Rustbelt Tour Recap & Ouachita Orogeny

<v Speaker 1>What's going on? Welcome to another episode of The Crime
<v Speaker 1>Payers of Botany Doesn't Podcast. This is Tony. I'm back
<v Speaker 1>in South Texas in the border lands, after just going
<v Speaker 1>on tour for three weeks. Me and I want on
<v Speaker 1>a little Roust Belt tour. It was on the road
<v Speaker 1>for three goddamn weeks. Went up to h I took
<v Speaker 1>my time getting back down here too, which was nice.
<v Speaker 1>Went through Arkansas, Goddamn Western Arkansas has a lot of
<v Speaker 1>nice stuff, a lot of nice stuff, and I watch
<v Speaker 1>it tall mountains. Wish I had more time to explore there. Vernonia, Lettermanny,
<v Speaker 1>I had no evaculate endemic, a river scoured novaculated endemic.
<v Speaker 1>No evaculate, of course, is just basically biogenic silica. It's
<v Speaker 1>mud composed of the bodies of radiolarians and diatoms, which
<v Speaker 1>are single celled plankton that build their shells out of glass,
<v Speaker 1>out of silica, and then they accumulate at depth in
<v Speaker 1>the ocean, and these thick beds of mud which later
<v Speaker 1>lithify and turned to stone in this case turning into novaculate.
<v Speaker 1>That was a fucking cool habitat to see. So these
<v Speaker 1>this river side novaculate deposits, probably because you know, the
<v Speaker 1>area is so lush. The entire eastern half of the
<v Speaker 1>country is so lushed since it gets more rain. Again,
<v Speaker 1>if you look at a satellite map, the hundredth meridian
<v Speaker 1>is where the content starts to dry out as you
<v Speaker 1>move west. That these it's so lush that these, you know,
<v Speaker 1>river scoured areas are the only places you get to
<v Speaker 1>barren novaculate where plants like Amsonia who brick the eye,
<v Speaker 1>and Vernonia letter mannii. And there's another Sylphium species there
<v Speaker 1>like a I think it's undescribed. My friend Adam is
<v Speaker 1>gonna hopefully work on it and describe it. But they
<v Speaker 1>grow on these, you know, basically out of cracks in
<v Speaker 1>this novaculate rock. This smooth shirt and evaculate kind of
<v Speaker 1>looks like shirt. But that was a fucking cool site. Man.
<v Speaker 1>I was just man, I was rolling in it. I
<v Speaker 1>was just having such a good time coming down living
<v Speaker 1>in the truck, even though I had poison ivy all
<v Speaker 1>over my legs torso and mildly on my balls but
<v Speaker 1>not that bad on my balls. And it went away
<v Speaker 1>pretty quick, I think because I I knew I got it.
<v Speaker 1>I stopped at a hotel and texts Sarcana shout out
<v Speaker 1>to the uh, what is it? What was it? The
<v Speaker 1>Crepit Hotel. It was really not. It was really kind
<v Speaker 1>of rough in there. It was I'll be honest, there
<v Speaker 1>was a working person's hotel. But I felt good about
<v Speaker 1>staying there. It's definitely not the place they're gonna throw
<v Speaker 1>you out when they find out you snuck in two dogs,
<v Speaker 1>not just the one you have the phony service animal
<v Speaker 1>car for. Well, it's not phony, but Louis's actually a
<v Speaker 1>service animal. She is registered service animal, and she's been
<v Speaker 1>trained and behaves amazingly. But I don't really have a
<v Speaker 1>condition that necessitates having a service animal aside from being
<v Speaker 1>fucking nuts. Okay, I'm fucking nuts. That's gonna be if
<v Speaker 1>I ever get shaken down an airport or something for
<v Speaker 1>the service animal thing. And they just they're like, you know,
<v Speaker 1>you don't need that. I'm just gonna break out into
<v Speaker 1>a hysterical rant about how I'm fucking nuts. I'm fucking
<v Speaker 1>nuts anyway. But they shout out to the hotel in
<v Speaker 1>texts arcana because they were really a commonating there. You
<v Speaker 1>could tell it's like the hotel. It was like Windom Garden.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's Windom Garden in text Arcana, but half
<v Speaker 1>the people at the Windom Garden in Textarkana you can tell,
<v Speaker 1>actually live inside there. It was cool in a way. Man,
<v Speaker 1>It was like you know, because they were friendly. It
<v Speaker 1>was they were friendly people living there. But it was
<v Speaker 1>kind of rough. You know, text Arcana is a little rough.
<v Speaker 1>But I went in there. I got the Don Dish
<v Speaker 1>soap slatter that shit all over my legs. Got any
<v Speaker 1>you Rushi? All that was on my legs off and
<v Speaker 1>this is you Rushia? All that quite likely went through
<v Speaker 1>my pants. I was wearing jeans. I was wearing just
<v Speaker 1>some fucking Dicky's jeans, Like I'm kind of loose fitting.
<v Speaker 1>You know. That's the key in the heat is you
<v Speaker 1>want like you wear an excel, you wear a shirt
<v Speaker 1>size bigger than you are, heavy cotton. Make sure it's
<v Speaker 1>bigger than you are so it's not tight, so you
<v Speaker 1>get some airflow. But at the same time it's wicking
<v Speaker 1>up the sweat and it's keeping the sun off of
<v Speaker 1>your skin so you're not getting burned. It's really you know,
<v Speaker 1>those those guys, the uh the guys are over there
<v Speaker 1>and Middle East. You know the sheepherders with the big
<v Speaker 1>white robes and stuff. They they know what they're doing.
<v Speaker 1>I can't believe. I don't the bedoon know who's that.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what the fuck I'm making it. I'm
<v Speaker 1>making an American of myself. My sense of geography is.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I think I have a pretty decent sense
<v Speaker 1>of geography for being a fucking American. I've been on
<v Speaker 1>five continents and I'm always looking at mass but still
<v Speaker 1>I should know about the sheepherders that were at along
<v Speaker 1>s white robes. Anyway, the point is I went in
<v Speaker 1>there and I wiped the fucking you rush you off
<v Speaker 1>myself with this don dish soap in the shower, and
<v Speaker 1>I think that cut the That cut in half the
<v Speaker 1>time that I would have been itching and rashing, you know,
<v Speaker 1>because I've gotten it earlier that day at the lighton
<v Speaker 1>Area Pelosi. Spot Light and Area Pelosa is in Simaru Basi.
<v Speaker 1>The Alantis family, the Castilla family, if you know the
<v Speaker 1>genus Castilla, and it's uh Lightnary. Pelosi is known as
<v Speaker 1>Corkwood and there was a there's Corkwood Conservation Area on
<v Speaker 1>the Missouri Arkansas border Adam Black told me about the spot.
<v Speaker 1>I went in there and fuck, you could see the trees.
<v Speaker 1>It's so cool. They look like mangroves. They're normally growing
<v Speaker 1>in inundated areas in water. But the water I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if the area is in a drawer right now
<v Speaker 1>or what. There was no water, it was just mud,
<v Speaker 1>but they've got those inflated bases, and I wanted to
<v Speaker 1>go see him, and there was just God, there was
<v Speaker 1>Rexia there too, that cool melostone, you know it was
<v Speaker 1>I think it was Rexia virginica. And then I saw
<v Speaker 1>another Rexia species later on. But you had to walk
<v Speaker 1>through all this poison ivy to get there. And I
<v Speaker 1>was like, ah, fuck, man, really all right, fuck it,
<v Speaker 1>I'm just gonna do it. And it's gonna be on
<v Speaker 1>my boots and my pants, but it's not gonna get
<v Speaker 1>on my legs. Well, that shit made it through the Russia, obviously,
<v Speaker 1>sitting in a car, made it through the pants and
<v Speaker 1>started interacting. Started, you know, my skin started absorbing it,
<v Speaker 1>and I started getting that itch. You know, it feels
<v Speaker 1>like an itch like it starts off feeling like someone's
<v Speaker 1>taking a hair and like tickling your skin and then
<v Speaker 1>when you feel that you got a few hours until
<v Speaker 1>your break it out in a full out rash. And
<v Speaker 1>that's how do you rush? He all works, you know,
<v Speaker 1>your immune system starts picking it up. Is a mild
<v Speaker 1>irritation at first. Next thing you know, you're breaking out
<v Speaker 1>in the fucking rash and you can't help but want
<v Speaker 1>to just go stand under hot water in a shower
<v Speaker 1>and just feel the ecstasy of having those itches finally.
<v Speaker 1>Uh scratched. So anyway, that was that was that, but
<v Speaker 1>it went away. It didn't last too long, thank god.
<v Speaker 1>I thought, I gotta I got I get poison ivy
<v Speaker 1>so bad. I keep a dose of presn zone around that.
<v Speaker 1>I got a pharmacy in Mexico just to uh, just
<v Speaker 1>in case, you know, in case it gets really bad.
<v Speaker 1>But I couldn't figure out it was chiggers first or anyway,
<v Speaker 1>this is all shit. You don't have to worry about
<v Speaker 1>in the West and half of the country as much.
<v Speaker 1>You know, siggers. You don't get schiggers out west that bad,
<v Speaker 1>thank god. Uh, you get poison oak, but it's in
<v Speaker 1>the desert is generally not too bad anyway. But yeah, man,
<v Speaker 1>Arkansas was just loaded. And then there was I saw
<v Speaker 1>the genus elephant Topis again which I hadn't seen in
<v Speaker 1>a while, which is it's in the composite family. It's
<v Speaker 1>an Astaeci, it's got purple heads. It's in vernonioid subfamily,
<v Speaker 1>which is a huge family in Brazil. Uh. And it's
<v Speaker 1>the family the subfamily. Rather, it's not family, subfamily, the
<v Speaker 1>subfamily of the iron weeds, which we get of course
<v Speaker 1>in you know, from Texas you get Vernonia Larceni and LENNHEIMERII,
<v Speaker 1>which are both kind of wooly. Larceni is fucking insane.
<v Speaker 1>That's the one you get in like the West Texas Desert,
<v Speaker 1>the beginning of where the Edwards Plateau starts, descending into
<v Speaker 1>the Chiuahua Desert, in places like Sanderson, What a lovely town,
<v Speaker 1>Sanderson Motels and Neon signs. But uh, but you know,
<v Speaker 1>you get the iron weeds, uh in what was it
<v Speaker 1>like Missouricha and uh, Vernonia Missourika and Vernonia fasciculata and
<v Speaker 1>some of the other ones you get up in in
<v Speaker 1>the Midwest, in the Chicago area. But anyway, elephant Topas
<v Speaker 1>is in that same subfamily, and of course Vernonia letter
<v Speaker 1>up Manni had that no vaculated endemic I just mentioned,
<v Speaker 1>But Elephantopis is. It's cool. I didn't realize. I hadn't
<v Speaker 1>seen it in a few years. But it's got it's sincephalus.
<v Speaker 1>It's got a head of heads. So you've got a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of tiny purple flowers aggregated together in a single capitulum,
<v Speaker 1>and then you've got a bunch of those capitula later on,
<v Speaker 1>you know, in the next world down aggregated together and
<v Speaker 1>then subtended by three leafy bracts. So it looks it
<v Speaker 1>ends up looking like you know, from far away, you'd
<v Speaker 1>think it was in ruby ac you think it's like
<v Speaker 1>one of those how Stonia relatives or scenario relatives, or
<v Speaker 1>you'd think it would be like some kind of mint
<v Speaker 1>like you think the inflorescence almost looks like a verticilast,
<v Speaker 1>like a whirl you know, like you see on like
<v Speaker 1>a mint stem or a salvia stem, like some of
<v Speaker 1>the salvias do that too, you know, same thing. It's
<v Speaker 1>a vertiicilast or a bunch of tiny flowers aggregated together
<v Speaker 1>whirling around the stem like that Pynanthemum virginica. Same thing.
<v Speaker 1>So it was cool to see that. I hadn't seen
<v Speaker 1>that in a while. So I ended up I ended
<v Speaker 1>up going to another spart spot in Arkansas on the
<v Speaker 1>way down. Uh what was it? Someone wrote me from it.
<v Speaker 1>They were kind of mad because I talked about how
<v Speaker 1>it needs to burn. I think they took it personally
<v Speaker 1>and I was like, I put up like an Instagram
<v Speaker 1>video where I mentioned, like, god, I just this, you know,
<v Speaker 1>this all needs to burn, like this is they They
<v Speaker 1>had a photograph on the little informational kiosk of what
<v Speaker 1>the spot looks like after a burn, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>it was understory of ferns. It was like a savannah
<v Speaker 1>understory of ferns, some scattered trees. Really nice but you know,
<v Speaker 1>a really nice place to hang out. But then what
<v Speaker 1>it looked like when I was there, it was dense
<v Speaker 1>and I had mentioned in a video like you know,
<v Speaker 1>it needs to burn. Whatever it's hasn't been managed for fire.
<v Speaker 1>They haven't been burning. And I think someone who I
<v Speaker 1>didn't know, someone who manages the site, wrote me it
<v Speaker 1>was like I'm really They were like really sad that
<v Speaker 1>I I was like, I wasn't bad mouthing you guys's work.
<v Speaker 1>I said, it needs to burn, that's all. I don't
<v Speaker 1>I don't know the nuances, who's managing this place or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure it's fucking great. And you know, you guys
<v Speaker 1>are probably have your own you're restricted by funding or
<v Speaker 1>lack of funding whatever. So uh but anyway, this spot
<v Speaker 1>was cool. I went there to see. I went there
<v Speaker 1>to see, uh, Liatrius hesper alagance, which is a type
<v Speaker 1>of blazing star that's got what is it. What's the
<v Speaker 1>common name of shooting star, blazing star? I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>what's the common name of lantris. I don't know. I
<v Speaker 1>was blazing stars meant zelia out west as well, But anyway, uh,
<v Speaker 1>it's a fucking dope species. Looks incredible. It's like this
<v Speaker 1>tall fuck It wasn't flowering yet, but it's this tall
<v Speaker 1>spike of flowers, just really showy ornate flower heads with
<v Speaker 1>really cool looking fieries on the side. You know, it's
<v Speaker 1>a liatrius alone are always fucking cool to see. I
<v Speaker 1>wish we got some on the western half of the country,
<v Speaker 1>as far west as I've seen it as Colorado, And
<v Speaker 1>I think, what is that punk tata out there? And
<v Speaker 1>you get a you get a variety of punk Tatah
<v Speaker 1>Interlingua by by Big Bend in the West Texas Desert.
<v Speaker 1>But that's really kind of it. I think, like the
<v Speaker 1>western plains and then down there in the Big Bend
<v Speaker 1>region is the only spy you get Latrus out west.
<v Speaker 1>It's normally normally an Eastern genus, but god, they're all
<v Speaker 1>fucking great. Look Lyatris bridgesy I is the one of
<v Speaker 1>the coolest ones I've seen, just fucking wild. The fileries
<v Speaker 1>are working as floral attract and it's the fieries are
<v Speaker 1>working as petals because these are generally flower heads or
<v Speaker 1>not petals legules. These are generally flower heads that don't
<v Speaker 1>have legules. I think most Lyatris are discoid. So I
<v Speaker 1>wanted to see liatris hesparella gans because it's just these
<v Speaker 1>dense It looks like the whole inflorescence looks like a
<v Speaker 1>pipe cleaner. You know, it's just these these dense clusters
<v Speaker 1>of flower heads. But it wasn't going off. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>bridgesy I. If you can look up bridgesy I after
<v Speaker 1>Bridges some fucking dead guy named Bridge apparently, or Bridges.
<v Speaker 1>Look that one up. That's I think that's primarily East Texas.
<v Speaker 1>It's the only spot I've seen it. But holy hell,
<v Speaker 1>that thing's incredible. Miller County sand Hills. That was the spot.
<v Speaker 1>Miller County sand Hills and beautiful. There's the sand Hill
<v Speaker 1>Assembly of God Church. In case you get a in
<v Speaker 1>case you get a hankering from some from for some
<v Speaker 1>Jesus while you're down there. Uh, Miller County sand Hills
<v Speaker 1>just south of Texas Arcana by like twenty minutes down
<v Speaker 1>everybody to the Louisiana Texas Arkansas state line. Okay, closer
<v Speaker 1>to Shreveport. Yeah, I kept seeing signs for Shreveports. Guy,
<v Speaker 1>go with the Whalon Jennings, you know, put some Whalen on.
<v Speaker 1>I fancy Whalen's. I'd like some of that classic country.
<v Speaker 1>It's a cool spot though, so it's it, but it's
<v Speaker 1>sand Hills, but it is. It does need to fucking
<v Speaker 1>burn so many places. When any so many places I
<v Speaker 1>go to in the eastern half of the country, I
<v Speaker 1>realize how important fire is. I want to burn everything.
<v Speaker 1>I see the understory. I want to light it on fire.
<v Speaker 1>Early spring, lay fall, I want to burn it. Gets
<v Speaker 1>rid of the ticks, gets rid of the chiggers, gets
<v Speaker 1>rid of a lot of them, it's not going to
<v Speaker 1>get rid of all of them. And also clears out
<v Speaker 1>all that dense understore. You get so much rain in
<v Speaker 1>these places that to me being out being used to
<v Speaker 1>being out west where everything gets so dry in the
<v Speaker 1>summer and everything's at risk of a wildfire. And I'm
<v Speaker 1>generally used to botanizing in deserts and area to areas. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I see all that shit, all that fuel, and I
<v Speaker 1>just realized, Man, it's like I want to I want
<v Speaker 1>to clear it out, you know. I think that's I
<v Speaker 1>think that's just part of our species. Those are the
<v Speaker 1>habitats we prefer. We prefer more open areas, if anything,
<v Speaker 1>for all the bugs and ticks and sugars, especially that
<v Speaker 1>you get when it's just dense, you know. And I
<v Speaker 1>was looking at one of these, one of these. I
<v Speaker 1>was looking at Miller Counter Miller County sand Hills. Actually
<v Speaker 1>I was looking at the forest there and I'm like, fuck,
<v Speaker 1>this needs to burn so bad. I was at the
<v Speaker 1>at the light and area Pelosis Spot Corkwood Conservation Area
<v Speaker 1>in southern Missouri. Man, Missouri's got some weird vibes. Southern
<v Speaker 1>Missouri it does not feel like a friendly spot. Holy shit.
<v Speaker 1>It was like, ah, whole time I was there, I
<v Speaker 1>kept being like, thank God, I'm not black in this area.
<v Speaker 1>Fucking hell. You know, get a little bit too much
<v Speaker 1>melanin in your skin, you get up put on some list.
