1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:53,000
Speaker 1: M hmmm, welcome to the crime pace. But body doesn't podcast.

2
00:00:55,759 --> 00:00:58,679
That's some that's some smooth ship. That's nice. I like

3
00:00:58,719 --> 00:01:00,960
to I like to listen to be Humphrey every once

4
00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:04,760
in a while. You know, she's an amazing musician on

5
00:01:04,840 --> 00:01:10,439
the blue Note label. Anyway, all right, we can finish

6
00:01:10,480 --> 00:01:13,560
off with that. What's going on? Welcome back? I just uh,

7
00:01:13,799 --> 00:01:19,519
I just got back from I was an ecuador Alan

8
00:01:19,560 --> 00:01:21,879
and Mandy invited me to come down there and be

9
00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:27,280
the plant person on a little uh like mycology tour

10
00:01:27,359 --> 00:01:30,359
they were doing down there, and it ended up being, uh,

11
00:01:30,519 --> 00:01:33,920
it was a fucking wonderful time. It was. I met

12
00:01:33,920 --> 00:01:36,480
a lot of cool people, spent the last two weeks

13
00:01:36,519 --> 00:01:40,560
hanging out with like nerds of the highest order. But great,

14
00:01:40,840 --> 00:01:46,799
I mean great conversations, mentally stimulating conversations. I learned a

15
00:01:46,840 --> 00:01:50,319
ship ton just from being down in that kind of

16
00:01:50,359 --> 00:01:56,200
habitat and observing the plants. Uh, And I said, wow,

17
00:01:56,359 --> 00:01:59,959
you know, the blue the tropical blueberry diversity is really wild,

18
00:02:00,200 --> 00:02:03,239
as well as members of the orders in Gibrelei's the

19
00:02:03,319 --> 00:02:05,799
Ginger order and all the families in there. You know,

20
00:02:06,480 --> 00:02:14,319
morantasy uh, helicony, ac cost they s et cetera Cyclant.

21
00:02:14,360 --> 00:02:20,120
They see the Panama hat family. They look so much

22
00:02:20,280 --> 00:02:24,439
like palms at first glance. Uh, and then you get

23
00:02:24,520 --> 00:02:26,919
up close and realize this is not a palm, and

24
00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:30,919
the inflorescence is wild and they can be the members

25
00:02:30,960 --> 00:02:34,719
of Cyclant, Theacey. We'll get into this later, but you know,

26
00:02:34,759 --> 00:02:40,360
they were like vining epiphytes. There were you know, small

27
00:02:40,840 --> 00:02:43,360
tree like things. The only kind of hint that they're

28
00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:47,280
not palms comes in the leaf shape. They've got this

29
00:02:47,280 --> 00:02:50,360
this it looks like a palm frond that splits into

30
00:02:50,400 --> 00:02:54,560
a v wild shit. That was down there with herpers

31
00:02:54,560 --> 00:02:57,599
I was down there with I mean, just other biologists.

32
00:02:57,599 --> 00:03:01,360
I guess it was technically an eco tour that they

33
00:03:01,360 --> 00:03:06,719
were offering, but almost everybody on this tour, on this

34
00:03:07,120 --> 00:03:09,560
thing was whatever to fuck you call it. I mean,

35
00:03:09,560 --> 00:03:12,479
it was you know, it was not it was not

36
00:03:12,599 --> 00:03:18,240
like fluffy and h click baity or any of that.

37
00:03:18,639 --> 00:03:22,240
You know. It was like pretty in depth learning and

38
00:03:23,719 --> 00:03:29,360
extremely educational and just fucking fun. But basically everybody on

39
00:03:29,439 --> 00:03:32,280
it was some sort of you know, had some sort

40
00:03:32,280 --> 00:03:34,719
of biological background or not. Everybody. There were some people

41
00:03:34,719 --> 00:03:38,000
that didn't, but you know, and everybody got afforded the

42
00:03:38,080 --> 00:03:39,719
chance to learn. It wasn't like there was you know,

43
00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:42,520
like it was h like to be to go on it.

44
00:03:42,560 --> 00:03:46,439
You didn't need to be extremely well versed in any

45
00:03:46,439 --> 00:03:49,800
of this stuff already, but you certainly would be by

46
00:03:49,800 --> 00:03:53,120
the time you left. And man, it was just it

47
00:03:53,199 --> 00:03:56,800
was so fucking great. You know, it was a little

48
00:03:56,840 --> 00:04:00,680
more plush than I would have you know, been traveling.

49
00:04:00,719 --> 00:04:03,159
And I mean I normally am like when I go somewhere,

50
00:04:03,159 --> 00:04:06,879
I'm living out of a beat up rental rental car

51
00:04:07,879 --> 00:04:14,680
and just fucking you know, just not for changing my clothes,

52
00:04:15,319 --> 00:04:18,560
and I'm just like, you know, wake up, get caffeinated,

53
00:04:19,120 --> 00:04:21,079
eat some food, pack some food, then got in on

54
00:04:21,079 --> 00:04:24,000
the field for ten hours and just bust ass to

55
00:04:24,040 --> 00:04:29,199
take you know, three thousand photos, make notes, collect some

56
00:04:29,240 --> 00:04:33,879
herbarium specimens. Whatever. This was a little more relaxed, and

57
00:04:35,199 --> 00:04:36,879
you know, they fed us and everything. It was kind

58
00:04:36,879 --> 00:04:40,560
of cool, but yeah, it was. It was an expenses

59
00:04:40,639 --> 00:04:42,839
paid trip to just go down there and basically be

60
00:04:42,920 --> 00:04:47,360
the botany person, be the plant the plant person, which

61
00:04:47,480 --> 00:04:48,959
when I you know, when it comes down to it,

62
00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:51,680
I mean, tropical botany is so new to me. I

63
00:04:51,759 --> 00:04:54,360
learned so much in this trip. But there's there's families

64
00:04:54,399 --> 00:04:57,399
that I had no prior experience with, like cost aacy,

65
00:04:57,519 --> 00:05:01,519
you know, these weird monoca families, myriantasy cyclant the see

66
00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:09,560
another great example, uh erythroxylce the coca family, the cocaine family,

67
00:05:10,439 --> 00:05:15,000
which I guess has four genea. Almost all the species

68
00:05:15,040 --> 00:05:19,720
are in Erythroxylum, which is the erythroxylum whatever. However, I

69
00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:22,519
think Erythroxylum so really the way to pronounce it, it's

70
00:05:22,560 --> 00:05:26,959
a lot easier. But those are that's the like the

71
00:05:27,040 --> 00:05:29,319
largest genus in a family. And there's a couple other ones.

72
00:05:29,360 --> 00:05:32,560
I guess there's disjunkt Erythroxylum in Africa, which I did

73
00:05:32,560 --> 00:05:35,240
not I did not know, but these are you know,

74
00:05:36,680 --> 00:05:41,399
these are like montane, very wet, very humid. It was

75
00:05:41,439 --> 00:05:43,120
an I opener for me too in the sense that

76
00:05:43,160 --> 00:05:45,279
I picture the Amazon. We were in Upper Amazon, to

77
00:05:45,360 --> 00:05:50,279
be fair, we were like three thousand feet God, that

78
00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:54,000
wonderful South Texas there. It smells like burning plastic can

79
00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:57,720
garbage fire. It is such a fucking dystopia being back here. Man,

80
00:05:57,839 --> 00:06:01,000
it has been unreal. Was It's just like they go

81
00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:04,560
to fucking Walmart to return this speaker, which I should

82
00:06:04,560 --> 00:06:08,000
you know, I would love to patronize an independent business.

83
00:06:08,199 --> 00:06:11,360
But I'm in fucking South Texas, so there's nothing down here.

84
00:06:11,399 --> 00:06:14,079
Walmart is what we got. I have to go there.

85
00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:18,240
I have to fucking it's I'm that's my own hell.

86
00:06:18,360 --> 00:06:20,759
Like this is punishment for some shit I did, probably

87
00:06:21,199 --> 00:06:24,240
a decade ago. I don't know, but I'm being punished.

88
00:06:24,240 --> 00:06:25,720
I feel like I'm being spiritually punned. I had to

89
00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:28,720
go to Walmart. I bring my kid with me. I say,

90
00:06:28,720 --> 00:06:32,199
you're coming with me, you know, for emotional support, getting

91
00:06:32,199 --> 00:06:33,680
so I put her on my shoulders. We go into

92
00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:35,959
fucking Walmart, and I'm dying the minute I walk in.

93
00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:38,600
I can smell the off gassing plastic, the fluorescent lights,

94
00:06:39,279 --> 00:06:42,920
you know, the consumers being farmed. We're all being farmed

95
00:06:42,920 --> 00:06:45,160
here in the United States. It's part of the dystopia.

96
00:06:45,360 --> 00:06:49,560
I hope you're enjoying it. Uh. And in South Texas especially,

97
00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:51,639
it feels like the Matrix. I feel like I'm living

98
00:06:52,319 --> 00:06:55,160
in the matrix, like a nineteen fifty style. It's so

99
00:06:55,240 --> 00:06:57,519
fucking dark, you know what, I should be taking this

100
00:06:57,680 --> 00:07:00,399
up with my shrink, not you. But this is part

101
00:07:00,439 --> 00:07:01,839
of the fun. In the podcast for me is I

102
00:07:01,839 --> 00:07:04,079
get to fucking dump on you. You don't mind, do you?

103
00:07:04,079 --> 00:07:05,600
What are you doing? You know right? You got time?

104
00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:08,680
So I go in there and I had to return

105
00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:12,199
this speaker that I bought for a fucking electric drum

106
00:07:12,240 --> 00:07:14,480
set that I have so I can make some like

107
00:07:14,639 --> 00:07:17,839
a bleke sel beats. I can make some beats for

108
00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:19,959
background music and shit like that. I played drums, been

109
00:07:19,959 --> 00:07:25,800
playing drums like twenty five years, and so I needed

110
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:27,519
this little speaker so I could hear the thing because

111
00:07:27,519 --> 00:07:28,720
I don't know where I live. I live in a

112
00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:30,680
small house and I'm just I don't have enough room

113
00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:33,079
for an actual drum set. So I got this thing. Whatever,

114
00:07:33,399 --> 00:07:36,399
I'm returning this. I shouldn't have bought the speaker at

115
00:07:36,439 --> 00:07:39,000
Walfart to begin with, because it was I knew it's bad,

116
00:07:39,120 --> 00:07:40,600
all right, It's just like go I have to go

117
00:07:40,639 --> 00:07:46,199
in there for groceries sometimes and uh, just an awful experience.

118
00:07:46,199 --> 00:07:48,000
So I was I but I did, and of course

119
00:07:48,040 --> 00:07:51,399
it was like cheap garbage that you know, came in

120
00:07:51,399 --> 00:07:55,360
a shipping container, was probably made by you know, nine

121
00:07:55,439 --> 00:07:57,920
year olds on the outskirts of Beijing. So I brought

122
00:07:57,959 --> 00:08:01,079
it back to return the thing, and I'm watching these

123
00:08:01,120 --> 00:08:06,519
two dudes like unpack this fucking TV that was like

124
00:08:06,759 --> 00:08:08,800
had to be nine feet long or something, and I

125
00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:13,560
was just like, that's you know, this is this is it.

126
00:08:13,560 --> 00:08:16,480
It's like the TV is not big enough. It's like

127
00:08:16,519 --> 00:08:18,439
a table. You could flip that on its side and

128
00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:20,600
eat off that thing, you know, with like a fucking

129
00:08:20,639 --> 00:08:25,839
twelve person dinner. And then I just realized, like God, what,

130
00:08:26,079 --> 00:08:27,600
like the fucking who the fuck? What do you need

131
00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:29,240
a TV that But the fuck you're gonna watching a

132
00:08:29,279 --> 00:08:32,240
TV that big? You know what, are you running a

133
00:08:32,279 --> 00:08:35,440
rec center? You got like an orphanage or something. I mean,

134
00:08:35,480 --> 00:08:37,039
I could see if you had an orphanage, you know,

135
00:08:37,120 --> 00:08:39,159
you have like movie night, you need a TV that big.

