Adam Black is NOT a Permaculture Activist

<v Speaker 1>Okay, all right, hello diabetes. Okay, uh hi, welcome to
<v Speaker 1>the Crime Pays. But Bodany doesn't podcast everybody. Adam Black
<v Speaker 1>is here and he's gonna tell us about his food forest. Adam,
<v Speaker 1>what are you working on with your food forests? I
<v Speaker 1>need to tell everybody what you're doing. Yeah, Adam, don't lie.
<v Speaker 1>There's nothing to be embarrassed about. Okay. You are the
<v Speaker 1>first perma culture specialists we've had on this podcast. But
<v Speaker 1>you know, I want to make you feel a home
<v Speaker 1>and I want you to talk about everything you're doing
<v Speaker 1>in the park. Show tell us what you were doing
<v Speaker 1>in the park. You were planting fruit trees, right, have
<v Speaker 1>no clue what you're talking to Adam. God damn it.
<v Speaker 1>You know what I'm really getting tight? You're drinking a
<v Speaker 1>fucking Coca cola at midnight. You're giving me hell for
<v Speaker 1>starting this. What are you doing? This? Got caffeine and
<v Speaker 1>a pal Okay anyway, okay, hey, listen, listen to you
<v Speaker 1>know what. I know some other things that don't affect you. Eeder, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>let's let's hey tell me what you're doing here. Tell
<v Speaker 1>everybody what you were doing. Why were you why would
<v Speaker 1>you come to West Texas today.
<v Speaker 2>I love West Texas, but uh lookreby, excuse to get
<v Speaker 2>out here. But this particular trip, we were focused on
<v Speaker 2>collecting a rare tree species that only occurs in the
<v Speaker 2>Chisos Mountains of Big Ben National Park Australia. Chisos census.
<v Speaker 2>What's it called the Big Bend hop horn beam. It's
<v Speaker 2>closer related to one of the other kind of western
<v Speaker 2>species Australia and Noltni beams.
<v Speaker 1>They're in beche lec Yeah, for gailees then yeah, the
<v Speaker 1>or okay sorry continue.
<v Speaker 2>Why yeah, And so we're just uh, it's something that's
<v Speaker 2>never been collected very extensively for XC two conservation and
<v Speaker 2>just with increased wildfires and just harsh conditions that continue
<v Speaker 2>to plague West Texas. Here these relics species that are
<v Speaker 2>just confined to these last remaining somewhat moist sites on
<v Speaker 2>these north facing cliffs, canyons and things. They're basically at
<v Speaker 2>high risk of extinction. So we want to be able
<v Speaker 2>to get them preserved in cultivation at the very least,
<v Speaker 2>and they're just in case they may disappear in the wild.
<v Speaker 1>Because you get and it's because you get a lot
<v Speaker 1>of these sky islands, right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean these are all just relics from the
<v Speaker 2>place to scene when this region used to be cooler
<v Speaker 2>and wetter.
<v Speaker 1>And all this stuff was lowered down.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was more widespread, and then as things quickly
<v Speaker 2>on a geologic timescale, just became a desert out here,
<v Speaker 2>these things just retreated into these last remaining cool niches
<v Speaker 2>and these north facing canyons have a little bit of
<v Speaker 2>a water source, and that's basically where they're just hanging
<v Speaker 2>out right now, kind of pissed off and would probably
<v Speaker 2>go naturally extinct if humans weren't accelerating it that much quicker.
<v Speaker 1>So when you say they're pissed up, do you mean
<v Speaker 1>they just kind of look like shit like the oaks
<v Speaker 1>we saw that ain't Fort Davis.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, I mean they're just barely hanging on. They're
<v Speaker 2>i mean, they're still producing seed, but like some of
<v Speaker 2>the oak species that also grow in these similar habitats,
<v Speaker 2>they're even they seem to be at least unhappier where
<v Speaker 2>they're they're just not really producing acorns at all anymore,
<v Speaker 2>and they just are clearly stressed. And I mean we're
<v Speaker 2>seeing things going downhill surprisingly rapidly in just the past
<v Speaker 2>number of decades that I've been out here watching them.
<v Speaker 2>I've been coming out here for at least twenty years,
<v Speaker 2>at least once every year.
<v Speaker 1>How long have you know? Because everywhere I look in
<v Speaker 1>West Texas the oaks look like shit generally speaking, how
<v Speaker 1>long have you noticed that happening?
<v Speaker 2>Well, I mean there's adaptable. There's the species that are
<v Speaker 2>more adaptable than others. It's uh, there's some that actually
<v Speaker 2>are pretty well adapted, at least for the current conditions here.
<v Speaker 2>I mean where their tipping point is as things continue
<v Speaker 2>to get more harsh here, we don't know.
<v Speaker 1>But but when you have years of drought, though, it
<v Speaker 1>starts I mean adaptable or not if you're not getting
<v Speaker 1>any fucking rain.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, like we saw today when we were up in
<v Speaker 2>the Davis Mountains, all the quickes Grissia, which it feel
<v Speaker 2>as a fairly adaptable species. You find them growing in
<v Speaker 2>the more exposed areas, not back in these moist niches,
<v Speaker 2>like these relic species are growing, but they were all
<v Speaker 2>browned up by the extreme drought that the region has
<v Speaker 2>had this year.
<v Speaker 1>And I got a moist nitch for you, am, I
<v Speaker 1>got a moist noche. Anyway, The point. Sorry, I'm sorry,
<v Speaker 1>it's just you know, it's fucking late. We were supposed
<v Speaker 1>to do to six hours ago. But those corks, Grissy
<v Speaker 1>look like shit, and they look like shit here up
<v Speaker 1>on the hill too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean they'll leave out again, but.
<v Speaker 1>They've got a whole second it's there, you know, with
<v Speaker 1>whole segments of their leaves dying.
<v Speaker 2>Right, and it's yeah, I mean they're they're going to
<v Speaker 2>leave out again for now. But yeah, this gets more
<v Speaker 2>and more of a regular thing here. It's going to
<v Speaker 2>just increasingly stress them. And yeah, they're going to go downhill.
<v Speaker 1>It's sad, man, it's fucking so. What what were you
<v Speaker 1>looking for to You're looking for dyke romanthus.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's after but it's pretty. It's widespread in Mexico,
<v Speaker 2>but it barely gets into the US and West Texas.
<v Speaker 1>Why don't you tell everybody what this is.
<v Speaker 2>It's an orchid. It's a terrestrial species that's actually adapted
<v Speaker 2>to fairly dry air conditions. It actually, it and it's
<v Speaker 2>relative Dicramanthus cinembranus, an orange flowered one, actually are fairly
<v Speaker 2>tolerant of the extreme conditions, like some of the orange
<v Speaker 2>ones actually bloom. This year despite the drought. They they
<v Speaker 2>have a pretty thick underground storage organ that they can
<v Speaker 2>basically subside off of and bloom regardless of whether they
<v Speaker 2>get rained that particular year or not. I mean, obviously,
<v Speaker 2>as with we just said with the oaks, that they
<v Speaker 2>surely have a tipping point, but they are fairly adapted.
<v Speaker 2>They don't really need a lot of people think of
<v Speaker 2>orchids as just needing very wet conditions, but there are
<v Speaker 2>desert orchids out there, and so but again, this one
<v Speaker 2>is pretty rare. It's only found a few sites at
<v Speaker 2>least in the US, and so we want to make
<v Speaker 2>sure that we can click seeds of these and get
<v Speaker 2>them backed up in cultivation, get them seed bank, get
<v Speaker 2>living material in collections, and just yeah, because we don't
<v Speaker 2>know when these sites are going to disappear, if not
<v Speaker 2>climate change, development or any sort of other threats that
<v Speaker 2>they may be subject to.
<v Speaker 1>So you would get these tiny seeds and then how
<v Speaker 1>would you germinate them. And I just want to apologize
<v Speaker 1>for how abusive I've been to you all day today.
<v Speaker 1>I love it. I'm sorry, you know, I like it.
<v Speaker 1>I know, but just in case if we were unsure
<v Speaker 1>at any point throughout any of the things I've said,
<v Speaker 1>lots of sexual innuendos. I've made your way, you know,
<v Speaker 1>involving me and you, and I'm sorry about that. But
<v Speaker 1>moving right along, how would you go about germinating some
<v Speaker 1>of these terrestrial organ seeds? You just do it on
<v Speaker 1>a petri dish? Do you use I've gotten Some guy
<v Speaker 1>wrote me an email who was telling me he was
<v Speaker 1>germinating a bunch of native orchids on cardboard and saying that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I forget what he said. Yeah, this method called
<v Speaker 2>the cardboard method.
<v Speaker 1>That right, But what is there a fungal host you're using?
<v Speaker 2>No? No, I mean a lot of people think that.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, of course, we all know that most orchids,
<v Speaker 2>if not all orchids, have their micro rhizolsymbions that they
<v Speaker 2>need for germination, But in cultivating conditions, at least in
<v Speaker 2>a laboratory condition for germination, you don't need the micro rising.
<v Speaker 2>In all cases, many orchids you can grow without as
<v Speaker 2>long as you're providing all the proper nutrients and things,
<v Speaker 2>you can grow them in these control conditions. Yeah, what
<v Speaker 2>do you give them? Sugar, carbohydrates and just other nutrients.
<v Speaker 2>I don't I'm no expert on all the media are botanical.
<v Speaker 2>What's the cardboard method though? You put them in? What
<v Speaker 2>do you? Yeah, I don't. I've read up on it,
<v Speaker 2>but I can't say I remember all the details about it.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, I keep I keep hearing reports of success
<v Speaker 2>with people using it. So it's I mean, it's interesting.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's it's clearly working for people, But I
<v Speaker 2>don't know what the really what the science is behind that,
<v Speaker 2>if and if anybody's really looked into that, and how
<v Speaker 2>anybody came up with that.
<v Speaker 1>I really know you you're growing these at Bartlett? Are
<v Speaker 1>you growing any tress real orchids there?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Yeah, we're just getting started out. I mean we
<v Speaker 2>were working with Longwood Gardens. Peters al up there as
<v Speaker 2>he's a whiz with orchid in vitro seed germination, has
<v Speaker 2>worked out a lot of protocols and he's basically trained
<v Speaker 2>our Bartlett's Botanical Sciences coordinator, an Alice Sander, to be
<v Speaker 2>able to do this in our laboratory. So I kind
<v Speaker 2>of do all the seed collections, hand them over to
<v Speaker 2>her and she works her magic on it. And yeah,
<v Speaker 2>we're just getting started with it, but we've got a
<v Speaker 2>lot of things grown out in the laboratory right now?
<v Speaker 1>Can we talk about something existential? Do you ever wonder
<v Speaker 1>what's the point of any of this, like any of
<v Speaker 1>the stuff that we're into. Maybe it's because it's late
<v Speaker 1>and I'm feeling loose, you know, I've been you know,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what. I don't know what it is.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe it's maybe it's the CBD gummies. Maybe it's uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I've had too much sparkling water.
<v Speaker 2>You can get me any of those. What you didn't
<v Speaker 2>give me a CBD.
