Speaker 1: He doesn't pay dry. Oh smart boys, No, it doesn't
mean I didn't dry. I just never know why.
Speaker 2: Sup the baby you're not as whole?
Speaker 3: Can w.
Speaker 2: Big deal, I'm still.
Speaker 1: It's a rest your side.
Speaker 2: Beat my head against the.
Speaker 1: Phone, try to not some sense down in my boon.
Even they don't chill this guy not so And when
they go, they let Chile. You can't push out or
out of Emma Ready. You can't push y'b or out
of Emmons. Ray. You can't put job around Emma Ray.
Don't try.
Speaker 2: Don't try. It's the basket chaill.
Speaker 1: And you got no coach. You living with guare one
and user. They don't shots, they let Jim.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you.
Speaker 4: John shop, that's nice. When did Johnny Thunders die? Did
he die of heroin too? Probably? I don't know. All
those guys die a heroin. Don't be sticking ship in
your arm. Don't be fucking with opiates. Real good advice
for you. Wish some of my friends would have listened
to that. Anyway, Welcome to another episode of the Cranpasce.
But he doesn't podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
I really appreciate it. Just kidding. I don't give a fuck,
but I'm glad you're here anyway, especially if you're listening
on the Patreon where there's no ads. The fucking ads
are really horrible. I've tried to dissuade advertisers from advertising
on this. I've talked shit numerous times about the advertisers
here because a lot of them are really it's tacky shit.
But you know, I think the ads. This is through
iHeart Radio. They reached out to me and they said,
you want to come on here, we'll do it. We'll
give the opportunity to give ads. And I said, okay, fine.
And I was with Podbean before and I said, can
I read the ads? And they said no, we just
do the spoken or the the you know, the automated.
They're tailored to you specifically. So if you've been looking
at like butt plugs online, you're gonna get ads for
adult toys. If you've been looking at lawnmowers online, you
know they're gonna be You're gonna be getting ads for lawnmowers.
You've been looking at you know, batch herbicide to go
spray on the the rich neighborhood lawns. You're gonna be
getting ads for a batch herbicide, all right, but just
make sure you're wearing protective gear and proper ppe when
you go and do that. Not that I would advise that, though.
I did have someone comment that they were really upset
that I was advocating vandalizing Craig Myrtles a few weeks ago,
you know. And I looked at the guy and he
was a nice He was a nice guy. It was
a nice John Q taxpayer, someone who looked far too
genteel to be listening to this podcast. And I just wondered, buddy,
how the fuck did you end up here, you poor guy?
How did you end up listening to this pot This
is not a nice, professional podcast. This is we get
into the weeds this in terms of science sometimes, but
there's a lot of toilet humor and filthy shit that
goes on in this podcast. This is a room that's
not for everybody. You're welcome to come if you want,
But I'm just saying, don't get mad at me when
you're disgusted, turned off, angry, find something I said problematic,
or want to leave. Those are the kinds of people
that I try, like I am actively trying to filter thout,
like I'm putting little land mines here scattered throughout the podcast,
you know, blow up in their faces and send them
running for the hills, you know, or just complaining about me.
Don't get me wrong, but anybody, anybody's welcome, right, all
political creeds, all, I don't give a fuck. Don't talk
to me about whatever you believe in. But you're welcome
to be here, and we can. I'll try to entertain,
you'll try to make it fun anyway. Speaking of which,
speaking of fun, I just had a colonoscopy today. You know,
my ma, first off, my Italian side of the family,
they eat nasty shit. They eat like all this, you know,
mozzarella balls, buffalo mozzarell and fucking red meats and stuff.
They get ass cancer real easy. My ma's side of
the family, she got she had a polyp when she
was like forty five. It could have turned into cancer.
Hand the gut blessed be that it didn't. They caught
it in time. So I said, what the fuck? You know,
because I'm always figuring out, I got a little anxiety.
I'm trying to do too much, burning too hard, don't
take time to chill out. I should smoke weed, but
I don't. I don't really like it, but anyway, uh,
and I don't drink doing it, and I should meditate. Maybe
should meditate. I don't know. I try to get exercise,
but that's hard because I live in Texas and everything's
built for car slim. That's why everyone's fat here. No
offense to the fatties, love the fatties. But uh but anyway,
so you know, I went I figured this was my
thing I was fixating on. I was talking to my
friend Jenna, and her husband dissects stiffs for a living.
He said he's been getting a lot of young people
with colon cancer. I said, oh shit, really, She goes, yeah,
you should get checked. I said, fuck, you're right, I
should because I don't know. I think I got a
different kind of cancer every week. And uh So I
fixated on this long enough, and finally I was like,
I found out I don't have health insurance. Because it's America.
Nobody does. Anyone who's not a SAP doesn't have health
insurance unless they have it through their work or something
like who the fuck's going to pay four hundred and
fifty bucks and then you only get to pay more? Right,
that's not what you do. You go to the emergency
room with a fake name. When they ask for you
for ID, say I don't have it. You know, you
could give him a fake a funny fake name, but
that's more risky because they'll know that it's a lot.
So you can try to make up something that sounds
you know, lots of vowels, you know. For me, I
just make up fake Italian names. I think I probably
have I don't know, twenty thousand dollars in medical debt
that I'm never gonna pay. I don't know who cares.
It's a badge of honor. Don't ever pay your medical debt.
Don't ever if you pay medical debt, we're not friends anymore.
You're incentivizing a broken system. Okay, anyway, So I don't
have health insurance. So I found a place that would
do it for a thousand bucks cash. I said, fuck it, fine,
So once every five years, I'll do it. And I
got away with only paying six hundred bucks. And I'm
gonna skimp out on the last four hundreds. I could
say this publicly, right, They're not gonna get no one's listen.
They don't know what are they gonna do come after me, huh.
Every time I mentioned to a healthcare worker, no I
don't have health insurance, I always mentioned because the American
healthcare system is broken and corrupt, and every single one
nods and says, I know, every single nurse, every single receptionist, everybody,
everybody knows how the American healthcare system is here, so
it's like they're kind of everyone's sympathetic to it. You know,
there's a little bit of free Luigi and everybody. So uh, Anyway,
so I went, I went to the get the colon
hospit I had that you can't eat for a day. Beforehand,
I had to drink this horror, horrendous gallon jug of
shit that's like lemon flavored laxative. So I was on
a toilet every hour. You don't want to hear this.
Do you eat in the salad or scept that? I
hope not. I'm my apologies. So this kind of information
can't be any worse than the ads they make you
listen to on the podcast. So so uh, you know,
it's just it's brutal, and then you know you feel
I feel lighthead. It's super easy. So I was drinking gatorade,
which I never drink because all the sugar in it.
So I was drinking like I went through like six
things a Gatorade, and I actually didn't feel too out
of my mind, Like I didn't feel like I was
on drugs like I normally do when I fast. Uh,
So I go in today, I go in. They don't
even know what fucking healthcare in the valley is. In
the Rio Grand Valley is so incompetent, they didn't even know.
No one there's any clue what I'm doing. It took
me thirty minutes being on the phone with these fucking idiots,
bless their heart's no offense to them, before I found
out what time I'm actually supposed to be there. And
so it got to the point where I was like, fuck,
it's eight thirty in the morning already. I'm just gonna
fucking show up these fucking morons. You know, I get
really spicy, but I try to talk to everybody as
polite as possible. I'm saying this to you, I wouldn't
actually say this to them. I don't want to hurt
anybody's feelings. But Jesus Christ, I don't know if there's
leading the fucking water or what. But I don't know
how you get these people. The doctors are never like this.
The doctors are always generally kind, you know, but the
people you gotta deal with, like at the reception, it's just,
oh my god. Fuck, I don't know. I don't know,
I don't know, not my world. Anyway, they finally get
me in there. They give me the Propo fall, which
is the Michael Jackson Druggs. It's what took out Michael Jackson,
got him to stop touching all those kids. And uh,
and I shouldn't make jokes about that guy dying. Eh
he was a millionaireor whatever. No, he was a billionaire.
How much of money. I don't know who cares. Anyway.
The point is I passed out. I woke up. They
told me, sir, you don't have any polyps, you don't
have any ass cancer. I'm good to go, all right.
But it's probably because I eat healthy, or I mean
I like to think I do. I don't. I had
a steak a week ago. I don't really eat red meat.
I had a steak because it was in West Texas.
It was like, you know, ethically raised. It wasn't feed
lots steak. It was healthy and I got the steak
just because it's the kite. It's the type of food
you can eat with the dogs. You know, you eat it,
you break bread together with the dogs, and then they
feel you know, it's a nice it's it's like a
a boost morale among the canine populous. So anyway, but
I was so miserable from having to deal with people
on the phone. I had to call them six times,
six fucking times before I actually got there to figure
out what time. I kept getting redirected twenty minutes on
the phone. Nobody knows anything. Everyone's an idiot. You're trying
to keep your cool. So I was in such a
bad move. By the time they were actually ready to
stick the camera up my ass, I could even make
jokes about it. And that was what really hurt, because
that was that's such a ripe opportunity. You're going to
get a tube stuck in your ass, and I can
see if you got you know, colon colon issues, you
gotta there's there's the gun is loaded, the gun of
jokes is loaded. And I squandered the opportunity. So anyway, whatever, anyway,
I don't have ass cancer. That's great. Uh, it's ninety
five degrees. We got a nice rainstorm here in South Texas.
I'm headed to Utah, to Washington County, Utah next week
to go make some videos. Should be fun. I always
love going through New Mexico. The Land of Enchantment. West
Texas is nice too, even though you know there's generally
no public access to much of the land. It should
be a nice time. I'm really excited for it, and
I'm bringing my daughter too, so that should be great.
We have a blast. I wish she would go to
bed on time. She never does. She wants to wrestle
and climb on me and punch me in the face
actively while I'm drawing. But then, you know, it's sorry.
You could you could see the eighty these already there.
I'll just be honest with you. I'll be honest with you. Shit,
they could see that. It's genetic. It's obviously fucking genetic,
you know. But anyway, Washington County, I'm gonna go see
the gypsum Arctomicon. What what time of year does the
arctomcon the Arctomicon? Remember, it's land. It doesn't matter how
he produced it. Pronounced that the gypsum dwarf poppy. Do
you know about arctomicon? Probably not if you live in
the central or eastern United States. What a fucking dope genus.
I've seen all three species Miriamii californica and humorless. Humorless
is the dwarf poppy that these are called the bear
poppies and the gypsum bear poppy. Uh shit, it's gonna
be finishing up now. There still might be some going off. Oh,
we're gonna have to go. What do you think of
like a nice gypsum crust soil? Do you know about
the gypsum have I We've talked about this in the
podcast before, having we these cool fucking soils, these edaphic endemics,
gypsum just like limestone, just like sand dunes, just like
serpentine gets its own sweet, its own cast of endemic species.
Endemic means they only grow there. Like if a plant
is geographically endemic to someplace, it only grows in that region.
If it's if it's endemic to a county or a state,
or a country or a continent, means it only grows there.
If it's endemic to a soil type, we call it
an a daphic endemic, and in this case you have
gypsum endemics right town Sendia Gypsyphyla which grows northwest to Albuquerque,
Nama Carnosa, which grows on the Texas New Mexico border.
Go to the New Mexico site. It's nicer and gentler,
and it just feels more mellow, not like Texas. Texas.
Just out loud whed again, the fuck is you know?
This drives me fucking n I'm gonna go off on
a rant here actually because this is ripe. Fuck Dan Patrick,
I want to say that right now. Fuck Dan Patrick,
you jowy Colonel Sanders looking motherfucker Lieutenant governor of Texas
meant the whole who is is this nineteen fifty? What
other place in the world is trying to ban THCHC
any kind of THC, even like the low dose stuff.
There was this stuff called Tehaus Tonic. I think you
could still get it till September. It was made in Austin.
It's like a hoppy, five milligram THHC non alcoholic beer.
Got it's so good. It's carbonated, it's delicious and I
would drink one of those slowly. I found them at
the bakery in Alpine in West Texas. I would drink
one of those slowly and five I don't smoke weeds,
so five milligrams is enough. Like that is almost too
much for me. I would drink it slowly at night,
and it was one of the few things that would
get me to calm down and turn off my stupid mind,
my noisy ping pong ball mind. And now that whole
business is gonna go out it, They're gonna go out
of business. This is gonna end fifty thousand jobs. There's
fifty thousand jobs, you know with THHC related products low
THCHC whatever you know. I think. I don't know what
else is going to affect low THHC, you know, gummies
or whatever. And uh, I don't know why they're doing this.
