me via face fuck as I call it, because that's really
what it turns into. You end up sucking your own face with the screen.
But uh, anyway, I forget how we even got here. Let's
move. Let's keep moving. So or Nito Staffalos, opposite of Folia is
a near Baja endemic. There's that one population. We filmed some of it
and kill your lawn. It grows right up against the border wall. Surely
there was a handful of populations in San Diego County before it got turned into
a strip mall, and uh, pretty sick de It's like, actually,
it's like pretty cool. Do you like fucking San Diego? Do you like
SD County? Do you like go up there? Go up to like North
County and like fuckingdeed just channeling. Forgive me the Tourett's kicks in every once
in a while. God, now he's being fucking ablest against people with Tourett's.
Jesus great, we turn this off, so u or nitos staffalos.
It has the beautiful bark. It resembles kind of a crape myrtle. It's
extremely fire adapt that it's got a burrow. It's and I did not know
until yesterday with Allen's waterful ass, how intensely important it is to the fungal
micael rhizolacology of the chaparral environment because we found so many fucking I can't wait
to do the video on that. That'll be cool. It was worth the
three ticks that Jordan got, which was kind of funny. I mean,
we were all laughing about it. But you know, we were sitting there
in a fucking seafood restaurant in Sonata and he's like think, He's like shit,
I think I got another one. And then you see those little bastards
just burrowed in, you know, right on his fucking chest, like just
just to the left of his nipple. It was worth the three ticks that
Jordan got. We got the doxy cycling. So he's dosing. He's dosing
himself right now. Hopefully it'll stave off the spiral keets for a while before
they start wreaking neurological havoc on him and he ends up like me. But
anyway, so we came up on this spot called like L Coyote Hiking Maybe
it wasn't L. It's just coyote hiking trail, and we met this dude
named Alvaro who rolled up in a white pickup truck. I had known this
spot from before because I had stopped there with my friend Pete Velu to check
out or Nitho Stafflos. It was one of those like roadside pisstops and then
you start paying attention to the plants. You're like, fuck, there's a
lot of cool stuff here. Let's take some time, spend thirty minutes here,
which then turns into three hours. So I had this point saved,
went back to it and we were just looking around. They had found some
cool I think they found a gymnapolis and some other stuff. On that note,
we found two psilocybin containing fungi, one A paniolis, which was growing
with the ornithos staff loos. It's not Michael Raizalan and it's a saprotroph but
in very tiny little shit too, but it was really cool to see,
surely undescribed. Then we found a gymnapolis growing off of Ambrosia quina podiufolia in
the in the desert scrub near El Rosario, growing right off of fucking ambrosia,
and it I think it. I think Allan's pretty sure it has psilocybin.
It was it was. I think it's in the clade of gymnopolis that
produces psilocybin. And then it had a greening because gymnopolis is orange, so
more of like an orangeish yellow. So when you get the bluing from the
psilocybin polymerizing into silosin, it gives it a green hue. And I mean
I just I fucking trust whatever he says. He's not fucking around, and
whenever he is wrong, he has no problem admitting it. So it's you
know, that's how you know someone's true to form. They're good shit,
they're not gonna bullshit you because they're afraid of looking stupid. I look stupid
all the time. I'm no longer afraid of it. Uh So, Uh
that was pretty cool. Yeah, but uh, we'll get to that.
I'll try to remember to get to that later. Maybe I won't, but
either way, gymnopolis probably undescribed growing on in ambrosia like right off the stem
with Bugero cactus and Stino sirius gmosis and agave shai a subspecies gold Maniana.
This whole fucking community plant community growing on conglomerate like just above a wash.
Really cool to come up on that, and it's you know, how often
would you see it too? That's the thing. It's probably more reason that
it's probably undescribed is because there's not a lot of people studying fungi, and
especially in a desert. But it's been there's been a shit ton of rain
here, so everything's going off. But yeah, this spot where we saw
the Coyote Hiking Trail. I guess they just formed it like six months ago,
which is cool. And this dude was all excited that we were there.
I had the fucking camera on me, so it's pretty obvious what I'm
doing, and he was just like, oh, you know, my Spanish
isn't great. But kind of told him what we were up to, and
he got all excited and he's like, oh, you got to come check
this out. So he took took us all up there and showed us they
had just built this little basically like a spot the host research groups and students
and field trips. It was so fucking cool to see. Man. I
was like, this is great, and it's you know, prominently preserved.
There's some lovely coast live oaks Quircus agrifolia growing in the canyons, which of
course are Ecto Michael riisel as well. So that's that was the big thing
for mushrooms, is we were going everywhere looking for Quircus agrifolia and pines.
At the higher elevations you get Pinus quadrifolia and Pinus ponderosa, and maybe a
couple other species of pine. In the elevations above six thousand feet and in
the Sierra San Pedro Martiri, which is the big uh, the big mountain
range there. I just put out a fucking brutally long, fifty three minute
video on it today, Plutonic Lifestyles of filthy mycologists, you know, kind
of blending geology in mushrooms. Man. We did a lot in five days.
