Florida Rants

<v Speaker 1>Hmm.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, welcome to another episode of the crime Pace. But
<v Speaker 2>Bataney doesn't podcast. We're here just outside a beautiful disney World.
<v Speaker 2>Came here to make our Disney vacation, our Disneyland dreams realized.
<v Speaker 2>Disney World. Fuck, it's disney World right in Orlando. Is
<v Speaker 2>that it? It does lottery? Yeah, you still speak so softly.
<v Speaker 2>It gives me, fucking seriously, give me, give me he
<v Speaker 2>be gepi's when you talk that soft. Don't be that
<v Speaker 2>soft anyway. I stayed in California too long. It's for
<v Speaker 2>the country. We're driving south from Orlando and we've passed
<v Speaker 2>some of the most hideous human infrastructure. I just gotta
<v Speaker 2>say that right out loud. Per You know, Florida could
<v Speaker 2>have really been if you had more regulations in place
<v Speaker 2>about development, or maybe if it had been settled a
<v Speaker 2>little bit later like California head perhaps you know, it
<v Speaker 2>wouldn't be such a shithold culturally speaking. But the roads
<v Speaker 2>here are fucking brutal. Just the car infrastructure is crazy,
<v Speaker 2>and they want to build a toll road through a
<v Speaker 2>beautiful split oak forest that we went to yesterday, which
<v Speaker 2>was very impressive. Lily, I must say thank you for
<v Speaker 2>being down to go there. I got off the plane,
<v Speaker 2>you know, into the Orlando airport and wanted to die.
<v Speaker 2>And then they said, you know, we got to go
<v Speaker 2>to the spot. We were gonna go to the house
<v Speaker 2>we were staying at, and instead we took you know,
<v Speaker 2>three hours to go to this fucking beautiful, you know,
<v Speaker 2>little patch of remnant what would you call that? What
<v Speaker 2>was this?
<v Speaker 1>The scrubby sea.
<v Speaker 2>Scrubby scrubby sandy, scrubby sandy, oh kill, beautiful white quartz sand.
<v Speaker 2>It was the remnants of the Appalachian Mountain, spent ground down,
<v Speaker 2>then it got washed out to sea, and then they
<v Speaker 2>got then they later got you know, put up you know,
<v Speaker 2>washed up on a little on the beaches of an
<v Speaker 2>ancient Florida. And as we get that white sand from
<v Speaker 2>because beneath there it's all limestone, substrate rocks, all that
<v Speaker 2>karstick limestone and shiit, same stuff you see in like
<v Speaker 2>Theminican Republic and parts of Cuba. And so I shouldn't speak,
<v Speaker 2>I've never been to Cuba. They got surpentine there too,
<v Speaker 2>but but it was a man a wonderful habitat. And
<v Speaker 2>the fucking mosquitos there were like the size of hawks.
<v Speaker 2>They were like dime sized mosquitos, but but they were
<v Speaker 2>the native ones. I got the genus and species. I
<v Speaker 2>put them on I net. But I caught one sucking
<v Speaker 2>on my hand and smacked it and killed it. It was
<v Speaker 2>it was fucking huge. But then the thing only itched
<v Speaker 2>for like three or four minutes and it didn't itch again.
<v Speaker 2>It was wild. It was like it was so big.
<v Speaker 2>I thought it would be I thought i'd get a
<v Speaker 2>welt in like a goiter or something, you know, quarters
<v Speaker 2>from an iodine division. See that's not what I mean,
<v Speaker 2>a boil. But but but that's not what happened. It
<v Speaker 2>was like, shit, man, if they're gonna be that, if
<v Speaker 2>they're that innocuous, I have had it, buddy. I should
<v Speaker 2>have left him, you know, and watched them, you know,
<v Speaker 2>fly away. Watch his little fat ass, you know, filled
<v Speaker 2>up with my blood, fly off into the the uh,
<v Speaker 2>the burned scrub land. So we were yeah, that was
<v Speaker 2>we were in this oak woodland, which was like how
<v Speaker 2>many different oak species were there at least age remember
<v Speaker 2>not the NPR voice, not the.
<v Speaker 1>Least at least six, at.
<v Speaker 2>Least six to seven, right, six to eight. Species. Quircus
<v Speaker 2>geminada was the large one. Then there was understory of
<v Speaker 2>Quirkus chapmanny I and Mrtifolia Quirkus and cana and then
<v Speaker 2>the Quirkus Lavish. I didn't see all those quirkers. The
<v Speaker 2>big one was Geminata, but it was this oak woodland
<v Speaker 2>with the white sandyander sert and there was fucking Russolas
<v Speaker 2>coming up. I mean, it's really marvelous habitat. It's really
<v Speaker 2>fucking beautiful, man. I can't describe, I mean to think.
<v Speaker 2>And that's probably why I talked shit on Florida so much,
<v Speaker 2>at least on what's been done here, because it's you
<v Speaker 2>took probably one of the most beautiful habitats in the
<v Speaker 2>United States. I mean, to be in these forests with
<v Speaker 2>like the fucking bright white sand and the Tilanzia and
<v Speaker 2>everything and draped in Spanish moss to lanza Us and
<v Speaker 2>the oidies and these beautiful oak forests, and then there
<v Speaker 2>was we rolled up and there's a giant fucking hubcaps
<v Speaker 2>gopher is polypemous. What's the common name for the tortoise?
<v Speaker 2>Just the gopher tortoise, the same genus as the mojave
<v Speaker 2>tortoise and the Texas tortoise and the the Sonorian tortoise,
<v Speaker 2>but a different species. So this is a genus, that's all,
<v Speaker 2>you know, northern Mexico, lower latitude United States, and this
<v Speaker 2>is the Florida version of it. And that those don't
<v Speaker 2>go into Mexico polyphemous at all. I mean probably not
<v Speaker 2>like Donna and a Yucatan. They're down their sipping on
<v Speaker 2>pina coladas and fucking I don't know anyway. And so
<v Speaker 2>we roll up and there's this giant black tortoise. There
<v Speaker 2>are they always melanistic like that. There's black of them are.
<v Speaker 1>Dark and there are others, and I think that might
<v Speaker 1>be an indicator of the age.
<v Speaker 2>Too, reallybat Yeah, this thing was massive, though, man. And
<v Speaker 2>and you look at this in in this habitat what's
<v Speaker 2>left of it, which is only crumbs, and you're like,
<v Speaker 2>what kind of sick fucking and it granted, of course
<v Speaker 2>it's you know, political leaders. There's the reason Florida's gotten
<v Speaker 2>so far in the ass with development is because of
<v Speaker 2>all the business ship bags and you know, people that
<v Speaker 2>just need to be those like the true sociopaths in
<v Speaker 2>society that kind of float to float to the top,
<v Speaker 2>you know, with the foam, like after all the sediment
<v Speaker 2>settles at the bottom, you know, like those fucking psychopaths,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and so because they're so in dysantus, I
<v Speaker 2>guess has put a lot of them in positions of
<v Speaker 2>power with Fish and Wildlife Florida Wildlife Commitment, Fish and
<v Speaker 2>Wildlife Commission, Yeah, Fish and Wildlife Estate Agency. That's so
<v Speaker 2>he's got. You said he used to not be so
<v Speaker 2>bad on the environment.
<v Speaker 1>Well, initially he was not so bad at environmental causes
<v Speaker 1>when he first came into office. And I think with
<v Speaker 1>his quickly declining political career, he's become more desperate for
<v Speaker 1>facause he's.
<v Speaker 2>Has been fucking pathetic. He's like a game show goos.
<v Speaker 2>So like the more laminated his face got, kind of
<v Speaker 2>the more. Do you think he's had play sick surgery?
<v Speaker 2>I yeah, yeah, But but you know he looks like
<v Speaker 2>a like a fucking ventriloquist dummy, he really does. He's
<v Speaker 2>got that kind of someone should make that actually, if
<v Speaker 2>someone bought like a rond decent, if someone made a
<v Speaker 2>ron DeSantis like little ventriloquist figurine, like not a full
<v Speaker 2>sized Petrilloquis dummy. I'm talking about, like you know, ten
<v Speaker 2>inches tall max, you know, just something you put on
<v Speaker 2>the dash with like the little mouth that comes out
<v Speaker 2>like that. I would probably buy it. It's just a gag,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I collector's item. But but he's put people
<v Speaker 2>in that are I mean, he's really got he's really
<v Speaker 2>got a heart on for what little is left of
<v Speaker 2>Florida's wild lands. And then of course the fire suppressions
<v Speaker 2>really fucked the landscape here too. So much of Florida
<v Speaker 2>is dependent on fire. And this scrubland that we went to,
<v Speaker 2>you know, once you kind of it transitions from this
<v Speaker 2>oak woodland that's got an understory of Sarah Noah and
<v Speaker 2>some of the scrub oaks and uh, this this These
<v Speaker 2>Liatrius species are incredible. There's like three or four liatrics
<v Speaker 2>species that all kind of look like they're different ecotypes
<v Speaker 2>of the same species, but I guess they're different species.
<v Speaker 2>But they're like these you know, three foot tall spires,
<v Speaker 2>really narrow leaves basil rosette, and they're growing on the
<v Speaker 2>stand and they just pop up intermittently along with the
<v Speaker 2>carfu forests or as Lily says, carfiferoth carfi forest, which
<v Speaker 2>is another liatrous relative it's got those long styles, you know,
<v Speaker 2>reminiscent to the Stevia and Joe pyweed tribe. And so
<v Speaker 2>it transitions from that from this this like scrubland like
<v Speaker 2>with the open understory to oh and fucking butterflies flying
<v Speaker 2>around on everything, really beautiful. The car the carfa of
<v Speaker 2>forest s has uh like those pink flower heads who
<v Speaker 2>we saw two species. And so when it transitions from
<v Speaker 2>that to this open scrubland of sarah Noola rappins, the
<v Speaker 2>salt palm sawt palm meadow and uh.
<v Speaker 1>That's a flat wood, a wet flatwood.
<v Speaker 2>That's so that was a wet flatwood. And then beyond
<v Speaker 2>that it transition the more swamps where the giant Gordonia is,
<v Speaker 2>which is the green tea family, theac which is order
<v Speaker 2>Eric Keyley's the blueberry order. That was a fucking cool
<v Speaker 2>tree to see. Man, it's it's so Gordonia. How many
<v Speaker 2>speed I don't know how many species Gordonia hasn't it,
<v Speaker 2>But it's another one of those Eastern North America Asia
<v Speaker 2>you know disc chunks, you know, like look what ambar
<v Speaker 2>and you know tons of other species. So but yeah,
<v Speaker 2>with I mean, that was a fucking cool it's it's
<v Speaker 2>a Gordonia, is like a thirty to forty foot tall tree.
<v Speaker 2>Can they get taller than it? It's like a medium
<v Speaker 2>it's like a medium sized tree. But it was re
<v Speaker 2>sprouting from the fire. And it's got these big you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's like a plant that if you saw in the
<v Speaker 2>fossil record, you know it was a wet, you know,
<v Speaker 2>humid and warm habitat. You know, it's got like that
<v Speaker 2>kind of leaf shape to it, like entire margins, smooth margins.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe the leaves are seven to eight inches long, sometimes
<v Speaker 2>six inches long, glabrous. But and then the flowers are
<v Speaker 2>five white petals with many stamens, like many of the
<v Speaker 2>members of the DAC. But yeah, but apparently it's fire depending.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, so many plants there were fired and we
<v Speaker 2>were walking through. There's burned stalks everywhere I came out.
<v Speaker 2>It looked like someone took charcoal and like drew a
<v Speaker 2>bunch of you know, chicken scratch marks on my the
<v Speaker 2>fucking mom jeans I was wearing. I got these mom jeans.
<v Speaker 2>I bought them because I was cheap, and they don't
<v Speaker 2>fit too well. They're kind of they don't feel very comfortable.
<v Speaker 2>But I tried dying them blue. It's like a darker blue,
<v Speaker 2>and I think it just came off. So I'm really
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna be really happy when I fucked these up
<v Speaker 2>and get a home in the crotch, because I won't
<v Speaker 2>feel bad throwing them out. But I like fifteen bucks.
<v Speaker 2>But but yeah, so there was there was these charred
<v Speaker 2>fire you know, fire remnants everywhere. And although it was
<v Speaker 2>mostly Ionia lucida and sarah Noa rapins and then a
<v Speaker 2>different species of carf forests, it was Odor testimus popping
<v Speaker 2>up every where, which has like red glabrous stems, not
<v Speaker 2>the pubescent, sticky glandular stems. And that thing what's it
<v Speaker 2>called vanilla leaf?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, vanilla leaf because it the dried leaves of this
<v Speaker 1>species of curfeforous have a vanilla scent and fragrance to them,
<v Speaker 1>and I guess a little bit of a flavor. And
<v Speaker 1>historically they were used to flavor.
<v Speaker 2>Tobacco when they're dried out.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, when they're only when they're dried out. When they're fresh,
<v Speaker 1>they don't smell because I.
<v Speaker 2>Didn't smell them. We're gonna see more of that, right,
<v Speaker 2>I need to take.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, we'll definitely see more. And it's really a lovely
<v Speaker 1>fragrance that in the fall and winter, when they start
<v Speaker 1>to dry out the flatwoods, when you walk through them,
<v Speaker 1>this aroma rises up from your feet and it's just
<v Speaker 1>it always smells like falling the flat woods to me.
<v Speaker 1>That scent.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was, But the mosquitoes weren't that bad. Man.
<v Speaker 2>I saw them when I fucking rolled up. I saw
<v Speaker 2>they were the size of hawks, and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>Jesus Christ, you know they're they're gonna They're gonna go
<v Speaker 2>for me. But then I only got bit once. We
<v Speaker 2>were there for like two or three hours, and we
<v Speaker 2>got bet once. It was crazy, and the fucker didn't
<v Speaker 2>even it didn't niche that much. I would have let him.
<v Speaker 2>If I'd have known it was going to be like that,
<v Speaker 2>I would have let him finish up.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, most of our native mosquitoes are not very effective
<v Speaker 1>at actually biting you. They're larger, they're kind of bumbling
<v Speaker 1>and slow, and they when they land on you, because
<v Speaker 1>they're larger, you can actually feel them and brush them
<v Speaker 1>off effectively, whereas the non native eighties a jip die,
<v Speaker 1>those little tiger mosquitoes that are that only occur around
<v Speaker 1>human habitation. That species is like an assassin.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's what we get in South Texas. They're an
<v Speaker 2>anthropic species. They have formed an evolutionary bond with humans
<v Speaker 2>where they follow us where we go. And so no
<v Speaker 2>matter how much you fucking spray or no matter how
<v Speaker 2>much you pave everything, there's still gonna be eighties a
<v Speaker 2>gypdi everywhere, which is fucking idiotic when you see you know,
<v Speaker 2>people associate habitats. But we were talking about this before. I
<v Speaker 2>don't want I want to stop using you know, when
<v Speaker 2>you're trying to push squares into do a native plant
<v Speaker 2>native plants, when you're trying to get to see the light,
<v Speaker 2>it stops calling it pollinators. It's good for the pollinators.
<v Speaker 2>It doesn't mean anything. They don't fucking get it. It
<v Speaker 2>doesn't and it's not the benefit of insects is not
<v Speaker 2>just that they pollinate some fucking crops or anything. You know.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's like honey bee shit, and I say beneficial insects.
<v Speaker 2>It's like the same. Because I really want to connote
<v Speaker 2>to these fucking drools, no offense to them. I'm kind
<v Speaker 2>of turned up right now. Okay, I took my meds.
<v Speaker 2>I had a cup of coffee and I'm fucking I've
<v Speaker 2>been seeing a bunch of idiots shit on this drive,
<v Speaker 2>the fucking car slums Afford. I'm kind of turned up.
<v Speaker 2>You just have to deal with it, Okay, settle down.
<v Speaker 2>But uh, you know, I want to stop calling it
<v Speaker 2>the pollinator because it sounds candy as it does. It's
<v Speaker 2>a pollinator, Guyden, the fuck does that mean to someone
<v Speaker 2>who the people you're trying to reach. It doesn't mean shit.
<v Speaker 2>You say beneficial insects the same way you can have
<v Speaker 2>beneficial gut flora or beneficial whatever it's benefit because they're
<v Speaker 2>providing multiple benefits. They're keeping past insects in check, like
<v Speaker 2>some of the some of the eighties of jypdi. They're
<v Speaker 2>food for birds, they're keeping plants in check. Think how
<v Speaker 2>bad Salidago would be. It's a native but thing of
<v Speaker 2>how like what a monoculture would form if it didn't
<v Speaker 2>have thirty plus species of insects keeping it in check.
<v Speaker 2>In the Midwest, it would look like it does in Europe,
<v Speaker 2>where it's highly invasive in some areas, and you know
<v Speaker 2>northern latitude Europe. So stop saying pollinator. It's a pollinator. Garden.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's it's my personal thing, say beneficial insects.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know why I got so mad about that,
<v Speaker 2>but anyway, but you know, so now we're going fast,
<v Speaker 2>we're driving on this two lane road. They're widening every
<v Speaker 2>road in Florida so they can make it more of
<v Speaker 2>a car slum. It took us just when we were
<v Speaker 2>leaving the Kissing Me area. It took us what was
<v Speaker 2>it like, twenty minutes to get through like a traffic
<v Speaker 2>like you could have walked faster. Yeah, it's just it's
<v Speaker 2>just it's a get on the paid toll road. It's
<v Speaker 2>just it's a fucking this car. Shit is really nuts, man.
<v Speaker 2>I really wonder how long it's gonna take for people
<v Speaker 2>to wake up and realize that this is just you're
<v Speaker 2>being scammed, you're being farmed, you know. I mean, there's
<v Speaker 2>nothing you can do about if you live in it.
<v Speaker 2>It's what's put on the plane in front of you.