I don't know. I have no clue why they're doing that.
What fucking idiot thinks that this is worth doing. And
not only that, but you're like five hundred million dollars
worth of tax revenue and Texas doesn't have income tax,
mind you. This state is just so absolutely fucking moronic.
Sometimes I don't get it. I don't understand, and they
want to make the populace dumb too, like that they're
doing these private school charters. They're defunding public education and
putting vouchers, taxpayer funded vouchers for essentially rich kids to
go to private schools. They say it's for everybody, but
it's mostly going to be rich kids. It's fucking gross.
You know, you got like one of the unhealthiest, dumbest
populace is in the United States. No offense, no offense
to anybody, right, I think what's the dumbest populist, least
educated populous in the United States? At Mississippi's It's somewhere
in the south, of course, but uh, but of course,
but you know the Texas is running up there. I
mean in healthcare is a fucking huge industry here too.
A lot of money to be made off people being
sick and out of shape and pre diabetic and from
living in you know, a place where where walking has
been made obsolete and there's not off in any bike lanes.
You can't get exercise if you want it to unless
you go to the gym and like you know, smell
bo and off gassing plastic while you're listening to bad
techno music. Got the gym. I hate the jim anyway,
So this is so Dan Patrick's idea. He's gonna save
the children from the evils of THCHC. Right, And mean,
why do I care if I don't smoke weed? Well,
I care because I hate alcohol. I absolutely hate alcohol,
and I hate what it does to people. I hate
how stupid it makes people. I hate that it numbs
people to things they need to otherwise be feeling so
that they can maybe change their lives, you know. I mean,
it's it's right up there with coke, like cocaine and
alcohol are two of them most fucking annoying drugs you
could put anybody on and then and alcohol is legal.
Alcohol is very important if you need a populace to
be dumb and numb to how miserable their life is
because they're working for too little and they're overworked and
you don't even allow them, you know, breaks for heat
at their job, not this fucking backwards ass state. But uh,
you know, and I'm here because of family. Before you
give me hell for a movie, I don't want to
hear it. Shut up, Like the California's got its own
list of problems. I don't want to hear you like
your your this liberal elitism. There's nothing more obnoxious and
Caucasian liberals. But but god, it just blows my fucking mind,
you know, But you get people stone. I would much
rather deal with people stoned, you know, especially if they're driving,
then with with alcohols, with alcoholics, right, I would. I
would rather be around stoned people. They've got their own
sense of issues. They're spacey, they forget shit, they're hard
to talk to, they're a little woo woo, they get
paranoids times. But I'd rather deal with that because they're
generally kinder people. Then I would deal with drunks. I
fucking hate drunks. There's a reason that shit has been
banned in so many cultures. Right, So if you're gonna
go that route, ban alcohol then too, and good luck,
you fucking idiot with that, because we know how well
that turned out. So Texas is and it's not going
to stop people from using weed either. Get it's gonna
make the cops jobs harder because now they got to
look for this stuff, and it's just gonna enable black
markets a lot of money to be made. If you're
growing weed out of state, you can ship it to
Texas vacuum seal that shit. Make sure you put it
in a plastic case, like a laptop case or something
plastic laptop case so that the you know, people at
the post office can't poke it with h steel rods,
you know, because then they'll they'll actually take your stuff.
That was an issue people used to have in California,
remember hearing people complain about that. Yeah, we're shipping weed
out of state the places where it's still illegal, and
the post office has actually been stealing a lot of
our stuff. They would poke the vacuum. It's just gonna
mention this in a podcast. This is stuff I heard.
I'm not telling anybody what to do. This is just
stuff I heard. I don't advise you to try and
make money off of these idiots making this law by
growing weed out of state where it's legal. Weed's a
very easy plant to grow, too, very very easy. Which
is so funny because all these weed bros get good
at growing weed, and then suddenly they think they're botanists
and they get all these goofy ass theories. No offense
to them. Love what you're doing. It's great stuff, just
you know, maybe a little humility. But you know, I'm
not telling you to do that. I'm not telling you
to exploit the black market that this idiotic law is creating. Man,
I know so many people that smoke weed down here too,
right wing, left wing. They don't give everyone smoke. Everyone's
smoking weed. It's a pleasant thing, right for some people.
I don't like. It makes me a little paranoid, makes
me forgetful. But it makes stretching really fun. It makes
stretching really nice, and working out too sometimes, right, Moderation's
key with that everything. But god damn it. I fucking
hate alcohol and if we if I know people I
know alcoholics that have said I drink less because I
can now have easy access to safe, regulated cannabis and
all that's going away. Listen this fucking guy. Listen to this.
Speaker 2: Would you buy anything off the shelf?
Speaker 4: Looks like Colonel Sanders, We'll just get the fucking white
suit in the.
Speaker 2: Boat state for the rest of your life. Would you
want that? Anybody want this bag? Okay, you want it?
Speaker 4: Theatrics he's a Thespian.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't dare buy it. You wouldn't let your children,
your grandchildren.
Speaker 4: What is he holding up? It depends how it tastes and.
Speaker 3: By the way, and come September all this will be
illegal anyway, So I'll be turning this over to the
police before.
Speaker 2: I leave here.
Speaker 4: Oh good job, Diane, good job.
Speaker 2: You don't know what's in it. No one knows what's
in it. This is not a game.
Speaker 4: Dose this guy. Dose him. He needs to get dose essence.
Speaker 3: The loopholes for Delta eight and Delta ten that were
creative around the natural help hemp of Delta nine.
Speaker 2: They have come into this state and used our state.
Speaker 4: It don't get okay.
Speaker 2: It could be a drug dealer van Delta. We will
not let the state of Texas, It's great, be in
the drug.
Speaker 3: Business of making these products available on the shelves.
Speaker 2: I want to try any of this.
Speaker 4: I like this. I like this, though, I do want
to mention O this is nice the comments section. We
will not be in the drug business except for alcohol
and tobacco. Those are fine. Don't ask why people dying
of fentanyl, but they're talking about CBD products. Looks like
an snl skit says the man taking millions from pharma
drug dealer. Yeah, you know, Texas politics being as correct
as they are, this guy's got to be getting paid
by someone. He's got to be getting paid. What a
fucking idiot. You know, So now people are going to
be getting weed from wherever and there's no measurement of
how many milligrams or how much is you know. That's
that was one of the nice things like for me
occasionally when I would drink these tehostonic things five milligrams.
I know I'm only getting five milligrams, and it tastes
good and it's I'll drink it slow because I don't
want to get ripped. I hate being stoned, but just
a little bit the right amount of buzz. It's so nice.
But now that's not you know, now that's impossible because
there's no way to measure it anymore. It's not regulated.
This guy, I hope this costs him his political career.
This guy's a fucking moron. You look at this guy.
He's a fucking dinosaur. This is a clown. This guy
is an idiot, you jowly fuck talk about going to
the gym. Send this guy to the gym, This old bastard.
How do these guys? How do guys like this live?
So long? Too? Right? This guy's gotta talk about a colonoscopy.
This guy's got to get a colonoscopy. He's probably in batch.
You know, he's eating try tip and all kinds of shit,
you know, stuff in his coling. With all that, the
all that pig and cow, he's probably got some polyps
some you know, none of these pigs ever die from
from disease. Rush Limbaugh was like the last pig that
died of a of a disease that was cancer. That
was only one. Give us another one, Come on, please
give us one. Huh. Why doesn't it ever happen to
bad to fucking bad people? Okay, anyway, I digress. Let's
talk about New Mexico plants. Let's talk about the sand
hills east, the beautiful Carlsbad, New Mexico. Now, this was
red sand. It's like an oxidized sand. I assume there's
a high iron content. I don't know the age. The
limestone around there is roughly Permian. But this sand, when
that's this sand obviously was weathered out of sandstone. But
it's been blown around, you know, it's been blown all around.
I don't know. I don't know what formation nearby formation
it came from. If you go to the rock that
it just says Eolian deposits, which means wind. I'm not
even sure if I'm pronouncing that right, but I don't
really give a shit to be honest. Again, who's going
to correct you on that? Actually, that's not how you
pronounced that. See what is this Eolien and Piedmont deposits? Yeah,
it just says place to see into Holo scene points
seven million years ago to present interlayed Eolien sands and
Piedmont slope deposits along the eastern flank of the Pecos
River Valley between Roswell and Carlsbag. God, it's so nice
going to New Mexico. You step over the border and
there's BLM land everywhere. You can go anywhere and there's
no like, mean, jolly fuck, who's gonna yell at you
or ask you what you're doing or assume the worst.
It's the thing that Texas landovers, the Texas landowners never
assume you're just harmlessly looking at stuff. It's always you're
up to no good, or you're gonna steal their rocks
because they own the rocks. The rocks and the seeds
on that land belong to them. You're stealing if you
take them get the fuck out of here. Oh god,
what does the rock that say? Yeah, west of Carlsbab,
it's uh, the Guadalupian. It's the Yates and Tansel formations age.
It's Guadalupian two hundred and seventy five million to two
hundred and fifty nine milli years ago, so before the
Permian extinction. Sandstone, siltstone, limestone, dolomite, and anhydrite. The lithology
it's mostly sandstone, carbonates and silt stone. Okay, so that's
where it's coming out of. But you get east the
Carlsbad and you start seeing these cool sandhills, really cool
sand hills, and they look barren at first. The miskit's
only getting three feet tall. And this is a tree.
This is a tree sized plant where you get water.
Maybe you get next to like a more shady micro site,
next to an arroyo, got like a big piece of
boulder or a piece of a mountain, a little sarrow
or some shit on the west side, so it's blocking
that hot afternoon sun. These miskats will get big, they'll
get tall, but here on these sand deposits, they get
multiple stems, they become multiple stem little shrubs the top
out of three or four feet. But I tell you, man,
the fucking and then I'm editing the video for this
part now. For this habitat, I was surprised at how
incredibly diverse and rich this area was. Man, it was incredible.
I mean, the there was so much cool chikro in
there and were the main reason I went there was
because of Po Maria James I the genus PO Maria.
It's a cool, cool sace alpinoid. It's a cool sace
alpanoid p It's got a really cool flower shape. You know,
they look kind of like an orchid, and you could
tell they're pollinated by some sort of big ass b
or something. They If it's got a weird shape like that,
there's something weird going on with the pollinator or with
the reward that it's offering the pollinator. And so it
had this It's got this keeled pedal that all these
statements come out of, and it's the whole thing's covered
in glands. But what is a gland? Think of like
the way pot looks, that's a gland. It's a glandular tricombe.
It's a hair with the little gland on it a
glandular tricombe. It's a living tricomb because trichombs can be
dead or alive. In the case of wool, I'm like
an oreosirious old man of the Andes cactus. Those tricombes
are dead, it's dead tissue. In the case of cannabis,
it's a living tricombe. It's alive. It's still connected to
the vasculature of the plant. It's still receiving h you know,
sugars and all this shit from the plant. It's actually
connected to the plant, still in alive. So anyway, I
don't mean like physically connected, I mean connected to the vasculature.
So this this po Maria, and it's a cool genus.
Pomria is a cool genus. Ainance says there's fourteen species.
There's probably more, but this is this does not get
I guess you got some in Nevada. No, you don't.
There's none in Nevada, none in Utah. This is Arizona, Colorado,
New Mexico, West Texas. Oh, you get some in Kansas.
I want to go to fucking Kansas. Kansas seems nice,
you know, Oklahoma seems nice too. Javier got invited to
a payote meeting with the comanches up in Lawton, and
he was gonna go, but I don't think he was
able to make it there. I think he had to work.
But uh, law In Oklahoma's nice. Say shut out to
laud in Oklahoma. Shout out to anybody listening in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Shout out to the Wichita Mountains. Shout out to the
prairie dog community, the prairie Dog compound near the Plains Museum.
What is the cool museum in Lawton. There's some cool
shit in Lawton, if you get a chance to go there.
But uh, anyway, Yeah, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, a little
bit in Kansas. That's an area I have not botanized
a lot. It's like eastern Colorado, Western Kansas, Oklahoma Panhandle.