<v Speaker 1>I'll give you one later. They someone sent them to
<v Speaker 1>me for free, I'll give you one. But uh, company
<v Speaker 1>sent me. These companies send me this bullshit I don't
<v Speaker 1>even want. And they're like, will you make a video
<v Speaker 1>for us if we send you this? And I lie
<v Speaker 1>and say yeah, and then sometimes I'll do it if
<v Speaker 1>it's cool, but like I say yes with no intention
<v Speaker 1>whatsoever of doing it, you know. And this company sent
<v Speaker 1>me this like hand chainsaw that fucking broke with and
<v Speaker 1>like like an hour of using it, like the fucking
<v Speaker 1>chain came.
<v Speaker 2>Off when you were using yesterday.
<v Speaker 1>No, that's a that's when I actually bought. But no,
<v Speaker 1>it was just complete garbage. It was, you know, like
<v Speaker 1>if not, if it wouldn't have been sent to me,
<v Speaker 1>it would have been sent to the fucking Pacific garbage
<v Speaker 1>patch or something. You know, it's just probably where it's
<v Speaker 1>gonna go anyway. But god, it's depressing, just the amount
<v Speaker 1>of shit. I should start saying, no, but I like
<v Speaker 1>free stuff, and I can always give it away to someone.
<v Speaker 1>So but do you I mean, what do you feel
<v Speaker 1>like philosophically, because I've got my own reasons philosophically for
<v Speaker 1>why I do this stuff, but because I figure, what
<v Speaker 1>the fuck everyone's you know, every what everybody's doing is
<v Speaker 1>kind of meaningless, and it's some way look at these
<v Speaker 1>fucking bankers and you know whatever CEOs horrible shit they're doing,
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't's stupid. It's like they fill themselves with this
<v Speaker 1>sense of purpose like it means anything, But this somehow doesn't.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like, if anything, this kind of shit means
<v Speaker 1>something more than that. This is at least people connecting
<v Speaker 1>with other living, you know, pieces of the world.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, it's just my nature to just go
<v Speaker 2>chase plants, and I love both botany and horticulture, so
<v Speaker 2>I want to get them in cultivation. I want to
<v Speaker 2>get them in the right hands.
<v Speaker 1>You'd be doing this anyway, Yeah, me too.
<v Speaker 2>I have done it anyway. I've worked for a couple
<v Speaker 2>of botanic gardens, and in between those jobs, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I was still doing it and not getting paid to.
<v Speaker 2>It's just it's what I love to do. I'd be
<v Speaker 2>out chasing plants and if there's seeds there, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>why wouldn't I collect them?
<v Speaker 1>All Right? It's fun. That's what I don't get is
<v Speaker 1>people who have this, like, if it's all dying anyway
<v Speaker 1>in the world, is so fucked why do it? That's
<v Speaker 1>doesn't I don't get. I think that's kind of a
<v Speaker 1>fucked way to live, Like, you're only going to do
<v Speaker 1>this if it seems like what what are you expecting
<v Speaker 1>to get some sort of fucking end result.
<v Speaker 2>No, it's fun now, Yeah, I mean it's a good thing.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, it's better than nothing. But sometimes I do
<v Speaker 2>step back and I'm like, well, I mean, I'm not
<v Speaker 2>going to be able to do everything. Everybody else who's
<v Speaker 2>doing similar work is not going to be able to
<v Speaker 2>save everything out there, all the components.
<v Speaker 1>But are you doing it to save it or just
<v Speaker 1>doing it because it feels good to connect with it.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not doing it because I change anything.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, you probably know from our conversations I'm
<v Speaker 2>kind of a pessimist in terms of where things are
<v Speaker 2>going to be going here and catastrophs.
<v Speaker 1>Would you say you're a Cat'm kind of wellastrophist.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I don't know. I just we can get as
<v Speaker 2>much as we can conserve. But I think humans are
<v Speaker 2>always going to be humans and we're gonna continue to
<v Speaker 2>really fuck things up here.
<v Speaker 1>You don't think there's any moving forward as a culture.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know cultural enlightenment, because that's the only way
<v Speaker 1>that people can really move forward. That's what human evolution
<v Speaker 1>is not. Basically, it's evolution of culture. Yeah, but when
<v Speaker 1>you've got eight billion fucking people, it's really hard to write.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I don't see any means of population control
<v Speaker 2>being implemented in the near future here.
<v Speaker 1>But I mean I'm just saying convincing that many fucking people.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Then religion gets in the way too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, and I think think a lot of
<v Speaker 2>people are well meaning, but ultimately, I mean all of
<v Speaker 2>us are hypocrites in some way, shape or form when
<v Speaker 2>it comes to uh wanting to do the right thing.
<v Speaker 1>Right, Like I didn't recycle today. I threw a can
<v Speaker 1>in the garden and then I rubbed one out after
<v Speaker 1>I did it, you know, because.
<v Speaker 2>I felt, I know, I need to see that.
<v Speaker 1>If we're the one paying for it anyway, Nah, I
<v Speaker 1>think that the individual that's all fucking stupid. All that
<v Speaker 1>shit is stupid and it's corny. And then the idea
<v Speaker 1>of doing anything for the sake of hope is fucking corny.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, if if that, if a good benefit comes,
<v Speaker 1>you know, as a result of someone killing their lawn
<v Speaker 1>or whatever, then that's that's great. But the main reason
<v Speaker 1>to do it is because it's fun and it's.
<v Speaker 2>Like a right.
<v Speaker 1>It's like why why draw like I draw a lot?
<v Speaker 1>I'd be drawing if there was no one to fucking
<v Speaker 1>look at it because it feels good. It's therapeutic. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I'm neurotic, I'm weird. I got something wrong with me upstairs.
<v Speaker 1>You know. If that wasn't obvious yet, we all do.
<v Speaker 1>What did you think of that man today in the camouflage?
<v Speaker 1>I love Jesus. Hat did he did he make you
<v Speaker 1>feel a certain way? You were really good at talking
<v Speaker 1>to him. I saw him roll up, and I was like,
<v Speaker 1>this fucking guy is gonna you know, the typical paranoid
<v Speaker 1>textan not once does it ever cross any of these
<v Speaker 1>fucking landowners' minds that maybe you're harmless and just looking
<v Speaker 1>at stuff. How did you feel about him? That went?
<v Speaker 2>Well, you were very good.
<v Speaker 1>That was a pretty You handled him like a fucking
<v Speaker 1>just soft and gooey pile of dough. He was. He
<v Speaker 1>was thankful for you after that. He was thankful to
<v Speaker 1>have met you, if you had a positive effect on
<v Speaker 1>his life.
<v Speaker 2>Interaction in terms of the compared with all the other
<v Speaker 2>folks that we've all run into as we're looking at
<v Speaker 2>plants alongside the road and Texas property owners get all paranoid.
<v Speaker 2>Didn't happen? Why are they?
<v Speaker 1>Why? Why does so paranoid you think?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, it's just it's just the Texas way.
<v Speaker 1>It is.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's that way everywhere to some degree, but.
<v Speaker 1>But it's especially like that here.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's definitely a thing here in Texas.
<v Speaker 1>They want to like stop wave of their figurative dick around,
<v Speaker 1>their non gender specific dick. Could be a woman that
<v Speaker 1>does this, could be a them that if it's if
<v Speaker 1>they're just a Texas landowner, generally Anglo. Perhaps not to
<v Speaker 1>play the race card here, but it generally is a
<v Speaker 1>Caucasian h h. They generally get really upset. They want
<v Speaker 1>to let you know, what are you doing? What do
<v Speaker 1>you think? What do you think? They're paranoia is that
<v Speaker 1>you're you're fucking like stealing, You're gonna steal some shit,
<v Speaker 1>You're illegally hunting, You're gonna take something. I just try
<v Speaker 1>to understand this mentality.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I've never understood it either.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, but it's a thing that happens like you're
<v Speaker 1>not doing anything, You're just on the side of the
<v Speaker 1>road next to someone property, and they come they want
<v Speaker 1>to sniff on you, sniff your crotch like a fucking
<v Speaker 1>police dog.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I don't know if it's just something that over
<v Speaker 2>time has just become the norm that people have to
<v Speaker 2>be that for whatever.
<v Speaker 1>Has been so annoying.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>The same thing happens in Mexico. They're like, what are
<v Speaker 1>you doing? You're like they tell you and then or
<v Speaker 1>you tell them and then they like just leave the
<v Speaker 1>fuck alone, or like fine, we just want to make
<v Speaker 1>sure you're not stealing anything, or they'll fucking hang out
<v Speaker 1>with you for three hours, like happen to me once,
<v Speaker 1>and they're just like you guys have a great that
<v Speaker 1>you make a new friend. Yeah, Now, I mean they're
<v Speaker 1>always so angry here. Why are they so angry? Well,
<v Speaker 1>I mean I thought Trump winning would calm them down.
<v Speaker 2>I've made friends. Just buy through these confrontations.
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes you meet them in there nice, you have like.
<v Speaker 2>A well, they're initially, of course on guard. They've got
<v Speaker 2>their gun right there, clearly visible, and they they get
<v Speaker 2>a little stiffy. They want to make sure that you
<v Speaker 2>know that they have the upper hand. But as long
<v Speaker 2>as you're kind of ease their concerns.
<v Speaker 1>And just what do you say if you look like me?
<v Speaker 1>What do you tell them? What do you tell them?
<v Speaker 1>You say, Hey, hey, buddy, I you got nothing to
<v Speaker 1>worry about. Okay, I am I am here for you.
<v Speaker 1>I'm here to listen to you tell them like that?
<v Speaker 1>What do you say? You say? Let me take you? Say? Hey,
<v Speaker 1>let me take you out for for a good strawberry malt. Huh,
<v Speaker 1>you filth the fuck? That's what you filth? The fuck.
<v Speaker 1>Let's go to a strawberry malt and then we'll go
<v Speaker 1>to church afterwards. What do you tell them? You say
<v Speaker 1>something like that to him, what's good?
<v Speaker 2>I just tell how it is. I'm telling them what
<v Speaker 2>I'm doing and.
<v Speaker 1>H But if you say we're botanists, does that get
<v Speaker 1>them angrier? Do you think that makes them more suspicious
<v Speaker 1>because only a liberal pansy would be into botany, and
<v Speaker 1>that means you're probably trying to like teach their kids
<v Speaker 1>to be trans or something.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, I don't care if they think that.
<v Speaker 1>They don't think that.
<v Speaker 2>I'm make sure not to say that I'm looking for
<v Speaker 2>some rare plant, because that always triggers.
<v Speaker 1>They always get worried about rare plants, even though rare
<v Speaker 1>plants are affording no protection whatsoever in the state of Texas.
<v Speaker 2>They're just no matter what you tell them, they're going
<v Speaker 2>to be convinced that if you find a rare plant
<v Speaker 2>anywhere near their land, the Garment's gonna come either dictate
<v Speaker 2>how they use that land or take their land from them,
<v Speaker 2>which is not true at all.
<v Speaker 1>But what do you think if I had a glue
<v Speaker 1>on mustache that that would like Maybe because a lot
<v Speaker 1>of them have mustaches, maybe that would make them warmer
<v Speaker 1>to me. Maybe they would make them feel like I.
<v Speaker 2>Was, you need a couple hat too.