We took five days because I missed the ship out of my daughter.
I want to go see her. She gets pissed when I leave too.
I see that. I see when she looks at me through the video call,
you know, and she'll look at me and she'll be like, you
need to come back. I'm like, fuck, I know. But soon
she's gonna be coming out with me. So for me, it's like,
how do I not make it fucking boring? For how do I make it
fun? We have a good rapport. We joke around. She likes wrestling
on me, climbing all over me, you know, punching me sometimes just
sometimes. But then she could be really sweet too, So I don't know,
we'll see. I'm not gonna obviously not going to torture her with it
if she's incredibly boring for her doing botany and geology shit in the field and
film with videos. I'm not gonna force her to, but hopefully she enjoys
it and I can make it fun. Who knows, though, maybe she'll
grow up to be a fucking accountant. No offense to accountants. I just
met a really cool one here at the Entheogenic Expo, which was why I
came out here in the first place, which I haven't even talked about.
But yeah, so anyway, so this this coyote trail, to get back
to it for the fucking third or fourth time after if they're going off on
a tangent, there was a Nithos staphalos there. It's it's just these hills
covered in chaparral, basically a thick scrub that doesn't get taller than six feet.
In most places there's canyon liva or not, canyon liboaks, coast live
oaks growing in the lower elevations. There was fucking poison oak everywhere too.
In the lower wetter Uh, the lower areas, it's incredibly steep terrain.
It's constantly eroding. The the substrates seemed to be. It wasn't as large
grained minerals in the rock as you'd see in an intrusive igneous rock like granite.
It seemed like more intermediate between what is that diabase? Nah? Fuck
it, I fucking forget, but it you know. But it also wasn't
volcanic either, so it was maybe I don't know, man who knows.
It was rock that cooled not super deep, but not super uh you know,
exposed on the surface either. So either way it was you could tell
that just by looking at the grain size by and estimating cooling time. Did
it cool fast this rock as a cool from a magma, or did it
cool slow underground over a million or two million years, like really large grained
granite. Either way, it created this really cool sand as it weathered and
mixed with organic material, and there was a slight red color to it,
which indicates iron content, So maybe a little maffic on the spectrum maphic meaning
magnesium and iron as opposed to felsic feldspar and silica. So, but there
was a whole host of fungi species in these lower lower bits where the coast
live oak was and it's you know, see the coast. The plants,
of course are important to the funglicology. You've got micorrhizal plants. Ectomycorrhizal produces
the fruiting bodies. The mushrooms or buscular micorhise of course doesn't produce fruiting bodies.
They're fungi that are little studied and not very well understood, and we
don't really know much about them, at least I don't. I don't.
They don't produce fruiting bodies. They're probably just clonal. They fucking incredibly important
to Earth's plant life. You know, this is an ecology that goes back
hundreds of millions of years, and I think that's mostly the glomaral miceats.
Is that clade of arbuscular micorhiza, the am fungi. But we're interested in
the ecto micro hyzol fungi because those are the ones we can see and look
at and easily study. So the plants serve as a host for the ectomycorrhizol
fungi, which will also you know, decompose organic material in the soil saprootrophically
and then share it with the plants that they connect to via the roots,
like ecto micro hyzol plants like pines and oaks, And as we learned Ornitostaphalos,
the eric case, a lot of eric case, I think a lot
of eric Ca c Well there's first off, rik ac can form their own
specific microhyzol relationships ecto microrhyzyl relationships, but especially the are butoid clade. As
I mentioned before, the Mansanita is the fucking madrones. They form what's known
as are buttoid mico rising, which I'm not really you'll have to look that
up to learn more about it, because I don't want to give you bad
info, but it's a specific kind of ecto microhizel relationship. But I was
just amazed. I mean it was and this could all be bullshit. Maybe
Werenthos staphlos is not ecto michael hisol, but it certainly seemed like it because
there was nothing else. There was nothing else around that these could be,
you know, once you got out of the canyons where there were no more
oaks or scrub oaks, there was nothing else around that these fungie could be
associating with. And we saw Ruslas, we saw Lactarius, we saw uh,
oh god, what are some of the other fucking genero home on?
Let me look these up? Yeah, of course there was Coordinarius too.
There was Coltrisia, which was a fucking uh. That was a cool genus,
man, that is is that a besity of my seat or what?
Yeah, it's a basity of my seat. Though it looks like a weird
it's got a like an orbital pad on the on the cap it's got doesn't
have gills. It's got like these weird pores that look kind of like bread
up close. Really cool genus. And then there was Tarzeta to t A
r z e t t A, which is a cup fungus. It's an
asco. It's an asco my seat, so it's got ask heat's get those
little stacked rags some of which some of those some asco my seats of course
you can blow on. And then a few seconds later a big cloud of
spores comes up. Tarzetta was Michael Riisel, God, there was yeah,
there was just a it was wild man. There was Amanita down below associating
with the oaks. Uh, what the fuck was this? This is a
oh was that a Oh? Maybe I got one of these these taxa wrong?