Fuck the Oklahoma Panhand. God, there's some beautiful stuff there. Man. Oh,
those open plains, those open, windy plains where the bison
used to be. I was at who was I visiting.
We were visiting a friend on a reservation in Oklahoma.
I think it was like two thousand and six or something.
And yes, she had this horse, this beautiful horse, and
I jumped up on it. It was really nice. Let
me get up on top of it. I was pulling
ticks off of it. I got on top of it
and was just riding it around. And then I thought
it'd be funny if I did it naked. So I
started riding this horse around naked, and uh, I fucking
wish I had that picture still. Shit was hilarious. Someone
took a picture of me naked on his horse, riding
this fucking thing around in the sun. Beautiful horse. I
felt so freed it. That was when I was living
my best life. When you're naked riding a horse in
western Oklahoma, you know you've really made it. You could
die happy. You could take a dirt nap the next day,
and you know you could could die satisfied anyway. That
whole area. I haven't spent that much time. Man. You
ever been to Dodge City, Kansas? Got I bet there's
some fucking I bet Dodge City. Like right in Dodge City,
there's a lot of rough culture. You know, a lot
of dollar generals, some rough. But I bet you get
to the areas outside there there's some beautif where's the
nice prairie preserves in Kansas? If you're from eastern Colorado
or Western Kansas or northern Oklahoma, you know that area.
Send me some places to go that you want me
to film plants. Don't make it a long email because
I won't read it. I just don't have the time
and I'm fucking eighty d. But send me a list,
be like you wanted these places. Here's some cool places.
Maybe send a mapplink to if you can, because they
don't make it a lot easier as easy as you
can make it for me. Right, Pretend I'm much older
than I am. Pretend you're emailing and geriatric. Anyway. So
I was going out there for pal Maria in Atlas
fourteen species in the genus po Maria fourteen variations on
a theme. There's probably more holy shit po Maria Sandersonia.
There's fucking red ones, Rubikonda. Where's Rubacunda? Oh, they're so cool.
They all look so cool. They look like Gladiola's or
something beautiful gladiol like the gladiolas I saw in South Africa.
Where the fuck is this thing from? That's incredible? Po
Maria Rubekunda? Where is this? Oh? Oh oh shit, it's
way down? What the fuck? Uruguay? How to fuck Uruguay
and Paraguay. Damn, well, that's a disjunction. I wonder if
that was a bird assisted dispersal. Had to be Ruba Kunda.
I did not know there was po Mario. I thought
this was just central let's see. Yeah, okay, there's a
couple in South America too. I didn't know that Brazil,
Paraguay and Uruguay anyway. So I was going out there
to see Paul Maria because I wanted to see pal Maria,
James the I and I had no idea the amount
of cool stuff I was gonna see. There was an abronia,
there was more That epizifium was life xenii, which is
Mirandia snapdragon vine, big purple flowers. Looks like a purple snapdragon.
But the leaves on this thing are fucking wild, arrowhead shaped,
kinda has state with like a fine pubescent indument on
him that gives them a silvery luster, a silvery luster
with silvery veins. It's a crime, this thing isn't you
know again. James Peace had this, but the nursery that
fired him threw all this shit out because they wanted
to grow bogan V's and all this other garbage. There
was Yuka campestris everywhere, little like it's the plains Yuka
they call it. I guess it's endangered species, probably just
because all the habitat has been destroyed, because it's readily
abundant where there's still habitat. There was Mimosa cooliada karpa,
a little white mimosa with like big thorns on it,
typical pinnate leaves. You see that, you could say, oh, yeah,
it's some mimoas. I could see that Macaranth tennessee to
folio purple. It's like a little purple daisy, related to
Grendilia and the macaranther and macaranthny tribe. There was a
really cool little grass. I don't give a shit about
most grasses, but I saw the ones I saw here
were fucking phenomenal. I saw Aristota purpoia, which was just beautiful.
All the aristotas are gorgeous. All the Aristota grasses when
they got their seeds on them, they're like blowing in
the wind. They look like these beautiful psychedelic feathers. Almost
really mesmerizing to watch, you know. And it was it
was hot out. It was like ninety degrees. I think
The elevation here was like thirty one hundred feet, but
there was a really nice breeze, so I didn't feel
overheated at all. It was fucking wonderful, man. But that's
the kind of the claim. You gotta watch out because
you can get so stoked, you're so excited because you're
seeing so much cool stuff, you forget that it's you know,
ninety degrees or ninety five, and you could pass out,
you know, but you just keep your song, just keep
yourself in check. I got to get a new cooler too.
The one I have is kind of jinky. Yeah. Monroe
Squarerosa was this little grass and it looked fucking nuts
because it had I didn't know this, and I guess
this species doesn't always do this. It's phenotypic depending on
where it's growing as well. It's phenotypic and environmental. The
hotter the climate, you know, and the more exposed. And
this was growing right out in the full sun. I'm
sure if it was in a shadier site it wouldn't
do this. But it was so wool this grass was,
you know, it was just looked like a boring little
bunch grass, except that it had these white cobwebs of
wool all over it. You know that are obviously affording
it the longevity. And it's otherwise very hot and especially
windy and arid climate that wind. When it's hot and dry,
that's enough. When you have the wind too, you dry
out that much quicker. So that's what all these hairs do.
And this is what I was trying to explain to
some of the you know, permaculture nutjobs and other people
that that didn't like my soil post with symbiosis Texas.
Now that soil's fine, it doesn't matter. It's barren limestone.
You can you can you can improve it. Yeah, okay,
you can improve it by dumping dump trucks of amendment sun.
It's not the fucking point more on. It's it's a
I got a tone of downe. I get a little
I'm a little hot. I get a little mad. I've
been a little mad. I've been calling people names and shit.
Right when I woke up from the PROPA fault, God,
I was out of it. That sucked. I was so
out of it. I hate being drugged. And when I
woke up from the Michael Jackson drugs, I was in
such a great mood. I forgot that. I was angry
about having to deal with the you know, the broken
healthcare system and all this stuff. And then and it
took like thirty minutes. You know, my daughter's grandpa went
and picked me up. Shout out to Leonardo, thank you.
And he went and picked my ass up and and
uh yeah, and took me home because they won't let
you drive home because you're still in the Michael Jackson drugs.
Why was that guy doing that stuff? I don't understand.
It's not like a recreational thing. I don't know. Maybe
it's just me. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make
fun of a guy anymore. He was a king of pop.
But I was in a good mood. And then just
you know, and out like twenty minutes of looking at
the phone or just thinking about the life circumstances of
modern America. It puts you in a bad mood. I
swear to god, if I didn't have botany, I would
be so much angrier and probably actively starting fights with people.
You know, I think a lot of people are like that,
and I don't shame them for it. I just want
I want to help those people, you know, don't drink,
don't don't smoke your pot. Get into the living world right,
find the find the ship that gets you stoked, kill
your lawn and plant some fucking natives, start learning about it.
Just go into it full. You know you gotta go.
I guess you gotta get that dopamine hit every time
you do it, or else you're not gonna be coming back.
But that's what kept me coming back was that dopamine
hit changed my life entirely. That and getting sober as well,
doing a recovery thing, being a friend of Bill or
Bob or whatever the fuck is his name of Bill, Bill,
It's Bill, right, yeah, you know anyway. Okay, So when
ROAs squarerosa was out there, that's a cool that's a
cool grass to put on your radar. Mu n r
o A squarerosa. But again it's not always. You could
see pictures on my I Naturalist. This was May seventeenth.
I was out there, so you could even do it
by filter. See all this stuff I was checking out
out there. That epiz Ifium epix ifium is like zeni
I as a good one. There was Centabauhinioides everywhere too.
That's a cool little son, I want to grow that. Yeah,
So you know, I'm just going through this habitat getting
distracted by all the cool shit I'm seeing while I'm
going to look for this one plant species, which is
the way it's normally done. You know, you go out there,
you just you know how it's going to be. You
got to stop and look at everything, and if you're not,
you're missing out on a lot of stuff. I was
surprised to see a horse crippler out in this habitat too.
Homolocephalitech Census one of the easiest cact i had to
grow from seed. They just need that heat. Really cool.
It looks like a cow patty. It looks like a
cow patty with spines, like a healthy cow patty, not
like the diarrhea cup you don't want to give the
ranchers give the antibiotics. To give a cow too much
antibiotics and it's just like diarrheing all over its ass.
This is really lovely content for this episode. I'm sorry,
I really hope no one's eating this is like a
healthy cow patty, like a bison patty, right, wouldn't that
be cool if there were bison instead of cows. This
is like a stoner thought. And I'm not high. I'm
just saying it would wouldn't that be nicer? Bison are
so much cooler. But they're too smart. That's the problem.
They're not as stupid as cows. You know, cows were
actively bred from wild They are ros to be dumb
because they're easier to contain, just like people. You breed
people to be not breed. But you, oh my god,
thinking it, Jennitis. They thinking knew it. You. If you
make people dumber by defunding education and creating a bleakue
consumer society, they're easier to contain and control. Right, That's
exactly what happened with Texas. So anyway, but this, this
homolocephalo was out there. You only see one, only one,
little horse crippler. What the fuck? But those are self
fertile too. Most cacti are not fertile, so you need
two to cross polonnate peyotes, homolocephala, what else. There's a
couple others. Those are self fertile. So even if you
only have one, you'll still get good seed. You're not
gonna get a lot of seed per fruit, but you'll
get enough. So but yeah, you can get like a
horse crippler to flowering in like three or four years.
Same with astrophyte them too. Just give them a lot
of water whenever it's dry and hot out, and don't
water them if it's if the soil is not dry
and it's below like seventy degrees seventy five. But anyway,
tons of cool shit in this habitat. I saw a
really weird Escobaria vivipara, which is a common cact that's
widespread throughout western North America, especially at higher elevations and
higher latitudes. Beautiful pink flowers. This was like a multi
headed one. I almost didn't recognize it as an Escobari
at first. I guess it must be the ecotype from
the lower latitude portions of its range. But Escobaria vivipara,
if you see it in like Nevada, or does it
go into Washington. I feel like it goes into Washington.
It goes into the high plains. You know, you'll see
that pink flower, and normally they're short and squat. This
was like a big ten inch tall motherfucker with multiple heads.
There was a really cool carrot I saw too, native
carrot you're a Tania Hinkley. I collected a specimen of
that for the herbarium. That was a fucking dope plant
to see little umbols of flowers, umboles subtanted by these
kind of spiny, white margined bracts. You know, any carrot
you see, you see that compound dumble and or just
that specific umbol inflorescence morphologs. The actual flowers I'll tend
to kind of look the same, the tiny flowers, but
you see that inflorescence morphology, boom, you know it's apac
There was one of the most dominant plant we saw,
Corcus Havardia there too, which is a sand sheet or
not a sandsheet, a sand oak, a sandhill oak, which
forms these mass of colonies that can probably live for
hundreds of years. Tops out at two or three feet.
I guess there's places where they can get taller to
but never taller than eight feet. And that was that
was surprising. I didn't expect to see that there. I
got nice photos that are developing acorns, the tiny acorns,
but I started seeing a lot of plants that were
either endemic to these sand hills or they were like
an ecotype that was endemic to these sandhills. Tons of
Onnathra too, the evening primroses anglomani I. There was Palletta there,
ananthro Palletta, just a fucking just a plethora of evening primroses.
And they all bloom at night. You know, you see him,
you see them at noon. The flowers are already withering
and limp, the petals are already limp. But I bet,
I bet it's just getting hit by moths at night.
So many cool moths there. Probably. I saw a giant
fucking moth at thornscrub the other day, like hummingbird sized moth. Yeah,
so there was. There was a bunch of Onnathra. There
was a Monarda. I guess it was just punk tata,
but it looked like a slightly different ecotype. There's so
much variation. I just you know, I collected it. I
put it in as punk tata, but man, who the
fuck knows? You know, again, you gotta be loose if
a species is especially widespread, you gotta be somewhat loose
about variations in form, right, And I've been doing this
long enough now that I just accept it, like, Okay,
it's this species or maybe it's you know, CF or AF.
You know, but it might be it might be an
affinity with this, It might be just a different ecotype.
At what point does an eco and then, of course,
at what point does an ecotype become a subspecies of variety?