<v Speaker 1>I thought about carrying a fucking Trump hat or something
<v Speaker 1>just for that, like that Larry David scene, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like just put it on and fucking maybe put in
<v Speaker 1>the dirt a little bit so it looks like it's
<v Speaker 1>seriously excellent. Camo. I don't give a fuck out. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I'm trying to infiltrate. I'm not trying to, you know, showboat,
<v Speaker 1>you know, from my side, I'm just wanting to you
<v Speaker 1>know what I mean.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, more often than that, I think most of these confrontations,
<v Speaker 2>after you ease your concerns, many times they'll be interested
<v Speaker 2>in what you're doing.
<v Speaker 1>You've gotten invite, you've gotten the old.
<v Speaker 2>End definitely many times. Other times, I mean they don't,
<v Speaker 2>and they just will leave you alone after that point.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I've been invited sometimes, and it's always like that,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you just don't talk about any stupid political shit.
<v Speaker 1>I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing these fucking you know
<v Speaker 1>what i mean. But still it's always like this one.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know why they're so angry.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, it's not going to go away, but
<v Speaker 2>so we have to just kind of got to work
<v Speaker 2>with it, navigate.
<v Speaker 1>You just got to learn how to You got to
<v Speaker 1>learn how to grease it. Ye, grease it and live
<v Speaker 1>it up.
<v Speaker 2>Well, yeah, and again you can turn these around into
<v Speaker 2>your favor.
<v Speaker 1>But that's why I'm going to get the Trump hat
<v Speaker 1>and the glue on mustache, and shit, you think that'll
<v Speaker 1>I had my neck.
<v Speaker 2>I think that's the key.
<v Speaker 1>You think that's you. I'll put a scar I'll get
<v Speaker 1>a scar right, I'll get a scarf, and I'll think
<v Speaker 1>I'm one of these Dallas liberals. But then I put
<v Speaker 1>the mustache on in a Trump had and they say, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>he's just weird, but he's one of us. He can't
<v Speaker 1>be that bad.
<v Speaker 2>Yep.
<v Speaker 1>Anyway, all right, well.
<v Speaker 2>Let me know how that goes.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'll try so. Tell me about the last time
<v Speaker 1>you were out here and these these granitic and is
<v Speaker 1>extrusive and intrusive igneous rock fields out here.
<v Speaker 2>Well, it was, I guess less than a month ago.
<v Speaker 1>And what were you doing.
<v Speaker 2>Well, we were coming back from a conference in Arizona,
<v Speaker 2>and we need to check some oak species that we
<v Speaker 2>were hoping would have ripe baccorns on them. Some of
<v Speaker 2>the rare oak species is part of our big research
<v Speaker 2>project going on out here, trying to understand all the
<v Speaker 2>complexities and the red oaks right now is what we're
<v Speaker 2>looking at.
<v Speaker 1>Of which we just get Quirkus gravesy eye and quirkus
<v Speaker 1>and moria.
<v Speaker 2>Well here, there's many more down in uh in the
<v Speaker 2>Cheesos in the cheese because that's the ultimate refuge.
<v Speaker 1>It's the Cheezos is what like an old volcanic system,
<v Speaker 1>right for the most part. Yeah, and it's full of
<v Speaker 1>nooks and crannies and refugeial sites and places to hide,
<v Speaker 1>more music areas. It's got the Arizona Cypress down there too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Yeah, there's and there's a lot going on. I
<v Speaker 2>mean a lot of people look at these oaks and
<v Speaker 2>just even a lot of good botanists will just not
<v Speaker 2>even pay attention to them, just throw up their hands
<v Speaker 2>and say these are too confusing, they're all hybridizing, rather
<v Speaker 2>than just taking the time, like I've done my entire life,
<v Speaker 2>to really immerse yourself in them figure out what's going on.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, yeah, there's hybridization going on, but there is
<v Speaker 2>stability to and a number of things that we're feeling
<v Speaker 2>or are good species that just haven't really been recognized yet.
<v Speaker 2>So we have a big project going on where we're
<v Speaker 2>again tackling the Red Oaks first. We will hopefully get
<v Speaker 2>to the White Oaks as well, because there's another similar
<v Speaker 2>amount of chaos going among that group. But yeah, we're
<v Speaker 2>just doing a lot of sampling, chipping away at the
<v Speaker 2>molecular work, trying to get better data on just hoping,
<v Speaker 2>hopefully backing up what we're seeing in the field in
<v Speaker 2>terms of morphology and ecological distinctions. And yeah, it's opening
<v Speaker 2>up a whole different world than I guess what the
<v Speaker 2>taxonomy we had been going on, which was just based
<v Speaker 2>on botanists maybe sixty eight one hundred.
<v Speaker 1>Years, is based on moreology.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I mean usually the botanists would come out, maybe
<v Speaker 2>spend a few days in the mountains here, and they'd
<v Speaker 2>throw a few names on a couple of things that
<v Speaker 2>stood up to them and move on and go probably
<v Speaker 2>somewhere a little bit more hospitable. But we know that
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot more going on than that. It's just
<v Speaker 2>nobody had really taken the time to study.
<v Speaker 1>This, and it sequenced things especially.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and now that we're looking at things from a
<v Speaker 2>conservation standpoint, we needed to just better understand what is
<v Speaker 2>going on, because there's at least one species, Quircus robusta,
<v Speaker 2>that we all kind of had a sense was probably
<v Speaker 2>just something within the hybrid gradient. And there's other things
<v Speaker 2>that we were seeing that were just like either lumped
<v Speaker 2>in with Quircus gravesy eye just because they kind of
<v Speaker 2>they look close enough to that, and therefore let's just
<v Speaker 2>call it that. When we noticed that they're growing in
<v Speaker 2>like different habitats.
<v Speaker 1>Talking about the limestone gravesy eye versus the regular old
<v Speaker 1>gravesy eye.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so it's been long known by something like the
<v Speaker 2>early I say early, it's like seventies and eighties Native
<v Speaker 2>Texas plantsmen like Lynn Lowry and Benny Simpson. They all
<v Speaker 2>knew that these these things that got called gravesy eye
<v Speaker 2>that grow on the limestone mountains, like in the Glass
<v Speaker 2>Mountains or down along the Rio Grande, that these were
<v Speaker 2>more adaptable to cultivated conditions off limestone, whereas all the
<v Speaker 2>other things that all the other gravesy eye that grow
<v Speaker 2>on the Ignis soil and the rhylite mountains here, those
<v Speaker 2>seem a little bit more touchy when you move them
<v Speaker 2>outside of their native range.
<v Speaker 1>Why normally it's the opposite. Igneous stuff is way more tolerant.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, it's just how it's been working so far.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, I don't know how to.
<v Speaker 1>I think the importance of Michael riise is is is
<v Speaker 1>understated looking at that duff. I was looking at that
<v Speaker 1>madrone today and just fucking fideling the duff and all this,
<v Speaker 1>all the mycelium and heifelstrands that I was, I mean
<v Speaker 1>directly on the roots on like the burrel and the
<v Speaker 1>and you look at you know, the composition of the
<v Speaker 1>duff layer and some of those forests, like the Sky
<v Speaker 1>Island forests, and it's just so fucking rich. It's all
<v Speaker 1>decomposing leaf material, and it seems super specialized. They wish
<v Speaker 1>there were more people studying it, but if they did,
<v Speaker 1>they'd have to get findled by that guy with the
<v Speaker 1>mustache and that Jesus Camo had.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, we were gonna look at a study kind
<v Speaker 2>of on a similar subject involving uh Stuwardia, the geos
<v Speaker 2>Stuartia and Franklinia, which Stuartia, well, Stuartio is in the
<v Speaker 2>Camellia family and native to where it's the east coast. Well,
<v Speaker 2>there's two species in the southeastern US, and then there's
<v Speaker 2>several Asian species.
<v Speaker 1>The southeast eastern China disjunction. What is that? They were
<v Speaker 1>all just going up to the high latitudes, probably right,
<v Speaker 1>because that's too fucking far. Otherwise, huh, it's like some Miocene.
<v Speaker 1>What do you think it was like back then? Amazing
<v Speaker 1>ball me balmy and hot.
<v Speaker 2>I could only dream. I wish I could go back
<v Speaker 2>to the Miocene.
<v Speaker 1>Your horny for the would you say your horny for
<v Speaker 1>the Miocene?
<v Speaker 2>I'm horny for the Miocene.
<v Speaker 1>If that was like a bumper sticker, would you put
<v Speaker 1>that on your work truck right now?
<v Speaker 2>I'm serious, don't. I'm not.
<v Speaker 1>Lie to me.
<v Speaker 2>I'd have to make an exception for that one.
<v Speaker 1>Would I'm horny for the Miacene? I will, But it's
<v Speaker 1>all it takes the Miocene. You don't need to go
<v Speaker 1>What about Oligus Snell when a lot of these volcanoes
<v Speaker 1>were going off?
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I I've always had an interest, didn't paleontology,
<v Speaker 2>and not just paleobotany, but paleo but vertebrate paleontology too.
<v Speaker 2>As a kid, I was weird. I was never I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I like dinosaurs, but I just was much more interested.
<v Speaker 1>In you were in the You were interested in the
<v Speaker 1>mammalian explosion.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, not just the mammals, but all the vertebrates that
<v Speaker 2>all the after the dinosaurs.
<v Speaker 1>After the KT extinction. What are they calling it now?
<v Speaker 1>Is that KT anymore? What's the new word? I don't
<v Speaker 1>give a shit. Who cares anyway? How did you feel
<v Speaker 1>about that? Adam? Tell me how you felt about that big, massive,
<v Speaker 1>extrusive ignus pluton that we saw today. We were scurrying
<v Speaker 1>around some dipshits. I put up a sign that said
<v Speaker 1>no trespassing. That looked like it had blown down. How
<v Speaker 1>can you own a giant fucking pluton like that that
<v Speaker 1>looks just like especially if you're like a kid that
<v Speaker 1>looks so fun to climb on, you're going to tell
<v Speaker 1>people not to go on it, like you're not doing
<v Speaker 1>anything with it. Isn't that absurd anyway? But what did
<v Speaker 1>you think about that? We saw what four different species
<v Speaker 1>of kylanthoid ferns, some nice nooks and crannies. I saw
<v Speaker 1>some stupid shit spray painted on the side of it.
<v Speaker 1>Bovardia was going off.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that was all just in a very after
<v Speaker 2>a long drought and entering winter here. I mean that,
<v Speaker 2>I mean if you go there after a good monsoon
<v Speaker 2>season in August early September, I mean, there's all sorts
<v Speaker 2>of stuff that come up in those between those boulders there,
<v Speaker 2>and so, but yeah, it was interesting to see just
<v Speaker 2>all the xeric ferns that were still had had their
<v Speaker 2>fronds unfurled. There weren't all shriveled up. I mean, getting
<v Speaker 2>a little bit of moisture right now, So that's probably helpings.
<v Speaker 1>Meriaptress when Hammi Mariaptress, Aria Bo Maria Hisp in the
<v Speaker 1>Lena Stanley, A God, it's just everything looks so rough
<v Speaker 1>out here though the drought is so fucking brutal. How
<v Speaker 1>different will it look in a decade or two. It's
<v Speaker 1>crazy how fast you think about that too, Like if
<v Speaker 1>this cut keeps up and it doesn't, rainfall patterns don't
<v Speaker 1>just magically change, not just once, but like a good
<v Speaker 1>sustained decade or two of back to quote normal rainfall.