<v Speaker 1>The fucking copsule ro anyway, but uh, and I did
<v Speaker 1>get rolled. I already got rolled there. And it was
<v Speaker 1>funny too. The cop was I will get to the
<v Speaker 1>point eventually, but the cop it was somewhere in Missouri
<v Speaker 1>and he stopped me, and he goes. He sees the
<v Speaker 1>Texas place and he's like, oh. He's like, where you're
<v Speaker 1>coming from? Like Chicago. He's like, oh, where you're going.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, I'm going back to Texas. He's like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>it's a good place to be leaving from and going to.
<v Speaker 1>It's you know, Lee leaving Chicago head of the Texas.
<v Speaker 1>That's a good It was just, you know, in my mind,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, just really, really, have you ever been to Chicago?
<v Speaker 1>Do you know anything about it? Have you ever spent
<v Speaker 1>time there? It's actually pretty nice, got a lot of
<v Speaker 1>walkable streets, got decent public transportation. The food will kill you,
<v Speaker 1>but it's delicious. Have you ever tried it? Like? What
<v Speaker 1>are you just being indoctrinated? You know, like everybody, everybody's
<v Speaker 1>just being indoctrinated by by social media, by the culture war.
<v Speaker 1>Like God, just settle down, just fucking take it easy.
<v Speaker 1>But he let me off with a warning. But it's
<v Speaker 1>funny though too. When I'm in those situations, like when
<v Speaker 1>the cops said that, I was like, oh, yeah, absolutely,
<v Speaker 1>Like I'm not gonna I want him to think that,
<v Speaker 1>I you know that I'm agreeing with them, like I'm
<v Speaker 1>an infiltrator. I want him to I want to fucking
<v Speaker 1>leave that situation without any heat. I'm trying to you know,
<v Speaker 1>you get the criminal mindset. You want to just you know,
<v Speaker 1>you want to get away. You want to get away
<v Speaker 1>with it, you want to get away. I'm not gonna
<v Speaker 1>fucking argue with the cop, you know and his uh,
<v Speaker 1>his fifty years of indoctrination with Fox News or whatever
<v Speaker 1>the shit. Just like yeah, all right, man, whatever, just yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you're right, Yeah, absolutely, yeah, definitely definitely feels better to
<v Speaker 1>be going back to Texas that I thirty five quarter
<v Speaker 1>between Austin and San Antonio that's just filled with fucking
<v Speaker 1>billboard there's personal injury attorney billboards, car dealer ships, parking lots,
<v Speaker 1>strip malls, you know, fifteen lanes of highway with frontage
<v Speaker 1>roads that also feel like the highway. I can't wait
<v Speaker 1>to get back there exactly. Yeah, you read my mind.
<v Speaker 1>The officer, thank you. Feel so it's safer here. Those
<v Speaker 1>good damn those libs. Uh but uh anyway, so but
<v Speaker 1>the this sand Hill Prairie conservation what is it Miller
<v Speaker 1>County Sandhills was just uh, was just dense. And the
<v Speaker 1>same thing with that spot the Corkwood Conservation area where
<v Speaker 1>I saw light in area Pelosa, Like you look at
<v Speaker 1>the forest there because there was a there's like a
<v Speaker 1>little turnaround at that Corkwood Conservation area where you pull in.
<v Speaker 1>It's like a little cul de sac. You see the
<v Speaker 1>road and they got a gate across this dirt road
<v Speaker 1>that just goes into the conservation area and the fucking
<v Speaker 1>road is just overgrown to shit. Like there's just saw beautiful.
<v Speaker 1>Uh what was it? Aurelia spinosa, like a giant one
<v Speaker 1>in flower. The flower had the inflorescence is like six
<v Speaker 1>feet tall, three feet I you know, hundreds of tiny
<v Speaker 1>white flowers. Looks like a giant nolina flowering or something
<v Speaker 1>beautiful fucking plant. But uh, you know, I looked at
<v Speaker 1>the forest there and I was like, I don't want
<v Speaker 1>to go on that. There's fucking poison ivy, it's all overgrown.
<v Speaker 1>There's fucking probably ticks and sigers everywhere. Like, I just
<v Speaker 1>want to burn it, you know, I want to wait
<v Speaker 1>till fall, till the nice season. You get a windy
<v Speaker 1>you get a day when it's not very windy, it's
<v Speaker 1>a little damp, and you set it all on fire.
<v Speaker 1>And that's good. And that's what you know Native people
<v Speaker 1>were probably doing for thousands of years. I mean, we
<v Speaker 1>know they were doing over thousands of years. And before
<v Speaker 1>Native people were here, you know, fifteen twenty, thirty thousand
<v Speaker 1>years ago, it was fire. It was lightning doing it.
<v Speaker 1>And that's that's the way it is. I mean, the
<v Speaker 1>fire suppression out east blows my mind. It's so crazy. Man.
<v Speaker 1>You need fire in these every one of these fucking habitats.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that's that's a way of cleansing out all
<v Speaker 1>the dead material. You know, it's not gonna it can't
<v Speaker 1>break down fast enough. You've got to burn. Uh. But man,
<v Speaker 1>sand Prairie was the magic words sand hills. And there's
<v Speaker 1>sand all over these areas because it's all been river deposited.
<v Speaker 1>There's so many river systems there that and they've been
<v Speaker 1>meandering back and forth so much like how did the
<v Speaker 1>sand at that sand hill? Normally you can figure out
<v Speaker 1>what river system dumped it to by looking at a map.
<v Speaker 1>You know it's because I mean, sand either gets to
<v Speaker 1>these places because it weather, it's out of sandstone, or
<v Speaker 1>it's blown in. Like if the base rock is sandstone,
<v Speaker 1>which I don't think it was here, it's all limestone,
<v Speaker 1>but double check, I might be wrong. I didn't. I
<v Speaker 1>didn't look. But in most of the Midwest it's it's
<v Speaker 1>the base rock, the parent rock. The country material is limestone.
<v Speaker 1>The country rock is limestone, or it's either it's so
<v Speaker 1>it's either whether that of sandstone, wind blown eolian or
<v Speaker 1>or river deposited. It's the only way that the sand
<v Speaker 1>gets to these places. So the spot I went to
<v Speaker 1>in Cape Girardo, which I pronounced Cape Girardo. The fuck
<v Speaker 1>is with everyone in Missouri mispronouncing their own cities names.
<v Speaker 1>That's not how that's how you pronounced it New Madrid,
<v Speaker 1>they pronounced it Madrid. That's not how you say. It's
<v Speaker 1>not how you say Madrid. It's not Madrid. You know,
<v Speaker 1>it's like New Yorker's in Houston. Houston, but uh, anyway,
<v Speaker 1>It'll always be Houston to me. But yeah, that that
<v Speaker 1>San Prairie south of Cape Girardo, that was such a
<v Speaker 1>fucking cool spot because I was I was sitting there
<v Speaker 1>looking at a map and trying to figure out why
<v Speaker 1>the fuck there's what looks like a mesa just south
<v Speaker 1>of Cape Girardo, Missouri, and then realized, oh wow, this this,
<v Speaker 1>this shit had been cut, basically cut, and that that's
<v Speaker 1>an old river bed had been cut by the river.
<v Speaker 1>You know, how are many millions of years ago? Holy shit?
<v Speaker 1>And today the river is like ten miles east of
<v Speaker 1>that location. It's so cool to think about it. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you look at all these river systems in the central
<v Speaker 1>US and it's you know, it's fucking so cool to
<v Speaker 1>think about, you know, a fluvial geo morphology. Almostly these
<v Speaker 1>nice But yeah, how did the sand get there at
<v Speaker 1>that Miller County sand Hills spot? I don't know, but
<v Speaker 1>I want to go back. I want to go back
<v Speaker 1>for more because in those sandy sites. That's where you
<v Speaker 1>end up finding all the cool, all the cool drought
<v Speaker 1>power plants, all the more dry adapted plants. You know,
<v Speaker 1>these sandals act like a little biogeographical island, a micro
<v Speaker 1>site surrounded by the more music and denser forest, you know,
<v Speaker 1>because it takes a lot to grow on sand, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Like that's the spot near Cape Girardo, which I think
<v Speaker 1>what was that called sand Hill Sand Prairie Conservation Area. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Sand Prairie Conservation Area. That was a fucking great site
<v Speaker 1>to be That was, Man, it was so cool, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and and go to go look it up, look it
<v Speaker 1>up on on Google Maps, and then put it into
<v Speaker 1>terrain mode and look up. Look at the you could
<v Speaker 1>see I mean, there's like you could see where the
<v Speaker 1>river cut through. Like look at Cape Girardo today. The
<v Speaker 1>river goes south of Cape Girardo and then flows east
<v Speaker 1>and then cuts a little hole in this massive rock
<v Speaker 1>that runs generally southwest to northeast south of Cape Girardo.
<v Speaker 1>Not massive rock. It's like hilly. It's like hilly areas.
<v Speaker 1>It's hills. Basically, I'm guessing the base rock is limestone. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>I had to double check this I'm using the rocked
<v Speaker 1>app roc KD. You should download this and look at
<v Speaker 1>It's fucking great. It's such a useful app. Man really
<v Speaker 1>gives you cut some context of what you're standing on. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So the rock there, I'm looking at it, it's TAM's group.
<v Speaker 1>It's roughly four hundred and twenty three to three hundred
<v Speaker 1>and ninety three million years ago. Stratigraphic names are bailey limestone,
<v Speaker 1>flat gap limestone, grassy knob, hirt, backbone limestone, et cetera.
<v Speaker 1>And so that's that's part of the rock. And then
<v Speaker 1>what is this stuff over here? Saint Peter's sandstone Everton Formation. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>so it might be it is old sandstone. So there
<v Speaker 1>is sandstone in south of Cape Girardo, so maybe some
<v Speaker 1>of that sand has been weathered out of there. But actually, no,
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't, because I remember looking at the sand itself
<v Speaker 1>on that sand Prairie conservation area south of Cape Girardo, Missouri,
<v Speaker 1>and seeing that it's a lot of it isn't even sand.
<v Speaker 1>It's like large grained pebbles. It looks like river deposited pebbles,
<v Speaker 1>the same stuff you'd see on a Mississippi River beach.
<v Speaker 1>But uh, I'll tell you what, though, I want to
<v Speaker 1>spend a lot more time in that area. It looks
<v Speaker 1>like there's tons of cool shit. The culture there's kind
<v Speaker 1>of bleak. You know, got some mean stairs. I got
<v Speaker 1>a mean old Caucasian ladies stare or three. You know.
<v Speaker 1>If someone drives by and his yeah, they look at
<v Speaker 1>you that like that, I just shit myself pouting face
<v Speaker 1>like you wave to them and they're just nah. They
<v Speaker 1>don't say anything like all right, Well, that's nice to
<v Speaker 1>see you too. Maybe I'll take you out to Denny's. Huh.
<v Speaker 1>I don't even think do they have a Denny's in Capere.
<v Speaker 1>Who's ever crashed the Dennis in Cape Girardo? Who's ever
<v Speaker 1>closed the Dennis in Cape Girardo? Right, spent twenty four
<v Speaker 1>hours in there. It was a lot easier to do
<v Speaker 1>when you could smoke. I guess, huh oh wow. Look
<v Speaker 1>at rocked Look at west the Cape Girardo. These pink
<v Speaker 1>scattered formations that looks really fucking cool. What is that?
<v Speaker 1>Most of it's been eroded, but there's you can still
<v Speaker 1>see the top layer of this pink formation. Saint Francois
<v Speaker 1>Mountains Volcanic Supergroup Age Miso Proterozoic sixteen hundred million years
<v Speaker 1>one point six billion years to one billion years. Stratigraphic
<v Speaker 1>name tom Sack group, Butler Hill group. What is tom
<v Speaker 1>thaum suck? Description chiefly alkali rhyolitic ash flow tufts, lava
<v Speaker 1>flows and god damn, that's cool. But keep in mind
<v Speaker 1>all this stuff, because it's in the Midwest, is beneath
<v Speaker 1>a lot of vegetation, so it's not gonna be like
<v Speaker 1>in the desert. That's what's so nice about deserts. You
<v Speaker 1>go to the deserts, you could just see the fucking
<v Speaker 1>naked rocks. You know, the rocks are already naked for it.
<v Speaker 1>There's no pesky plants to get in the wake. It's
<v Speaker 1>a lot easier to get context if you're in If
<v Speaker 1>you're looking at geology in the Midwestern East coast, you
<v Speaker 1>got to go to a road cut, a railroad cut,
<v Speaker 1>or a river. That's what cuts through this stuff. But
<v Speaker 1>definitely check out San Prairie Conservation area south of Cape Girardo,
<v Speaker 1>and certainly check out the Crisp Museum. Go visit my
<v Speaker 1>friends in a Crisp museum. What was her name, Helen Ellen?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. She was a really nice lady. She
<v Speaker 1>was really chill about bringing the dogs inside. You know,
<v Speaker 1>because Jack's fifteen, he's old. He's an old man. I
<v Speaker 1>can't leave him in a car. He's got heart issues.
<v Speaker 1>And plus they don't like to be alone. And anyways,
<v Speaker 1>it's Chris Museum is really cool. They got a cool
<v Speaker 1>natural history section. Kohokia Mounds is around that area. All
<v Speaker 1>these Mississippian cultures. You know, that's another thing I wish
<v Speaker 1>I knew more about. God damn these cultures that were
<v Speaker 1>building fucking pyramids a thousand years ago, fifteen hundred years ago.
<v Speaker 1>When did they go out? I think in like the
<v Speaker 1>twelve hundreds. Why did they go out? I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>like why did their civilizations collapse? You know what else
<v Speaker 1>has a good, good exhibit on some of those early
<v Speaker 1>early Native American cultures was Field Museum. I guess there
<v Speaker 1>were there were really complex cultures analogous to like, you know,
<v Speaker 1>Mayan An Aztec cultures in Ohio, in fucking Ohio. You know,
<v Speaker 1>you drive through Ohio now and it's just land of
<v Speaker 1>mean honkies. Actually that was a cool thing to when
<v Speaker 1>we were going through central Ohio. Me and l I
<v Speaker 1>got i get. Ohio scares me sometimes, you know, it does.
<v Speaker 1>I'll just be honest, it does. I've had bad experiences
<v Speaker 1>in Ohio. I've I got stuck there once after getting
<v Speaker 1>off a freight train that I took from Little Ferry,
<v Speaker 1>New Jersey, it took a turn in Deshler, Ohio and
<v Speaker 1>started heading south. Was that the name? I should look
<v Speaker 1>this up because that was a That was a fucking
<v Speaker 1>wild experience. People were still cool, but also they were
<v Speaker 1>cool with me. But also I didn't have neck tattoos yet.
<v Speaker 1>And it was before all like the heavy culture war
<v Speaker 1>stuff started popping up in America and like Tea Party
<v Speaker 1>US versus them, the Libs are trying to fucking indoctrinate
<v Speaker 1>our kids, like all that shit. Like this is like
<v Speaker 1>two thousand and five, you know, I think, like all
<v Speaker 1>the team remember all that tea party shit started like
<v Speaker 1>two thousand and eight, and that's when things really the
<v Speaker 1>culture war really ramped up, all this dumb shit. And
<v Speaker 1>then now it's just both sides are just fixated on
<v Speaker 1>culture war. You know, they tend to think they're right.
<v Speaker 1>Is obviously a little more insane, but I'm definitely not
<v Speaker 1>a centrist. But uh, you know, the fucking I've definitely
<v Speaker 1>seen a lot of fucking crazy, uh, coming from all
<v Speaker 1>all around, you know, coming at you from all angles. Yeah. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it was Deshler, Ohio. I got trapped in Deshler, Ohio overnight.
<v Speaker 1>That was a fun experience, though it ended up being spooky.
<v Speaker 1>It was definitely and you know one of those moments
<v Speaker 1>where you're like, we just don't fucking talk about religion
<v Speaker 1>or politics. If I don't talk about religion or politics
<v Speaker 1>with these guys, we can we could chill. But I went.
<v Speaker 1>They had like a little rail fan park, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like these like older, generally Caucasian men who are really
<v Speaker 1>into trains, but like photographing them, not like riding them
<v Speaker 1>or or you know, using them for free transfer or
<v Speaker 1>anything like that. And so I had had the and
<v Speaker 1>I had my bike with me too. So and my
<v Speaker 1>bike had got in a flat. It was all fucked up. No,
<v Speaker 1>I think I fucked up the actual I don't know
<v Speaker 1>either way. I had to get off this train because
<v Speaker 1>it was going south not west. I was trying to
<v Speaker 1>go back to Chicago. I got off hung out in
<v Speaker 1>Deshler overnight, and I had my bike with me, so
<v Speaker 1>they didn't think I was hitchhiking. I told them I
<v Speaker 1>was just riding my bike, and so that obviously if
<v Speaker 1>I told them I was hitchhiking, they would have thought
<v Speaker 1>I was, you know, a little more sketchy. Maybe, I
<v Speaker 1>don't fucking know. Definitely, don't tell him you riding the train.
<v Speaker 1>But I hung out overnight and they had this little
<v Speaker 1>rail fan park in Deshler where you could listen. You
<v Speaker 1>could listen to the scanner, you know, and hear like
<v Speaker 1>what the conductor of a train is saying to the dispatcher.
<v Speaker 1>And it was I think it was CSX was the
<v Speaker 1>railroad company. But I ended up hanging out. They had
<v Speaker 1>a little fire there that man, some of these dudes
<v Speaker 1>were just like you could tell they weren't loaded like
<v Speaker 1>they were just like working class dudes. One of them
<v Speaker 1>was one of them was sleeping in his car with
<v Speaker 1>his dog. You know. He was a really nice guy.
<v Speaker 1>But one of them, you know, I told him that
<v Speaker 1>I was riding my bike through I got a flat
<v Speaker 1>or had a mechanical issue. So I was kind of
<v Speaker 1>stuck there, and so I just hung out and didn't
<v Speaker 1>volunteer too much information that would make them be wary
<v Speaker 1>of me. But I just ended up hanging out with
<v Speaker 1>them that night and we got along. It was chill,
<v Speaker 1>and they one of them gave me a blanket. They
<v Speaker 1>had these little lawnchairs stood up. I slept in this
<v Speaker 1>this lawn chair around a fire. And then this one
<v Speaker 1>guy was cool too. I remember he said it under
<v Speaker 1>his breath, but he's like, man, if you're trying to
<v Speaker 1>get to Chicago, is an or an Ohio accent whatever
<v Speaker 1>that is, you know in like the cornfields, so a
<v Speaker 1>little bit, you know, maybe a little bit of a
<v Speaker 1>southern accent. There's something little bit of rural America, you know, uh,
<v Speaker 1>the real America. It's God diam right. This guy was like,
<v Speaker 1>there's a there's a there's a local that comes up
<v Speaker 1>from the south whatever the big terminal was south that
<v Speaker 1>takes this turn. Because that's the whole reason that Railfan
<v Speaker 1>Park was there, was because it was like a diamond.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you can go southwest or east, I think
<v Speaker 1>even go you go north too. It was a diamond.