You know? So when you're when you're when I said
a finis or AF or CF. You know, this is
the difference between when you see AF or CF with
a species name. In Latin nomenclature, right like Rebeki a
herda aff Rebeccy a herda AF means a finis, which
means related to or neighboring. You know. So in taxonomy,
aff usually indicse that a species has affinity with another
species but is not identical to it, right, so AFF
before a species name in case that the specimen is
likely a new species, but there may not be enough
information to describe it formally yet, such is the case
with this Rebeccy a Herda, or such I believe is
the case with this Rebecca Herda from the South Texas sandsheet.
It doesn't look like the Rebecca heard us from up north.
Maybe it's a different ecotype. It should certainly get a
different subspecies name. If it doesn't have it already. And
I looked at Flora of North America and I don't
think it's in there yet. There's no mention of the
counties where it occurs, of those being different. But yeah,
that's one thing I showed tow too Mike Powell at
Sewel ross Orbarium, and he was like, that's not hurd of. Man,
that doesn't look like herd of. He didn't say, man,
he's eighty five. You know, he's an eighty five year
old Caucasian Texas. He's not saying man. I wish he was.
But you know, it's such as like it take people
as they are, right, uh, CF and then anyway, So
back to this, but CF is shortened for the Latin
word confer, which means to compare with. So like you
know in taxonomy you see CF before before a species name.
It usually indicates that a species should be compared with
another species, right, So like CF can be used to
indicate that a cited source supports a different claim than
the one just made, and that the two claims should
be compared. So anyway, that both terms indicate uncertainty, but
at different levels, CF suggests a closer match than AFF,
which implies a more distinct relationship, so uh, you know,
good a again, AFF is like related to her, allied
with and it might be AFF is normally like if
it could be an undescribed species, whereas, uh, you know,
CF means compare with, so it's like, you know, especimen
closely resembles an own species, but has some differences that
prevent the definitive identification. So if you're unsure because you
just don't know, you could put CF if or you
haven't been able to key it out yet, or if
you're if you're unsure because it might be a new
fucking species and doesn't match anything else from that region,
you use AFF And that's another thing for identification. That's
so you know if you're not familiar with the region yet.
That is what the process of elimination is so important
in ID. If you know all the species in a region,
then you would know, uh, if you come across something
unusual that it's unusual. Whereas if you're new to a region,
just learning the taxonomy and learning the plants, so you
wouldn't know that this is unusual. That's why it's so
fucking important to get out there and do field botany,
and people who ask me what books can I read? Man,
the best thing to do is go out first and
realize you don't know anything about what you're looking at,
but that you're hungry to learn, and you're curious, and
you're asking questions, most importantly, why the fuck is this
growing here? Why does this look like this? Why does
this have hairs? Why does this have spiny leaves? Why
does this I've noticed these only tend to grow on
this site. You write that shit down, take it on
a nopad app whatever, or even just record little videos
for yourself, whatever the fuck, and then you you hit
those up later and then look them up actively, look
them up, you know, just searching on the internet. Even
use fucking AI if you need to use, but use
deep seek. Don't use chat, GPT or any use deep seek.
Ask you questions. Deep seeks the Chinese one that pissed
off all the American billionaires. Right. God, I meet these
fucking people, man, who just shit on AI so hard,
you know, and they like shame you for using it.
It's like listen, fuck face, and I say, fuck face.
Some of these people are dear friends of mine. But
the amount of water or whatever the fuck your beef
is with this. You just want to shame people. Again,
it's like a white This is like a Caucasian liberal thing.
They love shaming and shitting on people. That's how they
helped Trump win, right, That's why some of them are
probably plants from the CIA or from the fucking right
wing whatever. But they love shaming and shitting on people.
So shitting on people for using AI is a great experience.
It's a great way to do it right. It's a
great way to make yourself feel spared. But you're not
using it. I'm not using it to create you know,
those fat baby photos of jd Vance, though I do
appreciate them, thinking fat jd Vance, those memes are one
of the only good things to come out of Trump
winning the election, right, those and I can think of
a couple other things, like at least we have fat
Vance and he looks like a happy guy, Like he
doesn't look that bad. There was one with fat Vance.
He had tits and he was shirtless and he was
like bringing you was a POV video and he's like
bringing you a breakfast tray, Like you know, it's it's
so lovely to have you here. And then he brings
you a breakfast tray of scrambled eggs and toast. That
was a wonderful meme. I was so happy to see that,
you know. And then there's one where he's like in
space it's great. It's fucking horrible, But I'm not using
it to create those I'm using it occasionally to get
information that would otherwise take me forty minutes to pin
down and require reading ten research papers, and it can
be nice. So I use it occasionally and it's very helpful,
and you should use it too, if you're going to
be forced to deal with all the terrible shit coming
out of this new technology, like the ability to search
through massive quantities of information, especially about identity about you. Right,
That's what they're doing with foreign students that are trying
to come in to these elite universities, is they're going
through all their social media posts. This is so fucking
insane too that they're doing this, and they're using AI
to do it, and to find out if have you
ever said anything bad about Israel? Have you ever said
anything bad about this ethno state, this apartheid ethno state?
Have you ever said anything bad about Trump? Have you
ever said anything bad about capitalism. Capitalism is wonderful. Why
would you say anything bad about that? It can never
go wrong, especially when it's unregulated, when all the when
all the fucking chains have come off, and it's just
the corporations can do whatever they want in the court
the country is run by oligarchs. Have you ever said
anything bad? But if you're gonna have to deal with
the bullshit from this technology, you might as well use
a little bit of it for good. And these people
that shame people for using it, you know, again, fat
advance is the only thing that I that I am
behind that this other stuff, I don't using it to
create paintings and fucking videos whatever, don't. I'm not for that.
That probably is. That's a massive waste of energy. But
fat advance. At least we have fat advance, all right. Anyway,
don't shit, don't shit on people for it, all right,
Go talk to your therapists. You're upset about something, you
want to make people feel you know, making people feel
bad isn't a good way to get get things accomplished, right,
It just doesn't. It's just spreading shit. You're just like
giving people buckets a stale pissed. I encountered what was it.
There was some posts I put in today about I
left the comment. It was about how broken the healthcare
system is. I left the comment and it was it
was it was like, oh, the new American dream is
to leave, which is something I firmly believe. That's a
dream I speak to every spoke to a friend in Turkey.
She told me she's got they got free health insurance there.
Chile's got free health insurance. People bitch about it, but
they say it's way better than what you have in
the United States. Friends in Mexico say, oh, yeah, it's
you know, we have healthcare can be frustrating, but oh,
it's way better than you guys have. Like everyone knows
the US healthcare system is a joke. And I left
the comment saying such and and uh, you know, there
were a couple of right wing trolls, but whatever. I mean,
people just talk shit on the internet because they're miserable.
Everyone's miserable and and they're fucking nope happy. People don't
leave shitty comments like this. But uh, but this one
fucking moron. I don't know. I don't know if they ended
up blocking me or what. But they left this, and
I know it was someone told them this. I'm like,
they left, they said something, They're like you. I was like,
the new American dream is to leave, and they're like, yeah,
don't come here. Don't come here. You're gonna colonize my hood,
all you fucking Americans with your white supremacy culture. You know,
just when people use these academic social justice terms to
just pick fights with people and talk shit online, I
have no tolerance for it anymore, especially because I know
that ninety percent of these people are under the age
of twenty five, have the life experience of a fart.
Their their wealth of knowledge about the human condition is
is not there. It's the pauperate. It's negligible. They don't
know shit yet they're twenty five. How do I know
because I was twenty five once and thought I knew
everything about the world and talked loads of shit. And
I was just a fucking asshole. And I was miserable too,
That's why I talked shit so much. I was miserable.
I was not happy, right. I had a lot of
things going on in my life. I was very angry
about right, and it's not going to change anything like
it's the proper thing for those people to do. Whites,
that fantasy shit, the white supremacy. What are you talking
about white supremacy culture. This is the people commenting they
want to leave the US because it's broken. You think
they're fucking Nazisy moron, you know, you just you're parrotting
other people's opinions as if they're your own. There's no
critical thought whatsoever. You're just parroting other people's opinions, and
you're being a dick. Shut the fuck up. I can't
take those people anymore seriously than I would take someone
who's like a QAnon dad or someone's racist angry grandpa.
They're all victims of the algorithm. They're all tools. They
sound like morons, you know, you know, and that's the
thing I mean. I replied to this person, right, I
think they were in Mexico or something. They were just
parroting all this stupid buzzwords and slogans. These people talking slogans,
you know, these fucking the academic social justice speak to
shit on and shame people because you're really changing the world.
I said, I got ten bucks on you being under
the age of twenty five, depressed perpetually online, and that
your bank of life experiences is negligible. This is why
you're just parroting other people's slogans like it's your own
and throwing them at anyone who will listen. You're not
changing anything, just being as a stale cup of piss
to yourself and everyone you interact with. Put the phone down,
take a walk outside, and quit feeding into the conflict algorithm.
I should have said go talk to a therapist too.
You get how is therapy free in Mexico or cheap?
It's probably a lot more accessible than it is here.
Maybe I don't know. I don't know. How does the
culture feel about therapy? Does it make you a pussy?
If you go to therapy? That's what That's what they
feel like in Texas. That's what the Texas culture tells you.
If you go to therapy, you're a pussy. If you
actually try and deal with your emotions and make yourself
a better person so that you stop hurting people or
lashing out of people, you're a pussy. The proper thing
to do is just drown it all in booze. There
you go. Don't admit you're wrong, don't say you're sorry.
Don't express even a shred of humility. Just drown it
in booze and get a jacked up truck so you
can down some kids anyway. Okay, I digress him. Sorry,
here we go. Let's get back to talk about plants.
So we're on these red rolling sand hills dominated by
quirkush havardii little little Houstonia humafusas Houstonia is a genus
in Rubiac, the coffee family, very common in the lower
latitude United States. That was everywhere. That was a new species.
I wonder if that's a sandandemic. The thing I would
do on Inina whenever I put this stuff on in
two is go to the species page, click on the
taxon name, the species name, go to the species page,
and then look at the distribution. And it was always
in like a north south trending uh distribution, like through
west Texas up into eastern New Mexico, et cetera. So
that was really unique to I mean again, this is
this is just the reason I want to get out
to these places Western Kansas. Being one who loves dry
habitats and prairies makes me want to go to Western Kansas.
I don't know when was The last time I was
in Kansas, I wrote a freight tran through there with Benny.
We're stopped in Wellington. We met these rednecks who were
getting us drunk on some hoochs they made, and then
we got back on the Santa Fe on the train
there with Wellington's nice. They got some nice thrift stores there,
nice little main street America town. Not if you're colored,
though probably not. I don't know what happens if you're
dark skin you go to Wellington, they fucking cop stop
you or something. Probably who knows. That's the melonizing of
America that Trump promised to stop. Good luck, buddy, it's
not happening anyway. Dimorpha Canda cans. That was a cool mustard.
Some of you might know Dimorpha whiz life zenii, so
wooly mustard from West Texas, Northwest Texas as well as
New Mexico. Likes growing on sand. It was on those
dunes east of El Paso, Canada. Cans had really cool leaves,
though again variations on a theme. Another cool desert mustard
with these apt pressed erect upward facing narrow leaves with
like a unngulate margin. Really dope species almost thought it
was whiz life zenie it till I realized it's not
as wooly and the leaves look way different. I wonder
how these things speciate and how, yeah, how it happens,
you know, probably a very gradual process unless they're polyploid.
Let's they have multiple numbers of the chromosomes. Anyway, And
finally found pal Maria James I. Not very many of
them though, and they were. This whole area is getting
fucked by oil, oil and geyas and so there's wells
all over the place, there's rigs all over the place,
there's pump jacks all over the place. But uh, you know,
the habitat, it still pockets the habitat. I'm sure it'll
get fucked one day, but really really cool habitat. I
saw these cool little like sand digging bees Taxisfecs terminatus
got some of the some of the life here. I mean,
I hope there's parcels of this preserved somewhere. I really do,
because this is so unique, this habitat. You know, there
was Arnimsia philifolia there, of course, that Monarda was forming huge,
huge colonies like this, these mint colonies, Citeria lucopyla cool grass.
I saw the bristle grass that was out there, Euphobia Fendler. I, oh,
there's that arrested arrested up properrior. That's beautiful. Yeah, monarda
punked out. I think that subspecies was Occidentalis. I don't know.
A Bronia fray grains. That was a fucking dope one.