I forget anyway, Okay, sorry, I just got to strike that.
I think I think I missed, like did one of the fungie on
a in net not anything I just told you about. But yeah, and
so anyway, this was uh, this was all in this chaparral, this
chaparral environment, and these were all associating except for the M and E.
They were all associating with Ornithos staphalos because the only other things around was c
and not. This is cnol, this microreisel. I don't think so,
correct me if I'm wrong, cion not. This does certainly associate with Ecteno
my seat bacteria that I think you know, cteno my sat my seat,
because they were mistaken to be fungy for for most of their the first half
of their history. And uh in biology, cno, this does associate with
nitrogen fixing bacteria in the genus Frankia and cteno mycet bacteria. There was a
oh God, what Maloe's mullorhina. I always want to say Malacomily's, which
I believe is a rose cy member of rose family member. But Maloe's mullarhina
is a you know, hugely important plant, ecologically superdominant shrub, a small
tree here in southern California, northern Baja Mexico, malos malarina anacardiac. I
don't think. I don't think anacardiac is ectomycahizel. Let me check that.
Actually, first, oh, well that's nice. I just found the pdf
online. It's by micro Rzel Applications, so they're they're salesmen. They sell
fucking micro rzel. I take it. They sell micro rhizel root inoculate,
so take it with a grain of salt. But it's got a nice PDF
of family listing whether it's endo or ecto micae rhizol, or whether it's other
or non microhizel, et cetera. But yeah, according to this, antacardiac
is just endo microreizel. So it's just am, which is what I assumed
too. It is ramnacy. Let's see chrysocephalum astace is supposedly ectomycrohizel. Sometimes
I don't know betulace. Of course, that's in fagalies. It's in the
oak order. That's Ecto michael Ryzel. Not surprising. Uh, Let's see
see a note this ramnecy. This is gonna break my little heart if it's
turns out no ramnac is end though it's not ec though according to this,
which is what I would assume too, So it is not the except the
genus Dryas. Oh that's in rose C. He's supposedly ecto microhizel. The
genus dryas in rose c. Sala Casey, some of them willows can be
ecto microhizel. Anyway, the point is, let's see what it says for
Eric Casey. Yeah, so everything around there. I mean, just by
the deduction, it turns out it's almost certainly fucking oh wow, yeah,
ur butis Arctostaphlos, Gultheria, Lucatho are all ecto micro hyzel, and also
ericoid micro ryzel, eric coid and r buttoid, which are two distinct types
of Michael rhyzol associations. So you have to look those up. Do your
own research dot com. It's not so bad when you're not doing it for
some weird conspiratorial or political shit. You know, doing your own research can
actually be very enlightening as long as you know how to sift through all the
bullshit, you know, pull out the chef, get the little kernels of
truth. Yeah. So, anyway, just by by deduction, it turned
out it was the Unitho stapflos and also I mean they were the ornithostaplos were
close. I mean they were never more than three four feet three feet from
any of these these fungal species. But it's just so cool because you never
really see uh as far as I know, Michael Rzel genera of fungi and
chaparral, unless it's like with an oak or a manzaneta or ornernithostaphalos. So
there wasn't and there wasn't any Archtostaphlos here either either. It was all Ornithos
staphlos. So Ornithos staphlos thrives in that that apparale where it's almost desert work,
it's really hot in the summer, and none of those staflos is.
Of course fire adapted to my friend Kiyamara, a wonderful geriatric based out of
Oakland, who can grow anything. She's fucking cool. Got She's one of
those old ladies who like curses and you know might as well. You know,
if it was like the old days, she'd be like chewing tobacco,
you know, really cool lady. But she uh her my friend Martin don't
get along though. I wish that wasn't true. But they're both nuts like
me, So I guess I understand why I shouldn't be saying that on a
podcast. By the way, just forget your heart. Anyway, she germinated
seeds that I gave her of ornithos stapflos, and uh, yeah, they
fucking they came up. I should check on them and see how they are.
I'll send her a little photo. But it's just it's one of my
favorite fucking plants. Man. It's just so cool, and it's so perfectly
adapted to this specific kind of bioregion. You know, this this chaparral that
is almost desert, that might be desert in a hundred years, maybe less
with climate change. I didn't see how quickly that would happen. And I
guess. It's been a really fucking mild winter in Chicago. I was talking
to my ma. You know, it doesn't even get that cold. I
talked to my mom, and I talked to Al. Yeah, so poor
more of this year in this green tea. I might as well drink a
fucking can of naipa two. Thanks Liz. So Uh but yeah, I
walked away from yesterday and I had to fucking hassle al. I was like,
come on, let's go, let's fucking go. And then, of
course an hour later we were finally I had to threaten to leave. I
was like, you guys can take a fucking uber or something, even though
we're like forty five minutes south of Ensinada. I want to fucking go.