<v Speaker 1>If that doesn't happen, so many oaks will be gone
<v Speaker 1>and other things will be gone. And you know, if
<v Speaker 1>you were to be born in forty years you'd never
<v Speaker 1>know how different it used to look. Like, complete fucking
<v Speaker 1>shifting baselines just over. I mean that's overnight, that's in
<v Speaker 1>like a span of two human generations.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I mean, it's amazing to see just the ponderosa
<v Speaker 2>pines up here in the Davis Mountains just in the
<v Speaker 2>past five years, how much they've declined it And it's
<v Speaker 2>just just shocking.
<v Speaker 1>The fucking planted cypress trees and alpinal dying too.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, those are just planted in the wrong place.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but well no, they weren't planted in the wrong place.
<v Speaker 1>They were planted at a time when the eighties, when
<v Speaker 1>they were getting actual reliable monsoon summer.
<v Speaker 2>But it's still not optimum conditions for them, so.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I know. But still they were there for a
<v Speaker 1>while without they were there for thirty forty years without
<v Speaker 1>excessive irrigation, and there's still.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's definitely changed. Again. I've been coming out here
<v Speaker 2>for years, and it's I've seen a lot of things
<v Speaker 2>dying that just were flourishing ten, fifteen, twenty years ago.
<v Speaker 1>I wish I wish I knew more about the actual
<v Speaker 1>weather dynamics of West Texas, like where most of that
<v Speaker 1>rain comes from obviously down south, but what is is
<v Speaker 1>there some sort of high pressure zone or a shift.
<v Speaker 1>And because I presumably we're just getting seasonal summer rain
<v Speaker 1>like Mexico would beginning, which would be from the ITCZ,
<v Speaker 1>and it just goes a couple more latitudes to the
<v Speaker 1>north instead of just staying at twenty or twenty one,
<v Speaker 1>it comes up to, fucking what are we here? Twenty eight,
<v Speaker 1>twenty nine, thirty.
<v Speaker 2>I guess, ma'am.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I should have looked.
<v Speaker 2>But should.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's I don't know, but it's been, man, it's been.
<v Speaker 1>It's been like this for a decade at least. Remember
<v Speaker 1>the first time I came out here and everything looked
<v Speaker 1>like shit, Like I it snuck out of that Nature
<v Speaker 1>Conservancy property in Fort Davis to go look at Pinas
<v Speaker 1>suit of strobus, and uh, I was blown away by
<v Speaker 1>how shitty it looked. Everything was just super dry. But anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sorry I interrupted you. We were talking about Stewardia.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, it's.
<v Speaker 1>Like my fucking add has just taken over to my
<v Speaker 1>eight D mindset disjoint. The rambling is forgive me.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, no worries, I just forgot. We were in talking
<v Speaker 2>about that. Yeah, with the stew Ardia, it's kind of
<v Speaker 2>a similar thing to the Madrones arbutis where they're just
<v Speaker 2>have been deemed difficult to cultivate outside of their native
<v Speaker 2>range and even within their native range, and people have
<v Speaker 2>just kind of assumed over the years that it's a
<v Speaker 2>Michael riisal thing that they're just lacking in whatever planting
<v Speaker 2>sites they're forced to grow in. And people have tried
<v Speaker 2>like collecting soil around the root zones of some of
<v Speaker 2>these wild plants and trying to inoculate the planting sites elsewhere,
<v Speaker 2>and nobody's really had any good consistent luck with that.
<v Speaker 2>And with the Stuardia, people claim it's worked. With the arbutis.
<v Speaker 2>I've tried it but never really had much luck, and
<v Speaker 2>when I played around with in eastern Texas. But nonetheless,
<v Speaker 2>I mean with the stuarty Is, especially stewarty and malacadendron,
<v Speaker 2>one of the rare coastal plain species from I think
<v Speaker 2>Virginia kind of spotty all the way down to Florida.
<v Speaker 2>And then we have one little population in East Texas,
<v Speaker 2>which is the westernmost one. It's one that people want
<v Speaker 2>to grow big beautiful white flowers Chamulia like flowers with
<v Speaker 2>purple stamens, with blue anthers, blue pollen, and just really
<v Speaker 2>spectacular when it's bloomin. Just doesn't look like something that
<v Speaker 2>is really native here. But yeah, nobody's able to grow it.
<v Speaker 2>It's just kind of one of those teams deemed ungrowable.
<v Speaker 2>But then you take it up north or up in
<v Speaker 2>the Pacific Northwest and they do totally fine with it.
<v Speaker 1>Really. Yeah, so you don't do you think it's a
<v Speaker 1>micro rhizal thing and they probably a climate thing.
<v Speaker 2>Well that's what's been suspected. But like the thing with Stuartia,
<v Speaker 2>you can germinate them and the same thing with our beautist.
<v Speaker 2>You can germinate them and just regular potting soil that
<v Speaker 2>doesn't have any fungal activity in it, and they'll they'll
<v Speaker 2>germinate just fine, they'll grow just fine in a pot.
<v Speaker 2>But then it's when you transfer them to the soil
<v Speaker 2>that's when they just suddenly kill over.
<v Speaker 1>And that's when you disturb the roots at all. Well, people,
<v Speaker 1>I mean when you repot them here, they fucking.
<v Speaker 2>People have thought that too, where they Yeah, they feel
<v Speaker 2>like just you can't disturb the roots. You get to
<v Speaker 2>like pull the root all out and plant it or
<v Speaker 2>some people are growing them in like the peat pots
<v Speaker 2>where they can just plant the whole peat pot in
<v Speaker 2>there without any soil disturbance. But it never made a difference.
<v Speaker 1>Well, my feeling is they do better when you put
<v Speaker 1>them in the ground, well such a it's a more stable.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm talking from their perspective.
<v Speaker 2>I think they do better out here in West Texas,
<v Speaker 2>but I think a lot of people try to grow
<v Speaker 2>them east of the Edwards Plateau, east of Austin.
<v Speaker 1>Where it's more there's more humidity, and you're going to
<v Speaker 1>be more prone to rot. Yeah, I think it's they
<v Speaker 1>need that protective action of the Michael Rise. Protis them
<v Speaker 1>from other shit, other pathogenic.
<v Speaker 2>And what fuels people I think is there have been
<v Speaker 2>a few successes east of its native range and so
<v Speaker 2>being that it has been proven that it can be
<v Speaker 2>done long term with a few of these individual specimens,
<v Speaker 2>and those specimens were just things that were put in
<v Speaker 2>the ground and it just.
<v Speaker 1>Where have you seen big trees? You said Houston had one.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, there used to be one at Mercer Botanic Garden.
<v Speaker 1>But they died when it died when it got.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, when they flooded during Hurricane Harvey. That was the
<v Speaker 2>end of that one. There's another one in a private
<v Speaker 2>residence in Houston that's been there for a long time.
<v Speaker 2>I think that one may go back to.
<v Speaker 1>How often do you have to go through Houston? If
<v Speaker 1>someone paid you fifty would you live in Houston for
<v Speaker 1>now six months? Fifty grand? I'd maybe do that? Like
<v Speaker 1>you live next to a dollar store in like a
<v Speaker 1>fucking like a Walmart parking lot.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>There was no sidewalks there, but six months fifty grand?
<v Speaker 1>And you had to wear a bathrobe at all times
<v Speaker 1>of the day, like even if you're going to like
<v Speaker 1>a professional event or something. Would you do it? I
<v Speaker 1>don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Probably not.
<v Speaker 1>It's that bad.
<v Speaker 2>Huh yeah, I mean it's a shithole. I can't live
<v Speaker 2>in any city.
<v Speaker 1>What about Fort Worth? Would you live in Fort Worth
<v Speaker 1>for fifty grand for six months? Now for four months,
<v Speaker 1>but with the bathrobe? For three months? With a bathrobe
<v Speaker 1>and a dollar General you had to wear sandals? Would you?
<v Speaker 1>I'm serious? Fifty grand for three months? What the fuck?
<v Speaker 1>I would do it?
<v Speaker 2>No?
<v Speaker 1>X Maybe I wouldn't. I don't know. Oh God, anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sorry, not about the money. It's not.
<v Speaker 2>It's about the remaining scene.
<v Speaker 1>Where are the big sky islands? North of here? You
<v Speaker 1>got the Davis Mountains, Guadaloups, and then a handful of
<v Speaker 1>New Mexico.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, if you're.
<v Speaker 1>Viewing sky islands is biogeographical stepping stones for relict plants,
<v Speaker 1>where would you when where's the next few ones south here?
<v Speaker 2>Well, I mean I think they're less in the way
<v Speaker 2>of islands and more because I mean these are all
<v Speaker 2>just basically where're fucking islands? Well south of here? I
<v Speaker 2>mean there, or I guess looking at it reverse here,
<v Speaker 2>I guess all the sky islands in the southwestern US
<v Speaker 2>are basically just kind of where the Sierra Madre Oxendental
<v Speaker 2>just kind of trickles out there.
<v Speaker 1>They got a big horned sheep in the Sierra del
<v Speaker 1>Carmen with like giant package, like giant bulges, like fucking serious,
<v Speaker 1>like David Bowie in The Labyrinth. Have you seen that
<v Speaker 1>movie when he's the Goblin King and his fucking tights?
<v Speaker 1>Have you ever bought prescription drugs over the counter in Ohanaga,
<v Speaker 1>like even just an asthma and halo or anything? Do
<v Speaker 1>you have asthma? Okay? Anyway, next question, I'm sorry. All right, well, uh,
<v Speaker 1>why do you tell me you were recently in Hellisco?
<v Speaker 1>Let's talk about that. What were you doing down there?
<v Speaker 2>So it was a collaborative project with the folks that
<v Speaker 2>Varta Botanic Garden.
<v Speaker 1>You saw my friend Crystal Ball is working there.
<v Speaker 2>Now, yeah, yeah, he's he was there.
<v Speaker 1>He was working at et Noo Botany Garden or Snowball
<v Speaker 1>Sanchez before that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, and so uh yeah, we uh they actually.
<v Speaker 1>Were you nice to him? You weren't abusive.
<v Speaker 2>I was not abusive to him. I don't think. All right, good,
<v Speaker 2>I'll have to see if he feels similarly, but.
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure, yeah, he's I didn't hear anything negative about you.
<v Speaker 1>That's good. I was surprised. Keep going.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah. They initiated this project looking to collect acorns
<v Speaker 2>of two very localized oak species in Jalisco. There. They're
<v Speaker 2>fairly recently described, and each one is only known from
<v Speaker 2>its own mountain basically.
<v Speaker 1>And this is Sierra Madre occident though, it is, yes,
<v Speaker 1>And so what is the climate like You're like probably
<v Speaker 1>twenty degrees latitude.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, in that area. I mean they were seasonally dry.
<v Speaker 2>They were very distinct wet and dry season dry winter. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and but yeah, we we just basically went out to
<v Speaker 2>collect these two species, Quircus qualensis and quick As two atenses.
<v Speaker 2>And I went to the first mountain where Quircus two
<v Speaker 2>atenses occurred. We found the trees A lot of them
<v Speaker 2>had actually been cut to the ground by wildfire in
<v Speaker 2>recent years. So that seems to be one of the
<v Speaker 2>threats across the board here both here in West Texas.