<v Speaker 1>So it was a big crossing of trains, a lot
<v Speaker 1>of train traffic through there. This guy's like, there's a
<v Speaker 1>train that comes up from the south. At about six am.
<v Speaker 1>You could probably catch that and go, what's just cha?
<v Speaker 1>Kinda like he kind of said it under his breath,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and I was like, boom, that's it. That's
<v Speaker 1>what I wanted. That's exactly what I'm trying to do, Sir.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't say it, of course, but my heart skipped
<v Speaker 1>a beat when he said that. I was like, fuck, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I can get out of here, because there's you know,
<v Speaker 1>you can't hitchhike in Ohio, especially in a in a
<v Speaker 1>dominant Anglo area. It's the way. And I'm not being
<v Speaker 1>racist against white people. I'm just saying, you know, in
<v Speaker 1>a dominant Anglo area, you're not gonna have luck getting
<v Speaker 1>the fuck out of Ohio. You know, it's gonna be it. Well,
<v Speaker 1>it depends too, I've had fucking you know, in other states,
<v Speaker 1>I've had luck. It's it's a class thing. Obviously. I
<v Speaker 1>feel like working class people are little bit more down
<v Speaker 1>to help you out. But definitely in Ohio there is
<v Speaker 1>an ara of like paranoia and suspicion. Maybe it's a
<v Speaker 1>little bit a little bit of that heavy religious shit,
<v Speaker 1>the flavor of the region, like that certain kind of
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what the fuck it is. I can't
<v Speaker 1>figure out I'm trying to say this without getting myself
<v Speaker 1>in hot water with anybody, but there's definitely a fuck
<v Speaker 1>you're gonna have trouble hitch I can in fucking northern Ohio.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, so I was like, fuck, yeah, okay, that's it.
<v Speaker 1>So we just I ended up passing out. This other
<v Speaker 1>dude passed out in his car. The other dudes that
<v Speaker 1>were hanging out there left and he passed out in
<v Speaker 1>his car with his dog, and I ended up hearing
<v Speaker 1>that train coming at six in the morning. It was
<v Speaker 1>foggy as hell, and I went and I hopped on it,
<v Speaker 1>and I fucking wrote it threw Gary, Indiana into the
<v Speaker 1>South side of Chicago and was so fucking happy to
<v Speaker 1>not be in deshriller Ohio anymore. That said, when Al
<v Speaker 1>and I were going through Ohio, which is the whole
<v Speaker 1>reason I started talking about this fucking five minutes ago.
<v Speaker 1>You listen for the disjointed rants sometimes some of you do.
<v Speaker 1>I know you do. When I was going through When
<v Speaker 1>we were driving through Ohio, Central Ohio, was expecting it
<v Speaker 1>to be much the same flavor, which is kind of
<v Speaker 1>scary when I'm in certain like certain areas of Missouri
<v Speaker 1>or Ohio, and it's a dominant Caucasian vibe. I get
<v Speaker 1>a little scared because there's certainly a paranoid, suspicious and
<v Speaker 1>very turned up, very angry tone there. You know, the
<v Speaker 1>culture where those people, many of them, have been manipulated
<v Speaker 1>by the right wing media to be very very angry
<v Speaker 1>about shit that either doesn't affect them or that is
<v Speaker 1>not a threat to them in the first place. And
<v Speaker 1>so it's fucking scary, you know. Plus you get the
<v Speaker 1>whole weaker, you know, opioid epidemic thing. I'm really pigeonholing here.
<v Speaker 1>I'm really getting myself in trouble. But anyway, but I
<v Speaker 1>was I was excited to see that, like central Ohio
<v Speaker 1>was mostly working class black, and I felt safer, I
<v Speaker 1>felt more chill, I felt a more chill tone. So yeah, man,
<v Speaker 1>Like we went through Columbus, we went through fuck man,
<v Speaker 1>I forget where we were going through. We were we did.
<v Speaker 1>I did a video on a very heinous bathroom gas
<v Speaker 1>station bathroom we encountered. We had to, you know, it
<v Speaker 1>was so filthy we had to make a three minute video.
<v Speaker 1>I mean it was like that pungent, burning rotten egg
<v Speaker 1>smell coming out of the floor drain, and that was
<v Speaker 1>either in Ohio or or eastern Indiana, but either way,
<v Speaker 1>I remember driving through there and I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>this is not what I expected. Like, this is not
<v Speaker 1>you know, this is not that it doesn't feel so
<v Speaker 1>scarily red. It doesn't feel so frighteningly red, you know.
<v Speaker 1>But uh yeah, but fucking fucking uh. Would have loved
<v Speaker 1>to spend time in some more areas there. There's so
<v Speaker 1>many places I went through. I wanted to come through
<v Speaker 1>Indiana on the way down going back to Texas. There's
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of cool shit there. Penstem In demii, really
<v Speaker 1>cool penstemen. It's an endemic. It's like one of the
<v Speaker 1>Indiana's only endemic plants, Penstemen demii, which flowers in May.
<v Speaker 1>I was too late for it anyway, But there's you know,
<v Speaker 1>and there's all these cool glades you know, which again
<v Speaker 1>is just a dry micro site surrounded by more music.
<v Speaker 1>Woodland saw a really cool one in Joplin, Missouri. Speaking
<v Speaker 1>of scary places, you know where people just seem turned up.
<v Speaker 1>That's like, that's gonna be a spot where someone's gonna
<v Speaker 1>roll cold by your ass. You know, someone's gonna like, uh,
<v Speaker 1>some fucking angry pink dude in an oversized truck is
<v Speaker 1>gonna scream at you when so the last time that happened,
<v Speaker 1>that happened to me not too long ago, I'd have
<v Speaker 1>a you know, it's kind of funny. You just used
<v Speaker 1>having a fine time. Have you listened to a podcast?
<v Speaker 1>And you're not going fast enough for somebody who's riding
<v Speaker 1>your ass and a fucking guy just screams at you,
<v Speaker 1>and he's like pink. He's got a big dipping and
<v Speaker 1>a fucking bunch of Monster Energy drinks. He's all you know,
<v Speaker 1>he's all rolled up on Monster Energy drinks and god
<v Speaker 1>knows what else and just fucking rolls coal screams at you.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe he calls you something, you know, but he's like
<v Speaker 1>also pink too, Like he's kind of sunburnt and fucking
<v Speaker 1>you know, you know, like that pink color. Anyway, Uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I've got like the friends of Northern European
<v Speaker 1>descent who turn kind of pink. You know, they got
<v Speaker 1>to put a lot of sunscreen on. But by Joplin, Missouri,
<v Speaker 1>where was that What was the name of that spot?
<v Speaker 1>I gotta look this one up too. It was a
<v Speaker 1>chert g LID. I did a video on it. Lyatris
<v Speaker 1>Ersuda is there. Yeah, that was at Shoal Creek in Joplin.
<v Speaker 1>That's a fucking cool spot. And I got a little
<v Speaker 1>visitor center. Uh you get at that spot, they got
<v Speaker 1>a little visitor center. It's not at the spot where
<v Speaker 1>the actual glade is. The lady in there was super
<v Speaker 1>fucking nice. You know. I think anyone who's into nature
<v Speaker 1>at least in those areas is super fucking chill and
<v Speaker 1>just stoked to have people around. But yeah, Shoal Creek
<v Speaker 1>Visitors Center, shout out today. I'm over there at Shoal Creek.
<v Speaker 1>They got a nice little educational area for the kids.
<v Speaker 1>And then the glade, which is on the west side
<v Speaker 1>of what's actual Shoal Creek there is fucking credible to
<v Speaker 1>It's a shirt glade, so more of that biogenic silica,
<v Speaker 1>and there's a punthia there. There's some cool solegendella there.
<v Speaker 1>There's that liatris heerseudo, which is endemic to that region
<v Speaker 1>like western Missouri on down into northern Louisiana. Does it
<v Speaker 1>go up? And I would all I would assume probably
<v Speaker 1>that was a really cool one to see. It's a
<v Speaker 1>Liatris another Blazing Star or what is it? Shooting Star?
<v Speaker 1>Let me look this up, like getting I'm turning into
<v Speaker 1>a geriatric Italian already, like it is, I'm like fucking
<v Speaker 1>acting twenty years older than I am. Yeah, yeah, blazing Star.
<v Speaker 1>I don't use common names anyways, you shouldn't use don't
<v Speaker 1>use common names. They're fucking you know, we've been through
<v Speaker 1>this before. It's been five years. I've been doing this now.
<v Speaker 1>You know common You can learn a common name. You
<v Speaker 1>can just use the genus name instead. Latris, how many
<v Speaker 1>letters you got there? Seven blazing Stars? What twelve? Thirteen?
<v Speaker 1>Come on, Latris. You learn a genus, you learn other
<v Speaker 1>species in that genus just by knowing that genus, and
<v Speaker 1>you know, so there you go. Anyway, Uh, the taxonomy
<v Speaker 1>is implied, the evolutionary relatedness is implied. But yeah, addresses
<v Speaker 1>diatres arseudo was really cool. Looks like a big Thistlet's
<v Speaker 1>got a big swollen flower head with these recurved fieries
<v Speaker 1>that look kind of kind of spiky and folded, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like convolute. But yeah, anyway, another cool plant that was
<v Speaker 1>at that Shoal Creek area, That shirt glade was and
<v Speaker 1>I just have a blast looking at the rocks. Man,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, what the fuck you got that conchoidal fracture
<v Speaker 1>like you get with a lot of hirt, with a
<v Speaker 1>lot of silica, silica baced rocks, you know, nice to
<v Speaker 1>conchoidal fracture. Get to look at the texture of these
<v Speaker 1>things to figure out what it is, you know, texture, feel,
<v Speaker 1>how it fractures, et cetera. These Uh it's my little
<v Speaker 1>geology primer for rock id. But there was Femoranthus calisinus there,
<v Speaker 1>which was you know, the with I don't know the commonname,
<v Speaker 1>flame flower, whatever the fuck it is. It's it's it's
<v Speaker 1>in the bitterroot family monte ace so it's succulent. It's
<v Speaker 1>got a little succulent finger like leaves, and then this
<v Speaker 1>pink flower with many stamens. But Femoranthus is a cool
<v Speaker 1>genus for me because you know, when I was learning
<v Speaker 1>botany in California, I don't think you get any out there. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there's none. There's no Femoranthus in California, Nevada so far
<v Speaker 1>as I know. Uh, they're in Mexico. There's twenty species
<v Speaker 1>listed on ninastros. They're in Mexico. You get a lot
<v Speaker 1>out east, primarily in glades. That would be a good
<v Speaker 1>indicator species to see where the good glades are, Like,
<v Speaker 1>go to a naturalists, go to explore type in Femoranthus
<v Speaker 1>p H E M and uh, because I fucking love glades.
<v Speaker 1>Like I wanted to go to Nashville too on the
<v Speaker 1>way down, but I was like, I just don't have
<v Speaker 1>it a fucking time. I don't want to go and
<v Speaker 1>only spend two days in in you know, around the
<v Speaker 1>Tennessee Glades. I want to like, do I want to
<v Speaker 1>go there when I have a week? But anyway, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so you know you could that's a good indicator species
<v Speaker 1>for a rocky area, for a rocky site, you know,
<v Speaker 1>through Texas through I guess there's some in New Mexico.
<v Speaker 1>Looks like eastern Colorado, Uh, northern Arizona, southern Utah. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>what a fucking great. Well what is this one in Illinois? Oh?
<v Speaker 1>What is this? Is this a site in central northern
<v Speaker 1>Illinois near Dixon that's got a lot of Femorantus. What's
<v Speaker 1>going on there? Femoranthus rugo spermis So that looks nice.
<v Speaker 1>I'm looking at some of these habitat shots where is it?
<v Speaker 1>Where is this Franklin Creek State Natural Area in northern
<v Speaker 1>Illinois near Beautiful Dixon? Have you ever been kicked out
<v Speaker 1>of it? Denny's in Dixon, ILLINOI what river is that?
<v Speaker 1>God the fucking there is so much cool ship in
<v Speaker 1>the Midwest. Granted you got to have a car to
<v Speaker 1>get to most of these places. And uh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>there's been a somewhat socially conserved conservative vibe in many
<v Speaker 1>of these areas, but which means that maybe they're not
<v Speaker 1>appred I'm fucking maybe there's less of an appreciation than
<v Speaker 1>you might otherwise have for some of these quote natural areas.
<v Speaker 1>I just assume that, you know, when you see, you know,
<v Speaker 1>a big Christian school located in a town next to
<v Speaker 1>a Nashville area, you're gonna assume maybe there's less there's
<v Speaker 1>less appreciation for the biodiversity. I don't know. It's a
<v Speaker 1>difference of worldviews, class of civilizations. I gotta stop saying
<v Speaker 1>that shit. I'm gonna get you know, I'm getting myself.
<v Speaker 1>This is everybody podcast, now, right? Is that what this is?
<v Speaker 1>I gotta stop. Okay, anyway, Stone Barn, Savannah, Nachusa grasslands.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, I've heard of this spot. Damn, there's some
<v Speaker 1>good ship there. And looking at a terrain map especially,
<v Speaker 1>you should always have your map on the terrain layer,
<v Speaker 1>never on the flat layer. If you're if you're quote
<v Speaker 1>map sturbating, you're looking at places on a map to
<v Speaker 1>you might want to go look for plants. Have it
<v Speaker 1>on terrain. You gotta see that topography. And you're getting
<v Speaker 1>some topography here, which is cool. God damn, and download
<v Speaker 1>that rock that too, so but yeah, Joplin, uh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Femoranthus rugo spermis near Dixon, Illinois. That's that's definitely on
<v Speaker 1>my map. Now I gotta go to. But this Chert
<v Speaker 1>Glade and Joplin was fucking gray. And there's some actual
<v Speaker 1>cool cliffs down by the river, you know, like steep, decent,
<v Speaker 1>like someone was climbing there. There's some cool terrain. The
<v Speaker 1>Opuncha there I think was just Saspatosa which may have
<v Speaker 1>been Humifusa. Maybe they they split it up, but it's
<v Speaker 1>a prickly pair. And then there was oh, there was ruilla,
<v Speaker 1>which is just I think it was just Ruellia humorless.
<v Speaker 1>But it was a white flower ecotype and the flowers
<v Speaker 1>were just getting ready to open. We were there later
<v Speaker 1>in the day the flowers were just getting ready to open.
<v Speaker 1>So to me, that implies moth pollination along with that tube.
<v Speaker 1>That tube flower God. I got back in the man Freyda,
<v Speaker 1>I got back to my house. I got Manfreida lounge
<v Speaker 1>of flora, a gave relative. It's like a soft leaved
<v Speaker 1>relative of a gave. Someone was actually trying to lump
<v Speaker 1>it into a gave at one point, which is fucking stupid.
<v Speaker 1>They ended up it was nested within a gave and
<v Speaker 1>the proper course of action was taken instead of lumping
<v Speaker 1>Manfreda into a gave. Because it's so different in so
<v Speaker 1>many ways, different flowers, different habit It's not monocarpic. It's
<v Speaker 1>got a root, perennial root and herbaceous leaves. So the
<v Speaker 1>leaves are you know, are temporal or the leaves are ephemeral,
<v Speaker 1>and excuse me, the leaves are ephemeral and the root
<v Speaker 1>is permanent, and just shouldn't it would never in a
<v Speaker 1>million years. It shouldn't be, you know, lumped with the gave.
<v Speaker 1>They're closely related. It's good to know. But so what
<v Speaker 1>they did it was it was nested within so it
<v Speaker 1>had some agaves on above it on the phylogeny, and
<v Speaker 1>a lot of agaves below it. And so what they
<v Speaker 1>did is they just looked at the agaves that were
<v Speaker 1>above it, the species that were classified as a gave,
<v Speaker 1>looked at those, and then created new genera for those
<v Speaker 1>because they were weird already, like a Gave bractiosa became
<v Speaker 1>Paleoa gave bracdiosa. They were weird already. They didn't they
<v Speaker 1>didn't they were unique enough to be to warrant separation
<v Speaker 1>from the rest of the genus Agave akino, Agave striata,
<v Speaker 1>et cetera. But anyway, I came back to Texas and
<v Speaker 1>the man freight to launch of floor was going off,
<v Speaker 1>sending up an inflorescence about two feet tall. White flowers,
<v Speaker 1>white tubular elongated flowers that bloom, you know, start to
<v Speaker 1>open around six pm. The flowers smell like vanilla and perfume,
<v Speaker 1>like so many moth pollinated flowers do so many unrelated
<v Speaker 1>moth pollinated flowers, whether it's they're in Aposta a seed
<v Speaker 1>oleander family, the milkweed family, or whether they're in the
<v Speaker 1>cactus family, or whether they're in uh, you know, the
<v Speaker 1>agave family. Whatever. All have the same scent or like onathra.
<v Speaker 1>A lot of evening primroses are obviously moth pollinated. They've
<v Speaker 1>got that same perfume, alcohol like scent. Except with this
<v Speaker 1>man freate a lounge of Flora, which is a Star
<v Speaker 1>County species. It's a South Texas species. I don't think.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think you get it too far north. I
<v Speaker 1>think it's mostly like Southern Texas. Great fucking plant, though,
<v Speaker 1>really cool. You know, you'll you'll find it growing with
<v Speaker 1>horse cripplers and astrophyte and mysterious et cetera. This was
<v Speaker 1>it was going off at six pm and smelled incredible
<v Speaker 1>and I have two of them, and I just germinated
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of seed, and so I came back and
<v Speaker 1>I was just, you know, it's so cool to be
<v Speaker 1>able to study plants just because they're in your yard.