The abronia. Shout out to the Abronia's one of the
showiest members of the four o'clock in bougain villa family nictagenac.
And that was a species I hadn't seen before. There's
a really cool a bronia that grows in Yellowstone National
Park that Sheriff Woody and I saw that was. It
grows on the shores of this lake and it's endangered.
I don't know why. I don't know. I forget what
if it's just development or what, because there's development around
Yellowstone Lake. But yeah, that was a Bronia amafola. God damn,
it was a cool species. I think they're all moth
pollinated or butterfly pollinated. The white ones are moth pollinated,
the pink ones are butterfly pollinated. They've all got these
clusters of elongated, tubular flowers with a little hole in
the middle. So many members of the nicktag family, the Nictageneci,
are lepidopter and pollinated either butterfly or moth. Nictagenia capitata,
that red flowered bastard. The flowers kind of smell like giz.
I don't know why. I don't know what that's about.
Don't ash, don't ash, don't tell, but that's a red
flowered butterfly pollinated species. Man to go through the South
Texas sandsheet in the spring, when you know the castillea,
the paintbrush and all this stuff is out and it's
getting there, there's swallowtail butterflies everywhere. That's the ones that
use a. Ristolochi as a host plant, and they're just
hitting everything. It's man, so many black swallowtail out. It's
so fucking beautiful to see. You realize what important pollinators
they are too. Because bees can't access a lot of
these flowers because the hole is too small. You need
a butterfly that's got that little curled up proboscis to
hit these things. So uh, I just I just rooted.
I found them. Speaking of ntangent acy, I found aklyixantes obtusa.
A Klaisantes is a big g. I don't know any
species of aklaisantes. There are let's see fourteen species of A. Klaisantes.
Are they all Mexican and western North America? I would assume,
So let's see. Yeah, yeah, they're like down into How
far south did they go down into? Just a little
bit north of Mexico City. So what is it? Hidalgo,
No Hidalgo, San Luis Poto c up through the Sierra
Madre east into uh bunch of observations from the board
from around here shit Ton, kind of following the border
west Texas, southern New Mexico. Ooh, and there's a bunch
around northwest Arizona and southern Nevada. You know, there's a
dermatophylum Arizonau, the Arizona Mountain. Laurel one of the dumbest names,
no relation to laurels. I don't know what that name
is about. Couldn't we have thought of a better common
name for Christ's sakes then one that actively makes people dumber.
It implies species affiliations that aren't there. It doesn't look
like a laurel in any way. What idiot. I feel
like Texas common names are purposefully meant to make people dumber,
to imply relationships that aren't there. Desert pa and e,
it's not a peenie at all. There's only two native
pae and ees in the US. They're both in California.
You know, Mountain Laurel. Then you go to Alabama, completely
different species from a completely different family, also called mountain Laurel. Don't.
I don't get where this comes from, but anyway, there's
an Arizona Mountain Laurel that's super rare. Lives near Yan,
near where Yan lives. Jan. What's his name? Yan? Jan?
I don't know. Nice guy, really cool guy. If you know,
you know, If not, don't worry about it. Uh knows
his shit too. A good botanist lives in the desert,
built a home by himself, fucking you know, got relationships
with all the h some beneficial, some antagonistic, with all
the wildlife in his little desert. A boat out there
in northwest Arizona. Tons of experience with desert plants too,
But there's some dramatifile them up by him. But I
guess they're on their way out to he told me,
they're they're dying a drought. They're parched because the deserts
are drying out. They've been drying out for a long time,
but now with human accelerated climate change, they're only going
drying out more so. A khais Antes fourteen species, but
a kays Antes obtusa is a really cool one that
is common and can be grown as a groundcover down
here in South Texas. But I think it likes a
little more shade. You got to put it on like
an east facing wall, like east facing, you know, so
that by one or two pm on a hot summer day,
it's already getting shaded out. It's not getting blasted with
sun anymore. But I found a nice patch of it.
Dugs some up. This is just in like someone's alley too.
It's like all the weeds we get in the native
in the Rio Grande Valley are native, almost all of them.
Like in areas where it's human developed, I'm not talking
about like where a rancher seeds buffalgrass, you know, actively
seeds buffalo grass. Like the in the populated areas, most
of the weeds are native, which is pretty cool. I
appreciate that lots of euphobias, lots of a claysanthes, lots
of houstasias. Uh. I had carlo Ridia Texana popping up
on the street in front of me. Malpigia what are
they call Barbados cherry, that malpigious species. I've seen that
growing as a groundcover. It just gets mode. It just
gets completely mo This is like a small shrub that
produces edible berries. But you know, across the street from
my house, it's growing beneath Aretia and aqua which is
in Barajinac. Wonderful parrot food by the way, we get
the parrots come in and eating the berries and those.
But I've seen that Malpigia Barbados cherry, they call it
growing beneath that already. It just and it just grows
as a groundcover. It gets mot It's like a little
woody groundcover. It gets consistently mode because I don't owe
anything down here and takes just themb all over your
goddamn kids if you don't keep them out of the way,
and so, but you know, it grows fine as a
ground It's pretty cool to see. So this this Akla's
anthes was kind of growing like that. It roots into
the ground at one spot and then kind of grows
kind of like frog fruit, like filing out. A flora
is a groundcover, another great fucking groundcover. But then it
gets these white flowers that pop up at night, and
they've got a red throat, probably to maximize both moth
at night and then butterfly during the day pollination. Fucking
gorgeous plant. They said, I need some of that, and
it's just gonna get moat here, which it did. I
think the guy saw me digging it up and just
had a spite, like went in weed wet. He looked
like one of those miserable tehanos. He didn't look like
a happy guy. And I have passion for him because
it looks he's probably miserable, like a lot of people are,
you know, and alcoholic. See that's why you got to
legalized pot for that guy. That guy could be chilling
out in the lawnchhare underneath the little pergolis structure, you know,
smoking a big dube, mellowed out, just having a you know,
letting his fizzy water rest on his potbelly, smoking a
doobie and having a good time. Isn't how you want
to spend your your your golden years. You don't want
to spend him miserable, yelling at your yelling at your kids,
arguing about politics and anyway, mowing down native weeds that
some people in your neighborhood might like having around, like
mowing them done out of spike. I don't have any
any idea that he just I don't have any proof
that he did it out of Spike. This is just
the Chicago and me talking. You know, he probably just
did it out of Spike. This is the Chicago and
experiencing me talking. I know he's doing it just to
fuck with me. Anyway. So I dug up two of
those and I put him. They've got this fleshy root,
and I probably broke off some of the roots when
I was digging them up, even though trying to be gentle.
But they have this fleshy, semi succulent root. They're in Nictagenac,
which is in Carriophilelees. Lots of members of Carriophi lales
are succulent or have semi succulents, like you know the missms,
the cactus family, the bitter root family, montiac et cetera. Right,
So a lot of them have the bayaline pigments and
semi succulents, and so I put them in a bag.
I said, wow, that's a thick root. I bet it'll
just shoot out new roots. Even though I just traumatized
it ripped out of the ground. I put it in
a big one gallon or two gallon if you can
get them, plastic bag in some soil, and I watered
just a little bit. Not I didn't want to soak
it because this is a drought adapted plant and it
will probably rot because it's meant to. It's got you know,
the it's built for absorbing water quick. So I put
it in that bag. Just keep the humidity up, put
it under some lights inside temperatures like seventy five in
my house. Within a week or two. Uh, you know,
it didn't wilt because I had the amenity up in
that bag. Within a week or two it had formed
out new roots. I put it outside under my misting system,
which you know, waters for ten minutes once a day,
and it's under a pergola in the shade. It's where
all the little chirping frogs like to hang out. It's
also where the feral cats come to hunt the chirping frogs, right,
you got to remove those feral cats, remove them and
use them as fertilizer and so uh. Anyway, this thing
rooted within within like two weeks. I had a great
plant that was already had roots, you know, going around
the pot. And so then I planted that in the
ground and I got some I finally put some drip
irrigation in my yard, which is easy. It takes like
half an hour to install. If you haven't done it
you live in a dry climate. I highly recommend doing it.
The birds and the insects will thank you, and you'll
thank yourself since you don't have to waste time watering anymore.
And I put it on a timer. It it's like
twenty minutes because these things drip slowly, twenty minutes a night.
I'll turn that down to ten minutes a night. And
I put like an old molasses bucket for cattle that
I got from the dump in front of it, and
then lean the palette over it, just to give it
some shade for the first few weeks till it can
get established in the ground, which I like to do.
I recommend doing that too. I'll sometimes build little nests
of sticks around shit that I just plant. Especially if
it was while it was in a pot, it was
in the shade, then I'm putting it to a full
sun spot. Even if it's a full sun plant, it
needs time to acclimate. Best way to do that is
just put it in the ground and then put something
over it. Make like a little nest of like you know,
firewood around it. These are like branches I cut off
that I later use for biochar. I'll make a little
tepee around it, something to just so the hot bear
sun is not hitting it, you know, and it gets
and then like bit by bit you can remove the sticks,
gradually increase the more sun, and then within a month
it's fully adapted. And then now it's putting seeds everywhere
and you got new you know, it's fucking great. You
get to enjoy it. There's cool insects and birds like
you know, land on it. Whatever. So anyway, so yeah,
I was stoked to get that because that's another you know,
my intention with doing all this. I want to get
these species. Once I get in my yard, then they
get established that I can get seat off of them,
that I can give that seat to James Peace, who's
going to grow the shit out of it and then
he can get these into cultivation. And the goal here
is to get things more common, just as common in
cultivation as they are becoming rare in the wild, as
the habitat gets destroyed. First, I even shouldn't even say wild.
There's no wild anymore. Everything's human domination everywhere. But you know,
there's less there's so much human fuckery that you never know.
And especially in Texas, you know, everything's that a landowner's
whims unless it's in a state park or you know,
national park whatever, and those are few and far between Texas.
So everything's that a landowner's whims. So if that landowner
gets a wild hair up, they're ass or a stupid idea,
like a lot of them do. They can completely destroy
anything that's on their land because they quote own it.
So nothing is ever safer, nothing's ever safe. That's why
I mean they kill your lawn movement here is so important.
Get this ship into native native gardens as much as
as possible, as easy as you can. But uh, you know,
I've been noticing more pushback among the lawn cult especially
in Texas. It's so weird against native plant, native plant people.
That's why it's more it's more important not to and
I do do this. It's it's so important not to
shit on and shame people, and I do sh ship
on lawns a lot. But uh, you know you you
attract more bees with kindness, is that what it is
than with vinegar anyway? So just you know, you change
people's minds by being stoked about it and being good
at it and making it look fucking nice than you
do in dope and exciting and fun than you do
by just being that gretchen. You know, actually this to
see now, this is really fucked up. You like, you
shouldn't be doing this. This is really problematic, Like that's
not doesn't it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It works
for people who are morons and who are afraid and
don't you know, afraid of being called out. And it's
just using social the social ostracization as a way to
it doesn't work right, just to show people how cool
it is or what your don't bother. I don't know,
but yeah, we need a wholesale We need like a
nice wholesale or that is also open to the public.
Native plant nursery that just grows dope. Native Texas plants
and plugs. But you got like five or six bioregions
across Texas, South Texas Plains, West Texas Transpicos. I woulds
plant so you know, cross timbers all that, so you
got a prairies, a bunch of bunch of ground to cover.
You know, that would be a nice thing. If I
had a billion dollars, that's probably what I would do.
I'd probably sink twenty million into a fucking dope native
plant nursery and then start putting these Because you're not
going to get rid of the strip malls and shit,
I love, I love the idea of it. That's not
gonna happen. You're not going to change the culture. You're
not going to make it any less miserb with the
parking lots and the strip malls and the car culture.
But at least you can get native plants in there, right,
And if that means like getting him into home despot
or some shit, too, fuck it, go ahead. That's what
I would do. It start a big ass native plant
nurse so you just start getting these things out everywhere, right,
grow hundreds of these things. Watch that video on Pizzo
on Pizzos Wholesale Prairie Nursery Native Native Plant Nursery in
uh In, Illinois. Because that guy man they grow and
everyone who works he must. Everyone who works there seems
pretty happy and while taking care of seems like a
really cool place to work. It's fucking they grow amazing
quality plants. Wish we had something like that for Texas,
for every region in the in the South, the South,
the southeast, the West, wherever. Anyway, Moving right along, I
want to give another shout out to the d Wexler
d Wexler Steel Warehouse down there on South Aberdeen. And
the beautiful city is Chicago, Chicago, where they're you know
what they're doing now with these going on there. You know,
you know anybody who weld stuff. You gotta weld some stuff.