<v Speaker 1>And so they were so it wasn't development, no.
<v Speaker 2>And I'm not sure if these were like human cause
<v Speaker 2>fires were intended on clearing land or or what. But
<v Speaker 2>but yeah, either way, it definitely impacts these trees. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>they do re sprout, but that's not something that's guaranteed
<v Speaker 2>if we keep entering these long dry spells. If its
<v Speaker 2>conditions aren't suitable for them.
<v Speaker 1>Well, the fucking oaks here aren't even barely producing acorns anymore.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So yeah, that's why it's a priority go collect
<v Speaker 2>these things that are highly localized and get them backed up.
<v Speaker 1>So did you get acorns or were you just doing
<v Speaker 1>cuttings or what?
<v Speaker 2>Well, the first species, we didn't quite know when they
<v Speaker 2>were going to be mature, so we went we made
<v Speaker 2>one trip in late August, and we found we didn't
<v Speaker 2>see any acorns on any of the trees except for
<v Speaker 2>one that had these little, tiny, juvenile acorns, and so
<v Speaker 2>we thought, okay, that's all the production there is us here.
<v Speaker 2>We'll come back in another month and a half or
<v Speaker 2>so and hope that these acorns are mature. And we
<v Speaker 2>did so, and it turned out those acorns ended up
<v Speaker 2>a boarding probably like right after we saw them, because
<v Speaker 2>we found them all on the ground. They hadn't changed
<v Speaker 2>in size. And so we later learned from the person
<v Speaker 2>who described that species that the acorns actually raping in
<v Speaker 2>like July. So we had just totally missed it that year.
<v Speaker 1>So shit, why why would they be so early?
<v Speaker 2>A number of oaks? Yeah makes sense. Well, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>the oak species down there, they're they're they're kind of
<v Speaker 2>staggered for whatever reason. There are some that go as
<v Speaker 2>early as June and other ones that go later in
<v Speaker 2>the fall. Even though they're growing side by side with
<v Speaker 2>each other.
<v Speaker 1>The rains don't even really start till late July or
<v Speaker 1>August or when.
<v Speaker 2>I should know that, but yeah, I don't. I don't
<v Speaker 2>quite remember what the exact seasonal limitations were down there,
<v Speaker 2>But so yeah, we'll be going back next summer and
<v Speaker 2>try to hit them on schedule. Because yeah, when we
<v Speaker 2>came back actually in September, when we were hoping for
<v Speaker 2>the acorns, we actually saw by that point they were
<v Speaker 2>seedlings coming up under the tree from this year's acorn crop.
<v Speaker 2>So that's when we realized that we missed them, and
<v Speaker 2>those few small acorns that we saw were just destined.
<v Speaker 2>They were just still hanging on and had already basically
<v Speaker 2>been aborted at that point. So but we then went
<v Speaker 2>to go look for a quick as qualensus on that
<v Speaker 2>first August trip, and we hit that one perfectly. They
<v Speaker 2>were they had mostly dropped on the ground, but they
<v Speaker 2>hadn't tried out yet, so we collected mostly from the ground.
<v Speaker 2>We prefer collecting from the trees, directly off the trees
<v Speaker 2>before they drop, and we were able to do that
<v Speaker 2>in some cases. But either way, we caught them just
<v Speaker 2>in time. And on my second visit in September, they
<v Speaker 2>already had a wonderful crop of seedlings growing up there
<v Speaker 2>at vitypt.
<v Speaker 1>What elevation was this?
<v Speaker 2>Oh not too high? Well, actually, I'm sorry, the qualensos
<v Speaker 2>those are at a little bit higher elevation. Than the
<v Speaker 2>two attends. Yeah, it had to be at least I
<v Speaker 2>should remember this by.
<v Speaker 1>Dose A thousand meters is like desert.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's at least at an elevation where they're
<v Speaker 2>getting frosts. Three thousand I mean not really much snow covered,
<v Speaker 2>not really snow cover anything from what I was told,
<v Speaker 2>but at the very least they'll get some freezing temperatures.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, it was good that that was a success there.
<v Speaker 1>What was the ecology of these forests, like just super lush?
<v Speaker 1>What covered in epiphytes too?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it depended on the side of the mountain. Iuron,
<v Speaker 2>of course there's windward and leeward side, but generally it
<v Speaker 2>was the dominant trees were pines and oaks, very multiple
<v Speaker 2>species of pines and oaks.
<v Speaker 1>Are a lot of indigenous communities up in the mountains still
<v Speaker 1>people yeah, oh yeah, see, like the communities that don't
<v Speaker 1>even speak Spanish and a lot of Central Mexico.
<v Speaker 2>No, not in this area here. They were just I
<v Speaker 2>mean they were small towns and they may have been
<v Speaker 2>I'm not sure what the makeup was there in terms
<v Speaker 2>of the how much what the what the ethnic makeup
<v Speaker 2>was among them, But.
<v Speaker 1>But there weren't any Slovakians or anything.
<v Speaker 2>No, nothing jumped out to me as anything other than
<v Speaker 2>just typical small Mexican communities up there in the mountains there.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, I mean it's some of those areas were
<v Speaker 2>basically kind of cloud forest almost.
<v Speaker 1>There were epiphytes, any other species that you want to
<v Speaker 1>talk about that tickled your fancied, that got.
<v Speaker 2>You in Jalisco in those forests.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, every time I'm in cloud forests in Mexico and
<v Speaker 1>it's just endless, Yeah, fucking excitement I feel.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, I love apipytes in general. So it
<v Speaker 2>was neat to uh see a lot of the orchids there,
<v Speaker 2>a lot of the We didn't. We didn't hit it
<v Speaker 2>at the right time where a lot of the orchids
<v Speaker 2>were flowering. But I don't care. I really like them
<v Speaker 2>whether they're flowering or not. Yeah, we got there. There's
<v Speaker 2>a one's Amy and one Dio in there, Dion Thomas Ellie.
<v Speaker 2>And they were understory plants or what pretty much. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean they like a little shadier, not too shady.
<v Speaker 2>It looked. It seemed like they were mostly growing in
<v Speaker 2>kind of the light gaps within the forest, like a
<v Speaker 2>little bit of light. But yeah, they we got to
<v Speaker 2>see some of the some really some that had some
<v Speaker 2>fairly tall trunks to them that were pretty ancient. So
<v Speaker 2>it's neat to see, which which is a good thing
<v Speaker 2>because those are subject to poaching. There are people around
<v Speaker 2>the world. Oh yeah, there's a huge illegal trade and
<v Speaker 2>poached psychads, especially those really ancient several hundred year old
<v Speaker 2>ones that have trunks on them that are six feets
<v Speaker 2>high or more.
<v Speaker 1>But it just seems like any time you're trying to
<v Speaker 1>rip something out of the ground, it's gonna fucking die. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and you're just better off collecting seed or getting buying
<v Speaker 1>one from someone who knows what the fuck they're doing
<v Speaker 1>growing seed.
<v Speaker 2>All these species are are easily available in cultivation, but
<v Speaker 2>large specimens are not usually so it's usually some rich
<v Speaker 2>person out there once collection some status symbol of some
<v Speaker 2>gigantic rares.
<v Speaker 1>Most amazing collection. Yeah, it's amazing collections. What else? What
<v Speaker 1>else did you encounter? Any cool epithetic cactus?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we saw some rip salace and what's the other
<v Speaker 2>climbing one? I can't think of it right now. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>Picarnia my favorite vermelia genus.
<v Speaker 1>Why is it your favorite? Why are you showing favoritism
<v Speaker 1>towards me?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>That's the only genus to make it out of I
<v Speaker 1>guess Americas without human help.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I guess it's not my absolute favorite. I can't
<v Speaker 2>really have favorites, but it's definitely up there. I've always
<v Speaker 2>been drawn to that genus for whatever reason. I don't
<v Speaker 2>like all the other more popular I mean, I like them,
<v Speaker 2>but I'm just not into all the ecmeas and neoroogilia's
<v Speaker 2>and the things that people tend to commonly grow.
<v Speaker 1>What Piccarnia species did you see?
<v Speaker 2>It was something that maybe an undescribed species. It gets
<v Speaker 2>lumped in with some other species, and I don't remember
<v Speaker 2>what that was, but I think the consensus was that
<v Speaker 2>is likely a new speak. It will likely prove to
<v Speaker 2>be a new species with further research, but until then,
<v Speaker 2>nobody's really taken a close.
<v Speaker 1>Where said new oak described? Don't want a new oak
<v Speaker 1>that would describe where's it from? That shit out shoot?
<v Speaker 1>Was that wahaka? What was then? Begin with a P?
<v Speaker 1>I don't remember, God damn it.
<v Speaker 2>I just read this a few weeks ago, but the
<v Speaker 2>paper a few weeks ago, I have I hope. I'm
<v Speaker 2>even right with it being in Anwahaka, but.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think it was.
<v Speaker 2>I'm questioning myself. I don't, I don't.
<v Speaker 1>Know, I have man, I got the hold on where
<v Speaker 1>the ship was this? Let me send you some broken
<v Speaker 1>tools and you can make us a video on them.
<v Speaker 1>Did you like that? Oh, Andrew Hipson me is a
<v Speaker 1>PDF of his book? I forgot about that. What was this?
<v Speaker 2>Yes?
<v Speaker 1>They sent me a fucking veg composter that was kind
<v Speaker 1>of nice. You know, it's like kind it's kind of ridiculous,
<v Speaker 1>like you put shit in there and it grinds it
<v Speaker 1>up and turns it into it so that it doesn't rot.
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of it's kind of ridiculous too, But this
<v Speaker 1>is actually nice. This is an appliance I might take home.
<v Speaker 1>Put some stickers on it. Where the fuck is this oak.
<v Speaker 2>You mentioned? Andrew Hippy's the one doing our molecular work
<v Speaker 2>with our West Texas oaks here.
<v Speaker 1>I hope none of these professionals are going to be
<v Speaker 1>listening to this episode and listening to me verbally acost
<v Speaker 1>to you. Wait, what is hold on? New Quirk is?
<v Speaker 1>What the fuck was the new species?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know it was cool though, but.
<v Speaker 1>I want to just so people can look it up.
<v Speaker 1>You know, No, it wasn't a TARTI folio comes up
<v Speaker 1>and then news Yeah I can't remember Jesus Christ. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it was such a cool one. Quirk is barn Kinna.
<v Speaker 1>Where was that? Anyway? Where are you going now? Where
<v Speaker 1>you're going to Uruguay?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'll make a return trip there this winter. I
<v Speaker 2>went there for my first time last year, and yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's just one of those places I think not made
<v Speaker 2>people really focus on in terms of the flora there.
<v Speaker 2>I was quite amazed at the diversity of things like
<v Speaker 2>the Mertesi just a family I've always liked. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I like so many things. So I don't know why
<v Speaker 2>I say that.
<v Speaker 1>But quirk is peripetya. That's it. Yeah, p U r
<v Speaker 1>h E p e c h A. Once you looked
<v Speaker 1>at up guys in final texts and you could steal
<v Speaker 1>the article on SIHO.
<v Speaker 2>Sorry go ahead, Yeah, that's right. No, but just looking
<v Speaker 2>at general collecting, especially in some of the some of
<v Speaker 2>the more.