<v Speaker 2>You can't do anything else, you know, to live another way,
<v Speaker 2>you'd have to operate at different hours than everyone else
<v Speaker 2>to avoid the traffic or like bike. But it's just
<v Speaker 2>so bad for your health, man, And it's so you know,
<v Speaker 2>they get you locked up in insurance and all this
<v Speaker 2>fucking payments and all this dumb shit, and it's it's
<v Speaker 2>horrible for your mental health to you just trapped and
<v Speaker 2>alienated and isolated in this fucking car, spending three hours
<v Speaker 2>a day in your car commuting, you know, no way
<v Speaker 2>to interact with people, just alone, listening to podcasts, smelling
<v Speaker 2>the offcasting plastic, sucking on the tailpipe, emissions that a
<v Speaker 2>guy in front of you. You know, it's who wants
<v Speaker 2>to live like that? I'd rather be a bum shitting
<v Speaker 2>under a bridge and riding freight trains around the living
<v Speaker 2>like that. That's just my personal take, right. It's you know,
<v Speaker 2>you can get you on that hamster wheel. That's really
<v Speaker 2>what it is, is a good way to get someone on
<v Speaker 2>a hamster wheel. The car infrastructure. But this is most
<v Speaker 2>of the lower latitude the United States. I will never
<v Speaker 2>get tired of shitting on this. You know, I don't
<v Speaker 2>care if I'm repeatedly preciing to the choir anyway, moving
<v Speaker 2>on to nicer subjects. So, yeah, this this habitat we
<v Speaker 2>were in yesterday, Man, God damn it was it was nice.
<v Speaker 2>I could have spent another three or four hours there
<v Speaker 2>I did not get some of the cool. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it was cool because in the openings you could walk
<v Speaker 2>through this scrubland that had been burnt because it was
<v Speaker 2>just sawtpal meadow and car for forests, and then a
<v Speaker 2>bunch of unders like understory, I say understory, but the
<v Speaker 2>canopy was like only two or three feet tall of
<v Speaker 2>these sawt pal meadows, but it was you know, bubble
<v Speaker 2>stylusts and a bunch of cool sedges. I never give
<v Speaker 2>a fuck about sedges, but these things looked looked cool.
<v Speaker 2>Remind me of some of the habitat you see in
<v Speaker 2>Brazil because it's a similar substrate. It's just silicon dioxide.
<v Speaker 2>It's just still a good dioxide, you know, just quartz,
<v Speaker 2>this weather quartz. But it's, man, it's it's you know,
<v Speaker 2>so it's nutrient poor and uh probably I would assume
<v Speaker 2>somewhat acidic. Oh yeah, we saw that annual drasra too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, dras brevifolia. And then what what was the
<v Speaker 2>little plantagenation's bastard that we saw Gratiola his but yeah,
<v Speaker 2>a little white like six or seven inches tall. But
<v Speaker 2>the man, there was so much cool ship and then
<v Speaker 2>some of the mushroom diversity too. Yeah, it's like a
<v Speaker 2>would looked like a white rustler, like a white capped rustla,
<v Speaker 2>but it had that white uh you know, which would
<v Speaker 2>make sense because there's a ship a ton of oaks there,
<v Speaker 2>so there's gonna be a ton of micro rhys on mushrooms.
<v Speaker 2>But it had that that white crispy stem, that white
<v Speaker 2>crispy stipe that rustless tend to have, but it was
<v Speaker 2>white on top. And then I saw another roostless species
<v Speaker 2>with a red cap. Yeah it was. It was a
<v Speaker 2>fucking marvelous heaving. And they want to build a toll
<v Speaker 2>road right through it because some it turns out some
<v Speaker 2>fucking uh it's some developer built a Tavis Stuck built
<v Speaker 2>a U which is what it owned by a British billionaire,
<v Speaker 2>some some rich seve all these rich sociopaths. Man, it's
<v Speaker 2>these fucking I just you're being farmed. I don't I
<v Speaker 2>don't get these like cuck boot liquors in the comments
<v Speaker 2>section on you know, I mean social media posts defending
<v Speaker 2>billionaires all the time. It's fucking weird to see. God,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, they got to be by they're probably bots, honestly,
<v Speaker 2>but you know, there are people that actually honestly feel
<v Speaker 2>that way. But but anyway, but there's there's someone built
<v Speaker 2>a cult of some bleak cul de Sac community. But
<v Speaker 2>I guess they're using native plants. Yes, their homes. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they're greenwash shit. They got homegrown National Parks certified. And
<v Speaker 2>I speaking of which, we're starting a rumor that Doug
<v Speaker 2>telling me has tip piercings. It's complete nonsense, but I
<v Speaker 2>just think it's good to put out there. Yeah, wonderful man.
<v Speaker 2>He's a wonderful man. Happens to have his nipples pierces
<v Speaker 2>and there's nothing wrong with that. So just you know,
<v Speaker 2>you just don't don't hate, Okay, Let people live the
<v Speaker 2>way they want to live. He's being his true self
<v Speaker 2>having tid piercings. I used to have tid piercings when
<v Speaker 2>I was nineteen, just for shits and giggles. I thought
<v Speaker 2>it was funny. Then I went to jail. They made
<v Speaker 2>me take them out. Go fuck yourself a way. So
<v Speaker 2>this guy, some ship bag built this development community's cul
<v Speaker 2>de Set. Is it done yet? Sports in the works anyway,
<v Speaker 2>but it's you know, because the traffic is so bad,
<v Speaker 2>they want to build a toll road to connect that
<v Speaker 2>to the Orlando Airport, because if they don't do that,
<v Speaker 2>then people are gonna have to rot in traffic with
<v Speaker 2>all the other you know, miserable focks. No offense to them.
<v Speaker 2>They're they're not happy. They're suffering too. And the insight
<v Speaker 2>if you're living that lifestyle, you're definitely suffering. I feel
<v Speaker 2>for you. But uh, they got to so, you know,
<v Speaker 2>to avoid that, because if you have to sit in
<v Speaker 2>traffic for because of an inopportune location where this development
<v Speaker 2>community was built, you know, that's going to drive down
<v Speaker 2>the value of it. People aren't gonna want to live
<v Speaker 2>there as much. So to facilitate transport to this, you know, uh,
<v Speaker 2>these storage lockers where people are going to be living,
<v Speaker 2>they have to build a toll road and they're going
<v Speaker 2>to do it right through this fucking development area. And
<v Speaker 2>I guess I was speaking with one of the people
<v Speaker 2>that's fighting it and these developers and we're trying to
<v Speaker 2>green raw, greenwash it. They were offering her money like
<v Speaker 2>how much, how much how much will it take? Come on,
<v Speaker 2>come on, well name, we can set up I know
<v Speaker 2>you like hiking at this area. We can set up.
<v Speaker 2>We can build some nice bathrooms there and name it
<v Speaker 2>after you. And she's like a local activist. You know,
<v Speaker 2>just let me really in citious sleazy shit. It is crazy.
<v Speaker 2>So you know, I think about this and yeah, what
<v Speaker 2>what way out? You know, how do you how do
<v Speaker 2>you prevent this? You need some sort of fucking built
<v Speaker 2>in defense mechanism to stop this fucking ecocide that human civilization.
<v Speaker 2>Listen to me and Lily were talking about. You know,
<v Speaker 2>She's always like, oh, capitalism is capitalism, and like, let's
<v Speaker 2>be more articulate. Let's not try to sound like a
<v Speaker 2>twenty year old TikToker, because I hear some people saying
<v Speaker 2>that all the time. Someone said that at one of
<v Speaker 2>my presentations in Kansas City, seemed like a nice guy.
<v Speaker 2>He definitely, you know, a demographic that would be saying
<v Speaker 2>something like that. You know, he was wearing like a
<v Speaker 2>punk refest, no offense to him, and seemed like a
<v Speaker 2>nice guy. But I wanted to be I wasn't sharp
<v Speaker 2>on it because I was in the middle of given
<v Speaker 2>a presentation. But I was like, well, it's not just
<v Speaker 2>it's a little more articulate than that. Let's be articulous anthropicentrism,
<v Speaker 2>and it's a complete lack of you know, any way
<v Speaker 2>to prevent this. It's it's it wouldn't just be k
<v Speaker 2>it wouldn't just be capitalism because you get the same
<v Speaker 2>ship with any fucking economic system. It is, but it's
<v Speaker 2>anthropocentrism and it's facilitated by technology and disconnection from it.
<v Speaker 2>You know. So we've got this godlike power, but we've
<v Speaker 2>got this completely fucked up value system, just this primate
<v Speaker 2>primate hoarding complex. Still very simplistic. Can't see beyond our
<v Speaker 2>own short lifespans. Yeah, and so you gotta you know,
<v Speaker 2>let's you know, we want to get it. We want
<v Speaker 2>to We don't want to be vague, we don't want
<v Speaker 2>to just and we don't want to just be low
<v Speaker 2>hanging fruit for some right wing fuck that's gonna you know,
<v Speaker 2>just blanket make a blank beat. It'll be easier to
<v Speaker 2>make a blanket statement. It's. Oh, they just they just
<v Speaker 2>hate they just hate modern zimbilize. They s a capitalism. No,
<v Speaker 2>we just there's there's better ways around it, and you're
<v Speaker 2>not thinking of it. Don't be fucking sloppy minded. So anyway,
<v Speaker 2>but with that, that particular part of the land with
<v Speaker 2>Split Oak Reserve, is that right split oak forces. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>there are supposed to be conservation easements, which is the
<v Speaker 2>really insidious thing, especially they're supposed to be conservation easements
<v Speaker 2>that are protecting it that they're somehow able to walk over.
<v Speaker 2>I don't understand. Did you understand how how that's happening.
<v Speaker 1>Well, FWC has found loopholes to get around the conservations,
<v Speaker 1>which pretty much sets a precedent that conservation easements in
<v Speaker 1>Florida are not going to be protected. And the whole
<v Speaker 1>point of a conservation easement is, you know, it's basically
<v Speaker 1>a tax break for the landowner by the state that
<v Speaker 1>says that they are not they're going to get this
<v Speaker 1>tax break, but they have to not develop the property,
<v Speaker 1>they have to keep it in a certain state according
<v Speaker 1>to whatever the easement says. So these they're like contracts with.
<v Speaker 2>The state, but there's no one to enforce it.
<v Speaker 1>Well, it's supposed to be FWC and other entities. Well
<v Speaker 1>what owns the Yeah, and so there's so many developers
<v Speaker 1>now on the board of FWUC thanks to DeSantis, and
<v Speaker 1>they are founding ways around the conservation easements, and so
<v Speaker 1>it's it's very bad news for all protected land, all
<v Speaker 1>land under conservation easements in Florida.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because it means it basically means conservation easements don't
<v Speaker 2>mean anything. Yeah, Texas is bad too with this stuff.
<v Speaker 2>I mean Texas really likes, you know, like the people
<v Speaker 2>in power that really don't have a problem fucking the
<v Speaker 2>land and the ass. But Florida is really the worst.
<v Speaker 2>I think, man, you guys, don't you guys have should
<v Speaker 2>have barely left. There's barely of anything left.
<v Speaker 1>Way more public We've got way more public land than Texas.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but that's not saying much. Okay, Yeah, yeah, see
<v Speaker 2>it's where I live. It's work at least with public land.
<v Speaker 2>But but it's goddamn it's you would say that, I
<v Speaker 2>would say the development is probably worse here, at least.
<v Speaker 1>In central and central and South Florida. It's very bad.
<v Speaker 1>In the Panhandle. It's not quite as bad yet, but
<v Speaker 1>it's happening right now. It's in the process of being
<v Speaker 1>just completely devastated.
<v Speaker 2>But it's something you I mean, I think about it
<v Speaker 2>and like, I don't foresee it ever stopping. There's no
<v Speaker 2>there's nothing to stop it. You know, it literally is.
<v Speaker 2>It's a cancerous mindset and every subsequent generation, I mean
<v Speaker 2>once so much is lost. Every new generation will have
<v Speaker 2>no idea what it was once like and what they're
<v Speaker 2>missing out on. And so now that's just it sets up.
<v Speaker 2>It just sets it up kind of. It's like, this
<v Speaker 2>is just what you do. It's just that land is
<v Speaker 2>sitting there doing nothing and nature sucks because, you know,
<v Speaker 2>because a fire suppression and invasive species. You look at
<v Speaker 2>the woods and they're messy. Who wants to go into them?
<v Speaker 2>And it's really just hunters and like, you know, a
<v Speaker 2>smaller minority of hikers and nature appreciators that protected well.
<v Speaker 1>Thinks I think there is in general, you know, a
<v Speaker 1>large current consensus across Floridians and across the political landscape,
<v Speaker 1>regardless of political party leanings, that wants to preserve wild Florida,
<v Speaker 1>because especially in the last ten to fifteen years, so
<v Speaker 1>much has been as that it's it's happening so quickly
<v Speaker 1>that people are seeing it and they're losing the little
<v Speaker 1>tiny remnants where they walk their dog and where they
<v Speaker 1>drive by, and it's heartbreaking to everyone. I think.
<v Speaker 2>So this is like it's it is like the last
<v Speaker 2>twenty years, Like even twenty years ago, there was way more.
<v Speaker 1>Unbelievable amount yeah, you should see a map. It's wild.
<v Speaker 1>But so even though there's a large consensus the voting
<v Speaker 1>populace has said they want protection, They you know, voted
<v Speaker 1>to put all of this money aside for land acquisition
<v Speaker 1>and conservation, and yet it's not we are not the
<v Speaker 1>people who are putting money in the pockets of the politicians, and.
<v Speaker 2>So it really is it's just it's just that corrupt.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the voting public has said that they want this
<v Speaker 1>to happen, and yet they're not fully funding the Florida
<v Speaker 1>Forever A program. They're not fully funding you know, the
<v Speaker 1>uh wildlife quarters. They're they're doing shady stuff like perch
<v Speaker 1>seen you know, an eighty four million dollar plot of
<v Speaker 1>four acre plot of Bulldoz sand Yeah, what was it.
<v Speaker 2>Explain that to me again because you were talking about
<v Speaker 2>it earlier this morning.
<v Speaker 1>So the state has money set aside to purchase land
<v Speaker 1>for this quarridor that is supposed to be a wildlife quarter,
<v Speaker 1>you know of conservation easements from South Florida all the
<v Speaker 1>way up to Georgia and through the Panhandle. That will
<v Speaker 1>be a quarter where it's mostly privately owned land. But
<v Speaker 1>it's land that's not going to be developed and it's
<v Speaker 1>land that that wildlife can move on, can migrate through,
<v Speaker 1>so that you know, our panthers, our bears, and all
<v Speaker 1>of our other wildlife do not become isolated and die out.
<v Speaker 1>And so that's very important to Floridians. And yet, you know,
<v Speaker 1>we prioritize pot properties for the purchase and put money
<v Speaker 1>aside for the purchase of these lands to piece together
<v Speaker 1>this quarter. And yet they instead of purchasing one of
<v Speaker 1>the priority properties, they purchase this tiny little four acre
<v Speaker 1>plot of sand off on a little spit on the
<v Speaker 1>coast and the Panhandle that is only four acres and
<v Speaker 1>it's already bulldozed and there's only development around it, so
<v Speaker 1>it's not going to be a part of any corridor.
<v Speaker 1>And they paid eighty four million dollars for it, which
<v Speaker 1>pose of it though there's no purpose for it.
<v Speaker 2>Why did they do it? But you said, I'll tell
<v Speaker 2>you why.
<v Speaker 1>They did it. They did it because the owner of
<v Speaker 1>the property who bought it for only about seven million
<v Speaker 1>dollars in twenty seventeen, he's a Louisiana businessman who is
<v Speaker 1>a large donor to DeSantis and other.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, so it was a way to funnel money, basically.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, and he already went to jail in Louisiana for
<v Speaker 1>bribing politicians in Louisiana.
<v Speaker 2>How does this happen? I mean there's no oversight, there's.
<v Speaker 1>No there's no accountability.
<v Speaker 2>That's fucking Marley God. That is so corrupt. Damn. That's
<v Speaker 2>like it's like Mexican cop style corruption. Holy shit. There's
<v Speaker 2>no one to do anything about it.
<v Speaker 1>There's no organizations that might be able to sue. But
<v Speaker 1>at this point, they approved the purchase. We only got
<v Speaker 1>a like a week or so heads up on this,
<v Speaker 1>and they snuck it in that a purchase was approved,
<v Speaker 1>and so we don't, you know, organizations who want want
<v Speaker 1>to hold them accountable. There are only so many paths
<v Speaker 1>to do that, and it's it's expensive.
<v Speaker 2>So there's a lot of people in Florida that that
<v Speaker 2>don't want this and know it's bullshit. But yeah, judging
<v Speaker 2>from the comments and the post I put up yesterday,
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot of people in Florida that were like, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>this is fucked what's happening here? So it's just it's
<v Speaker 2>just the leadership. It's just corrussed, straight up corrupt leadership. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>how do you prevent that, man, you know, I mean
<v Speaker 2>the way to the way to prevent it, would you know,
<v Speaker 2>nip it in the butt culturally, so that people like
<v Speaker 2>that just don't exist to the extent that they do.
<v Speaker 2>But then once they're in, like, how do you when
<v Speaker 2>it's so corrupt and it's all money and power.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and it's not out of quit reported and you
<v Speaker 1>know the propagandaized news outlets that most people get their
<v Speaker 1>news from.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, that's fucking that's so bleak. It's not bleak. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>it's just it's frustrating. It's really aggravating. I like saying
<v Speaker 2>there's no hope. There's hope, but it just has to
<v Speaker 2>be a more publicized issue, like the level of corruption
<v Speaker 2>here and the threat that it poses to the life,
<v Speaker 2>the living world here in Florida, the land, the people
<v Speaker 2>that want to enjoy our whether they're hunters or you know,
<v Speaker 2>hikers or environmentals whatever. I really hope there's a bigger
<v Speaker 2>faction between hunters and environmentalists because that's the only hope
<v Speaker 2>for a lot of the public lands in this country. Man,
<v Speaker 2>I can't believe there's people that are against hunting too.