136
00:08:39,200 --> 00:08:42,159
It was just depressing. But it's at this connection from

137
00:08:42,200 --> 00:08:44,919
the real world, right that this part, it's all part

138
00:08:44,919 --> 00:08:48,679
of it. So anyway, get a TV in a South

139
00:08:48,759 --> 00:08:53,320
so's that a sick car? Uh that's just my judgments anyway,

140
00:08:53,399 --> 00:08:56,519
So uh, anyway, what the fuck? So it was it

141
00:08:56,559 --> 00:08:58,120
was an eye opener for me being in the Amazon.

142
00:08:58,120 --> 00:08:59,960
That's what I came back to. I was like trying

143
00:08:59,960 --> 00:09:02,960
to get out, you know, kind of come to terms

144
00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:09,120
with these wonderful life forms I've been seeing, and and

145
00:09:09,159 --> 00:09:14,639
then the human hell, the dystopic scenery of billboards and

146
00:09:14,679 --> 00:09:18,559
car dealerships and just consumer hell and complete alienation and

147
00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:22,720
isolation from the living world and what's real, and that's

148
00:09:22,759 --> 00:09:25,960
what you know, that's what a great many people live

149
00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:29,720
in in the United States and many other places as

150
00:09:29,720 --> 00:09:32,919
well anyway. So, but being in the Amazon was an

151
00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:36,879
eye opener for me because, you know, I picture I

152
00:09:36,919 --> 00:09:40,320
had never been to the tropical rainforest before, and I

153
00:09:40,399 --> 00:09:46,399
pictured hot, humid, miserable, and indeed, it can be that,

154
00:09:46,600 --> 00:09:48,720
but it wasn't at the elevations we were at. We

155
00:09:48,720 --> 00:09:52,559
were about thirty one hundred feet and it wasn't that bad.

156
00:09:52,600 --> 00:09:56,360
It wasn't as hot as I pictured it. It was

157
00:09:56,480 --> 00:09:59,720
chilly on some mornings. It's certainly not as hot as

158
00:10:00,759 --> 00:10:06,559
South Texas and June or August, you know, throughout the

159
00:10:06,559 --> 00:10:11,480
whole summer. And the mosquitoes weren't that bad, primarily, I

160
00:10:11,480 --> 00:10:15,039
would assume, because you know, i'd well, first off, mosquitoes

161
00:10:15,080 --> 00:10:17,240
are going to be worse and disturbed areas and in

162
00:10:17,559 --> 00:10:22,679
places that humans have basically cleared, you know, except for

163
00:10:22,759 --> 00:10:26,080
like Alaska. I was talking with Matt about this the

164
00:10:26,120 --> 00:10:29,559
other day, you know, and like remote Alaska, the mosquitoes

165
00:10:29,600 --> 00:10:32,879
are really bad because there's so much you know, so

166
00:10:33,279 --> 00:10:35,519
many large mammals for them to feed off of it,

167
00:10:35,519 --> 00:10:39,080
and it's just hell. But if there's not a large

168
00:10:39,080 --> 00:10:41,679
food source around and there's not a lot of human

169
00:10:41,720 --> 00:10:46,519
clearance because human disturbance, clearing the habitat also kills everything

170
00:10:46,559 --> 00:10:49,879
that eats the mosquitoes, which we don't realize because you know,

171
00:10:49,919 --> 00:10:52,440
we're disconnected and alienated from what's real and we live

172
00:10:52,440 --> 00:10:56,000
in this little hell of our own making. And so

173
00:10:57,159 --> 00:10:59,759
you know, in disturbed areas, it's when you get the mosquitoes,

174
00:10:59,799 --> 00:11:02,879
and it's for species like eighties a jipdi, these invasive

175
00:11:02,879 --> 00:11:06,440
mosquito species that you know, didn't they're not from North America.

176
00:11:06,480 --> 00:11:08,480
They were brought over. And not only that, but they

177
00:11:09,120 --> 00:11:12,799
they're like you know, Norway rats and feral cats, et cetera.

178
00:11:12,919 --> 00:11:16,679
They kind of follow humans. They they are organisms that

179
00:11:16,720 --> 00:11:22,159
benefit directly off of human society. You're gonna encounter, you know,

180
00:11:22,240 --> 00:11:24,919
those those show up once the land gets cleared and

181
00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:27,960
the et cetera, and they're you know, they're they've spent

182
00:11:28,120 --> 00:11:30,840
thousands of years co evolving with humans too as their

183
00:11:30,840 --> 00:11:34,120
food source. So well, I shouldn't say co evolving, just

184
00:11:34,159 --> 00:11:36,519
evolving because humans aren't really well. I guess humans are

185
00:11:36,519 --> 00:11:38,519
evolving in response to eighties a gyp D. Right, that's

186
00:11:38,559 --> 00:11:43,519
what sickle cell is. Anyway, the mosquitoes weren't that bad

187
00:11:43,600 --> 00:11:46,879
in the Amazon. There were a few, but you know,

188
00:11:46,919 --> 00:11:50,039
there's so many frog species and other insects that prey

189
00:11:50,080 --> 00:11:54,159
on them that there's the checks and balances, and it's

190
00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:57,200
I mean, it's the same story with ticks, right. The

191
00:11:57,279 --> 00:11:59,879
tics get out of control when you knock out the

192
00:12:00,159 --> 00:12:03,200
editors that keep the deer populations down, or when you

193
00:12:03,240 --> 00:12:07,360
stop burning. And so that's why ticks are so bad.

194
00:12:07,440 --> 00:12:08,879
Part of the reason why ticks are so bad in

195
00:12:08,960 --> 00:12:14,360
Northeast fire suppression, you know, removal of predators and complete

196
00:12:14,399 --> 00:12:19,279
imbalance of the deer populations. Anyway, I didn't know what

197
00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:22,159
to expect when I got down there, and it was

198
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:25,440
it was really pleasant. It's just humid and it rains

199
00:12:25,440 --> 00:12:29,480
a lot. You've got you know, the intertropical convergent zone,

200
00:12:30,279 --> 00:12:34,399
and so that's you've got these warm air masses you know,

201
00:12:34,879 --> 00:12:38,840
rising and uh of course creating low pressure systems low

202
00:12:38,840 --> 00:12:42,840
pressures of course associated with rainfall, and so you know,

203
00:12:42,879 --> 00:12:45,080
basically the other end of that Hadley Stell, you've got

204
00:12:45,080 --> 00:12:47,480
the high pressure zones, that high pressure cold they were

205
00:12:47,559 --> 00:12:51,600
descending at thirty degrees latitude north and south, creating deserts

206
00:12:51,639 --> 00:12:55,279
in certain areas. And that was air that originally rose

207
00:12:55,480 --> 00:12:59,240
at the tropics. We're part of that air originally rose

208
00:12:59,279 --> 00:13:02,320
at the tropics and then got pushed to thirty degrees.

209
00:13:02,440 --> 00:13:05,480
So because of that rising air, it just rains all

210
00:13:05,480 --> 00:13:07,679
the fucking time. It was like, I think the rainfall

211
00:13:07,759 --> 00:13:10,879
for where we were was between fifteen and twenty five

212
00:13:10,960 --> 00:13:14,919
feet of annual rainfall a year. And you know, many

213
00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:18,720
of the places where we were, it's wild. It's like

214
00:13:19,759 --> 00:13:23,679
you'll be walking and then there's just this little two

215
00:13:23,720 --> 00:13:27,440
foot crevasse that opens up two foot wide by like

216
00:13:27,559 --> 00:13:30,519
three feet deep, and then there's just water running through

217
00:13:30,519 --> 00:13:32,759
it and it's just a drainage and it's clear water.

218
00:13:32,840 --> 00:13:35,320
It's not like nasty brown water. It's clear water. It's

219
00:13:35,360 --> 00:13:39,519
got a little fish in it, and then that's just

220
00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:41,240
part of the drainage. I mean, the ground is just

221
00:13:41,320 --> 00:13:45,879
always wet. There's lots of leaf litter the forests. There

222
00:13:45,919 --> 00:13:48,080
were just fucking incredible. I kept thinking the whole time

223
00:13:48,120 --> 00:13:50,480
I'm there, I'm like, what is it like? What is

224
00:13:50,519 --> 00:13:52,720
it like to do psychedelics in this kind of habitat?

225
00:13:52,759 --> 00:13:56,559
It's got to be incredible because everything around you is alive,

226
00:13:57,399 --> 00:14:00,279
you know, versus like where I live now, everything around

227
00:14:00,360 --> 00:14:04,440
me is dead, you know, including like the people on

228
00:14:04,519 --> 00:14:07,919
the inside. Right, It's just like it's like the modern

229
00:14:07,960 --> 00:14:11,879
American that's where we're all headed. Like I think, you know,

230
00:14:12,120 --> 00:14:14,480
just we're all gonna be walking dead, just farmed this

231
00:14:14,639 --> 00:14:20,919
consumers dead on the inside, alienated from what's real. So uh,

232
00:14:21,799 --> 00:14:24,000
but just to be surrounded by like this, all this

233
00:14:24,519 --> 00:14:32,240
living green, living green fabric everywhere has got to be intoxicating.

234
00:14:32,240 --> 00:14:34,440
And then the fucking frogs at night, the frog diversity

235
00:14:34,440 --> 00:14:38,200
there's insane. Saw a lot of cool herbs who saw

236
00:14:38,360 --> 00:14:45,320
coral sneak. We saw what was it Boutria kophis, some

237
00:14:45,480 --> 00:14:50,600
pit viper species that the Alex, one of the herpetologists,

238
00:14:50,600 --> 00:14:53,600
was with. They milked the venom out of it. So

239
00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:55,000
we got the milk the venom out of it. That

240
00:14:55,080 --> 00:14:58,200
was cool at least see how it's done. Uh. And

241
00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:00,559
then they of course use that to create anti vent

242
00:15:00,639 --> 00:15:07,000
and it was. It was a really great experience, but

243
00:15:07,120 --> 00:15:09,279
the plant life was just fucking nuts. We went up

244
00:15:09,279 --> 00:15:13,279
to the Paramo one day, which is you know, Paramo

245
00:15:13,679 --> 00:15:17,519
habit that for anybody who doesn't know, is high elevation,

246
00:15:17,679 --> 00:15:20,919
low latitudes, basically what twelve one hundred feet looks like

247
00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:25,639
on the equator, and it was just fucking nuts. I've

248
00:15:25,639 --> 00:15:26,919
been wanting to go there for a while. But you

249
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:31,919
get all these temperate lineages, lineages from you know, points

250
00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:35,799
further north or south, latitudes further north or south, but

251
00:15:35,919 --> 00:15:38,799
they're at the equator, and basically at the equator it's

252
00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:41,799
far too warm for them and just too different of

253
00:15:41,799 --> 00:15:45,039
a climate and habitat type at lower elevations. The only

254
00:15:45,080 --> 00:15:47,519
place they can really get on is at higher elevations.

255
00:15:48,039 --> 00:15:51,320
But they're also kind of on these islands in the sky,

256
00:15:52,240 --> 00:15:55,200
you know, the andes, and so they they speciate you

257
00:15:55,320 --> 00:15:57,960
just but it's just nuts, man, and there's so much

258
00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:04,120
hummer pollination. Serato stemma elatam was a really wild looking

259
00:16:04,240 --> 00:16:07,480
member of Eric Casey, the blueberry family that was there.

260
00:16:07,480 --> 00:16:14,080
It was like this scandent vining epiphyte as well, and

261
00:16:14,159 --> 00:16:17,639
it was just fucking you know, these bright red flowers,

262
00:16:17,720 --> 00:16:20,679
very neck, the rich, the petals recurved back. It looks

263
00:16:20,720 --> 00:16:23,080
like a little bell with these recurved petals. And then

264
00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:28,759
these exerted stamens poking out, and some of these things

265
00:16:28,759 --> 00:16:32,120
would form like these woody tubers. They were epiphytes, but

266
00:16:32,159 --> 00:16:36,039
they would form woody tubers on their branches, which was

267
00:16:36,159 --> 00:16:38,279
nuts to me. It was like they were forming storage

268
00:16:38,320 --> 00:16:41,919
mechanisms for those you know, short periods that they may

269
00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:44,600
dry out. I mean, I don't know what the habitats

270
00:16:44,639 --> 00:16:47,919
like that. We were there in the paramo and it

271
00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:51,320
was it was very wet and cool, you know, chillier

272
00:16:51,320 --> 00:16:54,360
than sand. It was like, it's such a weird habitat.