I want some tacos, and I want to go look at this Dacati cypress
girl, you know. And Allan thought, I was just trying to nudge
my fucking priorities of seeing Takati Cypress into the equation. But I wasn't.
I've seen the Katie Cypress plenty of times. I really wanted to check out
the fungal associations, you know, both in the form of Michael Riisell associations
and saparatrophic associations in this growth. And it turns out I was right.
He was. He was jokingly busting my balls later, saying, oh geez,
we should have left that first spot earlier, you know, because that's
what I was been saying. He was kind of fun. Anyway, It
was a fucking it was a great time. But we got to the Takati
Cypress spot and uh, I was worried too, because I still got that
fucking Oakland. Tell you where your shit's gonna get broken into? Him,
Mike, you know, no matter where you are. And I was parked
in a precarious spot. We're having a criminal mind. I could see that
it was a great spot to break into a fucking vehicle. It was kind
of hidden, It was parked the way. You know. You get some
kids going there to smoke some weed out of their civic or something, you
know, packed six deep, and they see a truck sitting there all abandoned.
Why not just fucking pop up when a camp or see what they got
in there? And off with the fucking Uh the fuck? You know,
my dirty undies or something I don't wear nowhere, but you know, dirty
socks or something, you know, something fucking you know, the next thing
you know, it's on eBay. You got your fucking OnlyFans incomes getting uh,
getting compromised because someone else's bootlegging your material, you know what I mean?
So uh, anyway, and certainly we we got back to the truck
and there was like a little dan Maybe they were just hanging out, but
it seemed like they were getting ready to do some bipping, which is breaking
into the fucking you know, windows and jack and shit. But uh,
anyway, but yeah, the fucking full moon came up over the over the
hills to the east, and it was just a beautiful night, and I
was looking out over en Sonata, just hoping that the road that I was
standing on that had just been recently graded does not mean that there's more shitty
rich apartments coming to that area. Shitty rich apartments, apartments like I was
looking out over a mile to the east. God, just like hideous,
the type of shit that I mean, that's what drives me nuts. Man.
It's like the whole fucking economy in the United States and certainly a little
bit in Mexico though it hasn't caught on yet as much. Is so such
a large part of the economy is built on investing in housing and building these
shit ass developments, which I know, you know, I know. The
whole argument is that we got to build them dense, and yes, I
agree with that, but you got to keep blocks of open space too.
You can't just pack a fucking you know, four x four square mile dense
with apartments with you know, with no place to chill or like no preserves
of green space and native habitat. It's fucked up. Like I think about
what would my ideal city look like? Because I spend so much time being
in you know, human infrastructure and civic planning that I generally hate, which
is built around the car. I try to think about what it would my
ideal situation would look like. And it would be walk uple streets, a
place where I don't have to get in my car except if I got to
like move a fucking c ouch or buy an extra large you know, load
of groceries or some shit, and and I can just leave it parke that
I can fucking bike around it and walk around. You know, there's we
dedicate huge, you know, thoroughfares to cars. Why not dedicate you know,
huge thoroughfares just a pedestrian and bike traffic. Like when we were in
College Park, Maryland, there was these walking trails behind the hotel. They
put us up at for kill your lawn. They went for miles, you
know, mostly probably because it's a college town. It's for college kids.
But is that where we were in College Park? I forget what a fuck
it was, you know, but they had the whole car slum thing of
course going too. But then you know, this is the United States,
but they also had huge thoroughfares dedicated just a pedestrian, a bike traffic where
you could walk and it was just you're just walking on this this this trail
that's the width of a truck, you know, of a single lane on
a vehicle road just that with that goes for miles. It was so nice,
and it's just surrounded by woods and you know, or in it was
southern California, chaparral, you know. But using that, it's like,
why don't we do that? So you give people the option where it's not
just like a leisurely thing like oh, but a good a bike ride.
It's like no, it's like, there's a pragmatic use. This is the
thoroughfare that runs through the city that you can use pragmatically if you don't want
to be stuck in a fucking vehicle. God man, it's so sad,
you know, just being trapped in a car is so terrible. You know,
I'm not talking about like taking a fucking road trip or driving to go
see some relative. I'm talking about like daily use. It's just, man,
it's such a shitty way to live and it's bad on multiple fronts.