<v Speaker 2>That fucking blows my mind. You got to be out
<v Speaker 2>of your mind.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think there are that many people against hunting.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's just the vegans, but there's in Florida.
<v Speaker 1>Not really. I mean I think a lot of people
<v Speaker 1>recognize the the conservation value of hunting and the conservation
<v Speaker 1>funds that hunting provides, and.
<v Speaker 2>Just ecologically, man, that deer are.
<v Speaker 1>Fuck well, yeah, and the appreciation of nature that hunting also,
<v Speaker 1>you know, kind of kind of nourishes some people.
<v Speaker 2>I killed a deer by accent with a pelicon. I
<v Speaker 2>didn't long there's a long time ago. There's a long
<v Speaker 2>time Oh, and I killed one with you in the car.
<v Speaker 2>There's a long time ago. This is a statute of limitations.
<v Speaker 2>It's finally it's safe to mention on a podcast. I
<v Speaker 2>didn't mean to kill it. It was an accident. I
<v Speaker 2>shot it with a pelicon. I just wanted to hit
<v Speaker 2>it in the ass and drive it away. They were
<v Speaker 2>just fucking overpopulated. I'm not gonna say where it happened
<v Speaker 2>because that could, you know, criminally indict me. But it
<v Speaker 2>did happen, and I'm sorry to the deer, but also
<v Speaker 2>fuck you stay off my plants, your brick and anyway,
<v Speaker 2>but uh, I'm just kidding. That never happened, and we
<v Speaker 2>didn't go dump the body in the side of the
<v Speaker 2>road to make it look like it was roadkilled. And
<v Speaker 2>I'm not gonna say who was with okay anyway, but
<v Speaker 2>I think that the a faction between forming a coalition
<v Speaker 2>between yeah, environmentalists and hunters is real problem is that.
<v Speaker 1>So many on the right leaning side are so topic
<v Speaker 1>indoctrinated with this cultural you know, this culture warship, and
<v Speaker 1>they get their news from these propaganda alts.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the culture war was a brilliant strategy infiltrating the
<v Speaker 2>left and making them follow woke identity politics was a
<v Speaker 2>brilliant strategy too. That really works, man. You get a
<v Speaker 2>lot of just scolding gretchens online, just talking shit and
<v Speaker 2>just fighting with each other and just perpetually trying to
<v Speaker 2>purge the ranks of any infidels who don't toe the
<v Speaker 2>the you know agenda on Holy fuck, that was brilliant,
<v Speaker 2>brilliant co Went delpro couldn't have done a better job.
<v Speaker 2>It's been a couple of days now we're just left
<v Speaker 2>kissing me Prairie. After spending three days in the fucking uh,
<v Speaker 2>the scrub, the court scent, the white sand in the
<v Speaker 2>yellow sand, and some plants were only grow in the
<v Speaker 2>yellow sand, not in the white sand. Down there on
<v Speaker 2>Lake Whales Ridge, one hundred and fifteen mile spine of sand,
<v Speaker 2>and you can come, you could. It's like when you
<v Speaker 2>come down off the spine going east or west, and
<v Speaker 2>it's like you go down just a little bit, you
<v Speaker 2>can imagine, you know, you'd be going into the water.
<v Speaker 2>If it was two million years ago, you'd be going
<v Speaker 2>into the ocean. Tons of cool plants there. And we
<v Speaker 2>met some nice folks who let us crash with them.
<v Speaker 2>They gave me my own room and their trailer. It
<v Speaker 2>was very kind, Thank you, Ellen and Alisia and uh
<v Speaker 2>and yeah, man, it was fucking wonderful time. Now were
<v Speaker 2>just at the prairie and it was hot as fuck.
<v Speaker 2>I was roasting my ass off trying to get pictures
<v Speaker 2>of a ringium. YUCKA folium? What was it? Was? It
<v Speaker 2>subspecies sincatum, but it might as well be aits own species.
<v Speaker 2>The leaves were very stiff, you could tell they've been
<v Speaker 2>selected for a little more orbivy veterans. But uh, and
<v Speaker 2>it said it was a dry prairie, but fuck that.
<v Speaker 2>There was like a sign saying it was a dry
<v Speaker 2>pray next to like a giant puddle of water. It's
<v Speaker 2>like dry prairie in my ass. You want to see
<v Speaker 2>a dry prairie, go to Fort Worth. What's left of it,
<v Speaker 2>you know, if you can find it in the spaghetti
<v Speaker 2>bowl of card slums and freeway rams. This was a wet,
<v Speaker 2>fucking prairie. There's a ton of cool stuff there, more carfifferreth,
<v Speaker 2>lots of carpifperus, and there's dainty little scrub oaks quirkus
<v Speaker 2>eli yadi eye. But I recognized that was it pumila. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but it's eliadie. It's a variety or what It's just
<v Speaker 2>it's eliadi eye. So, but that was a fucking dope oak.
<v Speaker 2>It was like bright white undersides, white pubescents, the yellow veins,
<v Speaker 2>leathery couraceous leaves. And then there was a little alligator
<v Speaker 2>chilling in a little irrigation ditch. He was only like two.
<v Speaker 2>He was a two footer chilling a little irrigation ditch
<v Speaker 2>right near the parking area, and if you got too close,
<v Speaker 2>you'd go into the tube. He couldn't get him, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I almost tried to grab his tail. Cute little bastard.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I wanted to see him mangle my hand.
<v Speaker 2>You ever see that picture of you Do you ever
<v Speaker 2>see that video of the old man who got mangled
<v Speaker 2>by It's like some fucking Florida golfer, like some fucking
<v Speaker 2>some guy. You'd see it like a you know, the
<v Speaker 2>the luxury golf resort or some shit. I don't know
<v Speaker 2>what he was doing. He was some geriatric, some like
<v Speaker 2>pink geriatric. He's going down to touch a fucking I
<v Speaker 2>don't know what he was doing. He was going going
<v Speaker 2>to try to get some alligator off the land out
<v Speaker 2>of jumping on his hand and wrangling him. And it
<v Speaker 2>was kind of funny. You shouldn't laugh out of the
<v Speaker 2>people's mitch for misfortune. He's fine whatever anyway, But the
<v Speaker 2>scrub the lake whales rich was just fucking amazing, man.
<v Speaker 2>It was. I've never seen so many goddamn species of
<v Speaker 2>Polyganella grass list robust, the bessarama, what was the grass
<v Speaker 2>list was the tall one, the tall fucking six foot
<v Speaker 2>tall polygonella, And up until then I had only seen
<v Speaker 2>Polygonella sai. I'd seen two species, one in the Upper
<v Speaker 2>Peninsula Michigan, and then one Polya Americana on the former
<v Speaker 2>Mississippi River bed, which is at present ten miles west
<v Speaker 2>of the currentss Cippy River near Cape Girardo, uh, Missouri
<v Speaker 2>or Illinois. Where to fucking Missouri, the home of the
<v Speaker 2>I got my salad tossed in Cape Girardo's t shirts.
<v Speaker 2>You know you gotta come. You gotta get those little
<v Speaker 2>souvenirs when you're out. Don't forget the souvenirs. I'm gonna go.
<v Speaker 2>But what would the souvenir for Venus Florida be? What
<v Speaker 2>would some fucking laminated face? Where's where's all the development?
<v Speaker 2>Where's the biggest center of development on Lake Wales Ridge?
<v Speaker 2>We went to, where is it? These fucking ship back developers.
<v Speaker 2>God just degenerates, degenerates money worshiping goons and degenerates just
<v Speaker 2>these broken ass, lame fucking people. Like what you look
<v Speaker 2>at like the the what was that count? Was that
<v Speaker 2>Charlotte County commissioner? What was that that photo I looked
<v Speaker 2>at with all the fucking plastic faces and the.
<v Speaker 1>O.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I don't know. They all these fucking people look
<v Speaker 2>the same. They're all pink and they've got you know,
<v Speaker 2>fucking fillers and all kinds of weird that everyone's getting
<v Speaker 2>their boattox done. How many boatox clinics in Florida. Oh
<v Speaker 2>that's a nice fan. That's a sketchy fucking man. I
<v Speaker 2>love that mobile repair and power ports. It's like an
<v Speaker 2>orange Kidnapper van. It's nice. I want one of those.
<v Speaker 2>But uh yeah, But we were looking at this this
<v Speaker 2>parcel last night near what was it called Taylor? What
<v Speaker 2>was the name of the god Mike fucking mind, I
<v Speaker 2>can't remember. You notice what happens you don't get enough sleep.
<v Speaker 2>The tract we were at the southern tip of the
<v Speaker 2>Southern ti Yeah, it was the southern tip of the ridge.
<v Speaker 2>But it was attract the gould detract gouled like a
<v Speaker 2>money worshiping ghoule developer, ghoul perfect teeth. Cosmetic dentistry. Cosmetic
<v Speaker 2>dentistry has got to be big down here too, right,
<v Speaker 2>there's a you want to make money, you go into
<v Speaker 2>cosmetic dentistry. You could finally buy your corvette fucking sleeves bag.
<v Speaker 2>But we were at this spot that I guess they
<v Speaker 2>tried to turn it into an orange grove. They bulldozed
<v Speaker 2>all the scrub. The scrub community is incredible and it's
<v Speaker 2>all highly fired dependent. They bulldozed the scrub in the nineties,
<v Speaker 2>some shit bag company didn't and they got busted because
<v Speaker 2>they were they violated some laws and didn't get the
<v Speaker 2>proper permits because it was going to disturb the scrub
<v Speaker 2>jays or just destroy their habitat, and so they got caught.
<v Speaker 2>They got busted by the FEDS, they got shut down,
<v Speaker 2>and then they had to restore all of it. I
<v Speaker 2>got bit by Opuntia O Pundia austrina back there. Mean,
<v Speaker 2>motherfucker man. It literally feels like a snake bite without
<v Speaker 2>the venom. They go deep, those spines go deep into
<v Speaker 2>your legs. I would wear snake gaters just for the
<v Speaker 2>opuntia out there. But you know where they restored it,
<v Speaker 2>it was all filled with invasives. But you could see,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the Sarah Noah came back. Becaus geminata came back.
<v Speaker 2>There's like four or five different species of scrub oak here.
<v Speaker 2>Quircus geminata I think gets the largest chet manny I
<v Speaker 2>can get up words of like four meters tall. Uh Inopina,
<v Speaker 2>which has those highly conduplicate leaves, folded taco leaves, very
<v Speaker 2>very leathery glabrous on the outside, did they have They're
<v Speaker 2>like kind of pubescent on the underside. I think a
<v Speaker 2>little bit maybe, but they're mostly just relying on being folded.
<v Speaker 2>So that's it. You know. They look like they look
<v Speaker 2>like some of the pila, you know, the kylanthoid fern leaves,
<v Speaker 2>except their oak leaves, you know, just they're that folded over.
<v Speaker 2>It's really cool. But we were walking through this stuff.
<v Speaker 2>I was hoping to see an Eastern diamondback. We didn't
<v Speaker 2>see any, you know, with the little zoro mask and everything,
<v Speaker 2>we didn't see any, but we saw I guess there
<v Speaker 2>was kyon anthis big mayus out there, which is the
<v Speaker 2>fringe tree relative ash tree, relative of ashes. I'll have
<v Speaker 2>family Olac. But it's a dwarf fringe tree, you know,
<v Speaker 2>cayon Aths virginicus that really likes wet areas, doesn't it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>like it likes some moisture, I mean wet compared to
<v Speaker 2>where I live. But this is like a sand dwelling
<v Speaker 2>cayanat this a dwarf one, and I guess it's listed
<v Speaker 2>federally endangered. And then what was the other thing from
<v Speaker 2>the same family with the Seama Kartrima florid dana, which
<v Speaker 2>I've seen, Yeah, I think I've seen. I think there's
<v Speaker 2>oh yeah, and then there's tons of zymnia too. I
<v Speaker 2>bet zymenia would come back pretty easily, which I was
<v Speaker 2>so excited to see. Zymnia. The fruit's edible. It's actually good.
<v Speaker 2>There's not that much pulp on it, but there's enough
<v Speaker 2>to get a good taste out of it. But it's
<v Speaker 2>in the Olax family, Olax, which is a hemi parasitic family,
<v Speaker 2>which I know from primarily from Western Australia. Olex violent
<v Speaker 2>philanthis Olex no, what is it, olex Pinlanthia. I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>I remember seeing on these uh these granite insul burghs
<v Speaker 2>right near the coast in Western Australia. But it's in
<v Speaker 2>Santa Lal's and the Zamania is got kind of that
<v Speaker 2>like yellowish look to the leaves, like if you're looking
<v Speaker 2>at it against the backdrop of Corcus and Sarah Noah,
<v Speaker 2>it sticks out like a sore thumb. They're like yellowish leaves,
<v Speaker 2>which to me, a lot of members of the Santa
<v Speaker 2>Lal's order, and there's a ship ton of them, especially
<v Speaker 2>in Western Australia and in South Africa always have that
<v Speaker 2>same kind of look to them, that like yellowish leaves,
<v Speaker 2>and that's a big giveaway like they're they're members of
<v Speaker 2>especially Santa Lacey, like the family, the namesake family of
<v Speaker 2>the order, have that yellowish look to them. I don't
<v Speaker 2>know why. I don't know why that's connected. I assume
<v Speaker 2>it's connected to their parasitism somehow. Now in the case
<v Speaker 2>of members of World Bank Casey, they can have red
<v Speaker 2>leaves like pendicularis or like the Agonalinus that we saw yesterday,
<v Speaker 2>because I guess that is an adaptation that the red
<v Speaker 2>is the anthroscionist payments, which can be protective, and those
<v Speaker 2>can be costly to manufacture calorically, but if you're parasitizing,
<v Speaker 2>if you're a partial parasite, you know you've got chlorophyll,
<v Speaker 2>you can photosynthesize, but you're gonna steal from nearby plants
<v Speaker 2>like both Pendicularis and paintbrush Castalla and Aglinis do. Then
<v Speaker 2>you don't have to worry about the costs and you
<v Speaker 2>can just produce that bright red foliage. There was another
<v Speaker 2>plant I saw in Nuevo Leone that does the same
<v Speaker 2>thing and before I even saw it. In Flower, I
<v Speaker 2>saw those leaves and I was like, this is fucking
<v Speaker 2>Oraban Casey had these like reddish orange leaves. Oh, this
<v Speaker 2>is hideous. Where is this? Where are we right now?
<v Speaker 2>This just looks a good old like the American Commercial
<v Speaker 2>Slot Park, Avon Park. Oh, it's the outbay, literally upback
<v Speaker 2>stay house, outback steakhouse, KFC. I'm a plastic sensors. This
<v Speaker 2>isn't as hideous as it could be. America can do
<v Speaker 2>a lot better than this. I'm disappointed. This is not
<v Speaker 2>ugly enough. Come on, America, show us your soulless commercial center,
<v Speaker 2>your soulless commercial core. Yeah, get rid of some of
<v Speaker 2>these fucking trees. Get in more Alon. Oh there's a chippolin.
<v Speaker 2>Let's go under steel Art, Tabasco Sauce, go right in there.
<v Speaker 2>The Safari Inn. It's a bleak motor lodge. Got all
<v Speaker 2>this fucking grass. It's gotta be so hot. The scrub
<v Speaker 2>is amazing, though, but it's it's you know, when you
<v Speaker 2>see they do so much burning down here, it's like
<v Speaker 2>a whole thing. They got stickers everywhere. They're probably selling
<v Speaker 2>fucking beer koozies, probably edible underwear with pyro diversity written
<v Speaker 2>on it. You know, all kinds of shit. They really,
<v Speaker 2>they're heavy and the fire merch down here at least
<v Speaker 2>all the biologists which I support pyro diversity. The disturbance
<v Speaker 2>that enables the diversity is the burning. But when you
<v Speaker 2>look at some of these areas where it's been fire suppressed, man,
<v Speaker 2>it this looks like shit. It's just a dense thicket
<v Speaker 2>of woods. Oh, there we go. I'm looking at it now.
<v Speaker 2>Oh look there's a there's an ambulance chaser billboard. It
<v Speaker 2>nice makes me feel at home. God is fucking ugly here,
<v Speaker 2>Jesus Christ Duncan office deepole, all the billboards. And I
<v Speaker 2>love that people grow up in this country with this
<v Speaker 2>is all they know. This is the scenery, and they
<v Speaker 2>don't think it fucking affects them like they don't think
<v Speaker 2>that it like subconsciously that just affects your soul. Oh
<v Speaker 2>look it's Chick fil A. It's Chick fil although they're
<v Speaker 2>always closed up Sunday. We're closed up Sunday, closed other
<v Speaker 2>Sunday hottering the Lord. Oh I got news for you, buddy.
<v Speaker 2>Jesus was a radical pacifist who hated the rich. You
<v Speaker 2>don't like that, do you, huh? Anyway, Oh, it's a
<v Speaker 2>wind Dixie. This is Look at that massive parking lot.
<v Speaker 2>Is the giant heat better anyway? So you know, but
<v Speaker 2>when you see these these scrub lands that where fire
<v Speaker 2>has been suppressed for so long, you can really tell.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, they look they look like shitty woods. They
<v Speaker 2>look like the woods I grew up with in Chicago,
<v Speaker 2>invaded by buck thorn. Fire suppressed. You know, you gotta
<v Speaker 2>get in there, you gotta clean everything out. Fire cleanses everything.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, man, I don't know, but it's thank god
<v Speaker 2>they've been doing that. When did they start doing fire
<v Speaker 2>in the seventies. You were telling me something about this.
<v Speaker 2>You were saying early, like I mean, they did early
<v Speaker 2>seventies are.
<v Speaker 1>Ecology, you know, redeveloped it from you know, right, rediscovered
<v Speaker 1>it in the like thirties at Herbert Stoddard and Tall
<v Speaker 1>Timbers in South Georgia.