273
00:16:54,399 --> 00:16:57,440
It was like climate not even climate of San Francisco,

274
00:16:57,559 --> 00:17:03,320
like climate of like coastal Humboldt County, like coastal like

275
00:17:03,399 --> 00:17:08,480
up in the Redwood Belt, like Chili almost and very foggy.

276
00:17:08,519 --> 00:17:14,640
Everything's wet, and we're walking through this short canopy for us,

277
00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:19,640
maybe twenty feet tall. The dominant tree was Escalonia myrtaloides,

278
00:17:20,079 --> 00:17:22,720
one of the escalonias, you know, which is in the

279
00:17:22,839 --> 00:17:26,079
order escaloni alies. That doesn't tell you that much, but

280
00:17:26,559 --> 00:17:29,000
you know, if you look on the angiosperm phylogeny poster,

281
00:17:29,079 --> 00:17:32,880
it's somewhat close to the order astles, the sunflower order,

282
00:17:32,880 --> 00:17:38,640
and the Lobelia order and the trigger plant order. So

283
00:17:38,960 --> 00:17:42,160
but anyway, Escalonia is really diverse in South America. You know,

284
00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:44,920
there's a ton in Chile. There's a couple members of

285
00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:50,160
the family. I'm pretty sure in Australia and New Zealand,

286
00:17:51,119 --> 00:17:53,880
and a lot of things we saw had disjuncts, had

287
00:17:53,920 --> 00:17:57,440
other members of the genus or the family in New

288
00:17:57,519 --> 00:18:04,759
Zealand or in Tasmania. It's that gondwan in connection. There

289
00:18:04,839 --> 00:18:06,400
was like when I when I was in Chile, we

290
00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:09,640
saw Rakua Rakawa. How are you fucking pronounced that? Ra

291
00:18:09,680 --> 00:18:13,680
a u k a u a lead of virans, which

292
00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:17,240
is in arali a c the Ginseng order, order Apa

293
00:18:17,319 --> 00:18:21,240
les a carrot order. Uh not Ginseng order, Jinseng family.

294
00:18:21,279 --> 00:18:24,279
Excuse me. Arali acy, which is a rarely ac is

295
00:18:24,319 --> 00:18:27,319
like the sister family to the carrot family. Ginseng family

296
00:18:27,359 --> 00:18:30,839
is sister family to the Carat family. So h but

297
00:18:31,119 --> 00:18:33,559
order Apa Le's we saw Rakawa lad of virans and

298
00:18:33,599 --> 00:18:35,960
then I looked up and uh, you know the ce

299
00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:39,319
my my I naturalist profile where else I've seen that

300
00:18:39,519 --> 00:18:41,640
fucking genus before, and I had seen it in New Zealand,

301
00:18:42,559 --> 00:18:45,079
so I you know, that happened a lot. And there

302
00:18:45,160 --> 00:18:49,039
was another a couple other genera two that I looked

303
00:18:49,039 --> 00:18:52,160
at and realized, oh, I've seen this or a related

304
00:18:52,799 --> 00:18:57,519
genus in New Zealand. So you know, these plant lineages

305
00:18:57,559 --> 00:19:02,240
in South America, especially in Chile, you know, go back

306
00:19:03,359 --> 00:19:05,839
a very long time, you know, to when the continents

307
00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:08,359
were a little bit close together, fifty sixty million years

308
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:13,960
in some cases, the same with Gunnera. Some of those

309
00:19:14,039 --> 00:19:16,799
might be long distance dispersal, but I'm sure a good

310
00:19:16,839 --> 00:19:24,519
many of them are the result of Gondwana and affiliations. Anyway. Yeah,

311
00:19:24,559 --> 00:19:30,240
the Paramo was just just filled with wild shit Pinguicula calyptrata,

312
00:19:30,599 --> 00:19:35,000
a carnivorous plant. I think the thing for me that

313
00:19:35,119 --> 00:19:37,440
was that was wild to see was the habitat up

314
00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:41,519
there is. You know, a lot of stuff was fuzzy,

315
00:19:41,559 --> 00:19:44,519
a lot of stuff was covered in hairs. But it's

316
00:19:44,559 --> 00:19:47,920
not a dry habitat. I normally associate plants with hairs

317
00:19:48,640 --> 00:19:53,920
with with you know, dry or seasonally dry habitats. I

318
00:19:53,920 --> 00:19:57,480
don't think it's ever really dry for long periods in

319
00:19:57,559 --> 00:20:04,400
the Paramo. Certainly nothing compared to deserts or tropical dry

320
00:20:04,519 --> 00:20:09,599
forest or tropical thorn forest, et cetera. These hairs were

321
00:20:09,680 --> 00:20:13,920
mostly there as a result of adaptation to ultraviolet light

322
00:20:14,119 --> 00:20:18,279
and to frosts, because you're so high up that it

323
00:20:18,319 --> 00:20:21,839
can get very cold, especially at night. So just just

324
00:20:21,880 --> 00:20:26,079
the too a totally novel habitat for me and filled

325
00:20:26,079 --> 00:20:31,759
with diversity. There's a supposedly there's a disjunct Epiletia stand

326
00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:35,640
or Espilletia stand or Espalicia if you want to pronounce

327
00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:37,759
like that E S P E L E. T I A,

328
00:20:38,759 --> 00:20:42,759
which is a huge genus that's almost I think it's

329
00:20:42,839 --> 00:20:46,240
all endemic to the Paramo, but they're mostly in Colombia.

330
00:20:46,279 --> 00:20:49,839
It's astracy, so it's the sunflower family. But they can

331
00:20:49,960 --> 00:20:55,279
form these uh sometimes two or three meter tall colescent

332
00:20:56,039 --> 00:21:00,680
wooly just really bizarre look in doctor use plants. And

333
00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:04,920
there's a disjunk stand of Espialetia I forget what species.

334
00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:08,440
I think it begins with an L in Yanga nat

335
00:21:09,559 --> 00:21:12,079
National Park in this you know, like in which is

336
00:21:12,079 --> 00:21:16,359
like mid Ecuador. Most of the Espalicias are in the

337
00:21:16,519 --> 00:21:18,880
Espilletias are in the north, but there's this one disjunk

338
00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:22,680
population down down where we were. But it's it's like

339
00:21:22,759 --> 00:21:26,400
a two day hike in over some rough drink cat

340
00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:31,400
that would be fucking amazing to do. Yeah, the diversity

341
00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:35,839
in the Parmo was just fucking it was so cool.

342
00:21:35,880 --> 00:21:38,039
It was so cool. We didn't get enough time, but

343
00:21:38,079 --> 00:21:41,319
I could have spent I could have spent the you know,

344
00:21:41,359 --> 00:21:45,680
a few days. There. Two gunnera species, those weird ass

345
00:21:45,799 --> 00:21:49,240
you know, elephant ear looking plants. If you're not familiar

346
00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:52,440
with them, they're just they look like, you know, there,

347
00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:58,440
we saw Gunnera tinctoria in Chile, but up here it

348
00:21:58,519 --> 00:22:01,680
was Gunnera mage I guess it was gunna A magellanica.

349
00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:03,680
It didn't look anything like the gunner of Magellanica I

350
00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:07,599
saw in southern Gile. It's probably a different species. I

351
00:22:07,599 --> 00:22:13,279
don't think that's the DNA has been sequenced. Probably, uh,

352
00:22:13,839 --> 00:22:16,480
they just you know, just based on morphology alone, it's

353
00:22:16,519 --> 00:22:19,920
been lumped in with Magellanica. At least that's what I assume,

354
00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:24,880
because it's it's certainly a different ecotype. It's it's phenotypically different.

355
00:22:24,920 --> 00:22:27,559
I'm sure it would be genetically different. If you look

356
00:22:27,599 --> 00:22:29,880
at it, it's probably a different species or should be

357
00:22:30,519 --> 00:22:32,880
should be split up. And then I think there was

358
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:38,200
gunner a mannicotta down there as well, anyway, unrelated. It's

359
00:22:38,319 --> 00:22:41,519
nuts to see. I mean, it's such it's such a

360
00:22:42,039 --> 00:22:44,519
it's such a shit storm here back in the US,

361
00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:47,559
and I knew it was gonna be. I mean, I

362
00:22:47,640 --> 00:22:49,599
try not to. I'm just trying to close my eyes

363
00:22:50,319 --> 00:22:53,519
and take more of a Carlin esque approach to the

364
00:22:53,559 --> 00:22:59,240
fucking dystopic idiocracy nightmare that is the United States. It's

365
00:22:59,319 --> 00:23:03,119
just it's this. It just feels bad. It feels bad

366
00:23:03,200 --> 00:23:05,119
to see, to be here, It feels bad to think

367
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:09,079
about this place. It feels bad to hear. It feels

368
00:23:09,079 --> 00:23:14,480
bad to read the comments, just of shit that's going

369
00:23:14,519 --> 00:23:16,839
on here, just reading about what's going on, Like the

370
00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:21,079
people are still in such denial, you know, the I mean,

371
00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:23,279
I knew this was going to be Reagan two point zero.

372
00:23:23,279 --> 00:23:26,880
I knew it was going to be defunding everything. I

373
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:29,039
knew the country is gonna get dumber. I know people

374
00:23:29,079 --> 00:23:32,119
are going to be even more farmed than they are now.

375
00:23:32,200 --> 00:23:34,519
I know the middle class is going to continue to eroad,

376
00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:40,440
But it's just such a dystopias. Seeing the support still

377
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:42,960
among I mean, it's whatever. It shouldn't surprise me. People

378
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:45,720
are fucking morons, people are retards. At least we could

379
00:23:45,759 --> 00:23:51,319
say retard again, you know, without being lectured by some fucking,

380
00:23:51,759 --> 00:23:56,559
you know, elitist nerd. That's the that's like the high point, right,

381
00:23:56,599 --> 00:23:58,480
the one like the whole the whole country is going

382
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:00,559
to ship. But at least you could say read again.

383
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,400
She would never say to someone who's actually mentally disabled.

384
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:08,480
But but it's this is the poisonous concoction. That's the

385
00:24:08,519 --> 00:24:12,559
result of the last fucking i don't know, ten years.

386
00:24:12,599 --> 00:24:15,279
I mean social media too, the effects this all has.

387
00:24:15,319 --> 00:24:20,200
But you know, having numerous friends that have lost their jobs,

388
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:24,680
the defunding of science, like it's just gonna get worse.

389
00:24:24,799 --> 00:24:30,200
This is what the right has been wanting to do

390
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:35,359
for forty five fifty years now. Reagan started it, and

391
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:41,279
this is finishing it off. It's just it's fucking unbelievable. Man.

392
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:46,480
It's just it's so dystopic. It's such a death cult.

393
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:50,200
It's talking about being alienated and estrange from the living world.

394
00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:54,359
And I think just the stupidity too, like the just

395
00:24:54,519 --> 00:24:57,680
realizing there's not a lot going on upstairs. It's just

396
00:24:57,720 --> 00:25:03,200
like these lowest common denig dominator, bottom of the brain

397
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:08,079
stem primate instincts to like acquire money and hoard and

398
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:12,839
anything that stands in a way of that. But uh, gutting, education, gutting.

399
00:25:13,279 --> 00:25:15,920
You know, I've got so many friends that that have

400
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:21,759
federal jobs. They're scientists, They've got federal jobs, uh to

401
00:25:22,319 --> 00:25:27,680
you know, for surveying, for collecting data, for monitoring important shit,

402
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:31,200
you know, for keeping the living skin of the earth alive,

403
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:37,240
for keeping this living machine functioning. And he's fucking retards

404
00:25:38,039 --> 00:25:43,559
on the right. These people that just are so disconnected

405
00:25:43,599 --> 00:25:46,680
from anything real. They live in this make believe land

406
00:25:46,759 --> 00:25:50,920
of of that humans have just created of of a

407
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:54,759
of the economy and the fucking investment portfolios and the

408
00:25:54,799 --> 00:25:59,519
shareholders and whatever the fuck that diseased, boring ass world

409
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:04,240
is focused on, but disconnected from anything alive and real,

410
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:08,519
and the decisions that they're making is just god man,

411
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:13,000
it's just what the what a fucking the properate existence

412
00:26:13,079 --> 00:26:17,480
they must lead. But yeah, a lot of people have

413
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:20,319
just lost their jobs who are more than qualified. Because

414
00:26:20,599 --> 00:26:23,400
we're cottag or cottag we gotta cot. We gotta buy cots.