So but uh, but anyway, you know, I don't know, we'll
see, we'll see what happens to uh, the northern northern Baja and the
Ensinata area. So anyway, anyway, so moving right along out of the
out of the chaparral environment, we spent some time in the elf Rosario area,
which is where you get there's like a lot of agriculture there, a
lot of plastic agriculture too. They make these plastic greenhouses, probably because it's
coastal and it can be kind of chilly, and I was like getting into
the forties at night, even though there's giant cacti and boujump trees around,
and so they needed a little hotter. I don't know what they're growing on
there, if they're growing tomatoes or what, but lots of plastic. But
anyway, there's there's really good habitat around there. And I remember there was
a spot I had stopped in twenty fifteen where you could see Dudleya, the
genus Dudleya, which is in Krasslece. It's a huge how many species at
Dudleya. It's it's a relatively large genus how many let me look up how
many species? Forty seven species and twenty one subspecies. So anyway, you
got, you know, in crassiles in the quote unquote New World, you
got DUDLEYA and Akavaria Eka area are mostly Mexican adapted to summer rain, and
Dudley are mostly you know, Pacific coastal areas, you know, adapted to
winter rain and summer dry. And so there was a spot in twenty fifteen
I stopped to go look at the habitat there, which is dominated by Lyceum
solanace, the quote unquote Wolfbury Ambrosia, Quinapodiufolia, Fokyia columnaris, the boujum
tree, the Cereo agave shayi subspecies gold Maniana, which is just a subspecies
of a gave of agave shay, which you get in San Diego County in
a few places. But again most of the populations that are destroyed. Great
fucking species though, just huge inflorescences, and it produces many offsets and subspecies.
Gold Maniana gets a little bit larger, is a little bit greener,
and is more adapted to do a desert environment, you know, to a
little bit drier and hotter less coastal, but you still have that that mitigating
effect of the fog, especially in the winter. And so and I there
was any pack of series there. I don't think the Cardon is quite a
period. But but there were these huge dudley and it was just pull lenta.
You get ANTONII and BRITTONII in northern Baja coastal Baja uh Anthoni I grows
on these extinct volcanoes that are just draped and fucking like it. I wish
I had done a video there. I mean, I haven't done a video.
They're up by San Canteen. Uh. I've been there when I was
When I was there, I wasn't really doing videos to a large scale yet,
and I didn't feel comfortable, you know, just running my fucking mouth
and letting it go like I do now. And and I you know,
I just fuck. It's such a it's so unique, man. These these
old volcanoes are just composed of talis and there's these huge, beautiful dudley everywhere,
and they're all covered in this farina, this wax, this lipid,
this long chain fatty acid molecule that you can wipe off with a greasy thumb
and sometimes appears as a powder in these leaf rosettes. And anyway, these
dudleyopovoleta were fucking huge. I mean there were some that were as big as
Jack, and I remember it took a photo of me and Jack next to
one in twenty fifteen, and then I went back in twenty nineteen to go
find them when all that dudley A poaching was going on, when that van
full of what was it koreems or Chinese got popped with like twenty thousand fucking
whatever. The dudliest species is not simosa, what is it. The dudliest
species is from northern California that grows on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean.
And I figured when all that poaching was going on, they surely got these
biggins, but and I couldn't find them. But it turns out, as
I found out three days ago, I had just been at the wrong spot
where you pull off, and these fucking things were everywhere, and they were
so massive and so beautiful, and it was so cool to see, and
they had the old inflorescences on them, you know, which with the inflorescence
is the plant topped out at like three and a half four feet just a
fucking great species. And you get dudley apolvarrolenta. You know, it's pretty
common in southern California, in coastal southern California, but these are the largest
I've ever fucking seen. I don't know if it's an eco type or what,
but or I don't know, but they're just growing right on the fucking
ground. They're growing on the ground with some cool lichens and some cool liver
warts, and they just get so fucking massive. And they're protected by choya
by cylinder, a punch of prolifera, and I think there's like two or
three species of choya there. It was just, man, it was fucking
It was so great to see that they're still there and they're happy. You
know, they're obviously doing very well. And this seed is so tiny on
these fucking things. Man, when you think that, like a seed that's
basically the size of a chigger, it's like its just powder can turn into
these massive bastards. I would love to, you know, do a study
see how long it takes to get a plant that big growing it in cultivation
versus how long it takes to get a plant that big growing it in you
know, just in sit through and have it to and what and more importantly,
I mean, I've always heard that you can't really water Dudley in the
summer like once in a while. You can once in a while, but
they just rot so easily. And I wonder, you know, is that
are these things getting Do they just shut down completely in the in the summer
or do they get they got there getting a little bit of fog. I'm
sure you know the Pacific coast is close. Yeah, I don't know,
but they're They're super easy to grow from seed, you know, just like
any any any any succulent. Get a mineral mix, amp up the humidity,
cover and put that pottery set in there and let them go. God,
what a fucking great These things were massive, though. Man, it
was so cool to see so uh maybe I'll do a post on it if
I can't remember if I got some nice money shots. I should have.
But you know, I've seen all these plants so many times, but it's
still so nice just to take a million photos of all of them, you
know. And and I'm not when I'm out there taking photos, I'm not
doing it for art to be archy and shit, I'll do that too,
but it's mostly just you know, for for reference, use for use,
and presentations focusing on different characters, you know, as educational researches, resources
for others if they want to look at them on in ad or whatever the
fuck. So, But yeah, those dudley apovoletta. I was so happy
to see that they were still going strong. And then the boojums of course
were cool too. There they do the same thing that the ocatillo does with
their spines. They get that that first year's growth, they send out a
flower and the petiole or not a flower, they send out a vegetative branch.