<v Speaker 1>You know, if I wanted to study manfreate a lounge
<v Speaker 1>of Flora, normally I'd have to drive out to the
<v Speaker 1>field where they grow the few sites I know where
<v Speaker 1>they occur in South Texas and go hang out there,
<v Speaker 1>you know, from when they open till late at night,
<v Speaker 1>you know, to see what's visiting them here. I could
<v Speaker 1>just do it with my front yard. You know, I
<v Speaker 1>go outside, I photograph, I'm opening, and then I come
<v Speaker 1>back in, you know, have a little cup of tea
<v Speaker 1>or something, fuck around, get some work done, go back
<v Speaker 1>out at midnight and see what's pollinating them. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they smell incredible, man. And I saw like, yeah, this
<v Speaker 1>four inch wide moth hitting the other moth pollinated flowers.
<v Speaker 1>I got manda Villa lenugenosa, which is an apostanacy. It's
<v Speaker 1>another plant you encounter here in the Peote gardens a
<v Speaker 1>little bit further west of where I am. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>was trying. I mean I heard I heard on a
<v Speaker 1>grapevine that my house is hot with the code enforcement
<v Speaker 1>for the city I live in, which is just fucking
<v Speaker 1>just like really, really, you guys already tried this a
<v Speaker 1>year ago. You were already bested with me for having
<v Speaker 1>a quote, unkempt yard, and then I got it. I
<v Speaker 1>ended up dealing with it just by being polite, being
<v Speaker 1>polite and being kind, but extremely obnoxious and over informative
<v Speaker 1>to them and just hassling them every day. You know, hey,
<v Speaker 1>come by, check this out. These are native plants. This
<v Speaker 1>is what I do for a living. I'm a botanist,
<v Speaker 1>blah blah. You know, we actually just filmed the show
<v Speaker 1>called Kill Your Lawn. Lawns are you know, bad and
<v Speaker 1>numerous ways. They're bad for the water supply, they're bad
<v Speaker 1>for the soil. They make the area around your house
<v Speaker 1>hotter because they're like a heat island. They're only a
<v Speaker 1>little bit better than an asphalt parking lot. It heats
<v Speaker 1>up the ground, you know, versus the transpirational cooling effect
<v Speaker 1>that you get from having a four foot tall thicket
<v Speaker 1>of native plants. You know that you manage and you prune,
<v Speaker 1>and you clip and you cut a path through whatever.
<v Speaker 1>You make it look tidy and nice and with this
<v Speaker 1>shit whatever that means. But it's still a lot of
<v Speaker 1>plant material with you know, those stomato, those little gas
<v Speaker 1>pours on the under sides of leaves that take in
<v Speaker 1>CO two and let out oxygen and water vapor. And
<v Speaker 1>as they let out that water vapor, it's got a
<v Speaker 1>cooling effect because it's water going from a liquid to
<v Speaker 1>a gas state, just like a swamp. Corp. I just
<v Speaker 1>did that, and they eventually backed off and said, all right,
<v Speaker 1>fuck it. This guy's you know, I think what happened
<v Speaker 1>is they just realized I was going to be too
<v Speaker 1>much of a pan ass and let it go. But
<v Speaker 1>why the dude? You know this guy at city hall
<v Speaker 1>is even talking about it in the first place. You know,
<v Speaker 1>it's like it's the man, it'stead of your business. Doesn't matter.
<v Speaker 1>Don't worry about it. Like you you think everybody should
<v Speaker 1>have a lawn, because that's all you know. Your breadth
<v Speaker 1>of experience in the world is infinitesimally small. You haven't
<v Speaker 1>been around, you haven't seen other things. You don't know
<v Speaker 1>anything different. Why do you care? Go find something to do.
<v Speaker 1>Go find some stuff to staple. What do you do?
<v Speaker 1>What do you do at opposite city goll? Go staple
<v Speaker 1>some papers together. Just just get some papers off a desk,
<v Speaker 1>start stapling them. Go have a zoom meeting about something
<v Speaker 1>that doesn't matter. You know that, you know none of
<v Speaker 1>your constituents are aware of. Go go take a bribe
<v Speaker 1>from a developer. What did you go? Find something to do?
<v Speaker 1>There's something out there. Go occupy your time, you know, Ah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>yeah Jesus, but yeah, Havardi appealins was going up too. God,
<v Speaker 1>my yard is lit up at night. It's so cool.
<v Speaker 1>Like by lit up figuratively speaking here, I mean lit
<v Speaker 1>up with cool moth pollinated plants like the Havardia. A
<v Speaker 1>lot of moth pollinated plants won't even end up emitting
<v Speaker 1>scent until you know, seven eight pm anyway, like right
<v Speaker 1>before dusk. And that's what havardiappalins does, which is a
<v Speaker 1>in the Mimosa subfamily, the miska subfamily of the legume family.
<v Speaker 1>For basi, Havardia is a how many other species in
<v Speaker 1>the genus havardi I should look that up, But it's
<v Speaker 1>one of the best trees species. The plant here doesn't
<v Speaker 1>get huge, doesn't overtake, pops out at like twenty feet
<v Speaker 1>just like Guahio, like Senegalia berlandi, riet like ebony ebenopsis
<v Speaker 1>of bano, like misky. Some of the miskit here can
<v Speaker 1>get upwards the thirty or forty feet tall beautiful fucking
<v Speaker 1>trees nel Tuma glandulosa formerly in the genus Prosopis. But
<v Speaker 1>it's all mimozoids down here in the south tech borderlands. Man,
<v Speaker 1>you get some others. You got Citaroxalon celestrinum, you got
<v Speaker 1>some cool members of rutasi, Amorus helieta, et cetera. But uh,
<v Speaker 1>but and then in the sandsheet you got the you
<v Speaker 1>got Corcus virginiana. But it's an ecotype, the sandsheet ecotype.
<v Speaker 1>It's been through, however, many dozens of thousands, if not millions,
<v Speaker 1>of years of natural selection on the hot, dry, fast, training,
<v Speaker 1>relatively nutrient poor sandsheet. So that population has been you know,
<v Speaker 1>bread a little bit. It's been bred by the environment
<v Speaker 1>the same way that humans will breed crop plants from
<v Speaker 1>their wild ancestors. But obviously the environment is breeding it
<v Speaker 1>for a you know, adaptation to that unique suite of characteristics,
<v Speaker 1>and also pollinators and insect pass et cetera. Anyway, I'm
<v Speaker 1>going on a fucking rant here. We were talking about
<v Speaker 1>glades in western Missouri. The day before I hit that
<v Speaker 1>glade in western Missouri, I was on the side of
<v Speaker 1>the road and beautiful Ardmore, Oklahoma, checking out a rock
<v Speaker 1>out cropping, Beautiful ard More, Beautiful ard Moore, Oklahoma, checking
<v Speaker 1>out a rockout cropping with pensament Kobea and Diosporos virginiana
<v Speaker 1>per simmon. And I think there was a menopappus there.
<v Speaker 1>That's another kind of one, you know more, just like
<v Speaker 1>that suite of North Texas plants. Ringium leven Worth the
<v Speaker 1>eye was there too, which is a fucking stunner, but
<v Speaker 1>that was not blooming yet. You didn't get those big
<v Speaker 1>purple bracts. It's an erringium that gets, you know, upwards,
<v Speaker 1>like three four feet tall. You see it in North
<v Speaker 1>Texas a lot. It's generally going off in September. It's spiny,
<v Speaker 1>it's got really stiff, corriacious foliage, but it's like a
<v Speaker 1>deep purple and pink. It's a really fucking cool plant.
<v Speaker 1>I'm surprised I've never seen that in any native plant guard.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, why is no one using ringe worth the eye.
<v Speaker 1>It's a fucking great species. There was no Putthi a
<v Speaker 1>gill Vessens at this this rocky outcropping in Oklahoma too.
<v Speaker 1>I'm stopping at all these places. The Wachita Mountains look
<v Speaker 1>so fucking cool, you know. Look at that on a
<v Speaker 1>terrain map. It looks like someone pushed again. It's like
<v Speaker 1>at that Sierra Madre oriental thing where it looks like
<v Speaker 1>someone pushed the throw rug up against the door jam
<v Speaker 1>on a hardwood floor. Like that crumpling, you know that
<v Speaker 1>like accordion style crumpling. But in this case, when that
<v Speaker 1>orogeny happened, when those mountains were pushed up, you could
<v Speaker 1>tell the impact came from the south, because all the
<v Speaker 1>mountain ranges are generally bending. They're like a mildly bent
<v Speaker 1>arch that goes from from west to east, all right,
<v Speaker 1>And that's of course how all the rivers flow in
<v Speaker 1>between them. Because the rivers are flowing in between, they're
<v Speaker 1>flowing in the valleys in the troughs of these uplifted
<v Speaker 1>and bent layers of sedimentary rock of marine generally limestone.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's mostly four hundred years old, four hundred
<v Speaker 1>million years old. Yeah, So the collision, and this is
<v Speaker 1>when the super continent Pangaea was being formed. The collision
<v Speaker 1>that formed the uplift that bent those rocks that you know,
<v Speaker 1>pushed that that that throw rug up against the door
<v Speaker 1>jam on a hardwood floor of the lithosphere. Uh. The
<v Speaker 1>continent that did it was or the super the the
<v Speaker 1>plate that did it. A tectonic plate hit it and
<v Speaker 1>collided with it, coming from the south, forming the super
<v Speaker 1>continent of Pangaea. And then about three hundred million years ago,
<v Speaker 1>and this was these were again, this is all calcareous mud,
<v Speaker 1>this whole mountain range. The Wagtas were mostly calcareous mud
<v Speaker 1>formed from the bodies of single celled calcareous plankton, calcium
<v Speaker 1>carbonate plankton, plankton that cocoa lithophores foraminifhra that build their
<v Speaker 1>little look up a cocoa liphoor like an electron electron
<v Speaker 1>scanning microscope of of a coco lithophore c O C
<v Speaker 1>C O L I T H O p h E
<v Speaker 1>r E. They look fucking cool. They look really cool.
<v Speaker 1>They look like these little like a like an aggregation
<v Speaker 1>of a bunch of cheerios coming together or donuts coming
<v Speaker 1>together to form a globe, a sphere. And they got
<v Speaker 1>little ridges on them and stuff. That'd be a nice tattoo.
<v Speaker 1>Somebody out there, go get a cocoa lithophoor tattoo, a
<v Speaker 1>scanning electron microscope of a cocoa lithophor. So they formed
<v Speaker 1>these these, you know, this mud at the bottom of
<v Speaker 1>this ancient ocean. You can still see shit like this
<v Speaker 1>in the ocean in the ocean today in areas you know.
<v Speaker 1>But remember, you go too deep, you hit the uh,
<v Speaker 1>what is it? The calcium? What is it? Calcium compensation depth,
<v Speaker 1>the calcium carbonate compensation depth below below that depth, which
<v Speaker 1>varies depending on what ocean. You know, it's it's variable
<v Speaker 1>depending on what ocean you're in. It's between thirty five
<v Speaker 1>hundred and forty five hundred meters in the Indian Pacific oceans,
<v Speaker 1>but it varies based on you know, basically, how how
<v Speaker 1>the rate of calcium carbonate material forming and sinking holds
<v Speaker 1>up with the rate that the material is dissolving. So below,
<v Speaker 1>But the important thing to know is that below the
<v Speaker 1>calcium carbonate compensation depth, no calcareous mud is accumulating, so
<v Speaker 1>you don't get limestone. So that's why you get. Instead,
<v Speaker 1>you get silica. You get the chirt and the radularian shirt,
<v Speaker 1>whatever it's. It's a more silicious, generally speaking, silicious composition,
<v Speaker 1>silica rich composition of the mud below the CCD the
<v Speaker 1>calcium carbonate, the calcium carbonate compensation depth. And why does
<v Speaker 1>this matter because this is what forms the rocks that
<v Speaker 1>we end up looking for plants on. All right, That's
<v Speaker 1>why you end up getting silica based rock in some
<v Speaker 1>areas that's not volcanic like marine silica rocks versus limestone.
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of fucking limestone though, and that's why
<v Speaker 1>most of the most of the rock that you get,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it was mostly calcareous MUDs that formed the
<v Speaker 1>Western Interior Seaway. You know, that was around one hundred
<v Speaker 1>million years ago, which is pretty young, still younger than
<v Speaker 1>the rocks in the Watchita Mountains. And you know, the
<v Speaker 1>limestone that composes most of Texas uh is there because
<v Speaker 1>it was a shallow ocean, so it didn't there wasn't
<v Speaker 1>deep you know, it wasn't even deep enough in a
<v Speaker 1>lot of those areas, UH for the limestone basically to
<v Speaker 1>be filtered out and unable to dissolve or or more
<v Speaker 1>likely to dissolve excuse me, versus being deposited, because beyond
<v Speaker 1>it in the deep oceans, that's where you get a
<v Speaker 1>lot of the biogenic silica that forms the church. If
<v Speaker 1>it's a shallow ocean, you're just gonna mostly get limestone. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>that said, so you could tell that these the watch
<v Speaker 1>Ittail Mountain were pushed up and they've mostly been worn
<v Speaker 1>down because they're so old. I mean, this is an
<v Speaker 1>uplift that happened three hundred million years ago versus you know,
<v Speaker 1>like thirty five million years ago for the Sierra Nevada.
<v Speaker 1>Let me look at that up. Actually, yeah, Serra Nevada
<v Speaker 1>is still debatable. But I think what I had in
<v Speaker 1>my mind was like thirty five million years. It's between
<v Speaker 1>twenty million and fifty million years for Sierra Nevada. So
<v Speaker 1>I think thirty five million sounds like a good and
<v Speaker 1>relatively young versus the Rockies, which are thought to have
<v Speaker 1>been uplifted a lot earlier, like in the Late Cretaceous,
<v Speaker 1>seventy five million years ago, all right, So being they
<v Speaker 1>were being uplifted when the dinosaurs were still around, you know,
<v Speaker 1>because the dinosaur extinction happened sixty six million years ago,
<v Speaker 1>it's a good it's a good chronological landmark. The Wachitas
<v Speaker 1>are a lot older, so they've had, you know, two
<v Speaker 1>hundred and fifty million extra years to get ground down
<v Speaker 1>and worn by the elements, whether it eroded, et cetera.
<v Speaker 1>But still, what a fucking great man, what a great
<v Speaker 1>mountain range. So much good shit there too. I bet
<v Speaker 1>there's I bet there's how many endemics in the watch
<v Speaker 1>Itta Mountains? Yeah, how many how many how many endemic
<v Speaker 1>plant species in my favorite fold belt of Oklahoma, because
<v Speaker 1>that's what it is. It's a fold belts, a fold
<v Speaker 1>thrust belt, I think is the same thing. It's again,
<v Speaker 1>it's similar. Look at when you see those folds and
<v Speaker 1>that crumpling, that that that throw rug on the hardwood
<v Speaker 1>floor effect. You're looking at mostly marine sediments having you know,
<v Speaker 1>and compaction, convergent tectonic plate action. Same thing you see
<v Speaker 1>in the Sierra Moderate Oriental near Monterrey, Mexico. But it
<v Speaker 1>says here and it's just from the fuck website is
<v Speaker 1>says I'll tell you later. Fourteen endemic plant texts that
<v Speaker 1>have been documented from the Wachita Mountains, several of which
<v Speaker 1>have only been described in recent decades. Jesus Christ, there's
<v Speaker 1>probably quite a few that have not been described yet
<v Speaker 1>as well. God damn like man, Yeah, solid dogo watch atensis.
<v Speaker 1>Oh there's some good stuff. Oh, time to get back
<v Speaker 1>in the truck. I got too much shit to do. Oh.
<v Speaker 1>This is a natural history notebook and joint project of
<v Speaker 1>the Missouri Botanical Guard in the Ecological Health Network and
<v Speaker 1>a restoration ecology lab at Virginia Tech. And it sounds nice.
<v Speaker 1>Oh this is a blog from December twenty fourteen, but yeah, man,
<v Speaker 1>it's fucking oh, there's so cool. I've been wanting to
<v Speaker 1>bonnie there for a while. I look at areas on
<v Speaker 1>a map, on a terrain map, and see these folds
<v Speaker 1>on all this cool, I mean god, and you just
<v Speaker 1>immediately I'm like, oh, I'm looking for stuff. There's got
<v Speaker 1>to be some cool plants there. Again the intersection of
<v Speaker 1>geology and plant life, which is the same thing that
<v Speaker 1>I was doing in Cape Girardo. When I looked at Ben,
<v Speaker 1>I think Ben Thomas actually told me about that San
<v Speaker 1>Prairie Conservation area. He had a book, My friend Ben
<v Speaker 1>that works at Mobile. He had a book and I
<v Speaker 1>was looking through it and I saw the Sand Prairie
<v Speaker 1>Conservation Area and Polygonella americana, which is a really fucking
<v Speaker 1>weird species, really weird cool plant. Looks like a juniper.
<v Speaker 1>It's in the buckwheed family, and it grows in scattered
<v Speaker 1>populations only on sand. I think it's primarily only on
<v Speaker 1>sand deposits, because you know, stuff that grows on sand
<v Speaker 1>doesn't like competition. That's why it ends up growing there.
<v Speaker 1>There were some really cool dryland sedges at this uh
<v Speaker 1>at that sand prairie conservation area near Cape Girardo really
<v Speaker 1>like I normally I overlook sedges. I think they're cool,
<v Speaker 1>but I don't care about them that much. They're not
<v Speaker 1>my main thing. You know. I appreciate them, but I
<v Speaker 1>don't go nuts. And I don't know the terminology, but
<v Speaker 1>I certainly you know, it picked my interest being here
<v Speaker 1>because you see these things and you're like, man, there
<v Speaker 1>was one I think it was, Yeah, it was a
<v Speaker 1>bulbo stylist. It was like turning orange, beautiful color to
<v Speaker 1>these weird leaves. It looks like a grass with these
<v Speaker 1>weird fucking heads on it. And it was dominating here
<v Speaker 1>on these sand planes. And then there was it was
<v Speaker 1>so barren on these sand planes compared to the surround
<v Speaker 1>woodland that there was liking. There was cladonia liking you know,
<v Speaker 1>green and red match the cladonia liking growing on the ground.
<v Speaker 1>There was a punchya put the Essexes potosas scattered here
<v Speaker 1>and there, and then polygonella as well, which again looks
<v Speaker 1>like a juniper or like a tamarisk, like a salt seedar.
<v Speaker 1>But then it's got these these spikes. These are race
<v Speaker 1>seams of tiny white flowers. I put a post up
<v Speaker 1>on Instagram about it, h and the video came out.
<v Speaker 1>I think it was Friday I put it out. I'm
<v Speaker 1>putting out videos like fucking hotcakes, man, just like I
<v Speaker 1>just want to get them done. I've got other shit
<v Speaker 1>to do. I need to get this stuff done and
<v Speaker 1>get it off my plate. But h yeah, that polygonella
<v Speaker 1>was cool because it formed these these shrubs. You know,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's a shrub in areas where the soil is
<v Speaker 1>a little deeper. But then there were areas where it
<v Speaker 1>was really you could tell the soil was not that deep.