415
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:25,480
And what are you gonna do with that money? You're

416
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:29,000
gonna You're gonna you're gonna get basically award contracts to

417
00:26:29,039 --> 00:26:32,079
your friends, your crow. I mean, the oligarchy is just

418
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:35,599
gonna be fully cemented in now. I you know, I

419
00:26:35,599 --> 00:26:37,359
don't want to talk about because I know this is

420
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,359
this should be an escape, right, a little bit of

421
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:46,079
an escape, but it's, uh, the dystopia is just it's

422
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:51,759
so ripe now. So I think the answer is just

423
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:55,880
more of this, just the you know, complete irreverence for

424
00:26:55,960 --> 00:26:59,680
that world and complete reverence and respect for the living

425
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:03,440
world in front of you. By studying something, by learning

426
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:08,039
about something, by obsessing and fixating on something, it's a

427
00:27:08,079 --> 00:27:12,559
way of respecting it and also spreading it, you know,

428
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:16,000
spread it like a contagion. Make other people excited about

429
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:19,400
this stuff as well. And grow the shit out of everything,

430
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:21,559
to grow the shit out of all the plants you

431
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:28,319
can make, you know, spread this. You know, there's so

432
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:33,119
much you could do, you know, just don't just focus

433
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:35,400
on that world. Don't pull out of that world and

434
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:41,960
get immersed in this dark, make believe dystopic reality that

435
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:45,799
the humans have created in the United States. You know,

436
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:49,440
it's the country that doesn't want to believe, the country

437
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:52,640
that's in denial. Right, it's going to be morning in

438
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:55,039
America again. All over all you have to do is

439
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:58,079
say it, say it three times and click your heels

440
00:27:58,079 --> 00:28:01,960
and it'll happen. While the price of eggs never went

441
00:28:02,039 --> 00:28:12,240
up anyway, God fucking okay. So yeah, so the Paramo,

442
00:28:12,319 --> 00:28:14,240
we'll talk more about that later. That was some pretty

443
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:18,000
fucking wild habitat and just just the diversity. And then

444
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:19,720
I mean, I've got so many videos to edit to

445
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:21,839
and put clips to put together, and I'm still working

446
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:25,200
on Chile stuff. I'm really busier than I ever have been.

447
00:28:25,759 --> 00:28:27,680
And then I'm going to be in Chicago at the

448
00:28:27,759 --> 00:28:29,920
end of this month, at the end of February to

449
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:32,319
do a presentation, to give a presentation at the Wild

450
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:35,599
Things Conference. Then I got to come back here. I've

451
00:28:35,599 --> 00:28:39,319
got shit signed up for June, which is like, you know,

452
00:28:40,359 --> 00:28:43,759
I've got like four presentations I'm giving in the next

453
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:49,759
few months. So anyway, but back to the Amazon, you know,

454
00:28:49,799 --> 00:28:54,880
the most diversity in the lower regions that we were in,

455
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:57,440
not the Paramo. We've moved on to talking back about

456
00:28:57,440 --> 00:29:02,680
the elevations between thirty two hundred feet four thousand feet.

457
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:05,119
Below three thousand feet, I think it probably gets a

458
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:09,599
lot more miserable, just like humid as hell, and you know,

459
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:14,599
probably a lot more buggy. But but where we were

460
00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:18,640
at like thirty six hundred and thirty seven hundred feet,

461
00:29:18,799 --> 00:29:23,000
the most common families that we sawcaus nariac for sure,

462
00:29:23,039 --> 00:29:24,680
which is in the order lamy alas. So you got

463
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:29,480
bilatteroidsymmetrical flowers, generally opposite leaves, lots of adaptation and hummingbird pollination.

464
00:29:31,279 --> 00:29:34,799
Some really wild forms too, like they just the tropical

465
00:29:34,880 --> 00:29:38,039
plants are so crazy to me. I mean, huge leaves,

466
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:43,559
you know, hairs in some parts, but overall pretty glabrous

467
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:47,880
to shed water, especially on the top. There's a ton

468
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:51,359
of aeroid diversity and thoriums and philodendrons everywhere, which that

469
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:55,880
philodendrion that all the uh, you know, the aeroid nerds were,

470
00:29:56,039 --> 00:29:58,720
like the covid era aeroid nerds were paying like six

471
00:29:58,759 --> 00:30:04,160
thousand dollars for phill Dendron varicosum or some of those lookalikes.

472
00:30:04,599 --> 00:30:07,839
There was this giant ass Bogonia that it got to

473
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:14,119
like fifteen feet tall, was parvifolia, with which were the

474
00:30:14,119 --> 00:30:16,599
plants were diecius to. I went and looked at the flowers.

475
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:20,039
A lot of bogonias will have male and female flowers.

476
00:30:20,039 --> 00:30:22,240
You could tell them apart because the female flower they

477
00:30:22,279 --> 00:30:24,880
look alike, but the female flowers will have an ovary

478
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:27,920
subtending the flower. It looks like a little winged fruit,

479
00:30:28,599 --> 00:30:31,920
immature fruit. But they've both got that yellow, you know,

480
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:37,640
basically yellow sexual parts. Like the female flowers on begonias

481
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:41,079
try to make it look like they're producing pollen because

482
00:30:41,119 --> 00:30:45,200
the bees that hit them are pollen collecting bees and

483
00:30:45,279 --> 00:30:48,720
so anyway, but normally you'll find both sexes on the

484
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:51,079
same plant. With this one, it was like fucking fifteen

485
00:30:51,119 --> 00:30:54,599
feet tall, huge leaves, you know, foot and a half

486
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,839
two feet across, well maybe foot and a half eighteen

487
00:30:57,839 --> 00:31:02,119
inches across, and it will it's uh, it was just

488
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:05,680
they were dioecious, you know, it's monsters. There was a

489
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:10,440
really cool tree called Brownia, which was in its own

490
00:31:10,559 --> 00:31:14,319
subfamily of the legume family, a subfamily that I don't

491
00:31:14,319 --> 00:31:18,039
normally encounter very much. I've only seen a few members

492
00:31:18,079 --> 00:31:24,400
of it. It was a detereoid e D. E. T. A. R. I, O, I, D,

493
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:26,880
E A E. What else is in the terrioid. It's

494
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:32,720
a weird family. Uh uh oh shaddy, yeah, I think

495
00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:35,279
I've seen some. Actually it's got h yeah, well let's

496
00:31:35,319 --> 00:31:41,680
see genus Anea A, Gourdia, gabonius i, Curia labor vilias, Sindoropsis.

497
00:31:41,799 --> 00:31:44,920
I don't know anyway, it's a fucking weird Uh. It's

498
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:48,400
a weird subfamily of Fabase that was only created a

499
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:52,160
few years ago once, uh, you know, due to due

500
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:55,640
to some new ship, due to some incoming molecular evidence.

501
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:58,000
But you look at the flowers and they look remarkably

502
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:00,960
different from most p flowers. They look more like say,

503
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,440
sell pinioid, almost like a centa or a camacrista. But

504
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:07,920
the flowers are axillary. They're these big red flowers that

505
00:32:08,039 --> 00:32:11,960
come or not accilary, excuse me, calliffloris. So they come

506
00:32:12,039 --> 00:32:15,119
right out of the you know, the plant is coalesce

507
00:32:15,119 --> 00:32:17,119
and it's got a main stomach, gets upwards of like

508
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:21,160
thirty feet tall maybe in some cases really unique philotaxi

509
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:25,480
to cool leaves, and the flowers just come right out

510
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:28,119
of the main trunk. And what's cool is that before

511
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:30,799
the flowers open. I've noticed there are ants that just

512
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:34,559
guard the opening flower buds. I'm not sure if they're

513
00:32:34,599 --> 00:32:37,119
collecting some sort of material or wax off of it

514
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:39,759
or what I've seen that. I remember seeing that with

515
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:42,400
like pae andies. My mom when I was growing up,

516
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:44,640
you used toll grow peonies and the when the as

517
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:46,680
the flowers would open, before they would open the air

518
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:52,519
would always be ants crawling around the flower buds. Tons

519
00:32:52,519 --> 00:32:57,599
of antiversity too. I got to see the Atta species

520
00:32:57,599 --> 00:33:00,240
down there, Atta, the leaf cutters, because we get at

521
00:33:00,319 --> 00:33:02,559
in Texas too. We get leafcutter ants in Texas. It's

522
00:33:02,559 --> 00:33:06,079
out of Texana up here, but down there it was

523
00:33:06,079 --> 00:33:08,559
a different species. You know, all these connections to which

524
00:33:08,599 --> 00:33:12,440
was cool. I mean, you know, similarities. When you see

525
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:14,480
a plant that's similar enough to one you already know

526
00:33:14,599 --> 00:33:17,079
that occurs, you know, one thousand miles north of it,

527
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,839
you can you get a window into how that might

528
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:24,519
have evolved or speciated. And the distribution of these plants,

529
00:33:24,519 --> 00:33:26,559
of these plants, well, my voice keeps fucking cracking. I

530
00:33:26,559 --> 00:33:32,519
don't know what. I don't know why. So that was yeah,

531
00:33:32,559 --> 00:33:35,400
Brownia was wild. There was the aeroid diversity was nuts.

532
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:37,599
We saw an anthorium up in the paramol too at twelve

533
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:43,759
thousand feet. Uh. The neotropical palms was fucking crazy. God,

534
00:33:43,799 --> 00:33:46,279
there's so many cool ones. This Ethnobodany video that I

535
00:33:46,279 --> 00:33:49,319
got coming out next week, I mean, it really shows

536
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:52,119
the importance of some of these palm species, both for

537
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:56,640
fiber and for fruit. The what was it that was

538
00:33:57,079 --> 00:34:01,119
Bactris is the genus of palm, and the fruit that

539
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:03,720
it produces is like a little golf ball sized fruit.

540
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,920
You gotta peel it, and then the fruit tastes like squash.

541
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:10,440
It's delicious. It tastes like kabocha squash, and then you

542
00:34:10,599 --> 00:34:13,280
just you know, the spit out, the spit out the seed.

543
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:16,079
You kind of have to eat around it. Seeds kind

544
00:34:16,079 --> 00:34:20,280
of big. The fucking market there was wild. And then

545
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:22,840
the last day, crews made us go to this market

546
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:25,599
with didn't make us. He suggested it sounded cool. I

547
00:34:25,639 --> 00:34:28,079
went there. It was fucking great, and it was just

548
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:32,079
loaded with with all kinds of cool shit. It was fun.

549
00:34:32,159 --> 00:34:34,880
Mostly native fruits there. I mean they had stuff that

550
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:37,760
wasn't native that like, you know, bananas obviously aren't native

551
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:43,480
to to the Americas. Same with rambutans. They're not native

552
00:34:43,519 --> 00:34:46,280
to the Americas. They're in the you know, they're related

553
00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:48,599
the light cheese. They're in the maple family. Step in Dacy.

554
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:53,119
But they had these big ass beetle grubs too, which

555
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:56,000
was the genus was rinko forests. They're like two or

556
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,760
three inch long beetles. They live in the palms. And

557
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:02,760
then and you can eat them and grill them whatever,

558
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:04,920
fry and whatever. They're supposed to be fucking delicious. I

559
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:08,079
didn't actually end up trying any. And then the beetle

560
00:35:08,119 --> 00:35:09,719
that it makes is cool too. It's not like one

561
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:13,559
of those rhinoceros beetles. It's one of those circoulianids which

562
00:35:13,599 --> 00:35:15,920
has like a long snout, like a weavil like snout.

563
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:17,599
You got to get down with eating bugs. Don't be

564
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:22,880
fucking weany about it, Okay. It's but also like seeing

565
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,840
the ecology too. I mean, these things are connected to

566
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:28,480
the palms. They're using the palms. They eat the palm.