Maybe you weld some weld some shit in your backyard.
You got a backyard. Go weld some ship in the park.
You don't need a permit. Go find a vacant lot somewhere.
Go get when you do that, go get the steal
from d Wexler. They sent us a bunch of hats.
I think this all started because Al found a nice
hat he found in the thrift store Als a thrift
store prince. He's he's just so good at finding the
good stuff in there. He just finds these. When when
we were doing the costumes for some of the skits
on Kill Your Lawn, you know, whether it was an
old Italian, you know, Catholic lady, or whether it was
some sleeves bag mafioso or whatever. He nailed the costumes
just from the thrift stores of the Chicago Land area.
And so he found a d Wexler hat and he
just wore the shit out of it. It smelled terrible
within a few months. And uh, anyway, d Wexler saw it,
and they sent us more more merged. They're wonderful people
and so we support them, all right, So go to
d Wexler. Just go there. He just to say, Hi,
you don't even want to buy steel, Go buy him
a sandwich. Go buy a fucking sandwich for John Wexler.
I don't know what type of sandwich he wants, but
pick something that's easy you can't go wrong with. I
don't know, but it would PISTROMI what is Chicago ins say?
Go go get hi. Gonna tell you beef makes you maybe
not because those really short in your life. And I
like the guy, even though I've never met him. I've
just we've just exchanged mail anyway. Uh okay, So shout
out to d Wexler. I was I found something really cool? Yes,
I said. One of the dominant plants at Thorn Scrub
Sanctuary is uh this plant called Zinnia austro Texana. Zinnia
is a genus in the sunflower family. You get some
showy ones. You get some of them are you know,
really common in uh in cultivation, you know, like old
lady flower beds and stuff like that. You know, it's
I don't mean any offense by that, and I'm sure
someone would have a problem with what I just said,
but you know, old ladies like flowers, and old ladies
like zinias. You get Zenia anomala, which is a cool
orange one from the trans Picos area. You get Zinia aceosa,
which is very common in central and West Texas. Uh Oh,
where did I see? Oh? You get Zenia grand of flora.
I've seen that in Marfa too, But grand to flora.
You got to keep in mind, it's still it's still
a zinia. They're generally pretty small. I guess I've seen
Where did I see Zinia elegons. Oh that was in
the dr that was in the Dominican Republic. Oh, that's
a fucking invasive I think looks like it anyway. So
Zinia is a genus. They're mostly dry and scrubland plants,
dry scrub grasslands. There's probably the center of diversities in Mexico,
you know, probably higher Mexican Plateau. Most of Mexico is
at higher elevations, like three thousand feet four thousand feet.
That's low elevation in Mexico. You get the twenty degrees
latitude three thousand feet four thousand feet. That's the elevation
that a lot of the cool cacti like payotes and
Aerocarpus grow at. Okay Uh, this is still hot as fuck,
and it's got a dry season because the you've got
mountains on the east and west side of this Mexican plateau, right,
So it's like a mesa that's bounded on It's like
a big fucking table of land, of uplifted land that's
bounded on either side by the Sierra Madre Occidental and
the Sierra Madre Oriental. And we'll talk about that later,
because I was thinking about the Sierra Madre Oriental today
down there by Monterrey, which is is that's fucking three
hours from me. I gotta stop saying fucking so much.
I'm sorry, and is chef w it's three I'm closer
to Monterrey and I am from uh than I am
to San Antonio. But uh, anyway, it's just a pain.
He asked to go through the border. Now Mexico wants
to Mancy to get a visa, which I understand because
the US is such a horrible neighbor. But uh, and
also the cops are so corrupt in Mexico. Mexico's got
a lot of little Kirk. Cops in Mexico are way
more corrupt than they are in a US. All Right,
I didn't say abusive, I just said more corrupt. But yes,
I think there's like thirty species of Zinia, maybe more,
but anyway, Zinnia ostro texano was a species that was
lumped in with asceosa and then was split I believe
by Billy Turner thirty years ago. All Right. Billy Turner,
rip well known Texas botanist, died of COVID around twenty twenty,
but did a lot of good work, and I wonder too,
how many other species are like that. You know, we're
lumped in with like this Rudbeccia that I've been talking
about that has probably been lumped in with herd of
but it's probably distinct. Need someone to do molecular work.
If anyone listening to this can do molecular work for me,
let me know, because I want to get this thing
sequenced and see how close it aligns with true Herda.
Alan used to be able to do that, but he's
busy as shit lately and he hasn't used to sequence
some stuff for me. But anyway, okay, so, but this
Zinia is all over thorn scrub and it grows on
these these hard pan calcareous calichi soils. It's a fucking
gorgeous plant. It's got like chalky mint green linear leaves.
It forms like this nice compact little mound, like a
little cushion, and then it gets these really beautiful, tiny,
not tiny, they're like marble sized, gumball sized, white flowers.
And because it's asta race, what looks like a single
flower is actually composed of many flowers. If you don't
quite understand this, that's fine. Just know it's what the
sunflower family astace does. It's what looks like a single
flower is composed of many flowers. A sunflower is composed
of three to five hundred individual tiny flowers. If you
actually get up close and look at it, you can
see them. I'm sorry if I'm repeating this for people
who already know it. Anyway, we try to teach here
at crime pace. So this thing was all over. I
was walking. Every time I walked through thorn scrub. My
favorite time to be there is at dusk. That's when
the rattlesnakes are out. We just have one or two
that I've seen. Hubert Selby Junior I named them. That's
when the tortoises are out. That's when life comes out.
When it's hot as balls. Okay, it's crepuscular, of course.
And so I'll be walking walking around, you know, gun
on my hip, pope, and I see a pig. Never happens,
because they can normally smell you from a while, you know,
from a mile or two away, my half quarter mile away.
And so I'll be walking around this wonderful landscape, just
listening to the parakis flying and the wind blowing, and
the singing insects and if there's some cicadas out because
we've had rain and the previous couple months, they'll be
out and I'll every everywhere, I'll see a giant peote
that I didn't see before, hidden in the under some brush.
And and so I went to go collect some of
the Zinias seed for James Peace, and I couldn't figure
out the seeds are tiny there in these flower heads.
I said, fuck it. The whole flower heads dry already,
but the rays what look like the petals, these white rays,
are are still on the flower head. The capitulum is
the technical term for it. So I'll just take the
whole thing. So I just took my hand and ran
along the stem, pulled off all these old flower heads,
threw them in a bag. Fuck it, I'll let them
dry out sort them out later. And so I did that,
and I was sorting them through yesterday and trying to
find the seeds and splitting these in vulcars open, which
is like the kind of the same as a capitulum
and vulcar capitulum. These are all asta racy vocab words
right specific to the sunflower family. And so in doing that,
I realized I didn't need to split them open. The
entire ray what looks like that white petal comes out
and is attached still attached to the seed. So only
the marginal florets around the ring around the circumference of
that flower head seem to be fertile. Maybe the disc
florets are too. Like an Asta raci. You got disc florets,
you've got ray florets. The rays are attached to the
petals what look like the petals. The rays and the
disc florets are in the center right. And some flower
heads don't have any rays. They're just entirely discoid, all right.
It just looks there's no daisy petals, if you want
to call them that. But Zinny of course has those
daisy petals, those rais. And so I was pulling these
rays off and the seed, these tiny seeds are attached
to it, and then I realize they stay attached to
the ray. And this is really unusual for most I
don't think I've seen this in any other members of
the sunflower family, which has got to be twenty eight
thousand species strong. There have to be twenty eight thousand
species in this family easily. It's like second most you know,
species dense most populated, most most the largest plant family
after orchids. And so I've got these things on a
piece of paper and I'm just pulling them out, and
I realize I can just easily lift I just grab
the ray, the entire dried ray, white dry, and pull
it out and the seat is attached to it. And
then I realized, Wow, this is an an ingenious dispersal mechanism.
If these things are just sitting, you know, these clumps,
these little cushions that are maybe eight inches tall max.
Ten inches tall max. On the floor, the otherwise barren floor,
barren and rocky. There's pebbles everywhere from the you know,
ancestral Rio Grande running back and forth over here over
the last five six million years, maybe longer, you know,
draining the mountains of West Texas and southern New Mexico.
It's the landscape. It's just so intoxicating. And and then
I realized that these things will just sit here in
the wind. And you get a lot of winds. It
can be south, text can be very windy. There's why.
There's one of the reasons there's so many damn wind
farms here, and that wind will just pick up. It'll
just lift those rays out of the involacar, out of
the flower head, just like a flower being lifted out
of a vase. But in this case, the flower has
a little sail attached to it, and that seed is
at the base of that ray, at the base of
that sale, and that just that's how they get everywhere.
So it's ingenious dispersal mechanism. And like many desert plants,
the seeds are probably somewhat long lived. They can last
a year or two at least, if not longer. Some
desert plants can last super long. That's an adaptive benefit
that the environment is going to select for, is long
lived seeds. If something doesn't have long lived seeds and
you grow in a place where you'll have six months
with no rain, it'll be really hot and the seed
can't take that. That species will die out unless it
finds some other way to cope. So anyway, this was
really fucking cool, And you know this is one of
the reasons because you're not going to find this in
a book. You're not going to find this in a paper.
You're only going to find this type of information like
this dispersal strategy of this rare plant species. It only
grows in South Texas. You're only going to find that
by doing field bottony. You're only going to find that
by getting your ass out there, sweating, crouching down, taking
the time to look closer, taking the time to gather
some seeds, by really immersing yourself in the landscape and
the life forms and studying the plants. That's why people
when people ask me, well, what books should I read? Well,
I guess I mean, you really just got to get
out there. Man. You got to get out there. You
got to pay attention, you got to take notes, you
got to take pictures, and you got to think it's
the most important thing. Think about what is in front
of you. Okay, don't just We're so often in life
we're taught to just follow instructions. There's no actual critical thinking.
There's no taking in the information, digesting it, thinking about
how this would work, trying to picture it in your head.
Maybe weed is good for this sometimes too, I don't know.
You have to picture it in your head, imagine it literally,
visualize this in your head. How would this work? And
then if something doesn't compute when you're visualizing it, then
you ask questions, doesn't make sense? And then you look
harder and further. This is why books are not the
end all be all the book. You need books, that's
where you're gonna get information. You need the Internet. That's
where you're gonna get information. But you need that time.
You can have all the information in the world. You
could be sitting in front of a bookshelf. You can
be sitting in a library. If you don't have if
you have not trained your mind, if you've not exercised
your mind to think about things in this way, to
visualize things, to think about, Uh, walk through the steps
of how something might happen, and how something might get pollinated,
and how something might the seed might get dispersed. Why
what is going on with the flower? When you look
at it, like what are the different fucking parts? What
is actually going on there? Like? What am I looking at?
It's like it's like opening up a hood of a
car and wondering, what the fuck does this do? What
does this do? What does this do? Oh? This pumps
this to this? Well, how does that work? What power
is that? You got to think about it. That's how
you understand what is around you. It's how you understand
the life that's around you. And with plants, it's especially
important because plants are what enable all terrestrial life. Okay,
in the ocean it's a different story, but plants are
what enable all terrestrial life. Everybody should know a little
something about them, and stuff should be taught. Some of
this stuff like elementary botany should be taught in grade school,
no joke, like elementary botany, maybe a little like an
elementary entomology course. Not just science class, but actual courses
that teach this shit, you know, instead of the indoctrination
you might get in like civic studies or social studies
or whatever dumb shit, got it. They would have taught
us this, you know, and not only taught us it,
but taught us not just to memorize it, not about that,
but to understand it. You don't even need to memorize,
you just need to understand the basic principles of how
this works and think. You have to be taught to
actually think, to visualize things. That's my main beef with
school too, is the memorization. God, it's just just making
good little obedient workers memorize and follow rules, right, What
a waste of human potential? Anyway, That's all this one
I was Uh yeah, I saw it and was just like, man,
that's brilliant. I was just sitting here at my desk
looking at these things taking these seeds out to get
him to James, and uh, I was just like, huh,
that's fucking cool. Wow, this is this evolved, this is
how it does it. And it's so rare for the
family too, that that ray, that that pedal stays attached
to the seed, and the seed's literally using that pedal
like a little sail for the wind to take it off.