<v Speaker 1>By soil, I mean sand, and I don't know if
<v Speaker 1>there was bedrock beneath there, underneath there or what. But
<v Speaker 1>it got like a eight inches tall, and it looked
<v Speaker 1>so different from the other individuals that I was seeing
<v Speaker 1>in other areas of this conservation area that I thought
<v Speaker 1>it was a different plant. I was like, what the
<v Speaker 1>fuck is this? Is this like a weird kind of
<v Speaker 1>It looked like a weird kind of like subshrub flocks species,
<v Speaker 1>or like something in carriophilecey, like a weird pair of
<v Speaker 1>Nikkia or something. It was so fucking weird, and none
<v Speaker 1>of them were none of those were flowering, but I
<v Speaker 1>think it was. Yeah, it was quite obviously just Polygonella americana.
<v Speaker 1>It had, you know, the younger leaves, the younger like
<v Speaker 1>little linear arochoid leaves. It was such a cool spot.
<v Speaker 1>But then a storm picked up really quick to I forgot. Man,
<v Speaker 1>in the Midwest, storms get scary, like I'm not used to.
<v Speaker 1>I haven't been in an area where the storms can
<v Speaker 1>actually be kind of freaky. Like you see it and
<v Speaker 1>you're like, oh shit, that like a wind moves in,
<v Speaker 1>a cold front moves in all of a sudden, The
<v Speaker 1>trees are blowing violently. The clouds on the horizon are
<v Speaker 1>almost black, you know. I started seeing what looked like
<v Speaker 1>it looked like it might have been the funnel cloud
<v Speaker 1>that could have formed that died out, like there was
<v Speaker 1>some slanting going on to the uh, the clouds of
<v Speaker 1>vapor that were forming on the horizon, Like it looked
<v Speaker 1>like it was like it was raining, but it was
<v Speaker 1>coming in at a slant too, like there was a
<v Speaker 1>weird I don't know, man, it just it was spooky.
<v Speaker 1>So I said, all right, let's get the fuck out
<v Speaker 1>of here and and go meet at him Black at
<v Speaker 1>the h the dirty motel at actually it wasn't it
<v Speaker 1>was a nice motel. It was Hampton, and we stayed
<v Speaker 1>at the Hampton and his work paid for it. And uh,
<v Speaker 1>what was a Poplar Bluffs, beautiful Popular Bluff, Missouri. I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure they have some wonderful vacation Bible camps and beautiful
<v Speaker 1>Popular Bluff, Missouri. So enough about this region of a country.
<v Speaker 1>But know that if you live in Missouri or western
<v Speaker 1>Arkansas or eastern Oklahoma, I'm coming for you if it sometime,
<v Speaker 1>I'm want to come out there and uh and do
<v Speaker 1>some do some fucking body, like give it a week
<v Speaker 1>or something. I need to spend some real time out there, man,
<v Speaker 1>And I need to go to Nashville area to check
<v Speaker 1>out some of the Nashville Glades, a bunch of good
<v Speaker 1>ship there, northern Alabama, these whole you know, entire it's
<v Speaker 1>entire region of the country in the central East that
<v Speaker 1>I have not spent much time. Then. I've done so much,
<v Speaker 1>spend so much time out west in California and even
<v Speaker 1>Pacific Northwest early on, but not here. And I'm gonna
<v Speaker 1>be looking for the rocky sites, you know, an the
<v Speaker 1>orogenes looking for the histories, the origenic histories of some
<v Speaker 1>of these mountains, the wachitah Ozarks, the the Appalachians. Holy shit,
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of good stuff. Man. That's why I
<v Speaker 1>would man if you, if you live in those areas,
<v Speaker 1>got there, but they got to burn. They really need
<v Speaker 1>to burn. The fire suppression, to me is so crazy.
<v Speaker 1>And you think that these fire suppression regimes have been,
<v Speaker 1>it's the way it's been for one hundred and fifty
<v Speaker 1>years basically, you know, since the And I just find
<v Speaker 1>this word is so fucking annoying because you find so
<v Speaker 1>many like young fucking twenty four year old kids on
<v Speaker 1>TikTok overusing it and or college kids applying it the
<v Speaker 1>shit that it doesn't apply to. But when the fucking
<v Speaker 1>European colonialism arrived and decimated, you fucked up the landscape,
<v Speaker 1>you know, which, depending on where you are, started roughly
<v Speaker 1>three hundred to one hundred and fifty years ago. Prior
<v Speaker 1>to that, the fucking man, the landscape must have looked
<v Speaker 1>so different. Not only did you have megafauna, which you
<v Speaker 1>know had huge effects on the flora. I mean, all
<v Speaker 1>the intense grazing of the bison alone and robust populations
<v Speaker 1>of herbivores plus the predators that kept them in check,
<v Speaker 1>which also in effect handled the tick populations because when
<v Speaker 1>you get deer populations, you know, for example, going fucking nuts,
<v Speaker 1>you know and exploding, the tich population explodes too, as
<v Speaker 1>logic would follow, So you had the herbivore effect. And
<v Speaker 1>then all the fires I mean the indigenous people that
<v Speaker 1>Native people were using to steward and maintain these landscapes
<v Speaker 1>for thousands of years, which I'm sure they learned, you know,
<v Speaker 1>was a necessity. God knows how long ago they learned it,
<v Speaker 1>you know, probably a long time. Probably a long time ago.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it just probably became something where they were
<v Speaker 1>we got to burn these this shit just gets too inundated,
<v Speaker 1>it gets too dense. Well, actually, it probably wasn't even
<v Speaker 1>get I don't know, it probably wasn't even getting to
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. There's so many dynamics I'm unaware of,
<v Speaker 1>Like these ecosystems have been so fucked in the last
<v Speaker 1>few hundred years, it's hard to tell, you know, what
<v Speaker 1>different factors were affecting them and how things have changed.
<v Speaker 1>Once colonization occurred, people were removed the burning was was
<v Speaker 1>was thrown away, you know, the fire suppression started, the
<v Speaker 1>predators were wiped out, things were over hunted, the bison
<v Speaker 1>wear were exterminated. I mean, it's so wild to think about,
<v Speaker 1>you know, but it's and it's something that I'm not too.
<v Speaker 1>It's in a way it's new to me because again
<v Speaker 1>I learned Bodni out west, which is like shit then'
<v Speaker 1>you know, Europeans didn't really have a chance to start
<v Speaker 1>fucking things up there. This this civilization that came didn't
<v Speaker 1>have things just didn't have time to start fucking things
<v Speaker 1>up there large scale until like eighteen fifty, like it's one,
<v Speaker 1>populations really took off, you know, the gold Rush out West,
<v Speaker 1>et cetera versus you know out east its shiit me.
<v Speaker 1>You had a couple more hundred years for the wreckage
<v Speaker 1>to start occurring and for you know, large scale ecosystem destruction,
<v Speaker 1>lands starting to get converted to agriculture and pasture. It's
<v Speaker 1>so wild to think about. But and it's so different too.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, getting so overgrown and innundated so easily because
<v Speaker 1>the ring fall is that much higher where burning is
<v Speaker 1>man like burning is. I mean, but I feel like
<v Speaker 1>burning is a necessity anyway. We gotta have low controlled
<v Speaker 1>burns out west to eliminate fuels so you don't get
<v Speaker 1>massive wildfires. But then you've also got to have burning
<v Speaker 1>in a lot of these woodlands and prairies out east
<v Speaker 1>because there's just so much biomass generated every year due
<v Speaker 1>to the rainfall. This is just the wetter more music
<v Speaker 1>eastern half of the country. And if you don't man,
<v Speaker 1>the fucking the sugars alone will be enough to just
<v Speaker 1>fucking burn at all, you know, And that's what keeps
<v Speaker 1>these ecosystems healthy. Plus the predators too. It's a huge thing,
<v Speaker 1>the predators keeping the deer populations in check anyway. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, moving on from this area though, uh and
<v Speaker 1>going on up to the beautiful rest belt being out
<v Speaker 1>at a rost belt too. We went to Detroit, Detroit,
<v Speaker 1>we went to Pittsburgh, we went to we stopped in Youngstown, Ohio,
<v Speaker 1>out out to Kelly over there with your landscaping company
<v Speaker 1>that hung out with us and drank coffee and in
<v Speaker 1>beautiful Youngstown for a while. Man, these these I love,
<v Speaker 1>these like rust belt. It's kind of depressing and dystopic
<v Speaker 1>and weird, but these rust belt towns with these incredibly
<v Speaker 1>low population densities because the factories closed and there's old
<v Speaker 1>steel mills. Whatever the fuck we went to. We were
<v Speaker 1>looking for a spot to just park the van and
<v Speaker 1>make a sandwich and lurk in someplace had a big
<v Speaker 1>parking lot. We ended up in front of some brewery
<v Speaker 1>in Youngstown that was built in it. It was the
<v Speaker 1>brewery was in an old steel mill, like this giant
<v Speaker 1>old warehouse, like stadium sized steel building, open air steel building,
<v Speaker 1>not open air but you know, no walls inside. And
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I don't drink, but we just went there
<v Speaker 1>because it was a spot to lurk. It was open.
<v Speaker 1>It was like a Sunday. When we rolled through, it
<v Speaker 1>was like we can we can kick it here. No
<v Speaker 1>one's going to run us out of the parking lot
<v Speaker 1>and fill up the water jug whatever. And just being
<v Speaker 1>in that building this you know that once was a
<v Speaker 1>place where they poured molten steel. It was so so
<v Speaker 1>surreal because all the infrastructure is still there, these rusting hulks.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's like being in a museum. Same thing
<v Speaker 1>with Detroit. Detroit felt like that too, you know, just
<v Speaker 1>the these the old rust belt town low population density.
<v Speaker 1>There's been a lot of gentrification, I guess in Detroit,
<v Speaker 1>I mean any American city. Gentrification is not even the wording,
<v Speaker 1>it's like the it's like basically urban real estate speculation.
<v Speaker 1>Like gentrification is such an absolute term, almost because it's
<v Speaker 1>not what this is anymore. It's not about like a
<v Speaker 1>hip coffee shop. It's about, you know, intense investment speculation
<v Speaker 1>on properties, you know, like sometimes by companies that don't
<v Speaker 1>even aren't aren't even within the country, you know, like
<v Speaker 1>by overseas companies. It's like treating investments, treating the housings
<v Speaker 1>supply in urban areas like an investment, and just the
<v Speaker 1>intense fucking rental prices for some of these places. Now,
<v Speaker 1>I mean Detroit is still you know, comparatively obviously massively
<v Speaker 1>affordable to places like San Francisco, but still it's it's
<v Speaker 1>a priced some some people out. But you know, Detroit, man,
<v Speaker 1>like whole blocks. You're driving past whole blocks that are
<v Speaker 1>just empty. There were houses there once, they've been knocked down.
<v Speaker 1>It's just now it's just like these green fields, like
<v Speaker 1>overgrown with a mixture of mostly probably invasive plants from Europe,
<v Speaker 1>because those are always the ones that colonize and you know,
<v Speaker 1>fill in places in cities. You know, once there's like
<v Speaker 1>a vacant lot or railroad tracks or whatever, and then
<v Speaker 1>there's always a couple natives too, you know, solid dogos,
<v Speaker 1>some milkweed, some cottonwoods, whatever I could, I'd love to
<v Speaker 1>spend a lot more time just looking at that, looking
<v Speaker 1>at the plants that grow in these areas. You know
<v Speaker 1>what ends up there. And obviously the natives that are
<v Speaker 1>there have to be pretty aggressive if they're growing out
<v Speaker 1>of asphalt and concrete and fucked up soil, and they
<v Speaker 1>have to be generally wind dispersed or bird dispersed, like
<v Speaker 1>how are they going to get around? You know, how
<v Speaker 1>are they going to get there in the first place?
<v Speaker 1>Since the habitat, if they're natives, you know, there's no
<v Speaker 1>native habitat left. Everything's been turned into a parking lot
<v Speaker 1>or a road or housing, so you know, where do
<v Speaker 1>they come from? They wind birds, and then there might
<v Speaker 1>be little populations that are able to occupy places that
<v Speaker 1>aren't going to get mode or hacked back or sprayed,
<v Speaker 1>like power line easements, train tracks, vacant lots, even the
<v Speaker 1>fucking roofs of old buildings and whatever I do. All
<v Speaker 1>that restbelt shit's so cool. We spent some time in Detroit.
<v Speaker 1>We had two shows there which was just you know,
<v Speaker 1>basically doing a presentation, having a Q and A doing
<v Speaker 1>a screening to kill your lawn, shooting the shit. It's fun.
<v Speaker 1>I like just interacting with people too. I like, just
<v Speaker 1>you know, what do you guys, I'll just straight up
<v Speaker 1>ask me what do you want to see? I got
<v Speaker 1>photos from all over the world. What do you want
<v Speaker 1>to see? What do you want to talk about? Et cetera.
<v Speaker 1>The show in Pittsburgh was cool. That was just in
<v Speaker 1>a little coffee shop that was It was two in
<v Speaker 1>other also two days we did a show in Chicago.
<v Speaker 1>It was it was great, man, it was really laid back.
<v Speaker 1>We stayed in Ohio. I saw the largest on the
<v Speaker 1>way between Pittsburgh and Detroit. We stopped over at a hotel,
<v Speaker 1>a motor lodge in Ohio and like the outskirts of
<v Speaker 1>Cleveland and saw the largest poison ivy I've ever seen
<v Speaker 1>in my life, growing like thirty feet up a Scotch pine,
<v Speaker 1>you know, with a stem that was had to be
<v Speaker 1>between six and eight inches diameter. It was massive, but
<v Speaker 1>the whole thing was funny about it was the whole
<v Speaker 1>thing was coming up in between this depressing motor lodge
<v Speaker 1>and like a fucking it's like a stereotypical Midwest office park,
<v Speaker 1>you know, with that really slick black asphalt. It's like
<v Speaker 1>the way they do it in the Midwest. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know why it is, but it's just like each region
<v Speaker 1>has its own, you know, Like if you look at
<v Speaker 1>a picture of a bleak office park or a strip
<v Speaker 1>mall in the United States, you can kind of tell
<v Speaker 1>where it is. But you know, if you've been around,
<v Speaker 1>if you've traveled across the commercial cesspool it is most
<v Speaker 1>of the US, you know, you could tell where it
<v Speaker 1>is just by the just by the look of it.
<v Speaker 1>Each region has its own sense of bleakness. In the Midwest,
<v Speaker 1>you know, from like fucking Iowa to Ohio has its own.
<v Speaker 1>It's like that that slick black asphalt, like with the
<v Speaker 1>tar on it they put. I think it's like they
<v Speaker 1>put a ceilant or a tar. I don't know if
<v Speaker 1>it's because of the freezing or what. But but it
<v Speaker 1>was funny because it was the only native plant growing
<v Speaker 1>anywhere besides like the rigor On canadensis, the Caneisa canadensist
<v Speaker 1>formerly Canisa the horseweed, which was fucking everywhere. That's such
<v Speaker 1>a funny case. That's got to be an invasive fucking
<v Speaker 1>plant overseas because that thing is everywhere horsewed. It's called
<v Speaker 1>I don't know why, I've always just known it as canisa.
<v Speaker 1>It's got these tiny little astorac flower heads and it's
<v Speaker 1>fucking everywhere. I saw a huge patch of it in Pittsburgh.
<v Speaker 1>I was botanizing a degraded vacant lot next to a
<v Speaker 1>construction site. What else was growing there? There's some other
<v Speaker 1>cool stuff growing there. Oh, there was the dreaded Bradford
<v Speaker 1>pair to it was. That kind of fills me with Hey,
<v Speaker 1>Bradford pair and crape myrtle. It's crazy. Somebody somebody asked
<v Speaker 1>me the other day on a like a Facebook comment
<v Speaker 1>because I've been actually posting I don't have a personal
<v Speaker 1>Facebook page because I think Facebook's for marks, no offense.
<v Speaker 1>It just is a horrible venue. I hate Zuckerberg whatever,
<v Speaker 1>but I use the I've been using the crime page
<v Speaker 1>Facebook that that company set up and then abandoned because
<v Speaker 1>because it's a good way to educate people. And I
<v Speaker 1>guess a lot of people use it and whatever. So
<v Speaker 1>I've been posting on there and it's easy. I don't
<v Speaker 1>take it too seriously. I don't put much time in
<v Speaker 1>and I just you know, slap together some quick video,
<v Speaker 1>throw it up, do a post whatever. Hopefully people get
<v Speaker 1>something out of it, learn from it. But somebody commented
<v Speaker 1>really innocently, why do you hate crape myrtles so much?
<v Speaker 1>And I just just like went off. I'm you know,
<v Speaker 1>I was like, it's like the fucking crp myrtles are
<v Speaker 1>like the live laugh love sign of horticultural atrocity. They're
<v Speaker 1>just so fucking they're overplanted there. That doesn't mean anything.
<v Speaker 1>They're garbage, they're out of ecological context. They're invasive on
<v Speaker 1>the East coast, they die on the West coast and
<v Speaker 1>just require too much water. I'm sure they're really cool
<v Speaker 1>where they're native, like any invasive plant or horticultural atrocity,
<v Speaker 1>but they're just such a fucking they plant them out here.
<v Speaker 1>When I was I got invited to LBJ Wildflower Center
<v Speaker 1>a month ago, which was great, it was fucking awesome.
<v Speaker 1>I took my kid too. They had this dinosaur exhibit
<v Speaker 1>out there, so she loved it. She still raised hell,
<v Speaker 1>but it was still you know, uh it was easy
<v Speaker 1>to get her entertained otherwise because they had like these
<v Speaker 1>life size replicas of dinosaurs. The Wildflower Center, but also wildflower.
<v Speaker 1>Wildflower is just the weird world. Like, wildflower doesn't mean anything.
<v Speaker 1>If you see a wild they might want to think
<v Speaker 1>about a rebranding sometime. No, I'm you know, I'm not
<v Speaker 1>telling anybody what to do, but I'll be j you know,
<v Speaker 1>Wildflower Center might want to think about a rebranding. This is,
<v Speaker 1>you know, in twenty years, if we're not all annihilated
<v Speaker 1>by a nuclear war, you know, by these fucking uh
<v Speaker 1>primate male humans who are so set on fucking setting
<v Speaker 1>the world on fire. You know, if we're still around,
<v Speaker 1>you might want to think about a rebrand. It's just
<v Speaker 1>wildflower doesn't mean anything. The word wildflower, just like the
<v Speaker 1>Native plant Center. You know, if I was going to
<v Speaker 1>start a native plant center, it'd be like the the
<v Speaker 1>crime pays, fuck you native plant centers. You know, just
<v Speaker 1>like a blatant. They got to put a little aggressive
<v Speaker 1>spin on it. You know, it's just innately kind of spiny.