567
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:32,960
It's not wood, because palms are not you know, they're

568
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,760
not woody, they're fibrous. Monocots don't produce wood. They don't

569
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:40,719
produce you know, lateral marris, theems. They don't produce secondary

570
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:45,960
growth except for a few of the few of them,

571
00:35:46,039 --> 00:35:48,360
like you know, a few monocuts do, like the fucking

572
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:53,559
some drosinas I guess, and other I should actually do it. Well,

573
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,320
we'll mention that later. We'll get into like secondary growth

574
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:58,639
and monocuts. If you don't know what I'm talking about,

575
00:35:58,679 --> 00:36:00,679
you really should, because this is a key point of

576
00:36:00,679 --> 00:36:06,039
angiosperm anatomy. Dicots and udikots and conifers, which are obviously

577
00:36:06,079 --> 00:36:10,519
not angiosperms, produce vascular cambium. They can grow laterally, not

578
00:36:10,679 --> 00:36:13,679
just up and down. Palms and monoca, which are monocot

579
00:36:14,079 --> 00:36:16,559
can only grow up and down. They don't ever get wider.

580
00:36:16,599 --> 00:36:18,840
That's why when you look at a palm tree, it's

581
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:21,840
a spindly rod. It's been the same with its entire life.

582
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:26,119
It doesn't get bigger. But some palms have found a

583
00:36:26,119 --> 00:36:31,519
way around that, including some that I encountered down in

584
00:36:32,159 --> 00:36:37,760
the Amazon, like what was it Eriardia del toida, the

585
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,519
dick palm. It produces, you know, these lateral roots that

586
00:36:41,639 --> 00:36:44,400
come out at a forty five degree angle to form

587
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:47,920
this kind of flanged base, which is primarily you know,

588
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:50,280
it forms like an hour glass base basically so that

589
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:53,159
it can't be tipped over in this squishy soil or

590
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,280
get blown over. But when these things germinate there like

591
00:36:56,360 --> 00:37:02,480
pencil thin a couple maybe that were I think a

592
00:37:02,519 --> 00:37:05,039
little bit bigger, but but they can basically get a

593
00:37:05,039 --> 00:37:07,880
little bit wider as they grow, you know, up to

594
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:10,559
a certain point by forming these lateral roots, which I'm

595
00:37:10,599 --> 00:37:13,039
really curious about the physiology of that too, Like you

596
00:37:13,159 --> 00:37:17,440
send out this lateral root, but where is the bud

597
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:21,719
for the lateral root, and it's it's further they look

598
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:23,880
like they end up looking like a mangrove because they're

599
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:28,840
not the original stem kind of rots away as the

600
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:31,639
tree matures, and then they've just got this series of

601
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:35,719
thirty or forty roots coming out at forty five degree

602
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:40,119
angles and with their you know, they come out like

603
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:43,920
three feet above the ground and then eventually root into

604
00:37:44,639 --> 00:37:47,119
the soil. They come out, you know, at a forty

605
00:37:47,119 --> 00:37:49,760
five degree angle outwards and then eventually root into the soil.

606
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:52,239
And that's how the palm stabilizes itself. Because these palms

607
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:56,599
get like thirty, forty, fifty, sixty fucking feet tall, and

608
00:37:56,639 --> 00:37:59,960
they've got fishtail leaves too. Really weird, not like any

609
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,800
washing tony is that you see in North America. Complete

610
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:05,639
different file a taxi or like the Phoenix canary ancess.

611
00:38:05,639 --> 00:38:08,639
It gets planted all throughout California, including it. The old

612
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:11,840
Southern Pacific Railroad stations like Southern Pacific Road used to

613
00:38:12,119 --> 00:38:15,079
plant Phoenix Canary ancest everywhere wherever they would put up

614
00:38:15,079 --> 00:38:18,519
a depot, you know, Canary island palm or Phoenix deck,

615
00:38:18,599 --> 00:38:23,239
the liffra the date palm complete different fileottaxi complete different

616
00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:25,920
leaf shit, not phileo taxi, but leaf shape. I guess

617
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:27,880
it is a pilotaxi because it looks like these little

618
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:33,639
fishtail palm leaves that come off the racus just so much.

619
00:38:33,679 --> 00:38:35,159
You know, I would see shit and just be like,

620
00:38:35,199 --> 00:38:37,480
what the fuck is that? I have no idea. I

621
00:38:37,559 --> 00:38:39,159
need to know what that is. I need to learn

622
00:38:39,199 --> 00:38:41,719
about that. So I head up Scott Zona. You know

623
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:44,719
you got any references on neotropical palms, And he referenced

624
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:48,280
the book that I ordered. I found it on the

625
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:51,559
internet for like ten bucks, which was cool. I didn't

626
00:38:51,639 --> 00:38:55,679
check lib jin. It's probably on there, but hold on,

627
00:38:55,679 --> 00:38:57,079
I get your name, I'll get you to name it.

628
00:38:57,119 --> 00:38:59,719
A book in a second. Yeah, Field Guide to the

629
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:04,320
Palm of the Americas by Henderson looks like it came

630
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:09,199
out in the nineties, but god damn man. Yeah, just

631
00:39:09,199 --> 00:39:12,760
just you know, I'm fair stated by this shit. But

632
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:14,880
I also know that in learning about it, I'll probably

633
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:19,639
learn about other things, because everything's connected, you know this. Uh,

634
00:39:20,079 --> 00:39:23,920
you learn about one thing that might seem inconsequential and unimportant,

635
00:39:24,559 --> 00:39:27,000
and then you end up realizing, oh, it's not. It's

636
00:39:27,119 --> 00:39:31,559
like through learning about that thing, you learn a new

637
00:39:31,599 --> 00:39:37,320
example of how something is biologically accomplished, or how something evolves,

638
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:41,480
or or just something as simple as what other species

639
00:39:41,559 --> 00:39:45,000
this plant. You're not initially concerned with what it might

640
00:39:45,039 --> 00:39:49,639
be connected to. So learning that kind of shit, because

641
00:39:49,639 --> 00:39:51,679
I've seen that happen so many times. Something I'm not

642
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:55,159
interested in initially because I find it boring, and then

643
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,679
later on I learn, oh, it's actually connected to this thing.

644
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:01,679
Fuck that's cool. Now I'm interested in it. And also

645
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:03,119
just you know, I'm not gonna lie. A lot of

646
00:40:03,119 --> 00:40:06,519
this just comes from like complete revulsion at the human

647
00:40:06,559 --> 00:40:08,480
world in front of me, you know, especially like what's

648
00:40:08,519 --> 00:40:09,960
going on in the United States right now. Like I

649
00:40:10,039 --> 00:40:12,199
just watched the country I have to live in getting

650
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:18,280
dumber and greedier and just more disgusting culturally speaking. And

651
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:24,559
so I just you know, Bondi's not just an escape,

652
00:40:24,639 --> 00:40:27,440
it's also the answer. It's not just an escape. I

653
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:30,719
feel like it's also there's some good instructions for living

654
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:36,000
and for morality by studying the living world. So don't

655
00:40:36,039 --> 00:40:38,920
be a dumb dick. That's basically what I'm saying. Okay, Anyway,

656
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:46,400
what other diversity the gasnierriads the well. First off, hummingbirds

657
00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:48,599
are of course big pollinators, so we saw tons of

658
00:40:48,639 --> 00:40:52,360
red tubular flowers. Bats are big pollinators to Bremysterra is

659
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:55,599
another genus that was really interesting to me. And I

660
00:40:55,639 --> 00:40:59,199
was just showing my kid something about because we were

661
00:40:59,199 --> 00:41:01,039
looking at bat nation. I was trying to show our

662
00:41:01,079 --> 00:41:04,159
pictures of bats pollinating things because I showed her some

663
00:41:04,199 --> 00:41:07,039
pictures of these bats that we saw in a cave

664
00:41:07,039 --> 00:41:10,239
that we went into. Nobody got COVID, as much as

665
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:12,199
I would have loved to bring back COVID two point

666
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:15,360
oh to the United States, nobody got it. And the

667
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,920
people have been going in this cave for a while anyway,

668
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:22,599
So uh, but I was trying to show where you know,

669
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:25,159
bats can pollinate things. Then they went there. There's like

670
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:27,159
videos and sguaros and shit whatever. But there was a

671
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:30,239
nice video on Bermeestra, which is a lobilioid. It's related

672
00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:33,159
to Lobilia, and it's got that same flower structure with

673
00:41:33,199 --> 00:41:35,559
the fused anther tube and a little pollen presenter that

674
00:41:35,639 --> 00:41:37,920
pops out of it, and you know, is male on

675
00:41:37,960 --> 00:41:39,880
the first day and it becomes female on the second or

676
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:47,360
third day whatever, and so uh anyway, but Bremeistra, you know,

677
00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:48,719
you see this thing and you can tell it's a

678
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:52,119
Lobilia or it's a Lobilia relative because of that fused

679
00:41:52,159 --> 00:41:54,440
anther tube and the pomp presenter. But then you look

680
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:57,800
at the flower. It's got a really distinct morphology to it.

681
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:01,440
CenTra Pogon was down there to it. Another cool genus

682
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:09,280
in Lobilioidy of companilacy, the bellflower family. Anyway, but these

683
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:12,960
little these bermeyestras were out everywhere, and they're not red,

684
00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:17,119
they're not tubular, and they're you know, they're they're obviously

685
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:21,119
possessing the traits that have been selected for by bats.

686
00:42:21,159 --> 00:42:24,920
The bats have like actively bred these things over millions

687
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:27,760
of years. Whatever. You know, the bats, the ones that

688
00:42:28,079 --> 00:42:31,440
are most appealing to the The flowers that are most

689
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:32,920
appealing to the bats are the ones that end up

690
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:36,119
getting pollinated and then producing more of themselves. The ones

691
00:42:36,119 --> 00:42:39,360
that aren't, you know, appealing, appease appealing to them for

692
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:43,000
whatever reason, don't you know. It's typical natural selection how

693
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:47,760
it works. But the fruits, I'm curious about what disperses

694
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:51,119
these fruits because the fruits were like these inflated hollow

695
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:56,119
bags and then on the center like the burmeister are

696
00:42:56,119 --> 00:42:58,039
fruit I saw, at least I don't know what species

697
00:42:58,039 --> 00:43:01,360
it was. Very few of my e naturalists observations have

698
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:05,000
been you know, put to species level. They're just genera

699
00:43:05,159 --> 00:43:06,960
or family whatever, And it's good enough for me. And

700
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:09,599
that's the most you can hope to get in such

701
00:43:09,599 --> 00:43:14,559
a dense, diverse, species rich area that's also probably understudy.

702
00:43:14,679 --> 00:43:17,639
There's so much shit in many of these places that's

703
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:22,400
understudied because there's just so much out there and there's

704
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:26,039
not enough botanist to work on it whatever. And there's

705
00:43:26,039 --> 00:43:29,159
actually a lot of good bodany that's been done on Ecuador.

706
00:43:29,199 --> 00:43:31,559
I mean, you just go to like Google scholar, you'll

707
00:43:31,559 --> 00:43:35,119
see a shift ton of papers. But this fruit was

708
00:43:35,159 --> 00:43:37,119
like a bagfruit. And then in the center of it

709
00:43:37,199 --> 00:43:42,719
was like a little nodule. And then on that nodule

710
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,400
where all the you know, hundreds of tiny seeds because

711
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:48,599
lobilioid seeds are tiny. That's probably part of the reason

712
00:43:48,599 --> 00:43:50,440
they're all over the fucking globes, because the seeds are

713
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:56,599
so tiny. But but fuck man, was it was. You know,

714
00:43:56,639 --> 00:43:59,960
anytime you're encountering a new genus, it's it's pretty exciting,

715
00:44:00,119 --> 00:44:04,440
especially with such a like distinct and unique flower morphology,

716
00:44:04,480 --> 00:44:06,800
because all these flowers are a little puzzles, right, they're

717
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:09,199
little clues at what this thing evolved with, or what

718
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:14,159
pollinates it, or what its ecology is, et cetera. So

719
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:19,360
Bremstra was a genus we frequently encountered. I also saw

720
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:24,199
some cool micoheterotropse, of which there's many. Most of the

721
00:44:24,719 --> 00:44:29,400
fungi in the Amazon, the micorrhizal fungi is arbuscular mico hisea.