<v Speaker 2>That wasn't in the thirties though, yeah it was, or
<v Speaker 2>it wasn't over seventies, was it. I don't know. Maybe
<v Speaker 2>you're right when I read about it was early. It
<v Speaker 2>was saying early seventies, and it was because they realized
<v Speaker 2>all the quail were disappearing earlier than that, Oh the quail.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, there were a lot of wealthy Northerners that
<v Speaker 1>would come down on the railroad south to hunt at
<v Speaker 1>these plantations in South Georgia and North Florida. They would
<v Speaker 1>hunt for quail, and they suppressed fires there because when
<v Speaker 1>they saw a forest, they saw resources and they and
<v Speaker 1>the resources were the trees, and they thought burning would
<v Speaker 1>they would lose their resources, lose the wood for the tree.
<v Speaker 2>From the trees.
<v Speaker 1>And so eventually, with enough fire suppression, the quail started
<v Speaker 1>dying out and they couldn't figure out why, and all
<v Speaker 1>these rich, wealthy Northerners were like, what the fuck, And
<v Speaker 1>so they hired this ecologist from Chicago, Herbert Stoddard, and
<v Speaker 1>he came down and figured out that it was because
<v Speaker 1>of the fire suppression, that due to this fire suppression,
<v Speaker 1>that herbaceous understory was petering out, and that's what the
<v Speaker 1>quail depended upon. And so that was kind of the
<v Speaker 1>birthplace of rediscovering the necessity of firing.
<v Speaker 2>College quail and a whole bunch of other shit that
<v Speaker 2>we saw that pine lily today that's a fire dependent
<v Speaker 2>lily too, or a fire dependent plant rather too. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>got that thing was a fucking it was drip and nectar.
<v Speaker 2>You could look at the base. You could look at
<v Speaker 2>the base and see the nectar was just fucking massive,
<v Speaker 2>massive amounts of nectar and butterfly pollinated and the petals
<v Speaker 2>were kind of folded right at the base. They looked
<v Speaker 2>like clawed petals because I assume it just helps contain
<v Speaker 2>the nectar in there. So that's what butterflies would probe
<v Speaker 2>with their little probascai to get in there and then
<v Speaker 2>doing so pollinate the flower. Another thing I noticed when
<v Speaker 2>we were at the prairie site and kissing me, kissing
<v Speaker 2>me prairie. How far are we from Orlando?
<v Speaker 1>At least like four hours?
<v Speaker 2>Four hours? Really, I don't know. I don't know's that's
<v Speaker 2>good that we're not too close to Orlando. Oh, I
<v Speaker 2>don't want to feel it taint. But another thing that
<v Speaker 2>I noticed, and maybe I'm just maybe I'm just imagining this,
<v Speaker 2>but it seemed like a number of plants were converging
<v Speaker 2>on the same form. This like I call it the
<v Speaker 2>spire form. It looks like just this tall, narrow you know,
<v Speaker 2>the liantres quadrif flora looked like that. The you don't
<v Speaker 2>hit this guy in the caddy looks like Pauli walls.
<v Speaker 2>But they got this spire form. It's, you know, the
<v Speaker 2>liantress quadrif Flora did it. Solidago vergated it too. That
<v Speaker 2>was the weirdest golden rod I've ever seen. Very narrow.
<v Speaker 2>It looks like a little like a single erect string,
<v Speaker 2>almost like a little piece of twine, green twine, just
<v Speaker 2>sticking up. It was so narrow, you know, and I
<v Speaker 2>guess in the winter. It's got a rosette of basal leaves,
<v Speaker 2>and then you know it has calline leaves. I mean
<v Speaker 2>it has colline leaves like halfway up the thing. It
<v Speaker 2>stands about three or four feet tall, but you start
<v Speaker 2>beginning at like twelve or fourteen inches. The calline leaves
<v Speaker 2>are oppressed to the stem, to this main shoot. So
<v Speaker 2>it's just like this, you know, to the point where
<v Speaker 2>you almost can't even see them. So it looks like
<v Speaker 2>this little fucky I just blew a stap sign it's
<v Speaker 2>good now.
<v Speaker 1>I like that.
<v Speaker 2>It's good for him. This is a suggestion, and so
<v Speaker 2>look at these. It's the Golden Girls neighborhood. Every Florida
<v Speaker 2>every Florida and Bourbon neighborhood looks like the Golden Girls neighborhood.
<v Speaker 2>Is this that weed? Air? This is there? They got
<v Speaker 2>like a little lucophilin. Look, they got a little lucophilin
<v Speaker 2>planted there. But yeah, this this fucking spiral form of
<v Speaker 2>the alatris too. Man, it's some of the most narrow.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I assume it's because it gets so hot
<v Speaker 2>and you're on this nutrient poor sand. But uh, but
<v Speaker 2>I guess it could also be to just not catch
<v Speaker 2>wind during intense hurricanes. Remember all these plants, at least
<v Speaker 2>the Uni cots have you know, storage roots, like deep
<v Speaker 2>storage roots, fleshy storage roots. But you're driving the wrong
<v Speaker 2>side of the road. Not to be a backseat driver.
<v Speaker 2>This guy's upset by Look he's fleshing his light sets.
<v Speaker 2>You know, he's he's making him nervous. But oh my god,
<v Speaker 2>what the fuck is this? I'm getting distracted about the
<v Speaker 2>eccentric landscaping here, all this sat all this Saint Augustine.
<v Speaker 2>But but you know, but some of the oh yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's just an Eric Carriy ahead ruffle, just the Norfolk
<v Speaker 2>Island pine. It's not a true pine. But uh, but yes,
<v Speaker 2>you know the grasses. The monocots of course have these
<v Speaker 2>fiber scoots. And there were a ship ton of androd
<v Speaker 2>pogns there, Cabinicii, Cabana boy, Andrew pogon, what was what
<v Speaker 2>was the other one that delbatim What was the other one?
<v Speaker 2>There's another one because of the capillopes. That was a
<v Speaker 2>fucking beautiful alternating segments of red and green stem. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>these are these and now that I guess they're all
<v Speaker 2>in the genus and nathanum anatherroom. But they were just
<v Speaker 2>fucking dope grasses. I mean, even if you're not a
<v Speaker 2>grass person, even if the gray, even if grass is
<v Speaker 2>generally bore you and you're like funk that, I'm not
<v Speaker 2>gonna pay attention to the grasses. You know, you would say, wow,
<v Speaker 2>you would be It would be hard for you. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Is that the waxy one.
<v Speaker 1>No, that's the one with the shiny like dangling.
<v Speaker 2>Spice, shiny dangling spikes. But some of these there's like
<v Speaker 2>three different species that these androw pogan that have this
<v Speaker 2>wax on them, this glaucous wax. They're like this icy
<v Speaker 2>blue color. They're fucking phenomenal, man, They're so cool, and
<v Speaker 2>it's such an adaptation to that hot, nutrient poor sand.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I just remember the sand. There's not as
<v Speaker 2>many hairy plants on the Florida sand as there are
<v Speaker 2>in the Texas sand because Texas is probably a little
<v Speaker 2>bit hotter and uh and not as humid, but there's
<v Speaker 2>lots of wax. So this who's this guy walking down here?
<v Speaker 2>From a distance, it looked like fatvans, look like the
<v Speaker 2>fatvans meme, And maybe that's just the wishful thinking. So anyway,
<v Speaker 2>also at this spot was sarah Noora rapents. But the
<v Speaker 2>blue form, the waxy glaucous form, and it must have
<v Speaker 2>it must have all been the same colony because it
<v Speaker 2>was just this little, like one hundred yard patch. Maybe
<v Speaker 2>there were a couple of different individuals, but I bet
<v Speaker 2>it was just one individual. It's had like a really
<v Speaker 2>waxy blue leave. The saw palmetto is a fucking amazing plant, man,
<v Speaker 2>it's it's I guess they have a bad problem with
<v Speaker 2>poaching due to its uses A balltonic, you know, supposedly
<v Speaker 2>it's good for male virility or some bullshit. I don't know,
<v Speaker 2>a prostate. I don't fucking know, you know, these all
<v Speaker 2>these American men. I mean, it's men everywhere all over
<v Speaker 2>the world associated with you know, obsessed with the you know,
<v Speaker 2>improving their prostate or their balls or something whatever the fuck.
<v Speaker 2>The balltonics. You know, they're a common thing, but in
<v Speaker 2>America especially, you know, most American men are so out
<v Speaker 2>of shape and overweight. I wonder, you know, maybe it's
<v Speaker 2>maybe it's if you just got outside and exercise, you
<v Speaker 2>wouldn't need to do such a thing. But you know, again,
<v Speaker 2>the balltonic thing is everywhere. It's just like a male
<v Speaker 2>primate obsession. Right, there's some way to improve your balls
<v Speaker 2>or your your I don't know what the fuck. You know,
<v Speaker 2>there's go go to like the health food section of
<v Speaker 2>the the the homeopathic remedy section of a health food store.
<v Speaker 2>You'll see all the different ball remedies. They have scrotal remedies.
<v Speaker 2>But aside from that. The saw palmeadow is a fucking
<v Speaker 2>amazing plant. I mean, just these It's incredibly slow growing,
<v Speaker 2>like a centimeter or two a year. In some cases,
<v Speaker 2>they can live for centuries, highly dependent on fire. And
<v Speaker 2>then there was this this one little population probably all
<v Speaker 2>just the same genet, the same clone, with the waxy
<v Speaker 2>blue leaves and then suddenly it just changes to green
<v Speaker 2>leaves again, you know, on this little prairie section. It
<v Speaker 2>was amazing, really cool to see, and you could touch
<v Speaker 2>these leaves and they were I mean, you could feel
<v Speaker 2>the wax on them. So there's a apparently it's I
<v Speaker 2>don't know if it's a recessive allele or what, but
<v Speaker 2>but it was. It was cool to see that because
<v Speaker 2>I think prior to that I've only seen in cultivation.
<v Speaker 2>And then speaking of recessive alleles, there was we saw
<v Speaker 2>like one or two. I only saw a single white
<v Speaker 2>li actress. I guess there was one somewhere else lily
<v Speaker 2>had come across, but I just just saw that one.
<v Speaker 2>So it's a recessive allele until something else starts selecting
<v Speaker 2>for it. God, it was the prairies. They kissed me
<v Speaker 2>prairies amazing though. It's really cool, really fucking wonderful area.
<v Speaker 2>And they had just burned in I guess they burned
<v Speaker 2>one section in March, and they burned another section in June.
<v Speaker 2>And there's this whole thing down here with the seasonality
<v Speaker 2>of the fires. So where they had burned in June,
<v Speaker 2>there were there was still grass. There was a bunch
<v Speaker 2>of grass there. There's a high rainfall area, of course,
<v Speaker 2>but it's nutrient poor sand and it dries out faster
<v Speaker 2>than most other areas, and it's highly dependent on fire
<v Speaker 2>as well. And so where they burned in March, I
<v Speaker 2>guess the grasses had not gotten going these as as readily.
<v Speaker 2>They were still there, but they'd been you know, grasses
<v Speaker 2>of fibrous root systems. They don't have this big juicy
<v Speaker 2>storage tuber like most sand plants that are dicots. Unicots
<v Speaker 2>do like the composites. And so that was all dominated
<v Speaker 2>by a thick flush of carfiferuth CARF four I think
<v Speaker 2>it was. There was Carnosis there and uh odory. What
<v Speaker 2>other car carfifferus were there was Carnosus and corimbosas oh yeah,
<v Speaker 2>subtropicicanus and uh anyway, but that but it was that
<v Speaker 2>was like a dense pink bloom and uh and in
<v Speaker 2>the area where they that was what they had burned
<v Speaker 2>in March, because March can still be ninety degrees and dry. Here,
<v Speaker 2>winter's the dry season. Like in Mexico, it's you know
<v Speaker 2>that we're so close to the the tropics. You got
<v Speaker 2>almost at the summer, wet, winter, dry thing going on.
<v Speaker 2>And then where they had burned in June, the grass
<v Speaker 2>was coming was it was there. It was as more
<v Speaker 2>abundant than in the spart where they burned in March,
<v Speaker 2>and so you still had flushes of liatrius and carfiforests,
<v Speaker 2>but there was more grass diversity there. It's crazy. There's
<v Speaker 2>this whole there's I mean, the again, this is how dependent,
<v Speaker 2>especially parts of Florida are on the fire. There's the
<v Speaker 2>science on this goes deep, and there's people studying it.
<v Speaker 2>There's I haven't looked into any of the papers yet.
<v Speaker 2>I'll probably do that tonight, but it's it's pretty remarkable.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's I mean, I guess it's the same in
<v Speaker 2>Chicago prairies, et cetera. I mean, it's the same anywhere
<v Speaker 2>you've got fire dependent plants, which is really in most
<v Speaker 2>places in North America, because you get the same thing
<v Speaker 2>out west, at least in the California Chaparral. I don't
<v Speaker 2>I don't think the thorn scrub was ever a fire dependent.
<v Speaker 2>It's hard to imagine. It's it could be so barren
<v Speaker 2>in some places. I'm sure they've got fires there every
<v Speaker 2>once in a while. But but yeah, god damn, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>and you look at this stuff and you figure you're
<v Speaker 2>growing on sand. It gets even though there's high rainfall,
<v Speaker 2>it can be so hot and it gets it could
<v Speaker 2>dry out so quick, you know, and you see what
<v Speaker 2>the what it looks like when that there hasn't been
<v Speaker 2>a fire, when fire has been suppressed, and you see
<v Speaker 2>how thick all the underbrush and the dead palm fronds
<v Speaker 2>and the dead saw palmeto franz and you know, it
<v Speaker 2>just it gets choked out and you realize this is
<v Speaker 2>a tinderbox. I mean, how could there not be a fire?
<v Speaker 2>One lightning strike and shit just goes up. And then
<v Speaker 2>once you've got a fire going, it's just and it's
<v Speaker 2>all dry, that dry kindling. It's not going to go
<v Speaker 2>out anytime soon. And then especially you know, Native people
<v Speaker 2>were of course burning especially you don't have metallurgy. You
<v Speaker 2>want to you know, you don't want to hang out
<v Speaker 2>in some smothered woods or smothered scrubland. You want to
<v Speaker 2>clear it out a little bit, so you go and
<v Speaker 2>burn it. It's just just kind of a I mean,
<v Speaker 2>when you're in it again, when you're in an area
<v Speaker 2>that hasn't experienced a fire in a long time. It
<v Speaker 2>just becomes you know, you've become second nature. You would
<v Speaker 2>you would see it, at least I do when I'm
<v Speaker 2>out there, you know, standing in a like this one section,
<v Speaker 2>I think we were trespassing. It was like it was
<v Speaker 2>when we were looking at kayan Ant, this pig mass.
<v Speaker 2>We were on this it's commercial property, its own commercial
<v Speaker 2>It was adjacent to a friend's house, and and it
<v Speaker 2>hadn't been burned I think in twenty or thirty years,
<v Speaker 2>and it was choked out. I mean, it was hard
<v Speaker 2>to move through, whereas the scrub that's been burned in
<v Speaker 2>the last five years is relatively easy to move through
<v Speaker 2>and pleasant and more open and healthier. It looks healthier,
<v Speaker 2>so God. And then this the shitty woods where it
<v Speaker 2>hasn't been burned in fifty or sixty years. You know,
<v Speaker 2>that's where you get the invasives coming on. The Melinius
<v Speaker 2>rappens is a really bad invasive grass. But of course
<v Speaker 2>it's a grass you're not gonna get in the choke
<v Speaker 2>that woods you're gonna get, you know, that's where you're
<v Speaker 2>gonna get just the thick more of a thick shady dark.
<v Speaker 2>It looks like the shitty woods I grew up with
<v Speaker 2>in Chicago, all choked out with invasive buckthorn you know,
<v Speaker 2>never burned, heavy tick population, heavy tick and deer population,
<v Speaker 2>just just you know, the shitty woods. What happens when
<v Speaker 2>you don't burn, You know, when you take a fire
<v Speaker 2>a landscape that evolved with fire, and then you suppress
<v Speaker 2>it for a century or two. Not worth the only
<v Speaker 2>site of Crodillaria or vensus, which is well, not the only,
<v Speaker 2>it's the only one of one of only three sites
<v Speaker 2>again with this white sand sabole Atonia Corcus geminata. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>none of the vegetation is taller than three or four feet.
<v Speaker 2>I guess they did just have a burn two years ago. Ooh,
<v Speaker 2>there's a grass anantherum for really Andropogon species, but it's
<v Speaker 2>mostly just scrub oaks down pines and then a shit
<v Speaker 2>ton of that Florida hickory carry a Florid dana, which
<v Speaker 2>is fucking beautiful. It's I got yellowish brown leaves right now.
<v Speaker 2>I wonder if they're greener earlier in the season. Probably
<v Speaker 2>massive Ionia right they're at eight feet tall. Monocullus well,
<v Speaker 2>not monoc it's it's got a number of stems coming up,
<v Speaker 2>but they're generally unbranched until like seven or eight feet
<v Speaker 2>and lacking leaves. For the bottom eighty percent of the plant.
<v Speaker 2>There's a Cisernkium zerophylum everywhere, which is of course an iris,
<v Speaker 2>and a bunch of downed pine logs sable Atonia. Is
<v Speaker 2>there serenoa or pins out here too? Yeah, there you go.
<v Speaker 2>And this crodal area which I guess only gets eight
<v Speaker 2>inches tell oh, Garbaria heterophylla. It's like a shrubby relative
<v Speaker 2>of joe pyeweed Upatoria, the Stevia tribe with those long
<v Speaker 2>ass thoules Quirkus chapmaniac Qrcercento pina Quircus geminata, fucking sunny
<v Speaker 2>habitat man. The white sand makes a nice color pilot
<v Speaker 2>with all the the leaf droppings and charred wood in
<v Speaker 2>the bottom. This quercisento pina is so cool. Those those
<v Speaker 2>highly folded leaves, multiple stems sprouting from the same clone.