<v Speaker 1>It's which is good. It's like a cactus. It's like spiny,
<v Speaker 1>but then it's got a beautiful flower that it produces,
<v Speaker 1>and it's got a soft, squishy inside. But anyway, I
<v Speaker 1>was at the wild the Wildflower Center at'll bej and
<v Speaker 1>just on like a half mile away from it. On
<v Speaker 1>the drive there, you have to drive on this road
<v Speaker 1>you go past just this phalanx of crpe myrtles, Like
<v Speaker 1>just getting beaten over the head with these things. Just oh,
<v Speaker 1>it's so painful. It's like with passing each one, I
<v Speaker 1>feel like I'm getting macked in the forehead with a
<v Speaker 1>two by four. I fucking hate crpe myrtles so much.
<v Speaker 1>They're so fucking just bottom of the brain stem, lowest
<v Speaker 1>common denominator, home deepot horticultural shit, you know. And the
<v Speaker 1>thing is people like them for the flowers, which doesn't
<v Speaker 1>fucking that doesn't mean anything whatever. These flowers is a
<v Speaker 1>flowers a flower, all right. I mean if you like that,
<v Speaker 1>if you white, like the way that looks, you could
<v Speaker 1>like the way a native plant looks. It has ecological
<v Speaker 1>context and supports all the pollinators and cool shit. But
<v Speaker 1>they like it for that smooth stunt, that smooth bark,
<v Speaker 1>which like the fucking diasporos text aina our native Texas
<v Speaker 1>per simmon gets that same smooth bark and looks way
<v Speaker 1>cooler and will grow out of fucking rock walls like
<v Speaker 1>I've seen them growing out of rock walls in a
<v Speaker 1>limestone canyon in Sanderson, you know, Texas per simma with
<v Speaker 1>with edible fruit too, for whatever. If you give a
<v Speaker 1>shit about that, is it edible? Is it edible or medicinal?
<v Speaker 1>Can I can I eat it? Can I put it
<v Speaker 1>in my mouth and not die? I don't know who cares,
<v Speaker 1>but yes you can. In this case, it's just such
<v Speaker 1>a cooler play. They got a cooler pollination biology. The
<v Speaker 1>flowers are unisexual, so it promotes out crossing it just
<v Speaker 1>you know. But uh, but that doesn't get planted as
<v Speaker 1>much and it takes longer to grow versus the dreadon
<v Speaker 1>crape myrtle. Anyway, Yeah, that is a side that was
<v Speaker 1>a RNT. But but I went to the Carnegie Museum
<v Speaker 1>in Pittsburgh because I fucking love museums, and and I
<v Speaker 1>love especially in the natural history section. Like each I
<v Speaker 1>should do a review of all the natural history museums
<v Speaker 1>across the US. I've been going to museums forever, man,
<v Speaker 1>even when I was still like riding freight trains and shit.
<v Speaker 1>I would still go to the museum. I'd stop in
<v Speaker 1>the city and I'd hit the different museums. Maybe sometimes
<v Speaker 1>the art museum too. That can be nice, but a
<v Speaker 1>little bit different of a crowd there, you know, sometimes
<v Speaker 1>you see art that doesn't look like anything. But the
<v Speaker 1>Natural History Museum is always fucking cool. You always get
<v Speaker 1>a little context. And since natural history is such a
<v Speaker 1>regional thing, or can be such just like local specific thing,
<v Speaker 1>you'll find, you know, every museum, depending on where you are,
<v Speaker 1>we'll have a different exhibit focusing on the local natural
<v Speaker 1>history and geology of that region. And Carnigie Museum was
<v Speaker 1>no different. It was fucking cool. Plus they've got the
<v Speaker 1>art in there too. It's weird. Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh's
<v Speaker 1>like a mixture of art and natural sciences. They had
<v Speaker 1>some nice dinosaurs. I took some pictures for my daughter,
<v Speaker 1>but uh oh yeah, they got a really cool uh
<v Speaker 1>what was it? How fuck ichthyosaur diorama? That was nice.
<v Speaker 1>But they got a whole piece on the history, the
<v Speaker 1>geologic history of Appalachia, which again was formed. If you
<v Speaker 1>look at a terrain map, a topographic layer. There are
<v Speaker 1>these you know, it looks like these wrinkles in the
<v Speaker 1>in the Earth's skin that kind of coincide with the
<v Speaker 1>watchtah orogeny, the watchetah uplift that I was talking about earlier,
<v Speaker 1>which again was the result of continental impact of a
<v Speaker 1>of plate tectonics, of tectonic a convergent tectonic zone, basically Africa,
<v Speaker 1>the continent that was Africa or that is Africa now
<v Speaker 1>ramming in to you know, about three hundred million years ago,
<v Speaker 1>ramming into what is now the US, coming together to
<v Speaker 1>form the super continent Pangaea, and then rifting apart again
<v Speaker 1>one hundred million years later, like maybe like two hundred
<v Speaker 1>million years ago, and that's when the Atlantic actually opened up.
<v Speaker 1>And so that's why you've got and you've got the
<v Speaker 1>same rocks. There's so many geologic affinities between you know, Scotland,
<v Speaker 1>nor Northern Africa, Northwest Africa, Appalachia, Eastern Canada, et cetera.
<v Speaker 1>It's really fucking cool. I saw someone create a map,
<v Speaker 1>it was like a week ago. It was on Instagram
<v Speaker 1>about that showing like the same mountains, the same rocks,
<v Speaker 1>and same rocks and same basically same mountain ranges in
<v Speaker 1>the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and southern Appalachia. They were
<v Speaker 1>the same same there was the same mountain chain at
<v Speaker 1>one point before the Atlantic Ocean opened up, because there's
<v Speaker 1>a rift zone that goes up and down north and
<v Speaker 1>south through the Atlantic Ocean and then comes on board,
<v Speaker 1>comes up, uh, comes onto land around what is that Iceland,
<v Speaker 1>and then goes back down to the ocean, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like the seam of a baseball. So yeah, it was
<v Speaker 1>in yeah, like parts of Norway where like there's geologic
<v Speaker 1>affinities between Norway and Canada, northern eastern northeastern Canada too. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's fucking cool to see. But so it's an old
<v Speaker 1>mountain chain. But basically that's why the up lift happened
<v Speaker 1>in the first place. That's why you had that that
<v Speaker 1>you know, throw rug on a on a hardwood floor
<v Speaker 1>thing going on, you know, throw rug bunched up against
<v Speaker 1>the door jam on a hardwood floor like an accordion.
<v Speaker 1>Really cool. So and another thing they had too, which
<v Speaker 1>was nice was they had like a map of the
<v Speaker 1>state of Pennsylvania and it showed the difference you know,
<v Speaker 1>there's a difference in relief in the type of mountains
<v Speaker 1>that you get in northern Pennsylvania versus southern Pennsylvania, Central
<v Speaker 1>and eastern Pennsylvania in the north and in the south.
<v Speaker 1>And it's because you know, and if you look at it,
<v Speaker 1>you could tell they had it was a really cool,
<v Speaker 1>uh picture the mountain. The way that the mountains are
<v Speaker 1>sculpted looks different. They're much more wider valleys between the
<v Speaker 1>mountains and the north. The mountain ridges, you know, because
<v Speaker 1>you've got all these parallel mountain ranges. Basically, those are
<v Speaker 1>all the folds from when you know, Africa rammed up
<v Speaker 1>into the east northwest, Africa rammed up into the east
<v Speaker 1>coast three hundred and twenty million years ago, whenever it
<v Speaker 1>was creating the uplifting the Wachita Mountains and uplifting Appalachia,
<v Speaker 1>and so those folds, you know, just like imagine a rug,
<v Speaker 1>you know, bunched up against the door jam. You're pushing
<v Speaker 1>it from one end. It's on a hardwood floor, and
<v Speaker 1>it starts bunching up folding. All those folds trend the
<v Speaker 1>like the ridges go you know, northeast to southwest and
<v Speaker 1>then and then they kind of bunch up going towards
<v Speaker 1>the north, well, the northern end in between those ridges,
<v Speaker 1>the valleys are a lot broader. They're like U shaped almost,
<v Speaker 1>and there they've been worn down a lot. It's because
<v Speaker 1>the glaciers. It's because of the glaciation, and you could
<v Speaker 1>see it. It's very vivid. It's like a very vivid change.
<v Speaker 1>If you look on you can kind of see it.
<v Speaker 1>If you look at a geologic map, like if you
<v Speaker 1>go to Google Maps and put it in terrain layry,
<v Speaker 1>you could see where the glaciation stopped, like basically right
<v Speaker 1>at Interstate ninety nine, which runs you know, southwest to northeast.
<v Speaker 1>It goes through lt Tuna up through Bellafonte and State College,
<v Speaker 1>like northwest of that and north of that was where
<v Speaker 1>the glaciers were, and they just carved the shit out
<v Speaker 1>of the landscape. Like you can see a much different
<v Speaker 1>relief and you can see that the glaciers did not
<v Speaker 1>hit the Appalachian Mountains south of State College or south
<v Speaker 1>or east of State College, which is really fucking cool,
<v Speaker 1>and it's something you can't see unless you're like looking
<v Speaker 1>at the terrain. You know, if you're looking at like
<v Speaker 1>a terrain map, then it becomes really obvious. You're like,
<v Speaker 1>oh but uh oh, man, it just gets great. I
<v Speaker 1>didn't know. I'm I'm so unfamiliar with this region. I've
<v Speaker 1>got so much more exploring left to do, which is
<v Speaker 1>like also looking to get out of the United States
<v Speaker 1>because it could be such a tox successful at times.
<v Speaker 1>But it's nice to, you know, I have a little
<v Speaker 1>bit of context for the geology and the rocks because
<v Speaker 1>that dictates so much other shit that's going on on
<v Speaker 1>the surface. It's really really fun stuff to see. The
<v Speaker 1>fucking I highly recommend the Carnegie Museum if you get
<v Speaker 1>a chance to go there, and I got like a
<v Speaker 1>The do reciprocal admission too, so I have membership with
<v Speaker 1>the museum here in South Texas, which is just a
<v Speaker 1>small little museum, but have membership with them gets me
<v Speaker 1>gets me into the Carnegie for free, which I you know,
<v Speaker 1>I thought was pretty nice. So anyway, man, the fucking
<v Speaker 1>giants Cicatas are out. I did a video on them
<v Speaker 1>three days ago. It should be up in a week
<v Speaker 1>or two. But god, they're so They're so annoying. I
<v Speaker 1>love them, They're so amazing. It's just it's the most
<v Speaker 1>I've put them on. I've played them on here before
<v Speaker 1>I'll play them again where you could just go watch
<v Speaker 1>the video. But it's the most obnoxious insect in North America, absolutely,
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and ten percent. It's fucking hilarious, and it
<v Speaker 1>starts out it's just like I mean, if you think
<v Speaker 1>the ones, if you think the seventeen year ones in
<v Speaker 1>Chicago in the Midwest are bad, you got to hear
<v Speaker 1>the giants. There's botanists I know down here who can't
<v Speaker 1>stand them, like they give visibly upset hearing this insect.
<v Speaker 1>It makes me so happy. I think it's because I
<v Speaker 1>just think it's hilarious. You know, anything that's harmless and
<v Speaker 1>able to irritate the shit out of people to that extent,
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, irritate the shit out of human beings
<v Speaker 1>that extent is my seal of approval. So I was
<v Speaker 1>out filming them the other There's not a lot you'll
<v Speaker 1>hear them sporadically here because so much of the habitat
<v Speaker 1>has been destroyed. They need the misky trees, miskeat and
<v Speaker 1>huisace huisace Is Vicelia pharnesiana. It's another mimosoid legumes, so
<v Speaker 1>it's in the mimosoid mimo soid e subfamily, just like
<v Speaker 1>you know mis gait and Senegelia bolandurai, the guahio. Another
<v Speaker 1>great fucking tree Epinopsis the Texas ebony et cetera. But
<v Speaker 1>it's primarily nel Tuma glandulosa aka Prosopis glandulosa and Vicelia
<v Speaker 1>pharnisiana the aka huisace that these things are eating the
<v Speaker 1>roots of and living off of. And I guess they've
<v Speaker 1>got a four year cycle, so they're on the ground
<v Speaker 1>for four years and they up. But the cult of
<v Speaker 1>the lawn is so big down here. I bet people
<v Speaker 1>are spraying all kinds of shit they smell they sell
<v Speaker 1>that fucking insect fogger down here? Do they sell that it?
<v Speaker 1>Someone should just go vandalize that stuff at home, despot,
<v Speaker 1>like they sell like crates of this shit at the
<v Speaker 1>big box stores. It's crazy, man, It's like you're just
<v Speaker 1>gonna poison the fucking like, especially the more I've gotten
<v Speaker 1>into bugs, especially because my kid really likes them, Like,
<v Speaker 1>you're just gonna spray this insect fogger. That's so fucking gnarly, man,
<v Speaker 1>That's like, it's so obscene. You're just gonna kill everything.
<v Speaker 1>Not to mention shit for brand, because you're killing all
<v Speaker 1>the cool stuff, like the dragonflies that will eat you know,
<v Speaker 1>all the other quote pesky insects. You're killing the spiders too.
<v Speaker 1>I got this big ass tropical orb weaver that sets
<v Speaker 1>up shop every night, sometimes right in my path, and
<v Speaker 1>so I end up walking into her. But she's you know,
<v Speaker 1>like the size of a golf ball, big red, beautiful
<v Speaker 1>pattern on her body. She's like a like a pinkish
<v Speaker 1>like a brick, like a pinkish mauve brick color. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we get the tropical war weavers down here, and it's
<v Speaker 1>kind of jolting at first, but she's you know, she's harmless,
<v Speaker 1>she's not gonna bite you, still wanting to do with you.
<v Speaker 1>But she's always out there catching moths and other insects
<v Speaker 1>that walk into her little web. I was killing mosquitos
<v Speaker 1>with the electric tennis racket. It's so fun. I kill
<v Speaker 1>like six a day. They're tiny, they're eighties at jipdi.
<v Speaker 1>They've got really fuzzy antenna. You can see them under
<v Speaker 1>a microscope. And yeah, and so I will kill him
<v Speaker 1>and then feed them to the pinkwicula. This company called
<v Speaker 1>beaver Lab, which is based out of China sent me
<v Speaker 1>a microscope. They wrote me on Instagram and they were like,
<v Speaker 1>if we send you this microscope, will you do a
<v Speaker 1>video for us? And I said yes, but only because
<v Speaker 1>I wanted the free microscope. I didn't really think I
<v Speaker 1>was gonna end up doing a video. But then when
<v Speaker 1>I actually looked at this thing, it's cool. It's like
<v Speaker 1>a microscope with a screen and you can take photo
<v Speaker 1>and video, so it's like a It's like a microscope
<v Speaker 1>that you could take phone pictures with without having hold
<v Speaker 1>your phone up to the eyepiece of the mic. It's
<v Speaker 1>really fucking cool. And it comes with slides and cover
<v Speaker 1>slips and little collection jars, and it's like meant for
<v Speaker 1>being used with kids too, because it's got It comes
<v Speaker 1>with like a little booklet like the one I the
<v Speaker 1>one I got I read with my daughter at night,
<v Speaker 1>the one they sent us. It's got little drawings of
<v Speaker 1>like tartar grades and shit in there. But I was
<v Speaker 1>so impressed because it was cool, I was like, all right,
<v Speaker 1>I'll do a fucking video. I can incorporate this. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I ended up incorporating into a video just because I
<v Speaker 1>ended up actually using it to look at something that
<v Speaker 1>I was doing a video on I did a video
<v Speaker 1>on growing So Tall from seed That'ssilerian because man, there's
<v Speaker 1>just there's one of the plays I did to talk
<v Speaker 1>at was this this So Tall distillery, and I didn't
<v Speaker 1>meet anyone there. I'm sure they'll probably find people, but
<v Speaker 1>it just still sketches me out. And everyone I've mentioned
<v Speaker 1>growing so Tall too, it's they're always like, like anybody
<v Speaker 1>who's a plant person, they're not growing so tall, but
<v Speaker 1>the so tall booze, you know, because you can make
<v Speaker 1>a booze out of soult, just like you make a
<v Speaker 1>booze out of a got. Any of the local Texas
<v Speaker 1>plant people I mentioned it too are kind of doing that.
<v Speaker 1>They're like, oh shit, that sounds kind of sketchy. And
<v Speaker 1>it's totally unsustainable because they're not farming this stuff. They're
<v Speaker 1>not actively growing it. It takes twenty years to reach
<v Speaker 1>the stage at which you can harvest it. So they're
<v Speaker 1>going they're just going out the habitat and whacking it,
<v Speaker 1>you know, just fucking by the bushelful. And you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot, and they got permission. It's fucking private property.
<v Speaker 1>Whatever cares if it's private property it's I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 1>my feelings not all that. It's yeah, it's cool. The
<v Speaker 1>landowner is okay with you taking it. What about all
<v Speaker 1>the other things that live there and depend on it?
<v Speaker 1>Are they all right with it? You know, you're like
<v Speaker 1>you're stealing from the fucking biosphere and not replenishing, or
<v Speaker 1>you're taking and not giving back. That's all so I was.
<v Speaker 1>But you know, I'm not trying to like take the
<v Speaker 1>shaming route with them. I just want to encourage more dialogue,
<v Speaker 1>more of a come. We're just going to talk about
<v Speaker 1>more of a conversation what they say. We're just want
<v Speaker 1>to make it a converse. I just want people, I
<v Speaker 1>just want to talk about more like oh, this shit,
<v Speaker 1>actually you do need to be growing this, you do
<v Speaker 1>need to be giving back, Like it's kind of fucked
<v Speaker 1>up to just be, you know, taking bushels of this stuff,
<v Speaker 1>this plant that's an essential in habitat. You know, however
<v Speaker 1>often they're doing it and not not replanting it or
<v Speaker 1>growing more like if anything, like just for your own
<v Speaker 1>pr so you don't look like, you know, it's like
<v Speaker 1>totally like cynical American capitalist view, like just just do
<v Speaker 1>it for your pr you don't actually need to do
<v Speaker 1>any but at least make it look like it. But seriously,
<v Speaker 1>you know, at least grow it whatever, because that's theilirium.