<v Speaker 1>Old biopiracy so you can pat in your new pharmaceutical company.
<v Speaker 1>I know about you. What do you think? I liked it?
<v Speaker 1>It was quite interesting. The diversity. I was the fucking
<v Speaker 1>land clearance.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean there's all sorts of different habitats around
<v Speaker 2>the We did a big loop around the country and.
<v Speaker 1>Did you go to any dry habitats or was it?
<v Speaker 1>Is it pretty music?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? A lot of it was dry, or at least
<v Speaker 2>seasonally dry. A lot of it's very open. But then
<v Speaker 2>you get down in these drainages and it's more forested,
<v Speaker 2>and I was actually amazed. And a lot of the
<v Speaker 2>places just learning how cold it gets. I mean I
<v Speaker 2>knew they would get frosts here and there, but just
<v Speaker 2>hearing from some of the locals, they're just how cold
<v Speaker 2>it actually gets quite impressed, and it gives me hope
<v Speaker 2>that we can actually grow some of the stuff outside
<v Speaker 2>rather than I mean at least down in the teens
<v Speaker 2>fahrenheit and some of those.
<v Speaker 1>And so I saw that nice backers, all sorts of
<v Speaker 1>neat with the winged stems.
<v Speaker 2>What is yeah? Oh what is that?
<v Speaker 1>See? This is why I need to do species refreshers
<v Speaker 1>every every few months.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I can't wait to be done with this fucking book. God,
<v Speaker 1>I fucking hate the publisher, not not not Quarto, the
<v Speaker 1>other one.
<v Speaker 2>But that's what blew me away. Down there was just
<v Speaker 2>the diversity of Bacharus. I've always liked that genus. A
<v Speaker 2>lot of people think they're just weedy things, especially in
<v Speaker 2>the US, but they're not weedy.
<v Speaker 1>They're amazing big olv today. Yeah, I didn't even check
<v Speaker 1>the range on that. That was a weird looking.
<v Speaker 2>Back or as Jesus Christ, But yeah, there were several
<v Speaker 2>species down there, like you said, that have the very
<v Speaker 2>few actual leaves on them, and they're mostly just have
<v Speaker 2>these winged stems that are the remain photosynthetic structures. There
<v Speaker 2>were like prostrate ones, just ones growing flat on the
<v Speaker 2>ground forming carpets near the beach that were really neat.
<v Speaker 2>I worry about those, just like bringing those in the
<v Speaker 2>country and growing those just because they have a tendency
<v Speaker 2>to be weedy. I'm always kind of loose worried about
<v Speaker 2>astra seed things. I mean, some things we do for
<v Speaker 2>at least things of conservation importance. We will still collect
<v Speaker 2>seeds and either seed bank them or else grow them
<v Speaker 2>in controlled conditions, or grow them or share them with
<v Speaker 2>the garden somewhere where they're not going to get out
<v Speaker 2>of hand. We don't necessarily keep everything in our collection at.
<v Speaker 1>Bartlet, You're going to ecological gurge in the Southeast.
<v Speaker 2>We're always very sensitive about trying to not be the.
<v Speaker 1>You know, the Southeast. It's kind of a just ecological
<v Speaker 1>scourge anyway, it's a collapsed I'm sorry, I'm just kidding.
<v Speaker 1>That's that's a very ignorant statement.
<v Speaker 2>I'm just trying it it is. I mean, it was
<v Speaker 2>very depressing when I moved.
<v Speaker 1>From the Hocky death called Land at first Adam, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's where they first got to work.
<v Speaker 2>It was very depressing when I moved from Texas to
<v Speaker 2>North Carolina. I mean, I'm from Florida, and then I
<v Speaker 2>moved to Texas and I got kind of, I guess,
<v Speaker 2>complacent when I lived in Texas here because I still
<v Speaker 2>complained about things. But then when I went to North Carolina,
<v Speaker 2>I realized how bad things really are there, mainly because, like,
<v Speaker 2>at least here in Texas, we still have like roadside
<v Speaker 2>prairie remnants and just cool plants just alongside the road.
<v Speaker 2>Just driving around, you can find all sorts of stuff
<v Speaker 2>if you know where to look. They don't, oh, they
<v Speaker 2>spray the shit out of it. The roadside are just
<v Speaker 2>deserts and idiots. I found recently. Uh why, Yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>don't know. They spray, they spray, they mow like crazy,
<v Speaker 2>and yeah, it's just basically stray her side, fucking and
<v Speaker 2>the yep. And I mean even to begin with, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>so much of other than in the mountains, basically everything
<v Speaker 2>in the Piedmont and the coastal plain, everything's just been
<v Speaker 2>cultivated for so long. Everything's been tilled at some point.
<v Speaker 1>Well, Honky death cult got to work there three hundred
<v Speaker 1>years before they got to work on Yeah, so very
<v Speaker 1>California in the West coast. Fuck man, So.
<v Speaker 2>Almost all of it had been agriculture at some point
<v Speaker 2>in history.
<v Speaker 1>And what a shiit hole. Yeah. See, that's why I've
<v Speaker 1>had so little interest. I'm pissing off like a huge
<v Speaker 1>contingent of the United States. But if you live there,
<v Speaker 1>you got to be honest. You know, I grew up
<v Speaker 1>in Chicago. It's kind of a shit ale I was
<v Speaker 1>honest about. I still love it, I mean, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>what a fucking I have long. I mean, Alabama seems
<v Speaker 1>incredible there, seems like there's some incredible shit there, Like
<v Speaker 1>they got their own chestnut species, they got but there's man,
<v Speaker 1>so much of the whole area is just fucked. And
<v Speaker 1>then there's just like the Jesus shit. You're just getting
<v Speaker 1>slapped around with the fucking Jesus dildo everywhere you go,
<v Speaker 1>like everywhere you meet people on the street, yep, and
<v Speaker 1>God bliss you Jesus living fucking billboards everywhere, just like endless.
<v Speaker 1>That's so depressing. And I got nothing against Jesus. Seemed
<v Speaker 1>like he was probably a pretty cool guy, right, but
<v Speaker 1>his followers are fucking Cretans a lot of the time.
<v Speaker 1>So I've noticed I've met some really wonderful then, like
<v Speaker 1>Bill Cotman, you know people whatever. You know. Bill Cotman
<v Speaker 1>was the preacher who lived across the street from me,
<v Speaker 1>who knew I was in here doing you know, weird
<v Speaker 1>goofy psychedelics and fucking you know, shooting deer in my
<v Speaker 1>underwear and shit, and never fucking never called me in.
<v Speaker 1>And then he made a remark that I approved of,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I was like, Okay, this guy's on the
<v Speaker 1>same level. But not everyone's. Like some people, some really
<v Speaker 1>religious people just get weird. And it's depressing too, because
<v Speaker 1>I think you see the level at which someone's been
<v Speaker 1>duped so hard and just kind of giving up such
<v Speaker 1>a large part of their intellectual capacity to this thing.
<v Speaker 1>Not everyone does it. You can be religious as hell
<v Speaker 1>and also be really cool and have high intellect and
<v Speaker 1>believe in science. But it's just God, it's just so
<v Speaker 1>depressing and it's just such an obvious tool to control people.
<v Speaker 1>You know. That's what's really upsetting to me. I think,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, just such a waste of human potential
<v Speaker 1>hashtag not all religious people, you know, I'm just putting
<v Speaker 1>that out there, you know, I'm just saying, but well,
<v Speaker 1>let's continue bashing the South at them. So what do
<v Speaker 1>you think anyway? But so you're the ecological degradation is real,
<v Speaker 1>is what you're saying?
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, I mean a lot of people, like in
<v Speaker 2>the Carolinas don't even realize what the land used to
<v Speaker 2>look like in that area, especially complete shifting baselines, especially
<v Speaker 2>in the Piedmont area. They're like Charlotte up to Rawley, Durham, Aria,
<v Speaker 2>just all the prairies that used to exist.
<v Speaker 1>Is it as much of a fucking mess with private
<v Speaker 1>land too, Like there's just no access, Like you got
<v Speaker 1>this feudalistic style of where like the people are completely
<v Speaker 1>cut off from the land.
<v Speaker 2>Not as bad, it's I mean there's a number of
<v Speaker 2>public parks and things like that, nature preserves, things like that,
<v Speaker 2>but I mean they're really not what they used to be.
<v Speaker 1>But there's no public land get out west, no where
<v Speaker 1>you can or anything like that. Twenty miles right.
<v Speaker 2>The most you have there, just like national forests and
<v Speaker 2>some of the larger state parks.
<v Speaker 1>And how badly is the national forest invaded with invasive species?
<v Speaker 1>And fire suppression got the fucking ticks too. The fire
<v Speaker 1>suppression really fucked the East coast.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, mainly in the coastal plain.
<v Speaker 1>But the tick thing, especially fire suppression, that was one
<v Speaker 1>of the worst effects of fire expression was just a
<v Speaker 1>huge overabundance of ticks like that is a that is
<v Speaker 1>an ecosystem and complete whack. Yeah, you got that many
<v Speaker 1>fucking ticks.
<v Speaker 2>I give them all the time. I mean, I can't
<v Speaker 2>believe I haven't got any tick born illnesses yet.
<v Speaker 1>Normal. It's not normal to have that many fucking ticks. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>you stop burning for a century? What is it? It's
<v Speaker 1>all the coke you drink. Why don't you drink diet.
<v Speaker 2>At least I can't take I can't dan diet.
<v Speaker 1>What the taste or what?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Or the ideology of diet. Is it the ideology of
<v Speaker 1>diet coke that makes you?
<v Speaker 2>I just it gives the Why.
<v Speaker 1>Don't you drink Stevia's soda?
<v Speaker 2>I don't like that.
<v Speaker 1>I drink sparkling water with a fucking cucumber and a lemon. Hm,
<v Speaker 1>I can drink that. What that I get a soda stream?
<v Speaker 1>I brought one up here.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I just I can't drink the diet sodas or just.
<v Speaker 1>It's better than the fucking high fruit those.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I get instant headaches from what is it
<v Speaker 2>that aspartame or whatever is?
<v Speaker 1>I get instant headaches from that. That shit gives me. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I mean you're better off just not drinking any of
<v Speaker 1>that shit.
<v Speaker 2>I definitely don't drink as much as I used to.
<v Speaker 1>What about Zvo? Would you try Stevia soda? I don't
<v Speaker 1>know why not. I'm gonna What if I bought you
<v Speaker 1>a case, I'll drink it. What if I bought you
<v Speaker 1>a case, gave you fifty grand and said that you
<v Speaker 1>have to live where we? Where was it? Where we?
<v Speaker 1>Where was it? We? Houston? Fucking Louisville, Texas? You would
<v Speaker 1>you live in Louisville? It seems like a nice community,
<v Speaker 1>a nice little bedroom community. Okay, well let's keep moving on, Adam,
<v Speaker 1>because I don't have time for your silly questions and
<v Speaker 1>games and ship. What the fuck? Where are you going next?
<v Speaker 1>You're going to Uruguay in January? Yeah, when you go
<v Speaker 1>to the Philippines again.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, because that project is uh, that was
<v Speaker 2>part of a five year grant funded project that is
<v Speaker 2>basically ended this past year, and so I know the
<v Speaker 2>the p i's with that projector were reapplying for additional
<v Speaker 2>funding to continue it. So that's kind of.