722
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,599
These are fungi that don't that disreproduce a sexually. For

723
00:44:33,639 --> 00:44:37,840
the most part, they don't. They don't produce mushrooms. They're

724
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:42,400
not basidio my seats. They're glomero mi seeds, and so

725
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:47,880
they're mostly just you know, infused everywhere in the soil,

726
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:52,199
but they're also associating with probably most of the plants

727
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:56,800
eighty percent of the plants there, if not more. But

728
00:44:57,639 --> 00:45:00,000
there's a number of plants that have found a way

729
00:45:00,159 --> 00:45:04,239
to exploit this, Plants from unrelated families like Burmanniac or

730
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:09,039
Gentian Ac Gentians. Voi Rihea was one that I saw,

731
00:45:09,159 --> 00:45:15,000
jim No Siphon Andy saw, which is in uh that's Burmaniac.

732
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,639
I believe what else was there, Teco phile Ace, there

733
00:45:18,679 --> 00:45:22,559
was quite a few. Field Museum of Chicago has a

734
00:45:22,559 --> 00:45:25,440
bunch of good PDFs and they've been a huge, huge

735
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:30,079
source of help seeing those PDFs online. They were when

736
00:45:30,119 --> 00:45:32,800
I was in Brazil too, and I think that's what

737
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,599
I was referencing. There's a PDF on mico heterotrophs of

738
00:45:35,599 --> 00:45:40,239
Brazil and it's just thumbnail photos. It's a single thumbnail

739
00:45:40,239 --> 00:45:43,199
photo for each species. But you know, when you see that,

740
00:45:43,320 --> 00:45:45,000
then then that can at least point you to what

741
00:45:45,159 --> 00:45:50,800
genus you're looking at. It's been immensely helpful. Let me

742
00:45:50,840 --> 00:45:52,440
find this thing because there's that it'd be cool to

743
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:54,159
throw some names out there. At least tell you where

744
00:45:54,199 --> 00:45:58,000
you can look it up. God, okay, yeah, voiriea. Of

745
00:45:58,039 --> 00:46:00,880
course we mentioned that already Gentienac. It was triur not

746
00:46:00,960 --> 00:46:05,239
tecophile ac was excuse me sorry, triurid ce t r

747
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:07,719
I U R I D A C E A E.

748
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:13,400
The PDF is called Micoheterotrophic Plants of Reserva particular de

749
00:46:13,599 --> 00:46:21,159
patrimonial natrural do Crystallino. It's Portuguese, uh, which is in

750
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:27,440
Matto Grosso, Brazil. But yeah, burmanniac triurid a C. That

751
00:46:27,599 --> 00:46:29,519
is a fucking femine. It's not even on my radar yet.

752
00:46:29,559 --> 00:46:35,239
Triurid s thismyac. Of course, some really cool thismia is

753
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:37,519
down there, which I did not No, I did not

754
00:46:37,639 --> 00:46:43,400
think of it. Thimia milanomitra looks fucking insane. Uh ooh

755
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:46,159
what is this? So they got corloid root morphology. A

756
00:46:46,199 --> 00:46:49,079
lot of these micoheterotrophs, when you look at their roots,

757
00:46:49,079 --> 00:46:52,199
they've got these things that look like these papillomas. Aenal

758
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:56,239
peppoaloma Rein's previous anal peppaloma. Just had to get that

759
00:46:56,280 --> 00:47:02,679
out there, Marco Rubio anal peppa paloma. Uh hopefully you're

760
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:07,360
getting some terrible imagery. Oh god, I hate it. Here triurid.

761
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:12,039
They see Sia philip propriria, these papaloma like roots, like

762
00:47:12,159 --> 00:47:18,480
wardy roots. They look like cauliflower, like col knobs of califlower,

763
00:47:19,119 --> 00:47:23,960
which attached I assume are just infused with this arbuscular

764
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:28,880
micro rise. And you know, I'm trying to think of

765
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:32,440
how these relationships go, because it's not just we anthropomorphise, right,

766
00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:34,800
we say the plant is just stealing from fungi. That's

767
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:38,360
an easy way to introduce the idea to people. But

768
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:43,519
of course it's it's a simple, it's an oversimplified way, right.

769
00:47:43,559 --> 00:47:47,760
It lacks the complexity that's going on in this relationship,

770
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:50,679
which obviously started as a two way relationship and might

771
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:52,800
still in some way be a two way relationship. The

772
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:57,360
fungus might be benefiting somehow, but to us on the surface,

773
00:47:57,360 --> 00:48:02,440
it just appears like this plant is a pit. In

774
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:06,960
any case, it's fucking fascinating. Triua deacy. I gotta look

775
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:09,960
at it. I'm gonna have to consult the angiosperm phylogeny poster,

776
00:48:11,039 --> 00:48:13,599
which is down by the way plant Gateway, dot com

777
00:48:13,679 --> 00:48:16,880
or dot org, whatever it is. Is down, they're updating it.

778
00:48:17,039 --> 00:48:18,960
I can't get a hold like guy James being a

779
00:48:18,960 --> 00:48:21,559
friend of a friend in I guess he's moving to

780
00:48:21,639 --> 00:48:24,039
a new botanical institution in Europe. I don't know. I

781
00:48:24,079 --> 00:48:26,119
don't know what these guys. I don't know what they're doing.

782
00:48:26,199 --> 00:48:28,440
You know, nice guy though, he said I could use

783
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:31,320
that angiosperm phylogeny poster from my book, which will be

784
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:38,079
out in fucking nine years. Thanks Abrams Press. Uh. I

785
00:48:38,119 --> 00:48:41,280
can't wait to do unpaid labor for you when I'm

786
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:45,000
designing it on in design. You know, if only I

787
00:48:45,159 --> 00:48:47,159
wasn't a dumb ass and had had my lawyer look

788
00:48:47,159 --> 00:48:51,480
at the contract before fuck me? You know, why? Why

789
00:48:51,559 --> 00:48:56,320
have an angry Irish attorney, you know, who's just a

790
00:48:56,440 --> 00:49:00,880
fucking bottle of piss and vinegar. I love him, He's

791
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:03,440
a perfect attorney for me. Why have one of those

792
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:05,960
if you're not going to use him. I didn't use him.

793
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:07,840
I thought that the lady who reached out to me

794
00:49:09,119 --> 00:49:11,119
from the book company he doesn't even work there anymore.

795
00:49:11,119 --> 00:49:14,079
From the publisher, I thought she's so nice, she's such

796
00:49:14,119 --> 00:49:17,400
a nice lady. Why she wouldn't fuck me over? You know,

797
00:49:17,760 --> 00:49:21,320
she wouldn't screw me over. There's not even got nothing

798
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:24,039
to worry about. I'll just sign this contract. I'm sure

799
00:49:24,079 --> 00:49:28,360
it's fine, And I ended up signing. This was a

800
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:31,000
while ago. This book has been under for a while. Then.

801
00:49:31,039 --> 00:49:33,320
I'm working on another book, which I'm actually pretty excited about,

802
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:37,199
which is should be done here soon. But I'm just

803
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:39,880
I'm up to my knees and shit and good shit,

804
00:49:40,039 --> 00:49:43,320
but it's just shit, and I'm so fucking busy, and

805
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:46,239
I've just stopped responding to text and emails and every

806
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:52,199
I just don't give a fucking rudt of time. Sorry, Okay, anyway,

807
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:55,760
the andrew spronphilogic, but I don't have to look this

808
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:59,239
up because I've not try her a daisy. What the fuck?

809
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:01,840
It's a monoc family. Let me let me go look

810
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:04,599
at this. Okay, but this anyway, the point I was

811
00:50:04,639 --> 00:50:07,119
getting to about the andrew Sprimfilogny poster. It's down for now,

812
00:50:07,199 --> 00:50:08,920
but it's gonna be back up again. I guess they're

813
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:10,960
working on it. They're gonna there's some new revisions that

814
00:50:11,039 --> 00:50:13,119
need to be made, and it'll be up again at

815
00:50:13,199 --> 00:50:14,880
some point in the meantime. If you need a copy

816
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:18,639
of it. Email me. Make it short. I'm not gonna

817
00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:21,599
do anything but just send you a link. Uh and

818
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:25,760
uh that's it. Yeah, okay, hold on all right, my

819
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:28,360
mind is blown. I'm so happy I got one of

820
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:30,519
those posters on my wall. I can just go right

821
00:50:30,559 --> 00:50:32,639
to the wall and look at it. You know, I

822
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:35,679
have to go online. I threw a fit today and

823
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:37,800
was about to throw this fucking cannon print through out

824
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:39,440
the window. God, I just think about it and I

825
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:42,559
feel bouts of rage. I just want to strangle the

826
00:50:42,559 --> 00:50:47,039
fucking thing. I want to like. Oh God, I just anyway, sorry,

827
00:50:47,119 --> 00:50:50,760
I couldn't get the printer to hook up today. I

828
00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:53,880
had a nervous breakdown. I've had this problem for eight months,

829
00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:55,800
and of course the company doesn't give a fuck you.

830
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:58,360
I just I bought a paper weight. Now I'm fucked.

831
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:01,119
That's the thing, you know, just these little bits, you know,

832
00:51:01,159 --> 00:51:05,920
where the system is getting one over on you, right,

833
00:51:06,039 --> 00:51:08,719
Just it's just one example of the many ways. It's

834
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:11,440
not like equivalent to having to call the health insurance company.

835
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:15,239
I tried to get health insurance too. Uh, and then

836
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:17,239
I realized I can't do it. It Just I feel

837
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:19,119
like it's a scam. I'm being robbed. I'm not going

838
00:51:19,199 --> 00:51:22,360
to pay four hundred dollars. This is insane and so

839
00:51:22,599 --> 00:51:24,599
but now they just have been billing me anyway, even

840
00:51:24,599 --> 00:51:27,679
though I'm any coverage and I had to get the

841
00:51:27,719 --> 00:51:31,199
tax credit, and so the government's probably going to the

842
00:51:31,199 --> 00:51:33,320
irs is probably gonna still charge me the tax credit.

843
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:36,119
The whole thing is fucked. I don't know more CEOs,

844
00:51:36,199 --> 00:51:41,440
you know more Luigi's free Luigi. Okay. Anyway, Trieridas is

845
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:46,280
related to veloziac in the order pandinals family and order.

846
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:48,360
Should always be asking what family and order is this

847
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:50,639
fucking plant that I'm interested in? Ge get a little

848
00:51:50,639 --> 00:51:54,800
bit more context for uh, for life, and then if

849
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:56,679
you don't know that family or order, well what the

850
00:51:56,679 --> 00:51:58,440
fuck is in and ask about go to in neet,

851
00:51:58,519 --> 00:52:01,440
hit the explore feature type in the family name uh,

852
00:52:01,679 --> 00:52:04,519
look at pictures of that plant, learn about it, and

853
00:52:04,519 --> 00:52:07,119
then click on the map and see where it's distribution occurs.

854
00:52:07,199 --> 00:52:10,320
Very interesting, it'll help you know, zoom out in larger world,

855
00:52:10,320 --> 00:52:15,199
et cetera. But triarid Ace is, yeah, it's in. It's

856
00:52:15,320 --> 00:52:19,239
another weird fucking family in the order Pandinales, the screw

857
00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:21,119
Pine order if you don't know what a screw pint is,

858
00:52:21,159 --> 00:52:23,920
it's fine, it's you know, you can you can be forgiven.

859
00:52:24,000 --> 00:52:29,159
Because they're not really in in North America anywhere. They're weird.

860
00:52:29,199 --> 00:52:33,079
They're all weird. But the Lows, the Ac and uh,

861
00:52:34,199 --> 00:52:38,559
the the Panama hat family cyclant the see is also in.

862
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,360
It's just the weird order of monocots. But apparently triarid Ac.

863
00:52:42,519 --> 00:52:49,320
I wonder, I suppose all of triarid A s is micoheterotrophic. God,

864
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:54,920
that's cool. God, these fucking weird, weird things, these strange

865
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:59,840
and beautiful things. So ethysmyac triarid A s. In gent

866
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:04,360
On an unrelated note, and I know I'm all over

867
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:08,360
the place. Just bear with me, okay, all right. Was

868
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:13,760
drew from Carnivoro, the carnivorous plant nursery was over earlier

869
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:17,559
this morning. Stopped by my house to shoot the shit,

870
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:22,119
and because he was down here anyway for family stuff,

871
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:24,119
and he was telling me about a front of his

872
00:53:24,320 --> 00:53:29,239
that that has discovered a bunch of new carnivorous plant species,

873
00:53:29,239 --> 00:53:32,679
including one in the Amazon that's underwater for a few months.