<v Speaker 1>It's super easy to grow from seed too, so it
<v Speaker 1>all is. I've grown it so many times. It's just
<v Speaker 1>you sew it. You sew the seeds, you collect. You
<v Speaker 1>can collect the shit ton of seeds. When the things
<v Speaker 1>are flowering and fall the big flower spike, the wooden,
<v Speaker 1>you know, gets upwards of like fucking I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>twelve feet tall. I'll cut that wooden stalk off. It's
<v Speaker 1>not what it's you know, it's not like true secondary growth.
<v Speaker 1>It's a monocop. But it's it feels like what it is,
<v Speaker 1>like a cane, can you know, beat your your friends
<v Speaker 1>with it whatever. Use it as a walking stick. I
<v Speaker 1>use mine to flip the futon mattress in the back
<v Speaker 1>of my truck up when I'm done, like I just
<v Speaker 1>like use it as like a poker to push it back.
<v Speaker 1>But but you know, you collect the seed, you sew it.
<v Speaker 1>It's it doesn't need any there's no hot shit you
<v Speaker 1>have to do to Germany. You don't need to stratify it,
<v Speaker 1>no treatment, nothing, you just sew it and just let
<v Speaker 1>it go. And uh, it takes a while to get going,
<v Speaker 1>but you know, and you pot it up I mean
<v Speaker 1>in the ground as best, but you pot it up
<v Speaker 1>and keep the competition away so it can get enough light.
<v Speaker 1>It needs the full sun and it gets going. It's fine.
<v Speaker 1>It's really easy to grow, and it's a beautiful fucking plant.
<v Speaker 1>Desillarian is a cool genus. You get Desialirian longesimum and quadranguletam,
<v Speaker 1>the coalescent ones down in Mexico, there's a couple other
<v Speaker 1>coalescent ones. By coalescent, I mean it like gets a stalk,
<v Speaker 1>so it ends up looking like a trufula tree, you
<v Speaker 1>know from the lower kind of like a stalked sodaal.
<v Speaker 1>But uh, text saynum that's lear and text aynum and
<v Speaker 1>Leo phylum and wheel right do not they're they're a
<v Speaker 1>cal a, isn't They don't form a trunk. But it's
<v Speaker 1>a great fucking planet, So I may not love it.
<v Speaker 1>It's a great you know, new New World desert plants,
<v Speaker 1>so I just would love to see more people growing.
<v Speaker 1>It's related to Bocarnia, uh and Nolina, which are also
<v Speaker 1>really fucking cool. They're in that whole tribe No Nolinee
<v Speaker 1>from in the subfamily Nolanoidy. But Nolanoidy is like, it's
<v Speaker 1>all this asparagacy text on me. It's a fucking nightmare.
<v Speaker 1>The APG fucked it up so bad and made it
<v Speaker 1>so much more confusing than it needs to be. They
<v Speaker 1>should have kept all those subfamilies as their own independent families,
<v Speaker 1>but it's it's yeah, it's subfamily Nolinoidy. And then tribe Nolini,
<v Speaker 1>and Nolini has Bocarnia, which are the giant the quote
<v Speaker 1>ponytail palms. They're not a poem, but that's what they
<v Speaker 1>call them, ponytail palms. They're like another you can get
<v Speaker 1>them in like the home depot garden center as like
<v Speaker 1>a house plant. But they get big as fuck. Their
<v Speaker 1>native to Puebla, Puebla in southern Mexico. It's really fucking
<v Speaker 1>cool genus. Some of them get huge, big bulbous trunk
<v Speaker 1>looks like a swollen base, like a like a upside
<v Speaker 1>down light bulb kind of and uh. And then no Lina,
<v Speaker 1>there's a ton of No Lina. We get cool Nolina's
<v Speaker 1>in Texas. You get Nolina. What is it Perry, I
<v Speaker 1>Palmer Perry, I some dead honky I don't know. And
<v Speaker 1>uh and you get those in the Mohave Desert and
<v Speaker 1>the Kingston Range, et cetera and other places. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so but anyway, I but I was doing this video
<v Speaker 1>on that and I found I was looking at the
<v Speaker 1>soil the sand grains that I was using for the
<v Speaker 1>soil mix, and I ended up using the microscope that
<v Speaker 1>these people sent me. Anyway, so it worked there. Fine.
<v Speaker 1>Now I'm trying to get another microscope out of them.
<v Speaker 1>Normally we charge for these for these VIDs. But you know,
<v Speaker 1>since they approached me and I was originally intending on
<v Speaker 1>scamming them first, just taking the product and not doing
<v Speaker 1>any video, I cut them some slack. You know, Hey, Lisapel,
<v Speaker 1>you throw me another one of those microscopes. We could
<v Speaker 1>work something out, you know better yet, just tell me
<v Speaker 1>when the truck is coming with the palette. No, I'm
<v Speaker 1>just kidding. I'm sorry. So uh yeah, anyway, that was
<v Speaker 1>but that was fucking great. And then I forgot to
<v Speaker 1>mention when we were in Chicago, Urban Rivers, which is
<v Speaker 1>that organization that's building those floating rafts with all the
<v Speaker 1>cool native plant habitat on it. In Chicago when we
<v Speaker 1>were there, they were having like some anniversary they blew up.
<v Speaker 1>They got really popular. They had like a big street fest.
<v Speaker 1>People were coming by. They're planting more more of those,
<v Speaker 1>They're they're throwing more of those rafts in the Chicago River.
<v Speaker 1>They throw these floating rafts and they plant all these
<v Speaker 1>native plants like Hibiscus, mushodos and I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 1>plants that can tolerate very wet sites, like wet prairies
<v Speaker 1>or swamps. But there's a lot of there's a decent
<v Speaker 1>list of species that fit that profile that are native
<v Speaker 1>to the Chicago region, and they plant those on these
<v Speaker 1>floating rafts in the river, which is fucking It's still
<v Speaker 1>so mind blowing to me, Like that river used to
<v Speaker 1>be so gnarly, man. I've almost fallen in it a
<v Speaker 1>couple of times, painting graffiti, breaking into abandoned buildings, fucking
<v Speaker 1>around as a kid, you know, doing whatever. I remember
<v Speaker 1>once I got chased by crackheads after I was painting
<v Speaker 1>this building on Where was it was? Unholsted? Fuck? Where
<v Speaker 1>was it? Maybe it was the south end of Goose Island.
<v Speaker 1>I can't remember, but these crackheads saw me painting some shit.
<v Speaker 1>They were smoking crack under this bridge and saw me
<v Speaker 1>painting this building, and I had to walk by him
<v Speaker 1>on my way out under this bridge, and they were like, hey, hey,
<v Speaker 1>you know, we're gonna call the police if you don't
<v Speaker 1>if you don't give us forty bucks, we're gonna call
<v Speaker 1>the police. And I didn't have any money at all.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, first off, I don't have any money. Second,
<v Speaker 1>you're not gonna do like They're not gonna call the
<v Speaker 1>fucking cops. You're gonna smoke a crack under a bridge.
<v Speaker 1>They were just trying to get money money off me,
<v Speaker 1>which is obvious, which is funny too. It's like, man,
<v Speaker 1>you see some like you see some derely kid painting graffiti,
<v Speaker 1>He's probably not the one that you're gonna hit the
<v Speaker 1>jackpie with if you try to get money out of him.
<v Speaker 1>But I basically I forget how it went, but I
<v Speaker 1>what exactly went done. But they tried to get money
<v Speaker 1>off me, and I was like, yo, fuck you, and
<v Speaker 1>I ran the other way. But you had to go
<v Speaker 1>under this bridge, this viaduct to get out. That was
<v Speaker 1>a way, the only way to get back to the street,
<v Speaker 1>like Street Act says. So I ended up running the
<v Speaker 1>other way, which was directly towards the river and having
<v Speaker 1>to like it was a chain link fence topped with
<v Speaker 1>razor wire along the Chicago River, and I had but
<v Speaker 1>with nothing beneath it, there was nothing to stand on.
<v Speaker 1>So I was basically just like spider manning it laterally
<v Speaker 1>across this fence that was held up over the river.
<v Speaker 1>Oh fuck, it was so it was so gnarly. I
<v Speaker 1>can't even remember the spot that I was painting either. God.
<v Speaker 1>I was going through old photos at my mom's house
<v Speaker 1>the other day looking at looking at like photos from
<v Speaker 1>back in that time period of my life. There's like shit,
<v Speaker 1>I don't even remember. There's photos of it of that
<v Speaker 1>those times, and I'm in them, but I forget. I
<v Speaker 1>don't even have recollection of it, which is kind of
<v Speaker 1>spooky and like things that I paint that I don't
<v Speaker 1>have recollection, but anyway I have it. I ended up
<v Speaker 1>having a spider man on this chain link fence, like
<v Speaker 1>just sticking my toes in the holes and holding on
<v Speaker 1>with my hands my fingers through the chain link and
<v Speaker 1>moving laterally across this fence to get away from these crackheads,
<v Speaker 1>because yeah, there were like four or five of them, man,
<v Speaker 1>And I ended up being fine, and I hid in
<v Speaker 1>some tow yard. That's what the fence was too. It
<v Speaker 1>was for a towing yard, and I ended up hid
<v Speaker 1>hiding in the towing yard. It was like a towing
<v Speaker 1>or auto wreckers yard. And damn there where dogs are too.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, I forget it either way. I made
<v Speaker 1>it back to the street, to street level, back up
<v Speaker 1>the street level, and I was fine because the streets
<v Speaker 1>above the river. But uh but I remember that I
<v Speaker 1>was thinking back and after that happened, and I was like, man,
<v Speaker 1>I almost fell in the fucking Chicago River. That's gnarly
<v Speaker 1>as hell. It is. So it is like it had
<v Speaker 1>a smell to it, you know, it was like a
<v Speaker 1>bacteria smell or algae smell that it was like probably
<v Speaker 1>the only species of algae that could exist in that
<v Speaker 1>toxic as gnarly wall her you know. But now it's
<v Speaker 1>like the water is actually relatively clean. They have fresh
<v Speaker 1>water muscles that they're growing in it. Granted the muscles
<v Speaker 1>are hanging from a box, uh, so they don't get
<v Speaker 1>eaten by the muskrats. Louie killed a muskrat a year ago,
<v Speaker 1>and they brought that up. She's she's never killed shit,
<v Speaker 1>She's only killed street rats before. She chases cats all
<v Speaker 1>the time. I let her do that if they're not
<v Speaker 1>like pet cats, if they're just farrels, And I let her.
<v Speaker 1>It's good for the cats, you know, and for the
<v Speaker 1>things that the cats try to kill. Uh. But she
<v Speaker 1>she broke off and went and attacked this fucking musk.
<v Speaker 1>I was so pissed, you know, if anything, because it
<v Speaker 1>made us look bad and it's the only time she's
<v Speaker 1>done that. I was so And they brought that up,
<v Speaker 1>you know, they were bringing they were digging that back up,
<v Speaker 1>like they're like, because of Louie, we have a lot,
<v Speaker 1>we have a rule now. But uh, they were just
<v Speaker 1>kind of joking. I think actually the person who said
<v Speaker 1>it probably didn't like me. But you know, regardless, it
<v Speaker 1>wasn't it wasn't an issue. Louis was a she was
<v Speaker 1>a bad dog. But they have to use it. They
<v Speaker 1>actually have to use a dog on that dock anyway
<v Speaker 1>to keep the Canada geese. The Canada geese in Chicago
<v Speaker 1>are fucking oh my god, they get wild. You know.
<v Speaker 1>It's one of those those birds whose populations have probably explode,
<v Speaker 1>exploded because they thrive off of human off of human development.
<v Speaker 1>But anyway, so urban rivers was, yeah, they were. They
<v Speaker 1>were building more native planet docks. It's so nice, man,
<v Speaker 1>it's such a nice little spot. And it gets like
<v Speaker 1>the growth there. You know, you'll be there in March
<v Speaker 1>when nothing started to grow yet, and then you go
<v Speaker 1>in June or July and it's a thicket. It's like
<v Speaker 1>a it's a sound bearer. You can't see through it
<v Speaker 1>or over it. It gets up like four or five
<v Speaker 1>feet tall, six feet tall. It's really dense. You know.
<v Speaker 1>All that prairie shit, all the prairie shit too, is
<v Speaker 1>the same way in that reason, Like it goes from
<v Speaker 1>there being nothing there to getting upwards a six or
<v Speaker 1>seven feet tall and just being the dense thicket by
<v Speaker 1>the end of August. But then the span of three
<v Speaker 1>or four months you have this massive eruption of biomass.
<v Speaker 1>It's so nice, it was. It's always so nice to
<v Speaker 1>go through the prairie too. God, I was fucking loving it.
<v Speaker 1>You know, all the singing insects. You know what I
<v Speaker 1>noticed too, is the sound of those Katie DIDs is
<v Speaker 1>what is it? Fucking it's like, and they come out
<v Speaker 1>at night and their way up in the trees. I
<v Speaker 1>don't even know what species that is, but I was
<v Speaker 1>in Saint Louis and I was in there all over Chicago.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's really pleasant. I love the sound of the
<v Speaker 1>singing insects. It's like a psychedelic almost. That's why I
<v Speaker 1>loved cicadas too. It's like a fucking psychedelic experience. There
<v Speaker 1>was a cicada species I heard in a cactus forest
<v Speaker 1>in southeastern Wahaka near the border with Chiappas years ago,
<v Speaker 1>and I remember being in this cactus forest and just
<v Speaker 1>being intoxicated with the sound of these things. It was
<v Speaker 1>so fucking cool. I recorded some video of it. It
<v Speaker 1>was before I was really doing videos, so it's just
<v Speaker 1>the video of the sound. There's it's kind of nice.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not talking in it at all, but it was
<v Speaker 1>a yeah, and there's all kinds of cool dry land
<v Speaker 1>bermeliads all over the ground, hectia and there's tulansai recravata
<v Speaker 1>on everything, and it was neo bus bombia and nuda
<v Speaker 1>which is now cephalos serious noudah. But uh, these big
<v Speaker 1>green totem poles. They're like these you know, tall columnar
<v Speaker 1>cacta that don't really branch, and if they do branch,
<v Speaker 1>the arms stay really close to the main stem. Oh god,
<v Speaker 1>but yeah, what cicada species was that? But they were
<v Speaker 1>fucking it was a cacophony. It was so loud and wonderful.
<v Speaker 1>And so when I did this video on the giant cicadas,
<v Speaker 1>that's what it sounded like. Was you know, it was
<v Speaker 1>a different call obviously because it's a different species of cicada,
<v Speaker 1>but it's permeating everything. It's everywhere, and it was dark out.
<v Speaker 1>It was at my friend's house. She's got like sixty
<v Speaker 1>maybe thirty acres, I don't know, and it's like, you know,
<v Speaker 1>becoming the only island of hap with that. If you're
<v Speaker 1>looking at a satellite map, it's the only green island
<v Speaker 1>around it. They just okay to another housing development behind
<v Speaker 1>their house, which is depressing as fuck. You know, it's
<v Speaker 1>a spot where there had been a farm and a
<v Speaker 1>house and now it's gonna be like, you know, eighty
<v Speaker 1>McMansions for phrases, and people that want the shiny shit,
<v Speaker 1>lay masses that want the shiny shit, you know, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>sure they're nice, they're fucking whatever, you know, whatever. No,
<v Speaker 1>it's you, no to each their own what. It's fucking lame.
<v Speaker 1>It sucks. It's like that. Lifestyle sucks. The shiny shit sucks.
<v Speaker 1>The fucking value system is poisonous as fuck. It's empty,
<v Speaker 1>it's disconnected from anything real and alive. It's just a
<v Speaker 1>fucking fucking boring drag man, you know, all concerned with status,
<v Speaker 1>with you know, impressing your fucking fellow social primates, needing
<v Speaker 1>validation from them for the for your lawn or your
<v Speaker 1>nice car or whatever. Stupid shit. It's just fucking you know,
<v Speaker 1>more bottom of the brain stem shit, lowest common denominator shit.
<v Speaker 1>But there was a car, a car sitting on this
<v Speaker 1>miscuit when I was filming during the day. I was
<v Speaker 1>there during the day, and then I went back at
<v Speaker 1>night because they were louder at night. The cicadas are
<v Speaker 1>loud at night, they're actually singing. But there was a car,
<v Speaker 1>a car when I was there during the day, I
<v Speaker 1>was looking at them across this canal, and he was
<v Speaker 1>just sitting there near this pile of garbage where they
<v Speaker 1>demolished the house and also pushed up bulldozed all the
<v Speaker 1>all the vegetation, and he was just looking for shit
<v Speaker 1>to eat, probably looking for like little lizards or fucking
<v Speaker 1>road and scurrying whatever. Car cars are so cool. How
<v Speaker 1>far north did they go in at Texas? You get
<v Speaker 1>them in Austin, I don't know, probably anyway, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the cicada thing was fucking cool. I'm stoked about that.
<v Speaker 1>Video came out really nice. There Caesada gigas, the giant cicada.
<v Speaker 1>They go all the way down into northern Argentina. I
<v Speaker 1>was hearing them because their call is unmistakable. It's so
<v Speaker 1>incredibly annoying. Their call was in Carreto and Guanajuato when
<v Speaker 1>I was there, and the huisace trees above this small
<v Speaker 1>little canyon where the lafaffred, the fusa and the Strombo
<v Speaker 1>cactus was Yeah, God damn. I love them so much.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy how much joy it fills me with. And
<v Speaker 1>they're just hilarious. They're these weird, harmless bugs. My daughter
<v Speaker 1>was playing with them. They're huge, they're like green and
<v Speaker 1>these beautiful colors. And there were American snout butterflies out
<v Speaker 1>that night too. They had just all been passing through
<v Speaker 1>migrating south, like, it's so fucking cool paying attention to bugs. Now,
<v Speaker 1>I used to never care, never care, wouldn't give it
<v Speaker 1>a second thought unless it looked really weird, and even
<v Speaker 1>then I wouldn't. Now I'm like, oh God, what is
<v Speaker 1>it do in the ecosystem? Is it eating something? Is
<v Speaker 1>it pollinating something? Is it you know, is it using
<v Speaker 1>something as a host plant? Is it living in the ground,
<v Speaker 1>is it living in water? What does it do? You know?