So hopefully we can get this thing into cultivation. It
needs to get fucking blasted with heat. It needs heat.
Like it would look great up against like a sidewalk,
you know, or a curb or something. It's like a
great fucking little mounding groundcover. Zenia austro texta and a
Zenia acerosa is another one. And there's Zenia grande flora
and Zenia anomala, which was one of the dopest of all.
So I think there's like four or five species in Texas.
I don't know, but I think most of the species
are pretty small, well some of them are, some of
them are bigger. I guess for some reason I thought
I had seen another one, uh in Uh. I saw
something in the cloud forest of Wahaka, but I think
it was another genus. You know, these are these are
those genera names that I'm like, you're familiar with before
you really get into botany, because again you've heard it,
you've heard it mentioned in like the old Lady. Botanic
gardens are like it a flower shop or something, you know,
lacking any ecological context. So but I was stoked to
see this. This was a really cool phenomenon to observe.
And I saw a similar thing with uh Frankena JOHNSTONI
this is another rare plant from South Texas where the
whole you know, the flowers are at the end of
these branches. It's a little shrub and then the whole
distal like inch or half inch of the branch comes
off and the leaves that subtend the flowers. It's got
this whirl of leaves that subten the flowers. Those turn
yellow and fall off too, and act as a little
helicopter to help the to help the seed just you know,
take off and get a get a little wind dispersal
assist out to colonize new habitats, colonize new territories. And
frank Kenya is another that's another cool desert genus. You
get him in Chile. I've seen him in Baja. I
just saw a cool one in Mexico. It was Frankenya
james I. Order is carryo Philelees, so order of cactus
and spinach and beats and quineois and h bitter root,
MONTIECEI and miners lettuce, Claytonia and so. But it's in
its own family, frankini Ac. It's a weird one, but
it's really a lot of them are really salt tolerant
and they like deserts. They can grow and you get
a lot of salt in deserts, of course, because you've
got high evaporation rates, lots of heat, and lots of
exposed rock. If there's mountains around that that water washes
all those you know, chemically weathers and then washes all
those solutes into the basin and then the water just
evaporates before it can carry it out to a creek
that carries it out to an ocean, et cetera. But anyway,
so speaking of but speaking of these these cool you know,
arid land deserts, and speaking of Monterrey, Monterrey, which is yeah,
again like a three hour drive from me. If you
get a chance to go down there, it's nice. The
city is kind of gross, not gross, but it's just
like you know, like smiling shit eating grins billboards, smiling
shit eating grins on the billboards, money worship, you know,
a lot of stuff that you encounter in like more
fancy cities. But uh, Huasteca Canyon. Like you look at
a topographic map of Mexico, if you look at a
topographic map of Monterey specifically, you'll see it's got this
huge mountain range to the west of it. You know,
with these these fold thrust faults caused the originally horizontal
limestone bedrock to be flipped up drastically like a like
a rug, like a like a rug, like a throw
rug on a hardwood floor. You know, like if the
dog is running to get out the door and slips
on this throw rug and then bunches it up against
the door jam or something, you know, that kind of thing.
That's what the rock did over a series of however,
many million years, due to compressional forces coming from the west,
and so it's created some drastically incredible and cool and
uplifted and very steep plant habitat where these horizontal limestone
beds are literally almost vertical, and they've created and they're
eroding these these bedding planes are eroding it uneven layers,
so it almost looks like steps like pyramids have been
created in some places. And there's so many cool endemic
plants there. And I started thinking about this today because
Houstasius spicigara, which is an orange. I don't know the
common name for it, it's probably something stupid, but it's
a common plant. It's easy to root from cuttings here
in South Texas, and it gets planted in native plant gardens.
It takes a couple of years to get established and
look good, but mine are finally looking great after two
years in the ground. And it's how many bird pollen it.
It's got these orange flowers. And the only place I've
encountered it in the wild was in these dry forests
beneath these really steep cliffs that are just covered in
all these cool rock wall plants, like these hanging rock gardens.
It's so it's so cool, these hanging rock gardens of
incredible plant species, and there's so many of them that
aren't growing and soil. They're just growing out of these
limestone cliffs, these cracks in these limestone cliffs, and that's
where a gave albo palosa grows, which is a really
weird and rare at gave. It's got these little white
tufts at the distal ends of the leaf blades and
just looks like this. I don't know how you would
describe it, like a pin cushion that can be up
to a foot tall in some cases, perfectly spherical with
little white tufts on the ends. It's the Acaragma. Really
rare cactus is there as well, Decatropis, which is a species.
And Rutasi. That's another one I wish people grew, and
I'd love to get my hands on some seed grew
in South Texas. Rutasi. It's the citrus family. I guess
they changed the name from a gave alba pilosa to
a kind of a gave Alba pulosa. I guess it
came out on the other side of Manfreda. In that phylogeny.
If you look at a clatagram, there was like a
big chunk of a gave species that were all genetically
closely related on one side, and then there was the
genus man Freda in the middle, and then there was
a few agave species which were weird outliers, like a
Gave strayata, which is I guess now, I know, a
Gave striata and a Gave bractiosa, which is now paleo
a gave bractiosa. But they were on the other side
of Manfreda, and Manfreda was in the middle, and some
idiot had the idea that they were just gonna lump
Manfreda into a gave rather than split out the other
a gave species, you know, in order to make it monophyletic,
which is what you want any taxononic clade to be.
You want it to be monophyletic. And so that didn't
make any sense because Manfreda is so different from a
gave ecologically speaking and morphologically speaking, you know, they can
dive back to roots. It's like a perennial, herbaceous perennial agave.
It didn't make any sense to do that. That would
have been a stupid move. And so they just split
up the other side of a gave too. Because Manfreda
was nested within a gave. We'd had a gaves on
the left of it and the right of it on
a cladogram on a phylogeny on a evolutionary tree. If
you look at it, if you visualize this again, you
have to visualize it. Don't just memorize it. Visualize it.
It makes sense. Forget what the paper was. But I'm
sure if you google, like you know, phylogeny, A gave
a gave cladogram, you'll pull up the evolutionary tree where
you could see it, so it makes sense. But yeah,
kind of a gave albo palosa. These these this is
some of one of my favorite places in the world
is these mountains just west of Montterey. There are so
many cool plants there, and so many of them. I've
just adapted to growing in these rock walls because those
rock walls have been there for millions of years since
these these mountains were uplifted. There's it's just full of
cool fucking plants. Man, holy shit. Uh oh mesdenas Polyanthus,
what is this? Did they is that another name change?
What is it? No? This is uh oh god, no, No,
that's a that was an orchid. Okay, that's like a
dryland orchid. Jesus looks like it's in the it's in
the Sporanthe group. Yeah, okay, the ladies Tresses. I don't
know where to hell that name, that common name came from.
It's another stupid common name. But I highly suggest you know,
getting out there, and you need a you need a
four wheel drive of some kind to get out there anyway.
I mean you can. There's some places you can explore
with just a little sedan. But then there's a spot
we have to drive through this like dam, drive up
above this dam, and then it opens up into the
some of the other little these little nooks and crannies.
You know. It's so many micro habitats in this in
this mountain range too, And that's where you kind of
got it. I was there with my friend Carlos and
Andre San Alan rockefs Is in twenty twenty two. That
was like the second or third time i'd been there.
Mammalaria plumosa is all over that canyon too, just growing
out of rock walls. I mean, this is a mammalariat.
It's just like a little looks like a little marshmallow.
Can't even see any of the epidermal tissue. You can't
see any green unless you peel these tricombes. It's got
these like feathery the spines and tricombs. It doesn't really
have any spines. It's mostly tricombs, but the tricombes are
like feathery. They're like plumos, and they kind of block
entirely block the epidermal tissue from the sun. So it's
made its own it's made its own shade cloth. Essentially.
This is a This is a species. It's pretty common
in cultivation. You can buy them pretty easily, and they
form clumps. I've got one in my yard. Never flinches
in the full sun. Really easy to grow. Not super
picky about soil mix. I mean, it needs fast training soil,
but it's not gonna shit the bed if you don't
get the soil just right. It kind of a gave.
Oh this is cryptica. I forgot about that. That was
there too, Yeah, and cylindro puns you tu Nakata was
there too. No shit, that's a West I've seen that
West Texas. Oh, but I wonder if it's the same
ecotype or what God I forgot. I got to go
back there, man and monster guya come a gusta Folium
that's the uh they call it ironwood or what's what's
the other common name, but Guyacum it's got purple flowers.
They get tall, they get like Guya Khan is another
is the common name. Guyacum is the genus name they
can get. You know, you'll see him in West Texas.
You see him down here in South Texas. They can
get you know, twelve feet by twelve feet tall, but
you rarely see them like that because they grow immensely slowly.
I've got one in my yard. I started some from seed.
They're two years older, like eight inches tall. There's so
many good plants, don it is? It is so worth
going if you can, uh, you know, if you could
swing it, just spend a fucking couple of days, and
you know there's people like biking there and it's a
popular spot. Suppose it there used to be peyote there.
Maybe there still is hidden in some areas, but there's
no isn't it shouldn't be there. It's just been poached,
you know, it's been It's it should be fucking everywhere
in that habitat because it's just so adaptable and it
does so well. So it's kind of sad. That makes
me sad thinking about that. You know, ooh Lynn Leah
mess Piloides from Rosecey, I forgot I saw that down there. Wow,
that's a cool one. What the fuck is the range
on this? That is an odd member of rose Cy.
It'd be another cool one to grow God and you
go to those mountains when it's misty out and it's
just they you feel like you're in a fucking it's
it's it's feels otherworldly. You feel like you're like in
a sci fi movie about what was that movie with
the Blue People? I forget the fucking name Avatar, Like
it looks like the landscape and Avatar with these misty
mountains that these towering spires and just so incredible, so
fucking cool. There's so much amazing shit in Mexico, so many,
so much amazing geology and botany, and uh Sadly, just
like South Texas, the native plant movement is somewhat lacking.
There's not enough people studying this or just obsessing about
it outside of the universities. Like my friend Carlos when
I was when I first met him, he was like
he was so excited to see that there were people
that were into this shit. He's like, no one cares.
Like where I live, no one cares. So I'm sure
that's changed out. That was like five, five or six
years ago, So I'm sure there's I think this is growing.
I think it's especially as more people realize how fucking
bleak the modern world is and how empty human society
will leave you feeling, because it just gets you chasing material,
shiny shit, and you know stuff that like it's like
a temporary it's like coke, like the things that that
human society offers. He was like cocaine. It feels good
for a very short burst of time, but then you
need more and you get addicted to it, and it's
never enough. It's like the same thing with the primate
hoarding complex. You want the shiny shit, the fucking muscle
cars or the fancy technology or whatever, and it feels
good for a second, but after a while it's man,
you don't care anymore, and it's it's never like that
with the living world. You get in the living world,
it'll get addicted to that. It'll that dopamine hit keeps coming,
keeps coming. Every time I walk out into my fucking
yard and see some cool bugs or see a new
plant that I plant to do in something I didn't
notice before. I learned something new I learned, Just like
with the Zinniostro text on I Wow, I learned, this
thing is making sales for its seeds. Holy shit, it
that it never gets old. You never run out of things.
But the material world, the human material world, all the bullshit,
the you know, these these dopamine hits that the human
world makes. It's like cocaine. It's it's cheap, it's fucking garbage.
It doesn't last, and it doesn't like it doesn't make
you a better person either, like having a bunch of
shiny shit and fucking pool and fancy cars and all
the time shit, It doesn't make you a better person.
You need to be comfortable, you need good equipment, you
need shit that works. But but that primate hoarding complex
is just it's it's it's unfulfilling. It's a hole. It's
a void. It's not gonna fill the void within you.
That was cool. Chrisick Tinia, Panada was another interesting camp.
Another interesting composite I saw down there. We get chrisic
Tinia Mexicana common named Domianita, smells amazing marigold. Tried the
leaves smell fucking ripe. You get Domianita around Austin and
Edwards Plateau. Chrysik Tinia Panada has a much different leaf
shape and is a little bit larger of a shrub.
Is it? I can't tell, ah, what did I see?