<v Speaker 1>When are you going back to Mexico July?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Got it? I want to go. Let me come with you.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well they wanted you down, so I was supposed
<v Speaker 2>to go with us.
<v Speaker 1>Fucking I should be in fucking Wahaka right now, assholes,
<v Speaker 1>fucking Gabrielle and talking to you, you sensitive fucking jelly men.
<v Speaker 1>Looking at he's posting Fokiria purpussii photos. Now it's blooming.
<v Speaker 1>Now it hurts. It really feels bad to see. I'm
<v Speaker 1>just kidding. I'm fucking happy as out for you. But
<v Speaker 1>that seems like such an amazing species, those limestone growing
<v Speaker 1>on these limestone shelves. You could see the rock just
<v Speaker 1>e roaded. You could see it, the fucking dimpling caused
<v Speaker 1>by the rainfall. And some of these they're dry as
<v Speaker 1>hell right now, but they get summer rain. Would you
<v Speaker 1>go to Wahaka with me? Ever?
<v Speaker 2>I'd love to go there?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Could? We could eat Chapelinais and chapolinais and uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, go to the pharmacy, right, we'll go raid
<v Speaker 1>the pharmacy together. What are we gonna do? Viagra and
<v Speaker 1>asthma and Hayler's baby. That's that's all. Well, that's we'll
<v Speaker 1>just whoa be up all night, just you and me. Huh,
<v Speaker 1>Jack can watch.
<v Speaker 2>I don't need viagra yet.
<v Speaker 1>But what if you took like nine just for ships
<v Speaker 1>and giggles.
<v Speaker 2>I have no clue.
<v Speaker 1>You had an erection that lasted for sixteen hours?
<v Speaker 2>Not supposed to last for more than four hours.
<v Speaker 1>That's supposed to you have to go to the doctor.
<v Speaker 1>Where did they? Where did they? What did they synthesize
<v Speaker 1>that on? Wasn't it based on some sort of spider compound?
<v Speaker 1>Maybe I'm getting this confused. There was a there was
<v Speaker 1>if there was a spider that would bite you and
<v Speaker 1>it would give you an erection for it would dilate
<v Speaker 1>your blood vessels. I forget what it was. You know,
<v Speaker 1>it's getting late. I think we'll wrap it up, but
<v Speaker 1>I want to thank you for being willing to have
<v Speaker 1>this conversation with me, and I mean we have the
<v Speaker 1>hard conversations, you know. I know. Anyway, so you've been
<v Speaker 1>coming out to West Texas since you were five.
<v Speaker 2>Well, that was my first trip and it really had
<v Speaker 2>an impact on me and never made it out again
<v Speaker 2>until I was in my teens and had my first vehicle,
<v Speaker 2>and just as soon as high school was up, I
<v Speaker 2>just made it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. How the fuck did you end up in Texas? Man?
<v Speaker 2>So I was working at the University of Florida for
<v Speaker 2>Jason Smith, managing his forest pathology lab, and I was
<v Speaker 2>totally happy there, not really looking for a job. And
<v Speaker 2>then what was Peckerwood Garden in Hempstead, Texas? Created by
<v Speaker 2>John Ferry and Carl Schoenfeld. Basically John Ferry his personal
<v Speaker 2>garden of just all sorts.
<v Speaker 1>Of That was how you ended up? Was it Peckerwood?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was just basically his garden of all these
<v Speaker 2>wild collected Northeast Mexican plants just through his one hundred
<v Speaker 2>plus trips down into the Sier Madre Oriental.
<v Speaker 1>Was he went on with my friend Martin Grantham.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, have you ever met Martin? Not in person?
<v Speaker 1>I love that guy.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I need to love to see his collection one day.
<v Speaker 2>But but yeah, I ended up long story short, just
<v Speaker 2>when they transitioned from being a private to public garden.
<v Speaker 2>I was the first director there and worked there for
<v Speaker 2>several years. And now I work at Bartlett Tree Research
<v Speaker 2>Laboratories in Iarbretam and Charlotte, North Carolina. That's part of
<v Speaker 2>the Bartlett Tree Experts Company, which a lot of people
<v Speaker 2>don't make the connection between what I do with them
<v Speaker 2>and conservation work and stuff like that and how that
<v Speaker 2>relates to a tricer company, because that's what Bartlet Tree
<v Speaker 2>Experts is in most major cities, and they're in Canada
<v Speaker 2>and the UK. But uh, but yeah, I mean we
<v Speaker 2>we do a boord culture research and but it's because
<v Speaker 2>the owner is cool. Yeah, mister Bartlett. He's a he's
<v Speaker 2>a total plant geek and he's very supportive of both
<v Speaker 2>horticulture and botany, and so we are expanding into botanical research.
<v Speaker 2>Analyst who I mentioned earlier is our first step in
<v Speaker 2>that direction. So she's doing a lot of molecular work, Yeah, doing.
<v Speaker 1>Taxonomic crushing up plants work. Yeah, growing primers in there
<v Speaker 1>and putting them in a thermal cycler and yep.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, her main project's working with the genus critigues
<v Speaker 2>right now, genus nobody really likes, but is totally uh
<v Speaker 2>understudied and full of all sorts of conservation priorities. So
<v Speaker 2>it's the work is kind of necessary.
<v Speaker 1>Any any boring plant can still serve as a cool model.
<v Speaker 1>They're not boring at all, I know, but I'm just saying,
<v Speaker 1>any even if it was, even if it theoretically was,
<v Speaker 1>it could still serve as a cool model for how
<v Speaker 1>things evolve and specip and fucking end up with weird
<v Speaker 1>distributions and get restricted to certain niches or certain regions
<v Speaker 1>or sky islands or fucking lowlands or whatever. But you've been,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you've been basically doing this your whole life,
<v Speaker 1>just looking at it and fossils and cool shit, and.
<v Speaker 2>Just it's my nature. I wouldn't be when I was
<v Speaker 2>between jobs, between working at the garden in Texas and
<v Speaker 2>Bartlett here. I mean, I was just kind of working
<v Speaker 2>doing my own doing my own thing. I just had
<v Speaker 2>a botanical slash horticultural consulting business and it jobs just
<v Speaker 2>kept falling into place. I never needed to advertise myself,
<v Speaker 2>which was nice, but I mean I was still around
<v Speaker 2>those paid jobs where I still got to get out
<v Speaker 2>in the field. I was doing plenty of weather things,
<v Speaker 2>just totally unpaid. And but you'd be.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you do this out of passion and then
<v Speaker 1>just find a way to make it work for you. Definitely,
<v Speaker 1>it's just like the same thing I'm doing. Yep, just
<v Speaker 1>like being around the stuff, and I got an endless
<v Speaker 1>hunger for knowledge about it.
<v Speaker 2>Never be able to survive in a traditional job.
<v Speaker 1>Why is unrelated to this, but why does so much
<v Speaker 1>of horticulture just suck ass? Like so much of modern
<v Speaker 1>horticultures so thoroughly depressing and disconnected from anything related to ecology,
<v Speaker 1>any kind of perspective, Like just based on these really
<v Speaker 1>goofy ideas about what is esthetically pretty and it's not
<v Speaker 1>even pretty. Looks like garbage, it looks like shit. You'd
<v Speaker 1>you know, you think like the home despot garden section.
<v Speaker 1>I think of just corny ass plants, like ugly shit
<v Speaker 1>like things I want to vandalize just on principle, like landscapes.
<v Speaker 1>I liked vandalizing when I was like eleven. You know, yes,
<v Speaker 1>I did a lot of vandalism when I was eleven
<v Speaker 1>years old. You just sneak out at night and set
<v Speaker 1>stuff on fire. No one's home, nothing like that, but
<v Speaker 1>just you know, or garage or anything like that. No buildings.
<v Speaker 2>But you know what I mean, Well, I mean I
<v Speaker 2>see a change with that. I mean, we went through
<v Speaker 2>this whole house plant craze during COVID and the varrogated
<v Speaker 2>monster is and all that crap. But forgive me for
<v Speaker 2>those people that like that stuff.
<v Speaker 1>But I variegated plants that's like lowest common denominators. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>because it's not interesting enough on its own. You got
<v Speaker 1>to make it look weird and fucking.
<v Speaker 2>But I've seen that as a gateway for some people.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, sure, I mean, but still I went.
<v Speaker 2>Through a phase two where I like some of the God.
<v Speaker 1>Oh of course it's still the same thing four years.
<v Speaker 1>Four years later when they're in the other ship, they're like, god,
<v Speaker 1>I was in the lame ship. That was in the
<v Speaker 1>lame fucking you know. It's like, but a.
<v Speaker 2>Few people do it is the gateway for them when
<v Speaker 2>they do branch out. So I think that's still a success.
<v Speaker 2>And yeah, you can just get more people, especially the
<v Speaker 2>younger folks, because for a while there it was really
<v Speaker 2>just a lot of the plank cakes were only these
<v Speaker 2>old people that.
<v Speaker 1>Were old white guys, white people well I mean white
<v Speaker 1>they thems Kaji, old white, theay, thems.
<v Speaker 2>Pretty much it was all old people. They're all dying off,
<v Speaker 2>and everybody was wondering who's going to continue this made.
<v Speaker 1>It so so inaccessible. It's it's just it's just science too.
<v Speaker 1>It's such a cool I mean, it should be for
<v Speaker 1>fucking everyone when it's just a you know, but then
<v Speaker 1>when you try too hard too, then you get the
<v Speaker 1>like the guilty white liberal like why are we not
<v Speaker 1>divers enough? Why are we not? And then they try
<v Speaker 1>too hard, and then they just get more fucking white
<v Speaker 1>and lame and annoying. Now they're just trying to to perform.
<v Speaker 2>Well. The other problem too, is for those people that
<v Speaker 2>do want to get into the field, and the horticulture
<v Speaker 2>field at least, I mean a lot of the programs
<v Speaker 2>are just very basic. They're just teaching it to grow.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's a little bit more master master gardener.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, they can get a master gardener's certification. Okay, here, listen,
<v Speaker 1>someone paid you fifty thousand dollars to go through like
<v Speaker 1>six months of master gardener's certification with some of the
<v Speaker 1>lamest people. Imagine what would you do it? No? Really, no,
<v Speaker 1>one hundred thousand dollars.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>One hundred thousand dollars and you had to fillate the
<v Speaker 1>person who was teaching the Well.
<v Speaker 2>In that case, I'm definitely doing it. Yeah, right, But anyway,
<v Speaker 2>the hot culture programs, I mean, the kids come out
<v Speaker 2>basically being able to grow a maregold or squash or
<v Speaker 2>something and think they know everything, when unfortunately they just
<v Speaker 2>are not getting a good, well rounded horticultural education from
<v Speaker 2>some of these programs. There are definitely good programs out there,
<v Speaker 2>but I'm saying it time and time again, we get
<v Speaker 2>applicants like for our Breedom all the time, and just
<v Speaker 2>these people that clearly just don't know anything.
<v Speaker 1>Horticulture is just thinking about everything that's going out with
<v Speaker 1>a plant, picturing it in your head and learning.
<v Speaker 2>How to read it. Well. What bugs me too is
<v Speaker 2>that it's.
<v Speaker 1>Learning if it's chlorotic, if it's sick, if it's not
<v Speaker 1>yeah looking hot.