They only flower at the top. They send out a vegetative branch on
this bottle shaped circle collistant tree, and that first burst of vegetative growth,
the leaves have pettioles. And then every year after the leaves have keep feeling
I keep imagining, I'm feeling ticks on myself. Fuck. And then every
year after that first burst of vegetative growth, the leaves are just fascicled.
They're just coming out of fascicles like so many of the plants and might beloved
tom a leap and thorn scrub of South Texas, but that first year,
they've got a petiole that's like an inch long, and that pettiole, that
leaf stalk is later. It's what later becomes the spine, just like in
regular Okaatello fukiias splendins. But I think there's some Okatllo species that have a
different way of producing spines. I forget. I might be totally wrong.
They might all just use petioles from that first year of vegetative growth. But
it's pretty cool. After that first year of vegetative growth, they'll never again
produce a leaf with a petiole on that branch. They've got those axillary buds
beneath those old petioles, and those just those just produce fascicled leaves. You'll
get like three or four leaves without sessile, leaves without a petiole. It
just all come out of the fascicle. Which makes you know when you've got,
like in a time of leap and thorn scrub, when you've got twelve
different fucking unrelated species of plants that have all converged on that trait, which
obviously must help in the hot and the dry, you know, an extreme
heat to not have a petiole to just produce leaves out of fascicles. When
you've got twelve plants doing that, it can be very hard and they're not
flowering to figure out what you're looking at. Because again, remember we don't
use leaves for plant identification. You can, there are instances where you can,
but in most cases, you know, you use flowers. If you
can counter a plant you're not familiar with already, you use flowers. And
so that's of course, I'm just kind of saying that to myself because that's
something I got to make sure I put in this fucking book, in the
in the short chapter on plant identification, because you know, a lot of
people don't realize that you got to look at reproductive structures. Flowers if they're
flowering plants. Sorry, position of story, that is just clusters of sporangia
if they're ferns, megastroboli and megastrobo megastrobolism mega anyway, male and female cones
if they're conifers, uh, et cetera. So you know, loving all
that stuff. If they're brio fights, the fuck you look at the sporo
fyight. I don't know. I always forget, you know, I even
get too deep into the brio fights, the liver warts and mass. I
always forget the fucking the whole thing that's going on there. You know what
you look at for id you got the thallus, you got the sporophyight,
you get the fucking yeah, you know anyway, and if you're looking at
selaginella, you gotta look at the uh oh god, damn what the microphils?
I forget the fucking term. This is where we got the internet,
right, you could remind yourself. You mind yourself enough times you remember it.
But but yeah, so that was fucking cool. And to see these
boot jumps, these massive boue jumps, just covered in beard like and draped
and beard like him like it's fucking Christmas tinsel in some calase, some cases
quite long, just draping down. And they got a little bit of a
photosyn photosynthetic stem, a little bit of chlorophyll in those stems. A lot
of the stems will turn white and look all scarred and shit beautiful, I
mean beautiful texture on them. And then they get covered and lichened too,
because remember it can be quite foggy here. Fog evaporates meant by midday in
most cases but certainly I'd assume most mornings can be quite foggy and uh,
but you can still see a little bit of chlorophyll, so they are doing
they could do stem photosynthesis when they're drought deciduous, you know, during the
long dry season, when they've dropped their leaves. I would love to check
out Baja in the summer because or this area of Baja in the summer,
because you know, Southern Baja is summer rain, Northern Baja's winter rain.
And I'd love to see in the dormant season, just so I can have
a complete picture of the whole you know, the whole stage, life stages
of this every plant in this sekas system, Like what do the Dudley appover
Atlanta do come August when it's got to be you know, a few months
without any fucking rain and it's hot as balls. And didn't even mention Asculus
perrie yet, which is a buckeye that you get in the fucking deserts.
You get buck eyes growing with giant cardone cacti that are the size of houses.
Like you get a cactus that's the size of a fucking lighthouse, and
there's a little dwarf buckeye there, which you know again it is like that,
the where does Asculus californica, the northern California book eye, which is
not that closely related. It's in the same family, it's in the same
genus, but it's not that closely related to Asculus perii, which I should
actually checked. I should read the paper I'm at because somebody just told me
that it turned out it was more closely related to the Asian species of Asculus.
But uh okay, here we go. I find a nice paper with
a nice phylogeny, a nice cladogram, a nice evolutionary tree. In the
gene regions this fucking guy used were matt k. Of course its the transcrit
transcribed spacer region, which is what's used in fungi trn hk RPS sixteen.