<v Speaker 2>They form in a little colony again, keep hoping to
<v Speaker 2>see it each then diamondback but nothing. Yeah, there's a
<v Speaker 2>waxy Sarhenoa, not like bright, glaucus blue, nice, charred, nice,
<v Speaker 2>charred black, remnant of a pine god. I would love
<v Speaker 2>to see it when they burn. Polygonella Baldwina and Gustafolia,
<v Speaker 2>a relative of Hellenium, like a sand loving Hellenium. And
<v Speaker 2>what was it Polygonella polygamma? And what's the other Polygonella here?
<v Speaker 2>Mariapolis here as well? What family is insous? Beautiful, pale,
<v Speaker 2>lavender flower, fucking fabulous? God? Damn it? Oh, we saw Nolina.
<v Speaker 2>What was it? Britain O Britain, Yeah, Britain and Rose.
<v Speaker 2>It's wild to see you Nolena out here though, because
<v Speaker 2>that that genus is mostly out west. You saw Palmer,
<v Speaker 2>you want to I'm gonna get some photos of that.
<v Speaker 2>Don't you worried, Pale? Don't you worry? Pale? Is this
<v Speaker 2>a DNSA or yeah, that's nose clausa? Huh damn, that's
<v Speaker 2>a big clausa. Whoo, there we go. We got the
<v Speaker 2>nice a turpentine collecting pot, a remnant of one this
<v Speaker 2>terra cotta.
<v Speaker 1>How old is this then, well, it could be from
<v Speaker 1>it could be from the twenties to the sixties, to
<v Speaker 1>even the seventies. I think they still had turpent time
<v Speaker 1>camps out here. So they would have these clay pots.
<v Speaker 1>They would cut what they call a cat face, like
<v Speaker 1>a V shaped like wound into the pines.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they still do that in pine forest in Mexico.
<v Speaker 2>Like I've seen a mission come and now they nail
<v Speaker 2>that to the The fucking sand is really I know
<v Speaker 2>it really, it's I feel like it's sitting in front
<v Speaker 2>of a Stanning bed right now. I feel like Bali
<v Speaker 2>walnuts with the fucking what he's doing, you know, the
<v Speaker 2>mirror on his neck outside of the fucking anyway. So
<v Speaker 2>this is so someone just put these together kind of just.
<v Speaker 1>Like a well I don't know if it was broken
<v Speaker 1>here and someone piled it up or what. But do
<v Speaker 1>you find them all the time in pine flatwood.
<v Speaker 2>Why would they use clay and not glass.
<v Speaker 1>Probably because clay's cheaper in Georgia red clay.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, god, that's wild. But that's a thing though.
<v Speaker 2>So they would collect this part.
<v Speaker 1>They would have camps of basically indentured slit slaves, because
<v Speaker 1>they would people. People would live out in these camps
<v Speaker 1>and there would be like a company store that you
<v Speaker 1>would have to buy from, and you know, oh the
<v Speaker 1>company start up until the sixties really at least.
<v Speaker 2>Oh look it's polygonella grass. Yeah, a nice photo. God,
<v Speaker 2>that is such a wild play. You can barely see
<v Speaker 2>it from fifteen feet away. It's so thin, but it's
<v Speaker 2>like almost four feet tall. The ones we saw at
<v Speaker 2>the other site were like six feet tall. Yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 2>field notes section or part two. This is a different
<v Speaker 2>site I've since moved from when I talked to you last.
<v Speaker 2>This site is really blowing my fucking mind because of
<v Speaker 2>the dense communities of Cladonia Liken. What's worked really in
<v Speaker 2>my railway model? I muth tell you, I look just great,
<v Speaker 2>felt good at it just looks like little Treuth Sometimes
<v Speaker 2>I like to take the light out of you that
<v Speaker 2>it's truth and by I've got an ed scale called
<v Speaker 2>full thuotup of Avery Amtrak route. You get the point.
<v Speaker 2>It's that kind of stuff with the Silaganella aeron Nicola
<v Speaker 2>and it's just this beautiful patina. I could be an
<v Speaker 2>interior designer with these color pellets. You know, that'd be great.
<v Speaker 2>Get banned from a few houses, get on mark the
<v Speaker 2>Stewart and shit, you know, start dressing a little better,
<v Speaker 2>you know, taking a little bit more care of myself
<v Speaker 2>doing a clean shave instead of five o'clock, the five
<v Speaker 2>o'clock double thing, and going into rich houses, you know,
<v Speaker 2>maybe acting gay, doing the metrosexual thing, because that way
<v Speaker 2>the homeowners would trust my taste more. You know, it's
<v Speaker 2>rich people, so they're always gonna be cunts. But you know,
<v Speaker 2>get in there, just start slopping around with these different colors,
<v Speaker 2>because the colors I'm seeing are wonderful. I mean, we've
<v Speaker 2>got four different species of Condonia here, lime green, psych
<v Speaker 2>word green, kind of a darker green. Then we've got
<v Speaker 2>the rusty colors of the Aganella, all backed with the
<v Speaker 2>white sand in the occasional uh burn burned material, piece
<v Speaker 2>of burned scar. And then there's a Punthia Australia here
<v Speaker 2>as well, forming these delicious little colonies with these long spines.
<v Speaker 2>It does feel like being bitten by a snake when
<v Speaker 2>you walk into one of these things. Then there's a
<v Speaker 2>black soil crust here as well, but it's all underlaid
<v Speaker 2>by this white sand and this Serenora rapents. It seems
<v Speaker 2>they did burn this because it's not too dense. And
<v Speaker 2>thank god, the sun went behind the the sun went
<v Speaker 2>behind the clouds here there's a polygonella what is it,
<v Speaker 2>Bracoramia I forget the name, God, damn it. Basaramia another
<v Speaker 2>polygonella species, all kinds of antipogons, and then of course
<v Speaker 2>quirkus in a pina everywhere this little scrub oak the
<v Speaker 2>four or five feet but this habitat, I mean you really,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you don't want to blaze through some shit
<v Speaker 2>like this. You want to take it in because it's
<v Speaker 2>so fucking weird and cool and intoxicating, and especially since
<v Speaker 2>it's graand thank god, there's some human amdity up in
<v Speaker 2>those clouds now Pellapoxia fai everywhere. The only it's mostly open,
<v Speaker 2>like most of the scrub is like four to six
<v Speaker 2>feet tall, except for the Carria floridana and then Pinus clousa.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure it's absolutely hot as balls in July and August.
<v Speaker 2>But you know, again, sixty inches of rain here a year,
<v Speaker 2>which is a lot. We are on the east coast, Memember.
<v Speaker 2>As you go from west to east across North America,
<v Speaker 2>you get higher rainfall. Beautiful Balduena and guest the foyer
<v Speaker 2>right here. Asta Raci a dry Hellenium relative, you know,
<v Speaker 2>But so you've got sixty inches of rain. But then
<v Speaker 2>you've got that long dry season basically from now until June,
<v Speaker 2>I am told. And so of course you're on sand,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, it's like the dry winter thing, but
<v Speaker 2>it's not really winter. It's just shorter days. It's still
<v Speaker 2>hot as balls. Oh there's Seradiola too, which needs fire.
<v Speaker 2>It's a dioecious member of eriic Casey. It's a little
<v Speaker 2>broom like member of Eric Casey. To h six feet tall,
<v Speaker 2>usually only four feet tall. All kinds of cool bees
<v Speaker 2>and shit on there. Thank god, not too many honey bees.
<v Speaker 2>But man, this is just I mean, looking at the ground.
<v Speaker 2>I've never been in a place where looking at the ground,
<v Speaker 2>I mean I have. I've been in plenty of cool
<v Speaker 2>places with fucking wild likings and selaginella, but when you're
<v Speaker 2>in these I just broke some our guape nests. I'm sorry,
<v Speaker 2>giant scary looking spiders, but they're totally harmless. They're very beautiful.
<v Speaker 2>Where the fuck did it go? You guys gotta stop
<v Speaker 2>building your nests across out there you are. I'm sorry, sorry, Bud,
<v Speaker 2>you gotta stop building your nests your webs across these walkways. Man,
<v Speaker 2>Come on, you know, Oh, he wrapped up a little
<v Speaker 2>locust and I just throwkadied it or something and I
<v Speaker 2>just moved it. But just I mean again, just looking
<v Speaker 2>at the ground in a place like this, though, is fascinating,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and you don't want to crush too much
<v Speaker 2>of it. I guess you know, you crush up somebody. Oh,
<v Speaker 2>here's an a wrist of all the grasses are cool.
<v Speaker 2>Everything's cool. Everything a product of this environment, you know,
<v Speaker 2>a product of natural selection and this very bizarre ecosystem.
<v Speaker 2>How the fuck do I get out of here? Now?
<v Speaker 2>It's uh wow, what is that some sort of bizarre
<v Speaker 2>rust or whatever? The fuck? What the shit is it
<v Speaker 2>on this oak? I don't know quirkus geming out of
<v Speaker 2>But anyway, we came out here to see Christopsis Highlands ensus,
<v Speaker 2>named after Highlands County, Florida, a county to which it
<v Speaker 2>is endemic. It's a rare Heterotheca look alike. So it's
<v Speaker 2>got those multi seriate fieries. It's an astor ac. It's
<v Speaker 2>a dyc a damn yellow composite. Damn. Some of these
<v Speaker 2>are Puntia austrina are just so photogenic, big yellow fruit
<v Speaker 2>I'm seeing in the Zymenia. But we come out here
<v Speaker 2>to say christopis Highlands enses and it's got these like
<v Speaker 2>snake scale like leaves that come off you know, I guess,
<v Speaker 2>like three feet tall, and these leaves come off the
<v Speaker 2>stem and basically look like scales that kind of twirl
<v Speaker 2>around the stem like they're parallel to the stem. The
<v Speaker 2>leaves are and they're all tomentos as hell. They're super
<v Speaker 2>they're lenate, they're super wooly. They look like they're covered
<v Speaker 2>in that uh, you know, Halloween webbing, that polyester Halloween webbing. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>now it's the next day. I'm driving swerving this You
<v Speaker 2>got weird power steering issues in this car. You know
<v Speaker 2>that you need some power steering fluid? Why is that?
<v Speaker 2>Like has it always been like that? It's a Nissan.
<v Speaker 2>I've never driven a Nissan before. They're that bad. Air
<v Speaker 2>blows cold. That's all that matters. Anyway. So after after
<v Speaker 2>I last left you, I was suddenly surprised by this
<v Speaker 2>rednick redneck in a tree. This redneck in a tree.
<v Speaker 2>He appeared as if he was a you know, an
<v Speaker 2>apparition of the blessed Virgin twenty feet off the ground
<v Speaker 2>in a fucking Pinus Clossa. You know, he scrubbed. He
<v Speaker 2>would just thought he was upset. I don't know he was.
<v Speaker 2>He was upset because he was deer hunting, fucking most
<v Speaker 2>It was the most surprising thing, you know. I was
<v Speaker 2>almost kind of tickled. I mean I was tickled. I said,
<v Speaker 2>oh shit, I'm sorry. I didn't see. He said, you
<v Speaker 2>guys have been hooting and hollering for the last hour
<v Speaker 2>and a half. It'd been thirty minutes. Princess settled down,
<v Speaker 2>but I you know, I said, oh shit, I'm sorry.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't know. He was up there, hit his little bow.
<v Speaker 2>He looked so cute. He's like a little beef boy,
<v Speaker 2>you know. He he's like, he's like, let me get
<v Speaker 2>a lot of those in Texas. You know, they're driving
<v Speaker 2>these fucking monster trucks. You know, it's like a nine
<v Speaker 2>year old's dream to own a truck that large. And
<v Speaker 2>he was all upset, and I said, you know, at
<v Speaker 2>one point, I was like, listen, buddy, I've said I'm
<v Speaker 2>sorry three times. The fuck do you want from me?
<v Speaker 2>This is a hard way to ask for respect, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it seems like a counter and do it a way
<v Speaker 2>to ask for respect. I'm not asking for respect, you know.
<v Speaker 2>And then I pointed out to him, I said, you know,
<v Speaker 2>with all due respect, you're hunting one hundred feet from
<v Speaker 2>a fucking busy road, you know, Like, why don't you
<v Speaker 2>go more into the brush. I mean, if it's not
<v Speaker 2>my loud, obnoxious voice is gonna be scaring the deer off,
<v Speaker 2>it would probably just be the sounds of the intermittent
<v Speaker 2>huge trucks that are driving by. I don't know. The
<v Speaker 2>guy wasn't too fucking bright, you know. And then he
<v Speaker 2>drove by. He was really upset. He asked me if
<v Speaker 2>I had a recreation permit and all this shit, and
<v Speaker 2>I lied and said I did and it was open
<v Speaker 2>for recreation. Yea. His fucking guy didn't know what he
<v Speaker 2>was talking about. Dumb as a brick, poor bastard. I
<v Speaker 2>feel bad for him. Almost. He was driving some you know,
<v Speaker 2>one of those oversized trucks, you know, and it gets like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, nine gallons to a mile, and he he
<v Speaker 2>had some like contractors shit, you know, lettered on the
<v Speaker 2>side it said land clear, and yeah, poor guy, he's
<v Speaker 2>probably fucking miserable. It's yeah, god, he's probably miserable. He
<v Speaker 2>was really upset though, I was like, man, I don't
<v Speaker 2>know what the fuck you want. You know, you're gonna
<v Speaker 2>like marinate on this. Then he said he's gonna report
<v Speaker 2>me to my FWC. So anyway, but anyway, yeah, it
<v Speaker 2>was but it was surprising there he was. He was
<v Speaker 2>like floating, like you know, our Lady of Lords or
<v Speaker 2>what is Where's Where's where the where everybody see the
<v Speaker 2>mass hallucination of a blessed version he was floating. She'd
<v Speaker 2>do a drawing like that, like some some beef boy
<v Speaker 2>redneck with a neck beard in a tree floating, but
<v Speaker 2>with you know, with with his hands out, maybe wearing
<v Speaker 2>like a gown and a camo, a real tree gown
<v Speaker 2>with like a you know, the fucking halo around him
<v Speaker 2>or something. Except he's mad, you know, he's like he's scowling.
<v Speaker 2>But that was some fucking lovely habitat though. It was
<v Speaker 2>worth it, you know, it was definitely worth it's any way,
<v Speaker 2>we got out of there after they just in case
<v Speaker 2>the Fish and Wildlife Commission did come. I don't want
<v Speaker 2>to have to talk to cops. It would have been fine,
<v Speaker 2>but I just don't want to have to talk to
<v Speaker 2>some other you know, who knows what's really going on
<v Speaker 2>down there? You know, everyone's friends, So maybe the FWC
<v Speaker 2>guy he ends up talking to is you know, they're
<v Speaker 2>just gonna bust our balls whatever. I just don't want
<v Speaker 2>to deal with it. But yeah, this habitat is just
<v Speaker 2>blowing my mind. It's this same habitat. So you're getting
<v Speaker 2>sixty inches of rain year, but then you've got this
<v Speaker 2>dry season and it's not I you know, I refer
<v Speaker 2>to it as a dry season before, but it's not
<v Speaker 2>like a true savannah tropical savannah dry season because you'll
<v Speaker 2>still get intermittent showers.
<v Speaker 1>But but.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's it's still six inches of right a year.
<v Speaker 2>We just still at intermittent showers, but it's generally it's
<v Speaker 2>less rain than like the rainy season, and you're still
<v Speaker 2>on this hot as balls, dry sand. That just be
<v Speaker 2>a reflex back up at you, man, it was that
<v Speaker 2>was kind of intense last night. But I've also been
<v Speaker 2>reflecting on this philiform habit among all the plants like
<v Speaker 2>Polygonella grass lists and Solidago vergatta and Liontris squadriflora. This
<v Speaker 2>very tall, narrow the plant doesn't get wider than five
<v Speaker 2>inches or then point five inches. Excuse me, it doesn't
<v Speaker 2>get wider than point five inches, like half an inch
<v Speaker 2>for most of its ninety percent of its three to
<v Speaker 2>four foot height, or in the case of Polygonella grass
<v Speaker 2>list it's six foot height. And so it's just it's
<v Speaker 2>you know, you're ten feet away from it, and it's
<v Speaker 2>like trying to look at a piece of fishing line
<v Speaker 2>from ten feet away. It's just that thing. It's a
<v Speaker 2>really remarkable trait. And unlike the Texas sand, there's not
<v Speaker 2>many hairy plants here because hair, of course, would not
<v Speaker 2>be an adaptive trade. Is Any pot grower can tell you,
<v Speaker 2>you know who's tried to grow any of those ridiculous
<v Speaker 2>too high THHD cannabis trains outside. They rot when they
<v Speaker 2>get wet. You get glandular hairs or hairs in general.
<v Speaker 2>On a plant and a high rainfall climate, it's going
<v Speaker 2>to be more prone to rod. And you also don't
<v Speaker 2>really need them, I would suppose because of the high
<v Speaker 2>humidity and so, but I think it's more selection against
<v Speaker 2>hair because of that that rot when it does or
<v Speaker 2>that rain when it does rain. AGA's sixty inches of
<v Speaker 2>rain of years a fucking lot, Whereas in I think
<v Speaker 2>the Texas sandsheets like twenty five or something. But this,
<v Speaker 2>this fucking sand anthemism is getting me hot man. And
<v Speaker 2>it's all because I learned about California and serpentine when
<v Speaker 2>I was first getting into botany. It really stressed the
<v Speaker 2>importance of edaphic soils, you know. Or like that guy
<v Speaker 2>Ryan O'Dell in Central California, he's he. I guess they
<v Speaker 2>just published the somebody sent me a paper they published.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know who the fuck it was, Thank you
<v Speaker 2>whoever did that about clay endemics in central California. And
<v Speaker 2>I remember hanging out with Ryan O'Dell. Surprise, he tolerated me.