<v Speaker 1>It's like, that's the shit I asked when I meet
<v Speaker 1>a new organism. It's not can I put it in
<v Speaker 1>my mouth and not die? It's just, oh God, that
<v Speaker 1>drives me nuts. I put out a I wrote a
<v Speaker 1>tweet about that today on x on elon musk x
<v Speaker 1>fucking weirdo, fucking rich freak. But I put a tweet
<v Speaker 1>about that today, and uh it was funny. It was
<v Speaker 1>just it was this long tweet. Oh yeah, you know what,
<v Speaker 1>I'll read it to you right now. Okay, here we go.
<v Speaker 1>It was, uh yeah. I look forward to the day
<v Speaker 1>when I hear a lay person learn what a new
<v Speaker 1>plant is and not ask what does it do? Is
<v Speaker 1>it medicinal or edible? The concept of every species in
<v Speaker 1>the biosphere is a vital piece of a living machine
<v Speaker 1>that sustains all of life on Earth. Should be taught
<v Speaker 1>early on. I think like first grade is a good
<v Speaker 1>good time to start. This is more than just corny,
<v Speaker 1>cliched ear candy. The more you learn about every bit
<v Speaker 1>of the living world around you, the more fascinating. Everything
<v Speaker 1>becomes a dense web of connections. Plants, pollinators, dispersers, decomposer's insects, fungi, protus, bacteria,
<v Speaker 1>or keia. Accumulate enough experiences and what remains of the
<v Speaker 1>living world outside of human asphalt and concrete, and this
<v Speaker 1>notion becomes something that underpins an understanding of your own
<v Speaker 1>existence of this world and your slash are irrefutable membership
<v Speaker 1>in and responsibility to it, and that that as innocuous
<v Speaker 1>as that is, still found a fucking way to trigger
<v Speaker 1>someone to write a shitty company, to write a ship.
<v Speaker 1>I had to block some dude after writing this. He
<v Speaker 1>was in he was in Britain. He was He was
<v Speaker 1>like a smarmy British guy, probably with probably a rich kid.
<v Speaker 1>It sounded like, because you can only talk, you can
<v Speaker 1>only behave that condescending and smug to someone if you've
<v Speaker 1>never been popped in the face for actually talking like
<v Speaker 1>that to someone, you know what I mean, like the
<v Speaker 1>people that or you have to have something that's insulating you,
<v Speaker 1>whether it's wealth or you just don't go outside or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>But this guy responded to this. I'm not even gonna
<v Speaker 1>read his response. I have to dig through a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of shit to find it. And he said he was
<v Speaker 1>like smarmy as fuck to someone else too, like some
<v Speaker 1>like innocent guy to comment that he was just you know,
<v Speaker 1>I forget what he said, but it was like harmless
<v Speaker 1>with this guy, this guy that he responded to comment anyway,
<v Speaker 1>but the guy was just smug in a fucking dick,
<v Speaker 1>And I ended up comming to the guy. I was like, man,
<v Speaker 1>you know you're like you probably find a way to
<v Speaker 1>fucking sound the meaning and condescending if you're talking in
<v Speaker 1>your sleep, like how do you not like read the room,
<v Speaker 1>like you don't need to say it, Like you could
<v Speaker 1>be nice, you could fucking whatever. So anyway, he just
<v Speaker 1>he was some at one point too, I said, and
<v Speaker 1>this is kind of funny. I was like he because
<v Speaker 1>he was making it so he was doing like the
<v Speaker 1>poor me thing, like oh, I didn't, you know, the
<v Speaker 1>guy was like an obvious prick, and he sounded like
<v Speaker 1>this a number of times. There were other times he
<v Speaker 1>left something social media's is to fucking toilet in Twitter especially,
<v Speaker 1>of course, But there were other times he had said
<v Speaker 1>something and I was like, oh God, like what is this?
<v Speaker 1>The fuck is this guy? I'm just gonna know, like
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of a dick thing that he the way
<v Speaker 1>that he put it, but maybe he just doesn't, you know.
<v Speaker 1>And then there were other times where it was like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>this guy's being a fucking schmuck. So after five times,
<v Speaker 1>I was just like I said something and I was like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, can you just fucking stuff, like learn some manners,
<v Speaker 1>take your fucking meds. I don't know what it is,
<v Speaker 1>you know, And he had said I forget what he said.
<v Speaker 1>I actually have to look at this. Hold on. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's what it was. I said something. I said something
<v Speaker 1>in response to someone else, like just answering the question
<v Speaker 1>someone had, and uh, you know, I think it was
<v Speaker 1>about whether something's edible. And I was like, yeah, some
<v Speaker 1>of the last thing I ask not really interested. But
<v Speaker 1>you can generally make assumptions. Don't put anything in your
<v Speaker 1>mouth without knowing what something is down a species level ID.
<v Speaker 1>But you can generally make assumptions because certain plant families,
<v Speaker 1>like a post ace, you know, have have chemical synapomorphies.
<v Speaker 1>They certain plant families are known for heaven, for producing
<v Speaker 1>toxic stuff renunculecs, one of them a post and ac.
<v Speaker 1>There's exceptions in every family. There's a lot of members
<v Speaker 1>of the Carrett family like poison, hemlock, water hemlock, uh
<v Speaker 1>coneum meculatum is I think that's his emmaculatum anyway? Uh,
<v Speaker 1>that produced very toxic compounds like ferano kumer. In secondary
<v Speaker 1>chemistry you also get that and rue tasy, but it's
<v Speaker 1>rut tasy. I don't think is jenny generally toxic? But anyway,
<v Speaker 1>there's chemical similarities between various plants and a certain family,
<v Speaker 1>et cetera. And he said something that was just so
<v Speaker 1>fucking smug, And I was like, look, man, why are
<v Speaker 1>you Why do you sound like like, why are you
<v Speaker 1>saying it like that? Can you not that sounds condescending
<v Speaker 1>as fuck? This is like the And he was like,
<v Speaker 1>he responded with I'm just disagreeing with you. It was like, no,
<v Speaker 1>you're not disagreement, you're being kind of a dick, like
<v Speaker 1>can you say it differently? You know? And then he
<v Speaker 1>was like, are you just used to people not arguing
<v Speaker 1>with you? And I was like, people argue with me
<v Speaker 1>all the fucking time. I grew up arguing. I'm a
<v Speaker 1>fucking wop. I lived in a fan like I lived
<v Speaker 1>in a household where people were screaming at each other
<v Speaker 1>one week and then the next week they'd be fine,
<v Speaker 1>playing cards together whatever. Like, it's not that you're arguing,
<v Speaker 1>you're being a fucking dick, like, and then I made
<v Speaker 1>the comment, I was like, what are you fucking autistic
<v Speaker 1>or something? You can't read the room? And then he responded,
<v Speaker 1>which is, you know, I'm probably fucking autistic. I'm I
<v Speaker 1>diagnosed add I'm a fucking nut. But I uh, but
<v Speaker 1>he he did this pearl clutching shit back to me.
<v Speaker 1>He's like, how dare you? You know how petulant? First off?
<v Speaker 1>Who uses words like petulant and you know, accepts accept
<v Speaker 1>some fucking you know, godfree, That's what it's. That's what
<v Speaker 1>it's petulant. Just so petulant. Who calls someone petulant, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like to the you know what I mean, like not
<v Speaker 1>like writing it down, not write like, not like in
<v Speaker 1>a piece of literature, but in a fucking every day
<v Speaker 1>talk who uses words like petulant, like god, shut the
<v Speaker 1>fuck up. Uh. And so anyway, he was, uh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>he's like, what are you? Are you? How dare you
<v Speaker 1>shame people for being neuro atypical? And I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>give it a fucking rest, shut up. I'm like, I'm
<v Speaker 1>one to talk. I'm fucking nuts. I'm out of my mind.
<v Speaker 1>To what do you think? I'm like, you think I'm
<v Speaker 1>I of all people, am shaming someone? No, I generally
<v Speaker 1>think that's a trait. Sometimes autistic people can't read the
<v Speaker 1>fucking room and don't know how they're coming off, or
<v Speaker 1>that they sound like a dicky. You're either that or
<v Speaker 1>you're like a rich kid who's never been popped in
<v Speaker 1>the mouth before for talking down to people. Anyway, the
<v Speaker 1>point was, plus he was just British too, which is
<v Speaker 1>I think that's something they do over there. No offense
<v Speaker 1>to anybody in the UK, you know, no offense to
<v Speaker 1>anybody across the pond. I'm just saying I've noticed there's
<v Speaker 1>cultural traits, especially among the wealthy in that country. They
<v Speaker 1>have a way of talking that comes off as very
<v Speaker 1>very snide and condescending. But uh, anyway, I don't even
<v Speaker 1>know why I started talking about this. I just thought
<v Speaker 1>I just think it was funny. And this guy's like
<v Speaker 1>online anyway. I ended up telling him like he's online
<v Speaker 1>all the time, and I telling him I was like, oh, well,
<v Speaker 1>go fucking miss your orchids or something. Body scram get
<v Speaker 1>out of here. You know you're right, time enough internet
<v Speaker 1>for you. If you can't be nice, log off. All right.
<v Speaker 1>You want to like talk about something or or tell
<v Speaker 1>me something I don't know, or or share an anecdote,
<v Speaker 1>go ahead. But many you start talking like that to
<v Speaker 1>me or anyone else, you can go fuck yourself. So
<v Speaker 1>uh anyway, I forget how I got to talking about this,
<v Speaker 1>but it's fucking amusing. Imagine that. It's just crazy the
<v Speaker 1>way people again, the way the way you behave in
<v Speaker 1>a car or online, like anyone does this. It's it's
<v Speaker 1>so far removed from consequences. It's like it's these such
<v Speaker 1>alienating bubbles. You know, the last thing I wanted to
<v Speaker 1>talk about before I step out, because it's been two
<v Speaker 1>hours already, I'm surprised you're even listening. Still. But uh,
<v Speaker 1>the last thing I want to talk about was I
<v Speaker 1>had stopped at Missouri Botanical Garden when I did that
<v Speaker 1>video on the herbarium, which was incredible. It's such a
<v Speaker 1>fucking great spot to lurk. I could have spent I mean,
<v Speaker 1>that's easily That arbarium is easily a place you could
<v Speaker 1>hang out for a week and not be bored. They've
<v Speaker 1>got plants from all over the fucking world. It's so
<v Speaker 1>so incredible. But uh, I don't know if you if
<v Speaker 1>if you've seen the video that I did, there was
<v Speaker 1>the Czardini collection. This this woman Else's Ardini. She was Argentinian.
<v Speaker 1>She was German, but she moved to Argentina. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know what that was about. If it was like, eh,
<v Speaker 1>anytime you get somebody moving from Germany to the you know,
<v Speaker 1>Argentina or Paraguay, mid century, it gets you know, mid
<v Speaker 1>twentieth century gets a little gets a little hairy. You
<v Speaker 1>know they're they're reasoning for doing so. But anyway, but
<v Speaker 1>it was this whole aisle was filled with her specimens
<v Speaker 1>and it was hilarious because every specimen was just smushed
<v Speaker 1>in there, like it was like no preparation was taken
<v Speaker 1>to press this thing in a way that it was preserved,
<v Speaker 1>you know, in a way that you could see it
<v Speaker 1>at all. It was like it was just literally smushed.
<v Speaker 1>It looks like it looked like salad greens. For these
<v Speaker 1>are barium collections, you know, salad greens had just been
<v Speaker 1>smushed in between two pieces of cardboard on like the
<v Speaker 1>front seat of someone's on the set, you know, so
<v Speaker 1>and God, there was so much stuff there, and a
<v Speaker 1>lot of it wasn't idd yet. I mean, it looks
<v Speaker 1>like for me, it was like a horder nightmare because
<v Speaker 1>you've got all this stuff. You can't get rid of it,
<v Speaker 1>because you never know if there might be an undrescribed
<v Speaker 1>species in there is something valuable, But at the same time,
<v Speaker 1>you can't do anything with it. It would require so
<v Speaker 1>much work and time to go through and and sort
<v Speaker 1>it and organize it and figure out what can be identified,
<v Speaker 1>who is going to be able to identify it, et cetera.
<v Speaker 1>It's just, man, it was like giving me a panic
<v Speaker 1>attack looking at the thing. It was kind of funny.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, I don't know, like if you're going
<v Speaker 1>to put all that time. There were like sixty thousand
<v Speaker 1>collections sixty thousand vouchers that this lady collected that were
<v Speaker 1>never will probably never be mounted, Like they'll never be mounted.
<v Speaker 1>There's no id for a lot of them. There was one,
<v Speaker 1>you know, there was stuff there. Look, I identify a
<v Speaker 1>Perscia while I was there, Like it was obviously Pereskia,
<v Speaker 1>probably pereski a koliata and it had just been labeled.
<v Speaker 1>They see it was you know, it's a vining cactus. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>And it was you know, there was I guess there
<v Speaker 1>was decent data on it, but it was just fucking
<v Speaker 1>just smashed them between these two pieces of cardboard and
<v Speaker 1>thrown in a folder. And then you know, the whole
<v Speaker 1>this whole corridor was just packed on either side with
<v Speaker 1>old specimens. God damn, It's just like, what's gonna happen,
<v Speaker 1>What's gonna happen there? But uh, but the rest of this,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, the rest of the stuff was just I'd
<v Speaker 1>never really gotten a chance to look at the specimens
<v Speaker 1>there either. It's cool. They've got two different buildings and
<v Speaker 1>all the monocots and some other plant families are in
<v Speaker 1>this other building versus the one that I started off filming,
<v Speaker 1>and that's the one that I ended up going to
<v Speaker 1>with Peter Burnhert later and looking up Belowzia's such a
<v Speaker 1>cool genus. Ended up looking up belowsias and hanging around.
<v Speaker 1>And plus you don't time to go to the urbarium.
<v Speaker 1>There's always cool stuff on the walls, cool posters, cool stuff.
<v Speaker 1>It's just a nice place to lurk and hang out,
<v Speaker 1>you know. So uh yeah, I don't know. I think
<v Speaker 1>you can go there by appointment. You have to schedule it.
<v Speaker 1>And definitely if you're you know, a research you're affiliated
<v Speaker 1>with some institution, you can do it. You just have
<v Speaker 1>to schedulely, have to reach out to someone at Missouri
<v Speaker 1>Botanic Garden. But I didn't realize, man, they had seven
<v Speaker 1>million specimens there. That's fucking crazy. It's right up there
<v Speaker 1>with New York Botanica Garden too, which is another huge erbarium.
<v Speaker 1>And I've still never been to Shaw Nature Reserve, which
<v Speaker 1>is west of Saint Louis. It's like a little glade
<v Speaker 1>they've got they've got some native stuff, there's some that's
<v Speaker 1>I guess, there's some parts of it that are a restoration,
<v Speaker 1>and there's other areas that are like the glade areas
<v Speaker 1>are We're never demolished in the first place. I might
<v Speaker 1>be fucking that up. I might be totally wrong, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they've got some really cool plants there. I know, the
<v Speaker 1>these whole this whole section of the country again. I
<v Speaker 1>just it's it's it's been overlooked. I haven't spent much
<v Speaker 1>time there, and there's like big it's like a big
<v Speaker 1>blank spot on the map for me, you know, like
<v Speaker 1>all these other places I've been, I've got, you know,
<v Speaker 1>collections and photographs from these places, you know, all over
<v Speaker 1>the country, but like the north, it's but the Northeast
<v Speaker 1>and the central and a lot of places in the
<v Speaker 1>southeast too, and uh like basically like the holiest coast,
<v Speaker 1>you know, the whole eastern half of the United States.
<v Speaker 1>I got to start spending more time. There's a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of cool shit I want to see in Georgia again. Glades.
<v Speaker 1>I'm really into glades and dry rocky sites and probably bogs.
<v Speaker 1>I could probably do a bog or two, you know,
<v Speaker 1>do get some aquatic stuff. Generally not my thing, though,
<v Speaker 1>I'm much more enthusiastic about the dry sites. See the
<v Speaker 1>coolest evolutionary adaptations there. Anyway, I'll kill it for out,
<v Speaker 1>but Uh. Yeah, I'm gonna be speaking at Cactus Smart. No, No,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not speaking. I'm just gonna have a table selling
<v Speaker 1>some books and shirts and shit like old old T
<v Speaker 1>shirts I gotta gotta unload. I'll probably be selling for cheap.
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna be speaking at San Antonio Botanical Garden. When
<v Speaker 1>is it the September twenty sixth hole in Okay? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I'll be speaking at San Antonio Botanical Garden, giving a
<v Speaker 1>presentation I'm cacked I both from South Texas and South
<v Speaker 1>America on September twenty seventh Friday, September twenty seventh, and
<v Speaker 1>then I'll be at the Oklahoma City Mushroom Fair their
<v Speaker 1>Fungus Festival October twelfth. And there's a slight chance I
<v Speaker 1>might be teaching a class, an enter to botany class
<v Speaker 1>at Sewell Ross University in Alpine, Texas this fall, but
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. I probably shouldn't be doing it because
<v Speaker 1>they've got too much shit going on and I'm burning
<v Speaker 1>the candle at both ends. But it would be really
<v Speaker 1>fun to teach a botany class, and even if I
<v Speaker 1>can get one student to change their major from fucking
<v Speaker 1>whatever they're doing, whatever they're going at school for it's
<v Speaker 1>not as cool as biology and botany. I guarantee, I
<v Speaker 1>fucking guarantee you that even if I could do that,
<v Speaker 1>I will feel like I will have felt like I
<v Speaker 1>actually did something decent uh with uh with this year.
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, that's all I got for today. There'll be
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of videos coming out the Giants Ciccada when
<v Speaker 1>I'm stoked about. I've still got a whole bunch of
<v Speaker 1>videos to edit from a prairie in Cleveland, a cool
<v Speaker 1>site north of Pittsburgh, uh and that kind of shit.
<v Speaker 1>And then I'm supposed to be finishing up this other
<v Speaker 1>book I'm doing, which is fucking driving me nuts, and
<v Speaker 1>that should be done in November, and then after that
<v Speaker 1>I'll be doing a bunch more international trips and traveling
<v Speaker 1>around looking at plants. I want to go to, uh
<v Speaker 1>some ultramaphic sites in Saba, like northern Borneo. I want
<v Speaker 1>to go back to southern Chile. And I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>if you got a spy you could recommend let me know,
<v Speaker 1>you know, maybe it did. Maybe maybe I'll go to Jordan.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe there's some cool stuff. Go see Jimnrena, that weird
<v Speaker 1>monotypic subfamily of Asta racy. Anyway, that's all. I gotta
<v Speaker 1>have a grocery day, Go fuck it up by H