These are gene regions, and there was a number of characters. This is
a two thousand and nine paper. This is pretty decent though. But yeah,
it turns out as Perii, there's nineteen species in the genus Asculus perryi
is on its own somewhat long, lonely branch, related to the Silvatica,
Pavia, glabra, and Flava group quite far away quite far removed from Yeah,
man, like three clades removed from Asculus californica, So it's not that
closely related to the fucking northern California one, which is also a magnificent tree,
which is toxic to European honeybees. I don't know the details, you'll
have to look that up, but I think it's pretty cool because there's fairal
fucking honey bees everywhere. We saw plenty in the desert. It was a
bummer. I was so curious about the native bees, the native pollinators in
the fucking deserts of northern Baha. But shout out to Sam Drogi, by
the way, who made a sizable donation to Thornscribs Sanctuary. Uh. And
if we still haven't fuck this, I gotta figure that out too. We're
going to get this land purchased together at some point. But if you would
like to donate, the donations are tax deductible through our fiscal sponsor, morning
Star Conservancy, and we'll give you an E. I N number and we
could certainly use it. I think we're going to start applying for grants here
too. But it's all just sitting in its own, its own little lonely
bank account, uh waiting to get spent on a fucking you know, sanctuary
dedicated to education, a research station, and conservation and propagation of all the
cool rare thorn scrub species which are slowly getting turned into a mastigated pile,
a masticated pile of duff awaiting incineration like you see going on so much in
South Texas. They just put all this shit together in a burn pile and
set on fire and clear the land, because that's just what's what you do
down there. Weird land has more value than in tag Land, which is
fucking insane. But that's Texas for you. Actually, that's most of the
southeastern United States as far as I can tell. But anyways, Perry I,
yeah, is off. I guess it's could be sister to a Sylvatica.
Yeah. I can't really fucking tell Sylvatica or Flava. I think either
one because you can flip that cladogram that sister branch around, you know,
it doesn't matter, flip it around one eighty. So it's Sylvatica or Flava
is sister to Perie. But either way, pretty unique. And PERRYI is
cool because it's a it's just a dwarf buckeye, and it must form.
It must have a big tube in the ground called this a form stump that
it can re sprout from. But it tops out at like six feet and
it's got reduced leaves, you know, smaller leaves like you'd expect to see
on a desert species where the you know, I don't even think you get
any of You don't get any Asculus perrii. And in southern California. I
think it's I think it's a bahandemic. God, it's cool, though I've
grown it before. I collected some seeds, but I collected some seeds,
but I was trying to grow it in fucking Oakland. Yeah, it just
didn't do that well. It wasn't hot enough in the summer for it.
It didn't thrive. I'm sure they would just shoot up, you know,
down here in the heat. But yeah, it's cool, man, I
wonder I would assume that one's probably not toxic the honey bees. You know,
if you get like a neighbor who's a bee keeper, who'd be pissed
if you were marking is high by planting the fucking Asculus California got too close
to its hippocast in them, which is the one that's a horticultural atrocity that
shouldn't be planted in North America anymore because it's not native here. But it's
strikingly it does. It's a it's a common street tree in many places.
They were planning that in Oakland too, they all died. It's more of
a summer rain species. I think it's from Europe. But yeah, anyway,
that's fucking cool. Yeah, but anyway, so this aceless it's wild
to see a buckeye growing with these giant cacti and and bou jump trees and
all this other shit. You know, it's still I mean, it hangs
on. It doesn't. It doesn't. It's one of the last species to
go is the California Floristic province, and the whole plant community associated with it
tapers off as you move further south down the peninsula. It's right there with
the blue dicks, the dyke Elastoma growing with growing in these these cactus habitats.
So, you know, I think I've been fucking rambling for a while.
I got ship to do, so maybe I'll save the desert portion for
another podcast. You know, I'll have more shit to rant about. I'm
sure in a week, I got a long fucking drive ahead of me.
But I didn't even get to the getting fucked with by Customs coming back,
which you know, I declared my Iberian press like I always do, but
uh, yeah, I don't know. It's a fucking it's in fun.
They let me go, but god, the cop had a heart on.
There's this this uh short lady, you know it was, And then then
you always get the fuck when they see plant material that's pressed the fucking mea
heead. Meathead cops are always like, dude, is that that fucking is
that fucking hydro? Dude? You got hydro? No, it's a fucking
it's the research specimens to be a session that an arbarium pale. But I'm
sure they meant well. But some of the Customs guys were cool. But
it was just this one cop, which is a dick, and I'm showing
her this email that says, yeah, I think she just didn't like my
flavor. But you know, maybe she misread it. You know, I
don't know, man, who knows, but you know I wasn't being rude
or abrasive, but I guess and maybe I come off as a little abrasive
to anybody who doesn't know me, especially if you grow up in California where
everything's everything is like pretty cool all the time. To you, it's like
it's pretty cool. It's like whatever do you like? It doesn't matter,
Like it's like, yes, it's cool, Like it's cool if you're here
it, but it'd be cooler if you weren't. Uh, you know how
it goes out here. It's so maybe she just misread it, but she
was like, I was showing her a fucking email that said from Aphis that
said, you know, no, as long as it's dried, there's no
soil, there's no seeds, and it's not a rare or invasive species.