<v Speaker 2>He was a very kind man, but very deadpan, but
<v Speaker 2>he was you know, I'm sure I was making dildo
<v Speaker 2>jokes and saying all kinds of lud shit when I
<v Speaker 2>was out there, but but he tolerated me. So grateful
<v Speaker 2>to him. And but he was talking about vertic clays,
<v Speaker 2>like clays that rapidly expand and contract according to their
<v Speaker 2>moisture content. And and I guess the paper just came out.
<v Speaker 2>But that's another kind of vendemism. And then you get
<v Speaker 2>those near I own County, California, you get the latter rights,
<v Speaker 2>the weird weird ass irons. God, that's a fucking weird
<v Speaker 2>You go to these habitats with these bizarre soils and
<v Speaker 2>stressful soil situations, and the habitat just looks fucking insane,
<v Speaker 2>This scrub habitat. Jesus. Oh, it's like Jesus in the
<v Speaker 2>McDonald's colors. That's a great billboard. Fuck. If I wasn't
<v Speaker 2>using my phone, i'd take a picture of that. Well
<v Speaker 2>usually if you see mortals when you snap a picture
<v Speaker 2>for me, we should do a billboard documentation of Central Florida.
<v Speaker 2>The fucking culture here is shit, man, God damn it.
<v Speaker 2>Except if you're ever and where the fuck were we?
<v Speaker 2>Where was that town? The time? We just were Avon Park?
<v Speaker 2>Have you ever in Avon Park? Go to Crossroads Mediterranean restaurant.
<v Speaker 2>It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>We've been eating their morning lunch and even.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm gonna fucking marry that guy. He was so
<v Speaker 2>nice too, and he speaks Spanish. He's lived in Venezuela.
<v Speaker 2>He lived in Vinzie for twenty years. But but yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's been a one. It's been a We've been hanging
<v Speaker 2>out with this guy, Brett wonderful man, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>and he reminds me of so many highly intelligent gay
<v Speaker 2>men I know and have met before. You know, the
<v Speaker 2>kinds of people where you meet him and you're like, fuck, man,
<v Speaker 2>I'm not this. They make you feel bad about yourself
<v Speaker 2>because you're not intentionally of course, but just they're so
<v Speaker 2>put together. You know, you're like a fuck you know,
<v Speaker 2>I'm just some Tourette's babbling fucking you know, on a
<v Speaker 2>spectrum nut job. And and you know hear you or
<v Speaker 2>anyway whatever, But what is his main jam He studies gramminoids.
<v Speaker 1>Or what he does feel Yeah, he I mean grammonoids
<v Speaker 1>are his specialty, especially Andrew Pogan now an after him Antikanthelium,
<v Speaker 1>but also Cypherci. Oh, Brett Budok is his name, and
<v Speaker 1>he is just an incredible botanist, one of the best
<v Speaker 1>in this area. And Steve Orzel, of course, who will
<v Speaker 1>meet tonight.
<v Speaker 2>And then we're hanging out at whose house are we
<v Speaker 2>hanging out at?
<v Speaker 1>Bretts? Oh?
<v Speaker 2>No, who's the owner of that house? Edwin Bridges. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>with the nice books in the library, and he got
<v Speaker 2>that Stuart Macpherson book called The Land of the Lost Book. Shit,
<v Speaker 2>what's it called Lost Worlds is the Guianna Hilands, which
<v Speaker 2>you can't get if anyone can get Lost Worlds that
<v Speaker 2>are Guiana Islands by Stuart McPherson, and scan that shit
<v Speaker 2>into a PDF form, not with your phone, but with
<v Speaker 2>an actual scanner. I'll pay you fifty bucks, all right,
<v Speaker 2>and I'll let you slap me around flagelet me with
<v Speaker 2>smoke leaves like they do in a Russian bathhouse. I'll
<v Speaker 2>give you a fucking I'll give you a hundred bucks.
<v Speaker 2>I don't give a fuck. Just get that book in
<v Speaker 2>the PDF form. It's out of print. Some shit bags
<v Speaker 2>selling it for four hundred bucks on eBay, and yeah, man,
<v Speaker 2>it needs to be out there. It's got all these
<v Speaker 2>plants in it, like the whole family. What is it?
<v Speaker 2>Rapid tasy is endemic to the Guiana shield. You know,
<v Speaker 2>these highly weathered, nutrient poor soils. Oh, it makes me
<v Speaker 2>not just thinking about just business. I talk about weird,
<v Speaker 2>weird forms that plants can take. And I think the
<v Speaker 2>reason I've always been so attracted to that, whether it's
<v Speaker 2>the latterite soils or the weird sand on the meslum
<v Speaker 2>or the serpentine, it's just it really shows what evolution
<v Speaker 2>can do, and it shows what's possible, you know, like
<v Speaker 2>the forms and phenotypes that would otherwise never be never
<v Speaker 2>make it through the filter of evolution, become much more
<v Speaker 2>commonplace and prevalent in these highly stressful soil conditions, especially
<v Speaker 2>if they're nutrient poor. You know, same shit. I saw Minasuuriyes, Brazil, right,
<v Speaker 2>which I got If you go to my inter gram stories,
<v Speaker 2>if you're on that social media platform, that rigid social
<v Speaker 2>media clip, if you go to the stories, I've got
<v Speaker 2>a a story highlight it's like six or seven back
<v Speaker 2>at least as of October twenty twenty five, highlighting the
<v Speaker 2>imbricate leaf sclerophyll pattern that I observed that Minashuriyes Brazil
<v Speaker 2>convergent forms evolutionary conversience among numerous unrelated families or bank
<v Speaker 2>case rubyac astac lame eac, you name it. On these
<v Speaker 2>these imbricate leaf patterns, it was fucking wild. It was,
<v Speaker 2>you know, leafless for the bottom eighty percent of this
<v Speaker 2>time in some cases, and then cessile leaves, glabrous or
<v Speaker 2>harry all imbricate. What I mean by imbricate, like roofing
<v Speaker 2>shingles or snake scales like they're I guess another way
<v Speaker 2>to say it would be arochoid. But they're they're broad leaves,
<v Speaker 2>though they're not like they're not like the needle like
<v Speaker 2>leaves you find in arichoid leaves, like members of the
<v Speaker 2>genus Erica. And I guess you see that. I've seen
<v Speaker 2>that in South Africa as well. You know what they
<v Speaker 2>had when I was in Saint Paul. They had this
<v Speaker 2>fucking conservatory that had all this crazy shit in it
<v Speaker 2>like you wouldn't expect it in Saint Paul, you know, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>like a conservatory at Glasshouse. And they had these rooms
<v Speaker 2>that were maybe twenty feet long at most, but one
<v Speaker 2>was devoted to the floor of South Africa and it
<v Speaker 2>had all the carnivores and it had one of those
<v Speaker 2>I forget the genus name, a member of the paper
<v Speaker 2>daisy tribe and Nephalie that oh no, no, no, gauz
<v Speaker 2>Any is Sichorioide or something, but or maybe it's for Nonioida.
<v Speaker 2>It doesn't look like whatever some family said, but no,
<v Speaker 2>the nephaliate the the paper daisies, and it's got those
<v Speaker 2>leaves that look like spruce leaves. Man it's fucking crazy.
<v Speaker 2>But uh yeah, man, I got I have so many
<v Speaker 2>South Africa videos I never finished because I was just
<v Speaker 2>so overwhelmed. I gotta go back there one day. Man.
<v Speaker 2>I can't. I can't. I can't help swerving in this
<v Speaker 2>fucking car. This Why does it do that? The power steerings.
<v Speaker 2>It's like how they drive on the like TV sitcoms
<v Speaker 2>from the nineties, you know, when they would film people.
<v Speaker 1>It's a very erect boxing car.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we're swerving all over the place. What you got
<v Speaker 2>in that roof box up there? Oh yeah, firearms and
<v Speaker 2>dildo's essential for any long distance travel excursion. I would
<v Speaker 2>love a cough to roam me right now, because you know,
<v Speaker 2>I got nine years sober. California is sober incasual psychedelics,
<v Speaker 2>nine years sober, and I would love to. I just
<v Speaker 2>would love to waste the cough's time. That'd be fun, sir.
<v Speaker 2>You've been under the influence. Maybe not even slur my
<v Speaker 2>speech a little bit, just the fuck with him, you know,
<v Speaker 2>or like, uh, get a get a vapor, get a vape,
<v Speaker 2>get a vape pen, like the tobacco vape pen. Just
<v Speaker 2>have it, you know. He opens the door I'm listening
<v Speaker 2>to Gordon Life, but there's vape clouds coming out the
<v Speaker 2>fucking he wouldn't know. It gets the cops excited, support
<v Speaker 2>the first responders, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, So where Lily, where are we going today?
<v Speaker 1>Tiger and Creek Preserve is owned by the Nature Conservancy
<v Speaker 1>and it's been really well managed by with a really
<v Speaker 1>good prescribed fire regime for probably forty years at least,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I don't want to get it wrong, but
<v Speaker 1>for a really long time. So it's some of the
<v Speaker 1>best well managed sand hills, scrubby sand hill and kind
<v Speaker 1>of oak hammick that you can find in central Florida.
<v Speaker 2>Scrubby Dankell, scrubby scrabby sandy Tankels. That's the fire here
<v Speaker 2>is so essential to everything. I mean everywhere I look.
<v Speaker 2>Now you just see what how horrible everything looks when
<v Speaker 2>you take fire away? Was I mean? Yeah, like like
<v Speaker 2>that is that kudzu? What is it?
<v Speaker 1>A lot of vitis? So it's a native muscadine vine,
<v Speaker 1>you know, a native grape vine. But when you've suppressed fire,
<v Speaker 1>it overtakes even the oaks and pines and called.
<v Speaker 2>The shitty woods. It makes it makes for some shitty woods. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>look at that, man, You couldn't you couldn't walk into that.
<v Speaker 1>And then Machinis comes in the Brazilian pepper invasive Brazilian pepper.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, let's talk about somebody invasives where the heteropolgon.
<v Speaker 2>You've been really the heteropog been excited about the heteropolga.
<v Speaker 1>And it's a beautiful grass species. It's this, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>how would you describe it?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. It's got like a like a black
<v Speaker 2>bottom into the akeene and then a very long on.
<v Speaker 2>It is a beautiful grass. But you see it forming
<v Speaker 2>these monocultures. And I take it the reason you've been
<v Speaker 2>so excited about it is because it's a relatively new
<v Speaker 2>invasion you're seeing happen or what.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's so it's and it's nativity is being up
<v Speaker 1>in the air right now. So this state and other
<v Speaker 1>entities are not treating it as an invasive species, and
<v Speaker 1>when it obviously is acting as an invasive species because
<v Speaker 1>it may or may not be native to southwest North America, regardless,
<v Speaker 1>it is certainly invasive here and it is spreading rapidly everywhere.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so wait, but it's not native to Florida. So
<v Speaker 2>it might be invasive to the southwestern United States.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but for some reason, land managers are not quite
<v Speaker 1>treating it as an invasive yet.
<v Speaker 2>But that's still so. Yeah, it is. It's same continent,
<v Speaker 2>but it's far enough away that it's been separated enough.
<v Speaker 2>I don't even think it's fucking native though I've never
<v Speaker 2>taken I know, I'm talking on my ass. I don't
<v Speaker 2>know if it's native to the Southwest or not. But
<v Speaker 2>it was also saying it was native to parts of Africa.
<v Speaker 1>Though yeah, I was said, that doesn't different, it's actually
<v Speaker 1>native to this It's very.
<v Speaker 2>It's highly unlikely that you would have a plant native
<v Speaker 2>to the African continent, and with the disjunct in the
<v Speaker 2>American Southwest, that is extremely rare. It happens, but an
<v Speaker 2>extremely rare occasion. God, the orange grows here. I love
<v Speaker 2>seeing all the dead orange grows. That one we went
<v Speaker 2>by yesterday looked great.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, skeletons, skeletons of citrus trees remaining after the
<v Speaker 1>the greening disease has passed through them. And UF and
<v Speaker 1>other you know entities are trying to come up with
<v Speaker 1>new resistant varieties of citrus that they can't keep coming
<v Speaker 1>up with them fast enough. The the greening also adapts.
<v Speaker 2>But it's I mean when you see you see though,
<v Speaker 2>and you can see that white sand, you know, in
<v Speaker 2>these orange groves, and then that tells you what was
<v Speaker 2>here before. Yeah, it's it's crazy. And then like you
<v Speaker 2>see the white sand, know, like the scrub we've been
<v Speaker 2>walking in, these little remnant crumbs, was once there and
<v Speaker 2>now it's just these shitty orange groves that are dying. Well,
<v Speaker 2>not necessarily you know, citrus, lemons, grape fruits, you know,
<v Speaker 2>but that.
<v Speaker 1>Was the kind of path of destruction in central Florida
<v Speaker 1>along the ridge, all of the best yellow sand scrubs
<v Speaker 1>and white sand scrubs and probably a lot of species
<v Speaker 1>that were already really rare that we didn't even have
<v Speaker 1>the chance to document were destroyed to put in citrus groves.
<v Speaker 1>And then now that the citrus groves are beginning to die,
<v Speaker 1>the citrus companies are selling to developers, and the citrus
<v Speaker 1>grooves are even being further destroyed into track.
<v Speaker 2>It just, you know, and it's not that like you
<v Speaker 2>can't have agriculture, it's just that they didn't leave anything
<v Speaker 2>that they didn't leave. What Brett was saying yesterday that
<v Speaker 2>when the citrus originally came in a lot of these
<v Speaker 2>sand species still occurred in the rows in between the citrus,
<v Speaker 2>but then they would just go on and herbicide all
<v Speaker 2>of them because they didn't want anything to compete, which
<v Speaker 2>is that's shit for brain, that's fucking idiotic. You have
<v Speaker 2>like a natural what permaculture is supposed to be situation there,
<v Speaker 2>you know, edible plants with the natives surrounding it. You
<v Speaker 2>wipe everything out, and then you know you're just gonna
<v Speaker 2>end up with herbicide resistant, invasive bullshit. It's wild. But
<v Speaker 2>a lot of this stuff was rare just because the
<v Speaker 2>habitat was originally rare to begin with. It's just this
<v Speaker 2>narrow spine, right, I mean why a lot of this
<v Speaker 2>stuff was just restricted to the sand in Central Florida.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And citrus is larval hosts for giant swallowtail butterflies,
<v Speaker 1>which are native here because they eat our native root
<v Speaker 1>tasy members, and so there used to be a boom
<v Speaker 1>of these Wow, these giant swallow tailed butterflies with still
<v Speaker 1>a lot of the herbaceous understory around the citrus. But
<v Speaker 1>then once they started, you know, just drenching these groves
<v Speaker 1>and pesticides, all of that went by the wayside, and
<v Speaker 1>now it's just sterile and invasive melanis ripins the natal
<v Speaker 1>grass which is everywhere.
<v Speaker 2>So this is this is what. This is something that
<v Speaker 2>if I was like a lazy twenty five year old
<v Speaker 2>killed no offense to any listeners out there, I would
<v Speaker 2>just call colonization. But it's just shit. It's just completely
<v Speaker 2>disconnected shit for brained arrogance, civilizational arrogance. It's it's fucking
<v Speaker 2>it's a death cult. It's insane, but so depressing. It's
<v Speaker 2>very depressing to see, like when you see these abandoned
<v Speaker 2>citrus fields that are just invaded with you know, melanis repents.
<v Speaker 1>And people don't know why they're so depressed.
<v Speaker 2>But this is why this it is because you live
<v Speaker 2>in a shithole. That's part of the whole presentation I
<v Speaker 2>give too. You live in these bleak, depressing shitholes with
<v Speaker 2>no connection to any of this amazing natural native web
<v Speaker 2>of life that occurred for millions of years and gives
<v Speaker 2>context to the land, and all you know is fucking
<v Speaker 2>video games, another cia op and just being trapped in
<v Speaker 2>a car all day long and then whatever, you know, divisive,
<v Speaker 2>fear mongering, bullshit. You're getting fed on your phone via
<v Speaker 2>the algorithm, And yeah, you want to kill yourself, you
<v Speaker 2>know it might as well, can't. I just can't knock
<v Speaker 2>anybody for choosing a way out if they don't know
<v Speaker 2>anything else. So look at this parking lot. It's it's massive, beautiful.
<v Speaker 2>It's the size of it. It's a parking lot the
<v Speaker 2>size of a golf course. There's what the fuck? Why?
<v Speaker 2>What is that all just zoning? They just they make
<v Speaker 2>them build parking lots that big. There's nothing in there
<v Speaker 2>that wouldn't a sessitate a parking lot that huge. God,
<v Speaker 2>what a fucking dump. And then of course grass is
<v Speaker 2>just the default mode. Turf grass is the default everywhere. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that makes sense in a place where you get sixty
<v Speaker 2>inches of rain a year, tons of runoff. Yeah, the
<v Speaker 2>crpe mortles, they are invasive here. There's enough rain for
<v Speaker 2>them here.
<v Speaker 1>And I do want to say that we're told that,
<v Speaker 1>you know, being depressed and feeling hopeless is some sort
<v Speaker 1>of individual failing, like we're unable to adapt, and that
<v Speaker 1>we're at some you know, this clim macts of progress
<v Speaker 1>and life has never been better for humans. But that
<v Speaker 1>is just a lie. And the reason that you are
<v Speaker 1>depressed and sad and hopeless is not because you have
<v Speaker 1>some sort of moral failing. It's because our culture, that
<v Speaker 1>our culture treats it as a as a personal failing.
<v Speaker 1>If you're depressed, then there's something wrong with you. But
<v Speaker 1>if you're depressed, you're.