The photos I have are three or four years old,
but now it's still a little herbaceous thing. But god,
it's got cool looking leaves. Now I see wood in there.
It's it's got some it's it's sufferutescent. Maybe there is
the bummer was there's s. Photolus everywhere, which is a
horticultural atrocity from where is it Mediterranean region or South Afria?
Super invasive. It's in the alo family S. Photo Lacey,
which is another family monocut, a family of monosucculent monocuts.
But uh, yeah it was. It was really invasive there.
It was a bad invasive. I remember seeing it everywhere
and this is like some shit. I think they still
plant this. I saw this plant that around Austin, around
one of these new these hideous new housing developments out
by Lakeway, one of the rich neighborhoods. Just garbage, man,
fucking garbage. They were planting this, and then there was
like a Texas madrone and Verbusina LINDHEIMERI growing like thirty
feet away in a in like off the property of
this development. I'm just like, it was absurd. So you've
got these wonderful natives that are built for this environment,
and you've created this blant, bleak, bland ass shopping, you know,
shopping culture. Fucking just the landscaping bed of these these
non native this non native bullshit that's gonna die without
irrigation or escape and become invasive as fuck. Ooh. Another
a member of the willow family, a dry tropical forest
member of the willow family neo Pringlia integrifolia order a
malpiggy a lea same order as euphobias in points status.
Did you know it? Did you know that willows are
related to euphobias and this thing is just growing on that.
It was really dry we went there, I mean it
was spring. It's you know, most of the rainy season
here is primarily in in uh. I guess they can
get rain. They just got some rain now, actually, but
the big rainy season is in the summer, and dry
tropical forests Mammillaria is everywhere. Uh ooh, Mammialaria prolifera was
done there. Mammialaria prolifera multi steps in those little canyons.
I mean, these these mountains are just wrinkled the fuck
up and like like clothing would wrinkle, and it's created
these just such cool little microhabit It's such a diverse area.
It's so fucking cool. Tons of choyas cylindra putia in Braccata.
Where do I see that? Tu Nakata? That that's icicle choya.
Oh that was in. Uh, that was in. That was
kind of outside. That was not in the mountains. That
was outside. Got a nice picture of Allen with feral
cactus pelosis too. It's like eight headed, six foot tall
barrel cactus. I gotta get the fuck down there.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 4: Pain Teria elastical filo, what the fuck ella kisto phila?
Oh I shut I thought that was a mimosa. What
the fuck? What is this? Oh it's from the Inga tribe.
It is in Mimo Soudy. But the Painteria where I've
not seen that legume. I don't think that gets into Texas. Oh,
there's so much cool shit there all this stuff that
just the northern end is like up by Monterey. It
doesn't get into Texas, but it would probably grow here. Fine,
there's so much cool stuff. All you gotta do is
cross that border. You see so much cool shit growing
on their Paleo gave bractiosa of course, Acharagma huasteca really
cool little cactus with yellow flowers dah oh yeah. And
bud Lea cordatta of course is everywhere too. That's a
common that's like one of those those rather aggressive native
quote weeds of Mexico that can be a tree. It's
got multiple different ecotypes. It's got like really some with
really kanniescent white leaves, like chalky mint leaves covered in
these tiny little hairs. And then there's ones that are
more music adapted to a more music climate, that don't
have the hairs and are more green and the leaves
are bigger and broad leaved, you know, from a more
mild climate, higher elevation climate. It's like like you'd see
around Mexico City where it's like seven thousand foot elevation
and you know, right down on the campus of yunam
You ever been to Unam, UNA's the way to the
correct pronunciation. You go to Mexico City, you take the
little subway down there, wonderful experience. Just hold onto your shit, pickpocket.
It's a fucking subway and uh, and then you take
it down it's like a half hour or maybe forty
minute subway ride. They got good subways down there too.
They got good public transportation. Mexico City's fucking dope. It
smells like a parking garage because all the fucking automobile
traffic is terrible. You have black bookers. But for a
week or two you hang out there, it's so cool.
There's so much cool shit to see. But they I
basically I think they've been getting a lot of gringo tourists.
I had. My friend Priyo was just down there for uh.
She lived there for six months, and she said, the
amount of obnoxious fucking honkys just the fucking oh my god,
like I like the day I've had, it's fucking sick.
I love it, like I got such a day out
on a part of that. And then that's pissing off
a lot of people that live there too. So now
there's all this fucking you know, this pushback where they're
just like any fucking gringo that comes down here. Fuck
you fuck you know, it's just it's so now, it's tense,
and it's just all the stupid shit people do when
they start shitting on each other and lobbing turds. You know.
I like that. I like that term lobbing turds, you know,
just like especially with when it gets like this. It's
just treating race like it's sports teams. Don't it's not
about class. No, God, we can't pay attention to that.
Don't look any deeper, look at the first two dimensional
defining factor, like these white people like, no, there's fucking
cool you know, pasty honkeys that grew up in trailer
parks or whatever. They are working class. It's the haves
and the have nots. Motherfucker. Quit Quit treating race like
it's sports teams, you fucking morons. I get a little
too indignant. I get turned up you. I gotta stay
out of the Instagram comments section, I really do. And
that was one of the bummers of identitarianism too. It's
just just made class completely tone deaf, and it just
made it about race. The most basal, bottom of the
brain stem thing to attached to whether you're a racist
or whether you're an identitarian, just like sports teams like
what flag are you wearing? What jersey are you wearing?
And everyone who attaches this to this shit is totally
ignorant of the biological premise of race two, which I've
talked about this so many times, which is just melanine
content based on latitude, on phenotypic variation in a latitude,
brown and black skin tones have evolved independently multiple times,
the same way that pasty skin tones have. Right when
do we get to snap out of this bottom of
the brainstem primate mindset? Huh, fucking morons? I understand it.
I understand it, but forgive the indignant tone. But I
just you know, the education, the potential, it's the twenty
first century man. This information is out there. Like you
can read about vitamin B deficiency and vitamin D deficiency,
each one according to different latitudes. You know, your high latitudes,
you're gonna get vitamin D deficiency if you're too brown,
low latitudes, you're gonna get vitamin B deficiency, if you're
too pink or pasty. This is just basic science. Race
doesn't exist. It's a human construct, and and especially with
the ease with which so many idiots confused race and culture.
Quote race melanin content and culture. You know. Anyway, I'll
end that rant. But yeah, Mexico City, man, you got it.
It's it's nice. It's nice for a little while, you know,
again the black boggers. But anyway, I gotta go down there,
just to go down there again. I thought Marco. I
thought Marco and his dad and all his friends and
shit and his brothers were gonna go down there. And
I had such a great time with them last June.
That was so great. You know, his dad was hilarious,
his uh, his dad's friend was hilarious. Like these the
two old Mexican guys that were just fucking like, you know,
just like totally loose, you know, going on. They were
fucking great to be around. It was just a really
good vibe. Marco's into plants. You know, he's not a
super nerd like me, but he's he knows his ship
and it's excited about it. He's fucking such a good
vibe man, totally good sense of humor, joking around and
fucking ah.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: It was a really nice They invited me to come with.
I was I was honored. I was honored, and it's
because we were We were rolling deep too. There were
like seven of us, you know, I think I was
the only one that didn't speak Spanish, didn't feak, didn't
speak fluid Spanish. But because we're rolling deep, everything was
cheap too. We had like this big ass yukon they rented,
and you know, we would get like airbn b's and
then just go to all these different habitats and just
fucking nerd out and with my friend Gabriel too, you know,
Mexican metal head, uh Cactus nerd. It was such a
good time, so fucking I should have him on the podcast.
Actually I should have. I should have Gabriel Diaz and
Fonte on it daily daily, Diaz in Fante. Well, we're hitting,
we're hitting an hour and fifteen minutes again. Check out
some of these plants though, man, And if you get
a chance to just go to Mantharay, that's a really
nice spot, just even you know, if you're looking for
some sort of fucking getaway plant getaway with to rent
the car, you know you need you gotta you got
like a week or two off vacation flying a Monterey,
rent a car, and fucking you know, go to the
go to the go to those mountains. Man, there's so there, guy,
there's so much good ship. You'll never get tired of
clambering around those mountains. Just don't fall and break your ass, right,
so much good ship. Iris scene Eriscene, that's another cool one.
That one kind of blew my mind. Amarant thesy, which
is does not have the most charismatic flowers. Oh, this
was Eroscene orientalis. I thought it was Erosne the fuse
Josh with Texas on in it. Shut out to Josh.
You know, he's one of these. He's one of the
people that's doing a lot of the identifications on inad
for Texas and does a does a really good job.
Good solid dude. Former skater too. I think he's still skates.
I don't know. He came to my San Antonio presentation
that did last year and he's corrected a lot of
my identifications that especially ones that I don't have the
time for. I'll just oh, it's this, I'll put the
genus down and then he'll go look it up and
get it down to species. He's really good. He knows
his shit, you know, he knows he's really good. I'm
thankful for people like that. I wish every region on
Ininat had people that would go through and identify stuff.
I certainly don't want to do it, but you know,
whad other people go, Oh, Moretonia, Greggy. I was everywhere.
That is a really cool shrub we get in South Texas,
but it only grows on these these lomas, these little
hills full of conglomerate pebbles. But down there it was everywhere.
I was scaling up this sketchy rock face to try
and get a photo of it, kind of a guy
ve albo pealosa, you know, because most of the ones
at lower elevation have all been poached by these fucking nerds.
And I was like, you know, it was sketchy because
this limestone is falling apart this old ocean floor basically.
And I looked to my right and there was like
a giant Moretonia. You could tell if it's got these
red stems, these smooth red stems. It's like a multi
branch shrub, tiny white flowers. But Mortonia is a really
cool genius. I was talking about that last podcast, like
four or five species in North America, all of them
are limestone endemics. All have cool leaves that are imbricate,
like roofing shingles or snake scales. And and I looked
at yea, it was Mortonia Gregory and then I realized
it was everywhere like which, this is a kind of
a rare plant in South Texas. I'd love to see
it grown more in horticulture. I'm trying to I'm trying
to get on it. Mike Easton at San Antonio got
some cuttings and seeds. I need to go collect some
more seeds from the places the few places I know
where it grows in South Texas. But you know, in
horticulture would be fucking great. It would be such a
great plant for landscaping. And it's covered in insects and
cool bees when it's blooming. But but it's still kind
of rare. But down there it was everywhere. Oh god,
there's so there's so much good shit everywhere you look.
Are so much diversity, you know, Yeah, go to Hosteca Canyon.
You know, you got a couple of days just go
down there and take a look at the deca Tropis
bicolor and Neo pringlia and tigrifolio that's the the willow family.
That's salacacious thing. Sala casey, go find some cool mammalarias.
Why is nobody growing deca tropis? That's what I want
to know. That's a really cool it's a really cool rue.
I only took one photo. What the fuck? Yeah, it's
got like this rusty, it's got this. I saw it
at UC Berkeley Botanic Garden the first time I saw it,
and so I knew what it was when I encountered
it in habitat. But oh, the fucking flowers are incredible.
I bet they got some cool oil glands on them too,
like quite a few members of Rutasi. Goddamn. Oh, it's
it's related to xanthoxilum. It's in the xanthoxloidy. Oh, there's
some nice money shots somebody put up on an I
how about that. What is the range of this? I
think it's mostly I've only seen it. I've seen in
Tamilpis too. But how far south does it go? It
gets into just north of Mexico City a little bit. Yeah. Yeah,
it's just Sierra Madre. Man, it's just Sierra Madre Oriental.
What a fucking cool plant that thing needs to be
grown too. I wonder if it's frost. It's gotta be
frost tower. It's growing because those mountains, what elevation is
not the red it's like three or four thousand feet
or something. It's higher than here. They got to get
frost on there occasionally, you know, once in a blue moon,
but it happens. So this thing's been through the filter
over the last how many hundreds of thousands, millions of years. Yeah,
it's got that orange indument. Those new leaves coming out
are just oh god, it's beautiful. It's like fuzzy and orange. Okay,
well we'll call it quits there. Have a good rest
of your day. If you want to order stickers, they're
twenty bucks. You can venmo me as hell all one word.
I'll send you nine stickers, two of them multicolored. They're
real nice and uh yeah, I don't know. I forget
where I'll be speaking, so I can't tell you right now.
Maybe I'll do it next episode. All right, have a
good rest of the day. Go yourself by