<v Speaker 2>And what bugs me is these people just I don't
<v Speaker 2>see the passion in them. They feel like this is
<v Speaker 2>a good, cool career to go into and they like plants, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but they're just not using their own initiative to take
<v Speaker 2>things out.
<v Speaker 1>They want to grow food forest. Did you you've never
<v Speaker 1>grown I'll be honest, I'm not going to make funny.
<v Speaker 1>You ever grown a food for us?
<v Speaker 2>I have never?
<v Speaker 1>Did you ever talk about wanting to grow from?
<v Speaker 2>Never has never crossed my mind.
<v Speaker 1>You never thought, hey, that'd be a really cool idea
<v Speaker 1>to like go plant fruit trees and the hell strip
<v Speaker 1>between the sidewalk, and really, I'm not gonna make fun
<v Speaker 1>of you. It's not I'll delete this portion of the podcast.
<v Speaker 2>I will. I will gladly admit if I if it
<v Speaker 2>ever crossed my mind, you were never into permaculture. I
<v Speaker 2>was never.
<v Speaker 1>Were you ever into like what why? I don't understand
<v Speaker 1>why you're laughing right now? Were you ever into rejuvenating
<v Speaker 1>complex agricultural systems? Now? Were you ever in two? Did
<v Speaker 1>you ever make never mind? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I
<v Speaker 1>just wanted to know. I want just poking around in there.
<v Speaker 1>I'm just poking around and digging in there wanted to see.
<v Speaker 2>But going back, it seems like a lot of the
<v Speaker 2>people that really get places are those people that had
<v Speaker 2>that inner passion from day one. Don't really need that.
<v Speaker 1>School, like they're on a spectrum or something like me.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I get asked all the time, just from
<v Speaker 2>like Instagram followers and stuff, how do I be you?
<v Speaker 2>I was like, well, you don't. You have to be yourself.
<v Speaker 1>There's somebody how do I get into what you're Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>I mean there are these people think I just went
<v Speaker 2>to school for this and somehow I'm doing this, think.
<v Speaker 1>About it, I as questions obsessed over it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, but you got to have it in
<v Speaker 2>you already too. It's I mean, I mean I'm thinking
<v Speaker 2>about it. How how it's just always been natural for me.
<v Speaker 1>I don't have that and you get the drive in
<v Speaker 1>you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And I'm not saying that because I know there's
<v Speaker 2>plenty of peoples that need to find themselves so this
<v Speaker 2>is how it works and can develop these passions later
<v Speaker 2>in life. But I don't know, I just can't relate
<v Speaker 2>to that. It's just something that's been there since day one.
<v Speaker 1>Wasn't there with day one for me, I was planting
<v Speaker 1>fucking impatience in my mom's yard and it just felt good.
<v Speaker 1>The plant stuff. It was like the same creative urge
<v Speaker 1>I got drawing or something like that, or doing graffiti
<v Speaker 1>when I was a teenager. And then I just the
<v Speaker 1>more I got into it, the more I started thinking
<v Speaker 1>about it and being around these things. I started off
<v Speaker 1>planning redwoods and shit and growing medicinoias and all this stuff.
<v Speaker 1>And I was growing shit before I even had a
<v Speaker 1>place to plant that. I just liked growing it and
<v Speaker 1>watching it grow, and I liked the idea that I
<v Speaker 1>could plant this thing. And that's how you learn about it.
<v Speaker 1>Most importantly, by growing something, you're actively learning about it
<v Speaker 1>if you're paying attention and not just but you have
<v Speaker 1>to think it's all about how you think about these
<v Speaker 1>things and interact with them and observe.
<v Speaker 2>And that's what bugs me is that when people ask me, basically,
<v Speaker 2>how do you get into this field here? And I
<v Speaker 2>look at maybe their Instagram profile and they don't have
<v Speaker 2>a single plant that they posted on their Instagram. It's
<v Speaker 2>just all picture of them and their buddies at the
<v Speaker 2>bar or just crap like that, and there's not a
<v Speaker 2>single plant. I was like, you want to get into
<v Speaker 2>this and clearly or not having this, uh, there's there's
<v Speaker 2>something missing here. Basically, this sounds like a good gig
<v Speaker 2>where yeah, you get to travel all over the world
<v Speaker 2>collecting plants and have a conservation aspect and all that
<v Speaker 2>sounds fine and dandy, but it's clearly not an aspect
<v Speaker 2>of their life yet. It's like how it's like people
<v Speaker 2>are asking, how do I, how do I just suddenly
<v Speaker 2>be this person that they aren't.
<v Speaker 1>You have to get yeah, you have to get genuine interest.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and so yeah, it's just weird and I don't
<v Speaker 2>get it sometimes, but yeah, I don't know. I don't
<v Speaker 2>want to sound.
<v Speaker 1>Like everybody's trying to find that thing that fills the hole,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like the void within themselves and this meaningless,
<v Speaker 1>fucking consumer existence that were brought up. And yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>no matter what it is, you can tell when you
<v Speaker 1>found someone who's found that thing and knows what it
<v Speaker 1>is is, they're just fucking one track mind. They'll just
<v Speaker 1>be doing it no matter what, whether they've got money
<v Speaker 1>for it or not. You know, if they don't, they'll fucking,
<v Speaker 1>you know, rip off a fucking brinks truck whatever. They'll
<v Speaker 1>figure out a way to make it work. You figure
<v Speaker 1>out a way to make it work, no matter what.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, and I'm not trying to I guess, uh
<v Speaker 2>for those people that are still I guess figuring things
<v Speaker 2>out here. I mean, that's that's not to say that
<v Speaker 2>people can't become just ultra passionate about plants or whatever
<v Speaker 2>and end up doing what I do. I mean, these jobs,
<v Speaker 2>things like what I do, are not really jobs that
<v Speaker 2>are available out there. I mean they should be, but no,
<v Speaker 2>I don't a job. This is you looked out though
<v Speaker 2>way you got lucked up.
<v Speaker 1>You should tell them you should sign up for the
<v Speaker 1>Master Naturalist course.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Actually I just completed Master Naturalists, Master Gardener. That's the
<v Speaker 1>thing people tell me. And I don't like, I don't care.
<v Speaker 1>I just don't know, but I don't. But it's no
<v Speaker 1>one's gonna respect you because you took a fucking course,
<v Speaker 1>you know what I mean, no offense than any Master Naturalists.
<v Speaker 1>You just get out there and look, it doesn't mean
<v Speaker 1>anything either.
<v Speaker 2>And it just sounds really nerdy, like not in a
<v Speaker 2>cool way, like an asternaturalist what.
<v Speaker 1>Like, unless you're saying I was like yeah, I did
<v Speaker 1>that course. It was kind of cool whatever. But when
<v Speaker 1>people are saying they're like they want you to be impressed,
<v Speaker 1>and you're like, what right, No, I don't don't ever
<v Speaker 1>say that to me again. Please like, talk to me
<v Speaker 1>about something cool that you like, and I'll and then
<v Speaker 1>I'll be impressed. Like if you go down like some
<v Speaker 1>like autistic fucking o c D rabbit hole just talking
<v Speaker 1>about some organism that you're interested in, I'll be like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that that person's for real. I like them. They're cool.
<v Speaker 1>But if they're you know, and especially if you don't
<v Speaker 1>care that like you sound like a nut, you know, either,
<v Speaker 1>then I'll be impressed. But if you're like I took
<v Speaker 1>I completed the Master Naturalist training. I you know, just
<v Speaker 1>so you know, I completed the Master Naturalist tround, Like,
<v Speaker 1>don't don't tell me that. Please don't talk to me
<v Speaker 1>about that. You're making me uncomfortable. You're making me feel
<v Speaker 1>like I am supposed to, you know, have some sort
<v Speaker 1>of reaction that validates you, and I don't want to
<v Speaker 1>that doesn't I think you're a geek. No offense, Okay, anyway, Adam, Well,
<v Speaker 1>thanks for coming on here, and I hope you enjoy
<v Speaker 1>the room I've prepared for you tonight in my house
<v Speaker 1>that you can sleep in. It's got all kinds of
<v Speaker 1>straps and slings tied to the wall for you. And
<v Speaker 1>uh clean, not at all, not at all, buddy. No,
<v Speaker 1>they smell of like lactic aciduck together. Yeah they are,
<v Speaker 1>yeah they are, yeah anyway, But yeah, I always I
<v Speaker 1>always enjoy hanging out with you. Seriously, so we should go.
<v Speaker 1>Let's go to South America next time.
<v Speaker 2>Sounds good.
<v Speaker 1>You know, when's the last time you got a leech?
<v Speaker 1>Have you ever gotten those terrestrial leaches?
<v Speaker 2>I tried in Philippines.
<v Speaker 1>I They're really cute.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, everybody was getting them, but me, I was wearing
<v Speaker 2>I was the only one wearing shorts trying to get
<v Speaker 2>them because I always want to experience the wildlife.
<v Speaker 1>But how big were the leeches they were getting? Just
<v Speaker 1>like the little ones? It looks like, yeah, big ones.
<v Speaker 2>But I mean they cut them off and they'd be
<v Speaker 2>bleeding from the anticoagulations.
<v Speaker 1>My friends weren't fucking Indonesia, and they said that they
<v Speaker 1>all just there was like blood on everything because the
<v Speaker 1>leeches were on them, and they were they were laughing
<v Speaker 1>about it.
<v Speaker 2>Well, on the last trip. I finally got one on
<v Speaker 2>my leg and I was like cool, and I went
<v Speaker 2>to touch it and realized it wasn't attached yet and
<v Speaker 2>it fell off and I couldn't find it again.
<v Speaker 1>The lik But they're pretty harmless later. Yeah, right, Why
<v Speaker 1>can't you get any diseases from him?
<v Speaker 2>I've heard I don't know if it's true, but I've
<v Speaker 2>heard like some of them you can get like was
<v Speaker 2>it like a nematode or something that they can transmit? Right, Well,
<v Speaker 2>it goes away, I bet after like a week or two,
<v Speaker 2>but it creates a lot of like itching. I've just
<v Speaker 2>heard the secondhand.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know the fucking paralysis takes in Australia. Horrible
<v Speaker 1>looks nasty man.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'd love to get a leech, but I don't
<v Speaker 2>know if i'd want to get those.
<v Speaker 1>I followed this lady Jasmine Vink on Instagram. She does
<v Speaker 1>like a flying fox rescue and a lot of them
<v Speaker 1>get get paralysis takes and end up like on the
<v Speaker 1>round and then get eaten by feral cats or some
<v Speaker 1>other shit. But flying foxes are so cute anyway. All right, Well,
<v Speaker 1>if you want to look at Adam's Instagram page. It's
<v Speaker 1>Adam Black plant Nerd, is that right? And he's also
<v Speaker 1>got an OnlyFans where he shows off his package, ain't
<v Speaker 1>that Jesus Christ? And you think, yeah, he's a fucking wonderful,
<v Speaker 1>wonderful man, a wizard of knowledge and plant ecology and evolution.
<v Speaker 1>And thanks for thanks for coming on here and doing
<v Speaker 1>this late night session with me, young man. All right,
<v Speaker 1>thanks everyone else, have a good rest of your day.
<v Speaker 1>Go fucking somebody,