874
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:35,960
I think it's got a dormancy strategy, but most plants

875
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:38,679
with a dormancy strategy. It's a response to cold or

876
00:53:38,760 --> 00:53:41,320
to dry they grow in like cold temperate latitudes, or

877
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:45,360
they've got they're grow in seasonally dry places or deserts.

878
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:48,199
But this is a plant that's got a dormancy strategy

879
00:53:48,199 --> 00:53:51,440
in relation to being inundated with water and you know,

880
00:53:51,559 --> 00:53:54,800
blocked off from sunlight because it's growing. You know, it's

881
00:53:54,880 --> 00:54:00,960
under six feet twelve feet of water whatever, and and

882
00:54:01,079 --> 00:54:03,559
uh and then once the you know, the water's subside,

883
00:54:03,599 --> 00:54:07,360
then it comes back, it springs back to life and

884
00:54:07,519 --> 00:54:10,119
you know, that's it's never died, you know what I mean,

885
00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:12,760
figure of speech and starts doing its thing. But that's

886
00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:15,559
that was totally novel to me too. A fucking dormancy

887
00:54:15,559 --> 00:54:19,519
strategy in response to being flooded. All this shit is

888
00:54:19,559 --> 00:54:22,320
so foreign to me. The whole Amazon. I mean, I

889
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:26,039
was looking at maps with my friend Zane, who's a

890
00:54:26,039 --> 00:54:31,880
herpetologist down there, and and we were looking at you know,

891
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:33,760
I was like, I, for some reason, I don't know why,

892
00:54:34,199 --> 00:54:36,719
I thought you could just like drive east from Ecuador

893
00:54:36,760 --> 00:54:39,119
and you're just driving to Brazil. There's I know, it's

894
00:54:39,119 --> 00:54:42,320
all the Amazon, but there's surely a highway that goes

895
00:54:42,360 --> 00:54:44,920
through it. Yeah, I was so fucking ignorant. And then

896
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:46,960
I looked and I'm like, oh, there's nothing like It's

897
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,800
really like people use boats to get around. There's no roads,

898
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:54,280
there's you can't it's so thick and just water log

899
00:54:54,360 --> 00:54:58,320
there's no Uh. It's like a such a huge portion

900
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:02,440
of Earth's service. It's amazing. I'm so curious about it now.

901
00:55:03,039 --> 00:55:05,039
I want to go there and get deng gay and

902
00:55:05,639 --> 00:55:11,119
you know some other horrible tropical diseases. Zaying, by the way,

903
00:55:11,159 --> 00:55:14,880
had leish maniasis, which is a protist that you get

904
00:55:16,159 --> 00:55:19,199
from uh and causes the horrific rash that you get

905
00:55:19,239 --> 00:55:22,239
from something called sand fleas or sand flies. I don't know,

906
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:27,880
these little diptera, these little flies that just can spread this.

907
00:55:28,199 --> 00:55:30,719
That sounds fucking awful. And he's got a friend who

908
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:32,480
got out in his nose and ate half his face.

909
00:55:32,559 --> 00:55:34,679
Now he's fine. His nose came back, he grew it back.

910
00:55:34,679 --> 00:55:36,480
I don't know if you got to get a skin

911
00:55:36,559 --> 00:55:38,360
graft from his ass or something or whatever, but it

912
00:55:38,440 --> 00:55:40,599
sounds fucking bad. And it pops up like six months

913
00:55:40,639 --> 00:55:43,800
after the originally infected with it. What fun. One of

914
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:47,599
many tropical diseases you can get. It's just like, it's

915
00:55:47,639 --> 00:55:52,880
so fucking humid down there. Shit just thrives. Not where

916
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:54,599
I was, it was fine. I might still have denga.

917
00:55:54,719 --> 00:55:58,320
I don't know, but uh, Alex got denga. You know,

918
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:00,440
he was out for you can't do anything. It's he

919
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:03,519
was out for a few weeks. But he's fine now.

920
00:56:04,519 --> 00:56:07,239
But anyway, this, uh yeah, check out that Mike Mico

921
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:10,960
heterotrophy pdf. I just saw a little voi rhea. I

922
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:13,639
don't know what species it was, but some of these things,

923
00:56:13,679 --> 00:56:16,679
it's fascinating. They're fucking fun to draw it through. They're

924
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:21,400
really cool. Excuse me, I just burped. Somebody wrote me saying,

925
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:24,199
I listened to this guy's podcast, but it's disgusting. I

926
00:56:24,199 --> 00:56:26,840
can hear you drinking water, And then I had to

927
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:28,639
remind her, well, it's a good thing you can't hear

928
00:56:28,639 --> 00:56:31,119
me pissing in bottles because I do that too. You know,

929
00:56:31,199 --> 00:56:32,800
if I'm like right now, I could just pause and

930
00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:37,119
go to the bathroom. But if I'm talking with someone, hey, buddy,

931
00:56:37,159 --> 00:56:39,000
I don't have time to I'm not gonna take away

932
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:42,119
from the conversation. You know, that would affect you the listener,

933
00:56:42,159 --> 00:56:44,280
you'd hear the pausing or whatever. I'm just gonna piss

934
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:45,840
in a bottle. They don't know. I just mute the

935
00:56:45,840 --> 00:56:48,079
thing a pissing a bottle. I had to inform where

936
00:56:48,119 --> 00:56:51,840
that happens too, and she was repulsed. It was she

937
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:56,639
understood though. It was all good fun. So uh so, yeah,

938
00:56:56,440 --> 00:57:00,440
the fucking micae heterotrophy thing was cool. Well, and then

939
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:02,679
I think I probably have a I'm getting a little

940
00:57:02,719 --> 00:57:04,679
bit of a more of an interest in ethno botany.

941
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:06,840
I've always been interested in etho botany. I've always been

942
00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:09,880
interested in human relations to plants. That's one of the

943
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:13,400
few times I feel hopeful about humanity or just about

944
00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:17,760
people as individuals, is seeing them get excited about plants,

945
00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:20,960
especially kids. When people are dead on the inside and

946
00:57:20,960 --> 00:57:23,760
they no longer have that appreciation for the living world,

947
00:57:24,320 --> 00:57:27,199
nor do they have the capacity to get excited about it.

948
00:57:27,239 --> 00:57:33,079
That's when I'm I just don't you know, like really, like,

949
00:57:33,119 --> 00:57:35,079
what do you do? What's going on up there? Really?

950
00:57:35,119 --> 00:57:38,519
You don't like see any greater context. You just video

951
00:57:38,599 --> 00:57:41,480
games and fucking sport, Like what do you deal with

952
00:57:41,519 --> 00:57:45,239
your time? Like sports cars are fucking collecting shit to pray.

953
00:57:46,119 --> 00:57:48,639
You know what, I don't understand the I don't understand it.

954
00:57:48,679 --> 00:57:53,000
But you know, no judgment is they say bless their hearts.

955
00:57:54,039 --> 00:57:59,480
Ah So anyway, but the ethno botanical aspect of all

956
00:57:59,519 --> 00:58:02,360
this is, especially if some of these plants, you know

957
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:06,400
it's fucking wild, islex y Usa, which is in the

958
00:58:06,719 --> 00:58:10,480
genus islex same genus as yerba mate, same genus as yopon,

959
00:58:10,599 --> 00:58:15,480
which you know we get up here. It's a caffeine

960
00:58:15,559 --> 00:58:21,480
source native North American caffeine source Islex vamitatoria. Unfortunate species name.

961
00:58:23,639 --> 00:58:27,280
A friend of mine makes a makes macha out of

962
00:58:27,280 --> 00:58:30,079
that species and sells it. He's got like a little company.

963
00:58:30,119 --> 00:58:32,119
It's it's sold for a lot of money and whole foods.

964
00:58:33,239 --> 00:58:35,440
But you could probably pocket it from the store though

965
00:58:35,519 --> 00:58:37,320
you know it's gonna he's gonna make money either way.

966
00:58:39,800 --> 00:58:44,760
So anyway, but yeah, Ilex Yusa is like a thirty

967
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:47,519
to forty foot tall tree. In some cases it's larger.

968
00:58:47,559 --> 00:58:49,039
I don't think it's one of those plants. It's like

969
00:58:49,079 --> 00:58:52,880
Salvia divi norm where, which is supposed to not occur

970
00:58:52,960 --> 00:58:55,719
in the wild. It's a cultagen. It's been in human

971
00:58:55,760 --> 00:58:59,559
cultivation for so long that or is probably a product

972
00:58:59,559 --> 00:59:05,719
of human cultivation. Maybe who knows that the species itself

973
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:09,760
or that genome, whatever it is, doesn't exist in the wild.

974
00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:13,719
It's just predominant in cultivation. But it's it's man, they

975
00:59:13,800 --> 00:59:17,239
drink this shit like it's just water down there. It's

976
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:20,400
great and it's you know, they'll make it really light,

977
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:23,199
so it's not overpowering. But it's got caffeine and it

978
00:59:23,199 --> 00:59:26,519
feels like a much softer, more pleasant to the taste

979
00:59:26,639 --> 00:59:29,039
yerba mate because yerba mate will give me a headaches

980
00:59:29,039 --> 00:59:31,880
sometimes and it's got kind of a weird flavor to it.

981
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:36,360
This stuff is pleasant, this pie, and it feels good.

982
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:38,320
Of course I fuck it up and make it too strong.

983
00:59:38,360 --> 00:59:40,599
But it's what's enabled me to quit coffee for the

984
00:59:40,679 --> 00:59:44,760
last month. Except for a few times, I've mostly been

985
00:59:44,760 --> 00:59:47,280
off the coffee, which is great. I needed to be

986
00:59:47,400 --> 00:59:50,639
off of it because I just overdid it. I've been

987
00:59:50,639 --> 00:59:53,280
addicted to coffee since I was like fourteen or fifteen.

988
00:59:55,039 --> 00:59:58,599
Uh yeah, so it's been nice. I feel less. I

989
00:59:58,639 --> 01:00:06,000
feel slightly less ince anyway. On the uh the subject

990
01:00:06,119 --> 01:00:09,440
of ethnobotany, a plant that was I found really fascinating

991
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:13,039
and that I had never been exposed to before was

992
01:00:13,119 --> 01:00:17,480
Crescentia couhetae, which is in Big Noniac, the Catalpa family,

993
01:00:17,480 --> 01:00:21,559
the trumpet vine family, some North American relatives, the desert

994
01:00:21,559 --> 01:00:27,519
willow family, Big Noniac order. Lamy a leis uh so

995
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:33,239
you know bilatterally symmetrical flowers opposite leaves generally speaking. But

996
01:00:34,119 --> 01:00:37,719
the name for this is calabash tree. And it produces

997
01:00:37,800 --> 01:00:41,960
these fruits that look like many basketballs, you know, like

998
01:00:41,960 --> 01:00:44,320
the little ones. So you might see it like a

999
01:00:44,400 --> 01:00:48,239
game at the you know when you you go to

1000
01:00:48,320 --> 01:00:51,320
like fucking daven Busters or chuck E Cheese, you know,

1001
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:53,599
one of those like basket the little mini the mini

1002
01:00:53,639 --> 01:00:59,559
basketballs like that size, not the big ones. And uh

1003
01:00:59,599 --> 01:01:04,320
my cult trill references, they really place me. I used

1004
01:01:04,360 --> 01:01:06,039
to I used to go to Chunkie Cheese. You know,

1005
01:01:06,199 --> 01:01:08,880
you take take your take the kid there and she's

1006
01:01:08,920 --> 01:01:10,320
run all over the place. You gotta go there on

1007
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:12,159
the weekdays, you know, because it's a fucking Petrie dish.

1008
01:01:12,239 --> 01:01:14,920
Otherwise now it's a ripoff, but you could always find it. Wait,

1009
01:01:14,960 --> 01:01:16,880
there's scams. You could pull a chuck E Cheese, you

1010
01:01:16,880 --> 01:01:19,440
know with the ski ball machine or something. The whole

1011
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:21,519
place is a scam. Really, when it comes down to it,

1012
01:01:21,559 --> 01:01:25,719
they're just milking you anyway. Uh. The calabash tree family

1013
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:29,280
Bignonia ac order lamy alies produces this fruit that's the

1014
01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:31,760
size of one of those mini basketballs. You cut it

1015
01:01:31,800 --> 01:01:36,599
open and it's got this uh woody exocarp. It's like

1016
01:01:36,639 --> 01:01:40,360
a woody it's part of the fruit. It's beneath the rind,

1017
01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:45,159
but it's it's woody tissue and it creates a perfect bowl.