I think even invasive is fine. As long as it's dried and dead,
you can bring it in. You don't need a permit for it. And
I was showing her this email that I got from Aphis that they were writing
to me, a personalized email, not just not just like a screenshot of
something online, you know. And I've done this like fifteen times, man,
And she was like, well, you need a permit next time,
And I'm like, it says I don't need a permit, like, I'm
not going to listen to some ran I didn't fucking say this to word.
Thank god, I knew well enough to shut my mouth. But just you
know, you smiling, not okay, all right lady, whatever you say,
just fucking blow smoke up their ass. It was funny one of the
customs agents. The other one was like, he was cool. He was
like, yeah, you know, they went to school for six months to
learn how to do this, so they must know what they're talking about.
You just kind of like taking a dig at her, like fuck. But
at least no one threatened to shoot the dogs like happened crossing at the at
the South Texas border once. They were just fucking assholes. Man. You
go to secondary because anytime you declare something you do and they were just fucking
god. This one cop just had a heart on man, And it was
funny. I was joking with his buddy. I'm like, did that guy
he did like childhood trauma he never dealt with like he's got to you guys,
put in like a gofund me to get him therapy or something. How
much your copays with the fucking health benefits they give you, you know,
for mental health resources. And the one cop was kind of the one Customs
that was kind of laughing, you know, like I could tell like the
other guy's got a reputation, but oh yeah, bummed me out. I
was like, don't fuck come on, man, don't fuck with me,
like my my stone, fuck with my sense of security in terms of bringing
in, you know, specimens that are just going to be a session at
arburium anyway, Like this isn't like a this isn't for me personally, this
is like for you know, for science. Just fucking it's so weird.
Man. I don't know, but I think they saw us and they don't
know what to make either, because we're not. I mean, the car
was absolutely filthy. It was covered in mud, you know. There we
had Jack and Louis whereever we brought the old man out Jack. We all
smelled absolutely terrible, absolutely terrible. The whole car smelled terrible, you know,
and the fucking essential oils I was using warn't enough to cover it up.
And so I think, you know, we didn't come off as like
the typical, like like PhD. You know, no offense of course to
anybody who fits that bill, but we didn't come off as he's like clean
cut, you know, teal colors, ARII vess typical, you know,
more vanilla ish college college student, you know, or grad student or anything.
We just came off as fucking wing nuts, So I mean we had
to, you know, so I think they're just I don't know. But
then you know, when I go to those when I'm in those situations,
I just love inundating people, inundating the customs officials and anybody who will listen
very enthusiastically with unsolicited information because I love talking about this stuff and I could
talk about it with whoever. I mean, if I could do fucking ninety
minute podcasts just running my mouth, I would obviously have no trouble boring a
customs agent to death with. Or maybe they get excited, you know,
That's what I hope. Maybe they get excited about it and it becomes a
little side passion for them. There was the customs agent in Texas who knew
crime pays. He was a fan. The whole killer long thing confused him.
He wasn't ready for it yet, but he was a fan of crime
pay, so that was cool. Yeah. Anyway, all right, Well
I'm gonna go I'll finish up. I'll finish up the fucking desert portion of
Baja and some of the cool shit we side didn't talk about. Texas either,
did have really cool payote survey on some land in West Texas. My
fetish for limestone is now unrivaled with any other kind of rock type, at
least for the time being, in terms of daphic endemism and associations with plants.
So we'll talk about that next time if I can find a spot to
lurk, I just I'm just using it to forgive the sound quality too,
forgive both the disjointed nature of today's podcast as well as a sound quality which
has got to be a little bit suboptimal because I'm just using this little plug
in lapel mic on an old Samsung phone, not using that nice you know,
to sure or the road the name brand microphones that I use. But
you know what I guess is a thing. Why don't you guys write me
any what do you want to learn? What are you confused about? Do
you have questions? If you don't have questions, I'm going to be very
disappointed in all of you and any of you listening, not personal questions about
me, but questions about the material you know that we talk about here when
you come here, when we have this little intimate time, do you have
questions like why does it do that? Does a floral key necessarily imply evolutionary
any any depth of evolutionary relatedness? Or is it just someone you know,
picking character traits to just whatever they can grab onto, grasping for straws,
trying to figure out how to, you know, give someone the ability to
read the differences between two species, two closely related species. We already answered
that today, of course, But as an example, why don't the why
don't you email me? Keep it as short as possible because if it's super
long, I just won't read it. No offense. But uh, you
know, if you've got a question, read send me, send me an
email, and I'll fucking answer it on the podcast. And if I can't
answer it, that's even better because then I'll be forced to look into it,
research it, or just say I don't fucking know. So uh,
anyway, download that the PDF of Michael Riizel associations between different plants. Maybe
not from a website that sells Michael Rizel root inoculates, but there's got to
definitely, there's definitely got to be one out there or source them this.
So anyway, that's all I got for today. I have a good rest
of you. They go fuck you, somebody