<v Speaker 2>Just talking about like savative American culture pas for pussies,
<v Speaker 2>don't you. Don't try to work on yourself, don't try
<v Speaker 2>to understand yourself, because you might be a pussy. You
<v Speaker 2>might be, you might be weak. Better to just front
<v Speaker 2>like the guy. I should have done that. Man, I
<v Speaker 2>wish I had like M D M A therapy darts.
<v Speaker 2>I would have does that redneck in a tree yesterday,
<v Speaker 2>the redneck our lady of lords, you know, our lady
<v Speaker 2>of uh, our lady of land Clearance. With this giant
<v Speaker 2>hot wheels truck. That thing has got to be a
<v Speaker 2>pain in the ass to drive. Man, And I can't
<v Speaker 2>fucking imagine that. I hate I have a truck because
<v Speaker 2>I needed to, you know, get around on whatever to fuck.
<v Speaker 2>But like man, if and if I needed it for
<v Speaker 2>work and I could afford it, I'd get like a
<v Speaker 2>little tiny ass card that got with gasma. I'm a
<v Speaker 2>cheap day go man. I don't want to be spending
<v Speaker 2>you know, fucking one hundred and fifty dollars every five
<v Speaker 2>days that drive around parking lots anyway. God, yeah, look,
<v Speaker 2>why why couldn't all this, this's like forty feet of
<v Speaker 2>just mode turf grass on the edge of a parking lot.
<v Speaker 2>Why couldn't that I'll just be native native scrub. It's crazy.
<v Speaker 2>I can't imagine people that would see the ship that
<v Speaker 2>we've been seeing either and think that it's just wasteland.
<v Speaker 2>It's just scrub, you know, it's just there's nothing there.
<v Speaker 2>It's garbage, you know. Do you see that a lot
<v Speaker 2>in the popular culture. I mean, obviously Florida has or
<v Speaker 2>there are elements of floridy and culture that have no
<v Speaker 2>respect whatsoever for the land, for that kind of landscape
<v Speaker 2>and plant community. But how often it seems there's also
<v Speaker 2>a lot of people here that really want to preserve
<v Speaker 2>it though.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, there's so little scrub left that I think
<v Speaker 1>at this point most people realize, but you know, not always.
<v Speaker 1>I mean you see that in Texas, I'm sure all
<v Speaker 1>the time.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Well, people just don't know. Oh look it's it's
<v Speaker 2>Dave Thomas. Wendy's Dave Thomas. I wonder how Dave Thomas
<v Speaker 2>felt about Florida's scrub communities. Where was Wendy's Where was
<v Speaker 2>the Wendy's dream born? He wasn't a bad guy. I
<v Speaker 2>bet you could convince him to. I do like a
<v Speaker 2>frosty every now and then. It's fucking nasty. Okay, sorry,
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry. They shouldn't be giving the information off. Really,
<v Speaker 2>it's shameful. Come on, let's go fuck Jesus Christ. Anyway,
<v Speaker 2>what is the bleakest section of Florida, Lily?
<v Speaker 1>Probably Miami, I mean culturally, I don't know, it's hard
<v Speaker 1>to probably central central Florida.
<v Speaker 2>Where are the most botox clinics that would be in Miami?
<v Speaker 1>Definuely Miami. H the most plastic surgery, definitely Miami.
<v Speaker 2>If somebody, if somebody gave me, what would you charge
<v Speaker 2>for this? If someone wanted to like inject half your
<v Speaker 2>face with botox? What if I did that? What do
<v Speaker 2>you think I should charge for that? If somebody out
<v Speaker 2>there said they get off on it, and I look
<v Speaker 2>like Matt Gates and I like straighten my hair because
<v Speaker 2>it's a little curly, you know, with like a heat iron.
<v Speaker 2>I'll straighten it and get botox in my face and
<v Speaker 2>my forehead looks like Matt Gates's. What do you think?
<v Speaker 1>What?
<v Speaker 2>It's a good price? Forty for six months? How long
<v Speaker 2>does it last? Six months? I would do it just
<v Speaker 2>for shits and giggles, or I could do it on
<v Speaker 2>half my face so I look like I had a stroke. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>let's talk about the differences between yellow sand and white sand,
<v Speaker 2>because those are that's a term you hear down here
<v Speaker 2>among the ecologists. You get the white sand and the
<v Speaker 2>yellow sand. The white sand is more nutrient poor, and
<v Speaker 2>the yellow sand has more nutrients in it, presumably because
<v Speaker 2>there's more clay particles or more organics. And the theory
<v Speaker 2>is you were saying that it's the the white sand
<v Speaker 2>has been basically leeched more it was underwater, and so
<v Speaker 2>that's why it's so blanched. And then the yellow sand
<v Speaker 2>was never underwater. Is that correct? But you get I
<v Speaker 2>mean they're different in daphic situations, so you get different
<v Speaker 2>you get different plant communities on each.
<v Speaker 1>There's much more nutrients in the yellow sand.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you get a lot of the same plants. But
<v Speaker 2>then there's some plants that will only grow on yellow
<v Speaker 2>sand and presumably only on white Oh god, this nisan. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>Now we just rolled up to the pseudos z Zypis spot,
<v Speaker 2>which is actually according to the paper I read, the
<v Speaker 2>twenty sixteen paper on RAMNAC. They looked at its sequences
<v Speaker 2>h and uh the internal transcribed spacer and the or
<v Speaker 2>is it intergeneric for what the fuck it ts? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it is internal transcribed spacer. I fucking know why I
<v Speaker 2>do it myself. Anyway, they looked at it this this
<v Speaker 2>gene region and uh. And the genus Zizyphus Zzyphus, which
<v Speaker 2>is both Old World and New World or was as
<v Speaker 2>you know, when it was what it used to be
<v Speaker 2>before it got split up. You got species in China,
<v Speaker 2>got species in New World, which is again very rare. Right,
<v Speaker 2>It was like the same thing they did with the
<v Speaker 2>genus coppresses hesperaciprus, where you had uh or what used
<v Speaker 2>to be Capressus. You know, there was compressed in the
<v Speaker 2>Old World compressed in the New World. That's very that's
<v Speaker 2>very rare that those have not that those would be
<v Speaker 2>the same thing because they look so different and it's
<v Speaker 2>an old lineage to begin with, and so they split
<v Speaker 2>it up when they looked at the its because that
<v Speaker 2>did or when they looked at whatever gene region, because
<v Speaker 2>they realize, yeah, these are two different clades. They're different
<v Speaker 2>enough molecularly when you look at the DNA. And so
<v Speaker 2>that was done to Zizyphus Zzyphus, which we get Ziziphus
<v Speaker 2>of two Sofolia in South Texas. He gets Zipus that
<v Speaker 2>vericata in southern Arizona. And so they split it up
<v Speaker 2>and they change it to sarcumphallis for a while the
<v Speaker 2>genus Desiphus, but now it's Kandaliopsis. It's a bit if.
<v Speaker 2>It's a fucking mess. They're still trying to figure it out.
<v Speaker 2>And this is all because many members of Ramnaci do
<v Speaker 2>not differ so much in their flower structure. They just
<v Speaker 2>have tiny white flowers. It's like the same thing with
<v Speaker 2>members of uhuh what what was it? Bursa, some of
<v Speaker 2>the Bursara, you know, like Bursa, the elephantry genus unrelated
<v Speaker 2>to Ramnasi. You know, you gotta look at the you
<v Speaker 2>gotta look at the leaves more than the flowers. It's
<v Speaker 2>one of those those clades where the flowers just don't
<v Speaker 2>tell you that much. So and it's like that for
<v Speaker 2>many members of Ramnasci and so Zipis was Zypus was paraphyletic,
<v Speaker 2>which means, you know, not everything, uh in that clade.
<v Speaker 2>It was a monophyletic, not everything. That claye was as
<v Speaker 2>closely related to every other species in that clade as
<v Speaker 2>it was to some other genera, and so they split
<v Speaker 2>it up. Here you look at the phylogenetic tree. Pseudo's
<v Speaker 2>Zyphus comes out sister to Condalia, the genus Condalia, and
<v Speaker 2>then the trus of Zyphus were on like another branch
<v Speaker 2>of this cladogram. In Sarcumphallus, we're on another branch of
<v Speaker 2>this cladogram. So it was a fucking mess. Anyway, There's
<v Speaker 2>two species in pseudo's' Zyphus, which is what this is now.
<v Speaker 2>This is pseudos Zyphus salada, which is another extremely rare
<v Speaker 2>plant in Florida, and then you get pseudo Esyphus perii
<v Speaker 2>out in the deserts of California. So we're here to
<v Speaker 2>see pseudos Zyphus perii. But I'm distracted looking at this
<v Speaker 2>juniperous solicicola, which looks like a damn Callitris, which is
<v Speaker 2>an Australian genus in the same family in Cooper Sacey
<v Speaker 2>in the redwood family. This is a fucking wild juniper
<v Speaker 2>man Jesus Christ Solicicola. Yeah, it looks so different too much,
<v Speaker 2>much more wispy, and the scales are highly reduced. They
<v Speaker 2>just look like these the foliage scales. It doesn't even
<v Speaker 2>seem to have folios scales. It just looks like like
<v Speaker 2>photosynthetic stems. I gotta get some photos of this. Anyway,
<v Speaker 2>We're gonna go sweat our ashes off and check out
<v Speaker 2>this population. The only one of the only remaining populations
<v Speaker 2>of pseudos as iris, and the largest one too. The cattle.
<v Speaker 2>It's in a cattle pasture, but the cattle eat most
<v Speaker 2>of the other abaceous plants here and woody plants, but
<v Speaker 2>they leave the pseudos as ivs alone because it's so
<v Speaker 2>spiny and uh. And we'll report back, Well, that was
<v Speaker 2>one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. That was
<v Speaker 2>a It was a weird Uh. How would you describe that, lily?
<v Speaker 2>We were we were at a cattle pasture, some very
<v Speaker 2>docilent kind cows, I would say, too covered in flies,
<v Speaker 2>but blood sucking flies. And the one, the way the
<v Speaker 2>one looked at me, is it so gracefully bruled? Was heartwarming.
<v Speaker 2>They got they did get close, but it was a
<v Speaker 2>cattle pasture filled with h How many individuals of the
<v Speaker 2>pseudos' ipis? I would think that there are more than
<v Speaker 2>you think, but they're clonal. You can definitely tell they're
<v Speaker 2>forming that There were.
<v Speaker 1>Many populations that I think you overlooked, like in the
<v Speaker 1>in the oak hammicks and stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, maybe six or seven what there were some in
<v Speaker 2>the Okamis. Yeah, Yeah, I just saw one in the Oakama.
<v Speaker 2>Explain to everybody who may not be from southeast what a.
<v Speaker 1>Hammuck is kind of an area where the oaks have
<v Speaker 1>formed a little dominant island.
<v Speaker 2>Basically dominant shady island.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and usually it denotes it's slightly lower so there's
<v Speaker 1>more moisture for some reason, and therefore they also losing
<v Speaker 1>their leaves. They build up the soil with more organic
<v Speaker 1>matter than the nearby scrubby areas.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but there was there wasn't a whole fucking lot
<v Speaker 2>of those pseudos. A Zyphis whose closest relative is three
<v Speaker 2>thousand miles away in the deserts of California. I've probably
<v Speaker 2>seen pseudos Zypus Perrier just didn't photograph it. And it
<v Speaker 2>was probably when I was spending a lot of time
<v Speaker 2>in the dose between twenty seventeen and twenty nineteen, the
<v Speaker 2>California doesert, which I'm returning. I'll be in this. I'll
<v Speaker 2>be at the Sokal Botanist Symposium. Somebody told me they're
<v Speaker 2>giving me a free ticket, so I want to see.
<v Speaker 2>My friend Sam dragis speaking there. The b the B
<v Speaker 2>guy from the Labbit just got shut down because of Trump,
<v Speaker 2>the USGSB lab. But yeah, I don't know anyway, but yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it was. It was a bizarre plant. I didn't see.
<v Speaker 2>The new growth was fresh and green with photosynthetic stems.
<v Speaker 2>I would say, there, what like obbo eight leaves with
<v Speaker 2>an entire margin, orbiculate leaves with an entire margin. And
<v Speaker 2>that's important to note because in the same habitat habitat
<v Speaker 2>you see Critagus lepida, the weeping hawthorn. Critagus lepid of
<v Speaker 2>the weeping hawthorn, which also has divericit branching, this zig
<v Speaker 2>zag branching, what were you calling it? Gulate guiculate? I
<v Speaker 2>guess they both mean the same thing. But you know,
<v Speaker 2>when you learn about the zig zag branching in New Zealand,
<v Speaker 2>they call it divaricate renders. The first time I really encountered,
<v Speaker 2>you know, widespread evolutionary convergence among unrelated plant families on
<v Speaker 2>the zig zag branching habit and in that case, of course,
<v Speaker 2>in New Zealand, it's thought to be you know, directly
<v Speaker 2>associated with coevolution with extinct flightless moas. But something was
<v Speaker 2>obviously fucking with a lot of these plants evolutionarily speaking,
<v Speaker 2>in the past. And it wasn't just deer, because deer
<v Speaker 2>don't cause that center oxlan tenax, excuse me, cetera, oxland
<v Speaker 2>tenax was doing the same thing. And most of the
<v Speaker 2>times when I've seen cedaruxland tenax, it's just been a
<v Speaker 2>little shrub. But I actually saw some larger, some large,
<v Speaker 2>twelve larger specimens, small trees at the site that we
<v Speaker 2>were just that and they've got that little edible fruit
<v Speaker 2>that looks just like the cinerox lin celestronium that we
<v Speaker 2>get in South Texas. But yeah, I wonder what I
<v Speaker 2>wonder what it was ground sloths, some some extinct mamble.
<v Speaker 2>I guess were there any flightless birds in the southeast
<v Speaker 2>and North America?
<v Speaker 1>I think so.
<v Speaker 2>Large, large flightless birds. Whatever whatever caused it, uh it was,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you can have it. You could still see
<v Speaker 2>evidence of whatever herbivore that was, because there's a number
<v Speaker 2>of unrelated plants that do that same branching. Texas ebony
<v Speaker 2>does the same thing. It's so peculiar, man, it's so weird.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's like the thorns and spines aren't enough. You've
<v Speaker 2>also got to have this divericate, this zigzag branching structure
<v Speaker 2>with these fasticled leaves that almost lacking a petty I
<v Speaker 2>mean Pseudo's desiprous leaves have a pettiole. But uh, you
<v Speaker 2>know coming out of these leaf axles. Oh yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>the leaves the leaves were conduplicate as well folded. But
<v Speaker 2>you see that in a lot of buckthorn family members.
<v Speaker 2>Ram they see so it was like minivan with a
<v Speaker 2>fucked up hood. It's tailgating. Answer was, but we saw
<v Speaker 2>sleepy as humus strata again, a sleepy as humor frustrata.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know why to fuck I called this humor
<v Speaker 2>frustrata when I was out there, but it's humid strata
<v Speaker 2>and a tiny little monarch gag on it really really
<v Speaker 2>cool habitat. But the cows were keeping everything in check.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it's one of the cases where you see
<v Speaker 2>the benefits of grazing, and it's not always beneficial, but
<v Speaker 2>in that case it certainly was. Because if the cows
<v Speaker 2>weren't there, this habitat would just be getting smothered and overgrown,
<v Speaker 2>and that pseudos ziziphus would be uh, just shade it
<v Speaker 2>out entirely, you know, it would just be a why
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it would look like the shitty woods that
<v Speaker 2>you see in a lot of areas that have been
<v Speaker 2>let go that are you know, either former agriculture or
<v Speaker 2>just where fire suppressed. There's been fire suppression has been
<v Speaker 2>going on for so long. Okay, so we know we
<v Speaker 2>had a good couple of days. I haven't recorded the
<v Speaker 2>last two days. We went to Tiger Cree and then
<v Speaker 2>we went to go see diceer Andra Modesta today this
<v Speaker 2>patch of a fire suppressed habitat that's owned by the
<v Speaker 2>fucking water company, I guess outside of Orlando. And now
<v Speaker 2>we're in Orlando and I have to say, I've never
<v Speaker 2>been someplace that so thoroughly sucks the life out of
<v Speaker 2>you and eradicates the will to live. For the first
<v Speaker 2>time in my life, I almost sympathize with mass shooters.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you know, I'm only partially kidding when I
<v Speaker 2>say that, too, Like I just presume. I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 2>a mass shooting is just the net result. It's just
<v Speaker 2>the end result of living in a place like this,
<v Speaker 2>where it's just this spaghetti bowl of fucking miserable drivers,
<v Speaker 2>toll roads, horrible infrastructure that's just built. I mean, the
<v Speaker 2>roads just winding around, like the fucking none of the
<v Speaker 2>intersections makes sense. They just paint lines on the road
<v Speaker 2>to show drivers where to go. You spend your whole
<v Speaker 2>life in traffic. Everything around you is ugly. It's the
<v Speaker 2>most awful place I've ever been. And I was in
<v Speaker 2>fucking Cabrini Green when it was still active, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I like, I saw like a shooting. I
<v Speaker 2>remember like biking around Cabrini Green like twenty five years
<v Speaker 2>ago seeing a shooting. Or maybe it was one of
<v Speaker 2>the homes on David and all the housing projects in Chicago.
<v Speaker 2>I've been the fucked up areas I've been in fucking
<v Speaker 2>fucking depraved areas of you know, Mexico, whatever. This is
<v Speaker 2>the worst place I've ever been in my life. It
<v Speaker 2>is so fucking horrible here. I feel sorry for any
<v Speaker 2>kids you have to grow up here. I can't stop
<v Speaker 2>talking about it. I mean, I I was driving because
<v Speaker 2>Lily was what were you doing? She was just fun
<v Speaker 2>doing emails. I don't know she was answering an email.
<v Speaker 2>So I was driving and I fucking lost it. I
<v Speaker 2>just meettheads, these meathead, fucking dipshit contractors, you know, iq
<v Speaker 2>of a fucking sock. They're they're, you know, all competing
<v Speaker 2>with each other to be first. No one's letting anybody merge,
<v Speaker 2>you know. And then you put guns into the mix too,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, probably a lot of these either drunk
<v Speaker 2>or hungover. And it's just it is, it's fucking garbage.
<v Speaker 2>It is just a guard. You know. The only thing
<v Speaker 2>that gives me any hope with any of this is
<v Speaker 2>that at some point Florida's gonna be underwater, probably in
<v Speaker 2>the next you know, one hundred to two hundred years,
<v Speaker 2>and so that'll be like a cleansing. All this stuff
<v Speaker 2>will go. But I can see why, Like the Florida
<v Speaker 2>Pain Clinic was a thing like those two identical twins,
<v Speaker 2>those meats, speaking of meatheads, these guys were dumb as perks.
<v Speaker 2>They were just like walking refrigerators. You know. They were
<v Speaker 2>selling pain pills or something like that. That's the same.
<v Speaker 2>There would be a market for that here because it hurts.
<v Speaker 2>It's so ugly and terrible here for the human condition.
<v Speaker 2>It just hurts all the time. You know, I can
<v Speaker 2>I betch selling oxyconds. I don't know spiritual pain too.
<v Speaker 2>I'm talking about mozy, not even the physical pain. But
<v Speaker 2>it's the worst place I've ever been. Don't ever come here.
<v Speaker 2>It's fucking It's so fucking amazing that a place like
<v Speaker 2>disney World is here. I mean, that's very pointant. I
<v Speaker 2>think that it speaks, it speaks wonders. This is the
<v Speaker 2>you know, everything that's terrible and wrong about modern America,
<v Speaker 2>and there's good things about America. They're talking. I'm not
<v Speaker 2>saying America is all terrible, and I'm just saying everything
<v Speaker 2>that is terrible about America it's here. And it's like
<v Speaker 2>it's like a beating black heart that like oozes tar
<v Speaker 2>and hatred for human life. That's what Orlando is. It's
<v Speaker 2>the worst place I've ever been. Wait, hold on, wait,
<v Speaker 2>Lily's saying Tampa's bad too, is Tampa Tampa? But Orlando's worse.
<v Speaker 2>Orlando's worse than Tampa probably, But they've merged into each
<v Speaker 2>other at this point because it's you know, the sprawl thing.
<v Speaker 2>It's just it's just the everyone. Everyone's just being farmed too.
<v Speaker 2>It's just everyone. It's just a consumer farm. I can't stop.
<v Speaker 2>I fucking you know, I'm really having. This is orgiastic
<v Speaker 2>hatred I now have for this. I've never experienced something
<v Speaker 2>like this before. I think I hate Orlando more than
<v Speaker 2>I've ever hated anything in my entire life. Yeah, but
<v Speaker 2>I haven't been to Tampa yet, so I shouldn't speak.
<v Speaker 2>But anyway, we just got back the Diceerandra Modesta spot
<v Speaker 2>was fantastic. We saw Scuodelaria are in area as well.
<v Speaker 2>Another member of the min family, laby Aac. And now
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to a fucking airport, but Florida, you know,
<v Speaker 2>aside from where there aren't many people in Florida. It's wonderful,
<v Speaker 2>it's a wonderful, you know, endangered ecosystem These sands, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the former beach front two million years ago. These this
<v Speaker 2>heavily fire dependent habitat. Everything is fire dependent here. I
<v Speaker 2>don't think we've been in one place that didn't burn.
<v Speaker 2>Did we go to any places that weren't adapted the fire?
<v Speaker 1>No, I don't think so. We didn't go into any swamps,
<v Speaker 1>and even a lot of the swamps, like although it
<v Speaker 1>would be very infrequent, would occasionally.
<v Speaker 2>Burn, right, but tax sodium is not like fire adapted.
<v Speaker 2>It'll probably re sprout if it's there.
<v Speaker 1>They're trunks. Actually, they burn quite often on the margins
<v Speaker 1>of those swamps, and they are yeah, there seem to
<v Speaker 1>be very fired out.
<v Speaker 2>Really yeah, wow all cypresses no shit, but again yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I mean it's it's it's really dense. The
<v Speaker 2>amount of Michael Rhizle mushrooms I was just seeing at this.
<v Speaker 2>Diceerandrus Spot were nuts too. There was a number of
<v Speaker 2>members of Bullet Tace and then some of those Amanitas
<v Speaker 2>with the insection what is it? What is it got?
<v Speaker 2>You know, ALN's told me it so many times. Vagiant
<v Speaker 2>vegetators vaginate, you know. It's the ones with the Stria
<v Speaker 2>cab margins that might be fucking that up. They don't
<v Speaker 2>have an annulus. The amanitas that don't have a ring
<v Speaker 2>on the stipe, but then have the stria cab margin.
<v Speaker 2>Those are abundant too, and you know, numerous oak species.
<v Speaker 2>It's just it is such fascinating and unique habitat and
<v Speaker 2>there's nowhere else in the United States like it that
<v Speaker 2>I've seen. So it's this interesting dichotomy it's got. Florida
<v Speaker 2>has both the most terrible places in the world and
<v Speaker 2>some of the most unique habitats as well. You know,
<v Speaker 2>a subtropical it's basically a subtropical climate with these heavily
<v Speaker 2>nutrient these really nutrient poor sands. And then the fire
<v Speaker 2>frequency here was every two to three years in most
<v Speaker 2>of these places. I mean, all this stuff is just
<v Speaker 2>intensely fire dependent. And then of course that spiriform shape
<v Speaker 2>that uh, you know, plants like Lyatrius quadriflora and Salidago
<v Speaker 2>virgatta and a number of others and oh yeah, Polygonella
<v Speaker 2>grassless all converge on you know this, I mean this
<v Speaker 2>the fishing line stem where there they'll get, you know,
<v Speaker 2>between four and six feet tall, but you can't see
<v Speaker 2>him if you're more than five feet away from him
<v Speaker 2>because they're still thin and the leaves are just oppressed
<v Speaker 2>to the stem once you get you know, higher than
<v Speaker 2>ten to eighteen inches above the ground. But uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I do look forward to the day. I mean, I
<v Speaker 2>see why natural disasters happened to Florida all the time.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's punishment for these they got these fucking homes
<v Speaker 2>to look at this, like, look at this, bleak, fucking
<v Speaker 2>those aren't homes. They're just like warehouses for people. It's
<v Speaker 2>like eight units just it's like an apartment building. That's
<v Speaker 2>not an apartment building. They're just one of the town homes. God,
<v Speaker 2>it's fucking miserable there. Jesus, how do people not kill
<v Speaker 2>each other? The people? Is there a lot of road rage?
<v Speaker 2>People shoot each other all the time here. Road rage
<v Speaker 2>is terrible here, right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, you know the whole concept of Florida, Man,
<v Speaker 1>this is where it comes from. Because people are driven insane.
<v Speaker 2>Humans did not evolve to fucking live like this. This
<v Speaker 2>is terrible, This is amazing. This is the most awful
<v Speaker 2>place I've ever I'm gonna stop. I'm just getting redundant here.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry. Uh, there's a lot more I could say
<v Speaker 2>about the habitat here. Maybe I'll try to get into
<v Speaker 2>a Tiger Creek was really wonderful. That's one of the
<v Speaker 2>most beautiful places. It's just it's the people that run it.
<v Speaker 2>It's Nature Conservancy and they are so on top of
<v Speaker 2>burning and invasive species rem too.
<v Speaker 1>Shout out to Nolan and Cheryl managing that property. They're
<v Speaker 1>doing an excellent job. And there's just nowhere else in
<v Speaker 1>central Florida with well managed old growth and a large
<v Speaker 1>parcel of land where you can just walk and see
<v Speaker 1>what Florida used to look like should look like.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's you know, scattered very old long leaf pines
<v Speaker 2>and the largest pinus closs I've ever seen too, an
<v Speaker 2>old growth pinus closset. It was must have been like
<v Speaker 2>one hundred feet tall. And then the understory is just
<v Speaker 2>all these cool andropogons with the icy blue leaves. The
<v Speaker 2>grass diversity here is fucking wonderful. Man, it's incredible. Aria
<v Speaker 2>Agonam Tomy Tewson was there as well, which I'm surprised
<v Speaker 2>nobody's growing on. It's nice that lady let us in
<v Speaker 2>and got everyone here. Is a dick. It's just like
<v Speaker 2>other places, like drivers will let you in not hear man.
<v Speaker 2>They're just like, fuck you, fuck you, I'm gonna get mine.
<v Speaker 2>Then now here we go, we get you gotta pay
<v Speaker 2>to go everywhere too, because it's a fucking toll road everywhere.
<v Speaker 2>That's some corrupt shit. I don't know. I wonder how
<v Speaker 2>they won they wiggled that into that. So it's just
<v Speaker 2>I guess it's just a lot of close ties between
<v Speaker 2>sleazy businessmen and politicians here anyway. But Ariagam toman toosum
<v Speaker 2>is the type specimen for the genus, and god, it's
<v Speaker 2>a fucking wonderful plant. I've seen it before but never flowering,
<v Speaker 2>and it is just a bounty of of pollen and
<v Speaker 2>nectar for pollen eiers. It was there were so many
<v Speaker 2>cools and ship on it and mayflies and everybody was
<v Speaker 2>hanging out on the area agon toman toast and we
<v Speaker 2>saw a shit a ton of golfher tortoises as well
<v Speaker 2>Golpher's probaly femous someone yesterday with his cute little ass.
<v Speaker 2>And then we saw uh nemas stylists where we go
<v Speaker 2>Cold Creek Nema Stylus floridana, which is a member of
<v Speaker 2>the era a Dace and iris that the flowers only
<v Speaker 2>open with two, four and six pm and they're pollinated
<v Speaker 2>by halictid bees, little sweat bees. And I got some
<v Speaker 2>real nice money shuts of one of them dancing around
<v Speaker 2>on the anthers. Do we just go the wrong way? God,
<v Speaker 2>it's such a shit. We're fucking tramp. We can't get
<v Speaker 2>out on this is just pull a U turn. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>this is hell, but uh, Tiger Creek is not. So
<v Speaker 2>if you get a chance to go to the check
<v Speaker 2>out Tiger Creek, check out check out Colt Creek. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>if you have to come to Florida, if you're here,
<v Speaker 2>and that would be I would come here again just
<v Speaker 2>to see the plants. But all this shit, man, you
<v Speaker 2>gotta go through this. You gotta go through Satan's ainus
<v Speaker 2>to get to them. I mean that's what I feel.
<v Speaker 2>I feel like I'm insane. It's anus right now. This
<v Speaker 2>is it. This place, it sucks the life out of you.
<v Speaker 2>It's like a vampire. You know, when you stay out
<v Speaker 2>past you know, past dawn, and the sun starts burning
<v Speaker 2>your skin. That's what this place does to my soul.
<v Speaker 2>It's the same thing I can't get over. I mean
<v Speaker 2>most of America, you know, where it's not older cities
<v Speaker 2>looks like shit like this, but this is just I
<v Speaker 2>don't know if it's just the population density and all
<v Speaker 2>the grift involved it's so evident or what. But anyway,
<v Speaker 2>but this Nema style is Floridana. Let's go back to
<v Speaker 2>that Florid danas that was we saw it. It grows
<v Speaker 2>in the margins these pine woodlands and they were actually
<v Speaker 2>I guess they burned, but there's still quite a bit
<v Speaker 2>of invasives there. But it's not terrible. I mean, this
<v Speaker 2>is this is a pretty rare plant. It's a Florida
<v Speaker 2>endemic and there were quite a few of them coming up,
<v Speaker 2>and they're again they're dependent on ample burning, so that
<v Speaker 2>was great to see. But it's got three yellow anthers
<v Speaker 2>that are more erect, and then at the base of
<v Speaker 2>those anthers it's like a sixth parted style on a
<v Speaker 2>purple flower. It's a fucking dope plant. And then the
<v Speaker 2>leaves are like philiform like you know, they're like threadlike leaves.
<v Speaker 2>And we sell the Bilio glangelosa there as well, and
<v Speaker 2>my astress rested Nosa and Seladago odora, a bunch of
<v Speaker 2>bunch of cool and now we get to pay again.
<v Speaker 2>This is nice. What would they do if you just
<v Speaker 2>take the piece of fucking cardboard over your license plate.
<v Speaker 1>They take a photo of your face.
<v Speaker 2>Really, you just wear a mask. We're one of the
<v Speaker 2>masks at the ice agents that you're wearing.
<v Speaker 1>We also saw Grysillis, which we hadn't seen.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was a nice one. It's it's very grass
<v Speaker 2>style and very spirit of form, but growing in the understory.
<v Speaker 2>And then we, you know, right at the end of
<v Speaker 2>the day, we saw the cutest little baby eastern diamondback
<v Speaker 2>and the guy was so he was so chill. He
<v Speaker 2>had you know, just a almost purely black rattle and
<v Speaker 2>it wouldn't rattle. He was shaking it, but it wouldn't
<v Speaker 2>rattle because he was two young and like a year old.
<v Speaker 2>But he was super mellow. Just he went like three inches,
<v Speaker 2>He slithered like three inches from my foot, had no
<v Speaker 2>interest in me whatsoever, just went into the underbrush. And
<v Speaker 2>that was after we'd been fucking with him for like
<v Speaker 2>six or seven minutes, trying to get him to sit still,
<v Speaker 2>moving him around with sticks gently. We were gentle, but
<v Speaker 2>I was trying to get you know, money shots and uh,
<v Speaker 2>it was hard because the light was just going down.
<v Speaker 2>But he was right there in the middle of these
<v Speaker 2>piney woods, flatwoods, flat woods. That's they call him flat
<v Speaker 2>woods here. They were fucked to me, they're just fucking
<v Speaker 2>piny woods, but it was they were flat woods.
<v Speaker 1>The habitat the community is called a wet flatwood or
<v Speaker 1>music flatwood, and they transitioned between wet and music flatwoods
<v Speaker 1>out there. But it's an overstory of pines, mostly Pinus
<v Speaker 1>eliotti i the slash pine in that area. And then
<v Speaker 1>there's a dense amount of the saw palmetto and the
<v Speaker 1>understory mixed in with all the herbaceous plants.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, so saw palmettos in the understory and that
<v Speaker 2>was that was common everywhere, like saw palmetto whenever. Man,
<v Speaker 2>that thing that is like a keystone species. It's fucking everywhere.
<v Speaker 2>It's like Chaskea in uh parts of the higher elevation
<v Speaker 2>well I wouldn't say higher elevation but mid elevation and
<v Speaker 2>these in like South Chile, you know, just skeay is everywhere.
<v Speaker 2>It's like an understory plant, especially in those Eric Carria forts.
<v Speaker 2>Just SKay the neotropical bamboo genus. But Sarah and Noah.
<v Speaker 2>Rapins is fucking everywhere. Man, it's so common, and they're
<v Speaker 2>all they get all burned and gnarled. They can look
<v Speaker 2>they can look really cool when they rarely get very tall.
<v Speaker 2>Are their play what's the tallest one you've seen and
<v Speaker 2>what causes them to because most places we saw them,
<v Speaker 2>they were just crawling along the ground. They barely get
<v Speaker 2>up at all. You know, they're just going horizontal like
<v Speaker 2>a caterpillar. But then there's every other areas where they
<v Speaker 2>actually get kind of coalescent. Huh.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's uncommon, very uncommon in North Florida for them
<v Speaker 1>to become collacant, but it's more common in Central and
<v Speaker 1>South Florida. And we really don't know why. I've never
<v Speaker 1>seen a definitive answer. There's a lot of hypotheses out there,
<v Speaker 1>but none of them seem to be adequate explanations as
<v Speaker 1>to why they do that in Central and South Florida
<v Speaker 1>but not in North Florida. And they do occasionally. I've
<v Speaker 1>seen one, i think at Three Lakes that got at
<v Speaker 1>least eight feet tall. It was pretty far up there. Wild.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, eight feet that's wild. That's so bizarre.
<v Speaker 1>Where was it at Three Lakes, like w A. I
<v Speaker 1>think it is in Central Florida.
<v Speaker 2>Like yeah, so anyway, but yeah, it's been I mean, God,
<v Speaker 2>there's such a richness here it would suck to lose
<v Speaker 2>all of it. And I'm sure so much has already
<v Speaker 2>been lost because the development here is so extensive, and
<v Speaker 2>there was probably stuff that was destroyed for agriculture before
<v Speaker 2>it ever got a chance to get documented and described.
<v Speaker 2>But regardless, there's still a lot of precious shit worth savings.
<v Speaker 2>So if you live here, appreciate it and learn about it,
<v Speaker 2>and for kinds sakes, get the fuck out of these God,
<v Speaker 2>there's more of those warehouses. They're just like warehouses for
<v Speaker 2>people to live in. It's so fucked God, it's company
<v Speaker 2>company housing. Looks like company barracks. Anyway. Well that's all
<v Speaker 2>I got for now, so yeah, Oh, I'll be uh.
<v Speaker 2>I'm doing a bunch of shows in Texas. If you
<v Speaker 2>want to check the crime Pace website, they should be
<v Speaker 2>up there. A bunch of shows in the first and
<v Speaker 2>second week of November. I'll be doing San Antonio, I
<v Speaker 2>think on the fourteenth. I'm doing Houston on the sixteenth,
<v Speaker 2>and I'll be doing what am I doing Corpus Christina.
<v Speaker 2>I forget you gotta check the fourteenth, fifteen, sixteenth. I
<v Speaker 2>got shows in the November eighth. I'll be in Brownsville,
<v Speaker 2>so yeah, I'll talk to you then hopefully come out
<v Speaker 2>and we can shoot the shit and you can hear
<v Speaker 2>me rant about the extensive social commentary about lawns and
<v Speaker 2>learning about the life around you. Right, that's all I got.
<v Speaker 2>Every guys to day, go pluck yourself by