1018
01:01:45,280 --> 01:01:48,480
So these imagine like one of those mini basketballs cut

1019
01:01:48,519 --> 01:01:52,119
in half. It creates a perfect bowl. They're fucking everywhere. Uh,

1020
01:01:52,159 --> 01:01:55,599
and I think, let me stick at the range map.

1021
01:01:55,639 --> 01:01:58,599
It is the distribution. I mean it's planted throughout Southeast

1022
01:01:58,639 --> 01:02:02,079
Asia now too. This is obviously see an immensely useful

1023
01:02:02,199 --> 01:02:06,079
plant because you basically have a bowl from it. Right.

1024
01:02:06,119 --> 01:02:09,599
It's like it's not the hardest wood it's got. I

1025
01:02:09,599 --> 01:02:11,840
mean you could definitely step on it and break it,

1026
01:02:12,719 --> 01:02:15,079
but you've basically got it. What. Yeah, it sin Dominican,

1027
01:02:15,079 --> 01:02:20,039
it's throughout the Caribbean, it's throughout southern Mexico, and it's

1028
01:02:20,119 --> 01:02:25,320
I think it's is it colifflorous, two flowers popping right

1029
01:02:25,360 --> 01:02:28,960
out of the trunk. Yeah, it parts, yeah, but it's

1030
01:02:28,960 --> 01:02:32,400
a fucking cool It's a really cool plant. Odd pinnate leaves,

1031
01:02:32,519 --> 01:02:35,119
big noniac, just like the sausage tree, which is also

1032
01:02:35,119 --> 01:02:38,119
big noniac, which I've I grew a few of those.

1033
01:02:38,159 --> 01:02:40,679
I've got seeds, actually stuff. I got sausage tree seeds.

1034
01:02:40,719 --> 01:02:43,679
Who wants a sausage tree? Anybody out there work for

1035
01:02:43,719 --> 01:02:48,239
a conservatory that could use Kegelia africana, would you like

1036
01:02:48,280 --> 01:02:51,119
a sausage tree. I'll send you these seeds. It's a

1037
01:02:51,400 --> 01:02:55,559
great plant for a fucking conservatory, especially, but you know,

1038
01:02:55,599 --> 01:02:57,440
obviously you need a glasshouse. You need to be in

1039
01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:03,079
Florida or southern Califia or in my case, deep South Texas.

1040
01:03:03,079 --> 01:03:05,199
But it still dies back. Mine just died back in

1041
01:03:05,199 --> 01:03:08,079
a freeze. Once they get big enough, they don't fully

1042
01:03:08,159 --> 01:03:11,079
die back. The leaves will die. It's like a thirty

1043
01:03:11,119 --> 01:03:13,840
foot tall one. We got it froze. It got down

1044
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:16,760
to like twenty eight here for a few hours, and

1045
01:03:16,840 --> 01:03:18,519
I was freaking. I had to bring all that. Hovier

1046
01:03:18,559 --> 01:03:20,119
brought all my shit inside for me because I was

1047
01:03:20,119 --> 01:03:24,000
in Chile. Thank god, you know, uh, and then then

1048
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:27,320
it was supposed to get fucking cold again because most

1049
01:03:27,320 --> 01:03:29,599
of the native cac died down here. Are fine, you know,

1050
01:03:29,639 --> 01:03:32,719
all the mammalarias and all the native any native cactus

1051
01:03:32,719 --> 01:03:35,559
in South Texas can take a freeze. But I've got

1052
01:03:35,599 --> 01:03:38,119
other stuff that I you know, like someone gave me

1053
01:03:38,159 --> 01:03:42,320
one of those. Uh. I think Andy Andy from Andy's

1054
01:03:42,400 --> 01:03:45,239
Orchids gave me one of those ant house orchids. It's

1055
01:03:45,280 --> 01:03:52,360
like the stems are you know, it's a mermecophile and uh, anyway,

1056
01:03:52,719 --> 01:03:55,960
some of those are just I've got shit that's that's sensitive.

1057
01:03:56,000 --> 01:03:58,000
You know. Some of them are tillococtus you might use

1058
01:03:58,039 --> 01:04:02,480
for grafting or something, and well are sensitive to this stuff.

1059
01:04:02,480 --> 01:04:04,519
And I've got like columnars like my pack of series

1060
01:04:04,519 --> 01:04:08,000
wherebe I the tip died, so this will be less

1061
01:04:08,000 --> 01:04:10,119
of an issue. As they get bigger, they can take

1062
01:04:10,199 --> 01:04:14,079
these early morning freezes for a few hours, you know,

1063
01:04:14,119 --> 01:04:16,559
dipp into like twenty eight without dying back. But while

1064
01:04:16,559 --> 01:04:19,880
they're small still it can so anyway, it's just anyone.

1065
01:04:19,920 --> 01:04:22,159
It's the pain in the ass. But yeah, if you

1066
01:04:22,159 --> 01:04:24,440
want those Kagelia affri kind of seeds, email me and

1067
01:04:24,519 --> 01:04:27,880
I'll send you some. A friend of mine who has

1068
01:04:27,920 --> 01:04:30,800
a seed company in Rwanda gave them to me and

1069
01:04:30,840 --> 01:04:33,800
I've already grown a few and it'd be great. It's

1070
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:37,360
definitely a cool plant to show people because the fruit

1071
01:04:37,400 --> 01:04:39,440
does look like a fucking sausage. And then the flowers

1072
01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:42,559
are incredible to It's got these pendent influorescences that are

1073
01:04:42,559 --> 01:04:46,280
pollinated by birds and bats, you know, the huge flowers.

1074
01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:53,239
So anyway, but yeah, this Criscientia cool heade was was

1075
01:04:53,719 --> 01:04:56,079
really cool to see and I had no prior knowledge

1076
01:04:56,079 --> 01:04:58,320
of it. You see, when you see the fruit, you

1077
01:04:58,320 --> 01:05:01,360
think it would be either some sort of large palm

1078
01:05:01,440 --> 01:05:04,320
fruit or it would be in Kukerbatasi it would be

1079
01:05:04,360 --> 01:05:07,960
a cucumber fruit. It's neither. It's from big noniac. I

1080
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:10,800
wonder what this thing evolved with. What you know, the

1081
01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:13,320
inside of the fruit is filled this white meae substance

1082
01:05:13,880 --> 01:05:17,320
that it was probably megafun I guess, of course, but

1083
01:05:17,400 --> 01:05:20,800
this white meae substance with you know, many seeds inside.

1084
01:05:21,000 --> 01:05:24,000
And now I want to grow this thing because it

1085
01:05:24,000 --> 01:05:28,360
seems like it's got a drought tolerance too. But you know,

1086
01:05:28,599 --> 01:05:30,840
again all this shit and the climate's so fucked up

1087
01:05:30,880 --> 01:05:33,679
and the jet stream. You know, the Arctic's warming so

1088
01:05:33,760 --> 01:05:35,480
much that the jet stream isn't stable. So now we

1089
01:05:35,519 --> 01:05:39,199
get these polar vortexas. Remember whenever that cold air is

1090
01:05:39,239 --> 01:05:42,360
dipping far down south on the other side of it,

1091
01:05:42,440 --> 01:05:44,320
just like a wave and a trough, you've got warm

1092
01:05:44,360 --> 01:05:48,400
air going way up to the Arctic too. The Arctic

1093
01:05:48,440 --> 01:05:51,079
warms like one of the during the deep freeze that

1094
01:05:51,119 --> 01:05:54,400
happened here in Texas and was it twenty one? I

1095
01:05:54,400 --> 01:05:59,000
think Alaska that day was like warmer than fucking somewhere

1096
01:05:59,039 --> 01:06:02,840
in Arizona. And I forget anyway. Uh, you know, it's

1097
01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:07,239
all it's all part of the the general trend of

1098
01:06:07,480 --> 01:06:10,480
warming climates. I can't believe that fucking people like Joe

1099
01:06:10,559 --> 01:06:15,519
Rogan are full on climate deniers now. It's fucking insane. God,

1100
01:06:15,559 --> 01:06:17,719
it's so it's so fucking crazy. I shared a clip

1101
01:06:17,760 --> 01:06:21,639
on a YouTube channel yesterday by climate Town, which is Uh,

1102
01:06:21,840 --> 01:06:24,639
that guy Roley, I forget his fucking name. He's out

1103
01:06:24,639 --> 01:06:27,519
in New York. He's got a climate science policy degree,

1104
01:06:27,599 --> 01:06:29,039
but he says it with like a it's kind of

1105
01:06:29,119 --> 01:06:33,639
tongue in cheek. But he runs climate Town the YouTube channel,

1106
01:06:33,639 --> 01:06:36,800
which is great. It's fucking hilarious, hilarious, and it's good info.

1107
01:06:37,280 --> 01:06:39,639
But I posted it because I kept seeing people sharing

1108
01:06:39,679 --> 01:06:42,239
that land Man show. I don't know if you know

1109
01:06:42,239 --> 01:06:46,559
about that. You're you know, suburban dads, boomers, climate deniers.

1110
01:06:46,559 --> 01:06:48,760
They love this show because it's the main clip from

1111
01:06:48,760 --> 01:06:52,679
it is this billy Bob Thornton, who really went out

1112
01:06:52,719 --> 01:06:54,480
on the deep end. I said, wow, you know, he's

1113
01:06:54,480 --> 01:06:58,199
got like a he's doing like a Captain Jack Sparrow

1114
01:06:58,239 --> 01:07:01,000
impression in his daily life. He's dressed like a fucking pirate.

1115
01:07:01,079 --> 01:07:04,800
You know, he's dressed like a drag queen pirate. No shade,

1116
01:07:04,840 --> 01:07:07,880
I'm just saying it's, you know, anyway. So, but he's

1117
01:07:07,920 --> 01:07:11,440
doing this. He plays this West Texas land man who

1118
01:07:11,519 --> 01:07:13,960
works for the oil companies. It helps get land. And

1119
01:07:14,400 --> 01:07:17,599
there's this scene where he's it's so fucking tongue in

1120
01:07:17,719 --> 01:07:19,719
chee man, it's not tongue and she it's so cliche,

1121
01:07:19,760 --> 01:07:23,400
like it's so like, this is what I would imagine,

1122
01:07:25,119 --> 01:07:27,400
you know, a Joe Rogan bro or like a West

1123
01:07:27,440 --> 01:07:32,840
Texas bro who's never left West Texas would think of

1124
01:07:33,000 --> 01:07:37,320
like the California liberal. You know, the roles are very

1125
01:07:37,360 --> 01:07:41,000
cliche it's very cartoon, it's very predictable. But you've got

1126
01:07:41,000 --> 01:07:42,920
this landman played by Billy Bob Thorton, and then the

1127
01:07:43,119 --> 01:07:47,360
the liberal out there who's all for renewable energy, and

1128
01:07:47,400 --> 01:07:49,559
he's telling her how none of this is renewable. It's

1129
01:07:49,599 --> 01:07:53,159
those windmills are bullshiting, you know, blah blah, and oil's

1130
01:07:53,159 --> 01:07:56,039
all we got. Yeah, everything's out here is made of oil.

1131
01:07:56,079 --> 01:07:59,679
And you know, like the typical thing, the typical argument

1132
01:07:59,719 --> 01:08:01,760
you hear against electric cars. And I'm not for any

1133
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:04,679
of this shit. I'm not four cars, I'm not four windmills.

1134
01:08:05,039 --> 01:08:06,719
Any of this. It all feeds the tumor. It's all

1135
01:08:06,719 --> 01:08:09,159
part of the same disease, just a different source. I

1136
01:08:09,199 --> 01:08:11,800
will say, I don't like oil, though I don't like cancer.

1137
01:08:12,119 --> 01:08:14,159
I don't like the fucking smell of exhaust. That was

1138
01:08:14,199 --> 01:08:16,000
something that was running through my mind the whole anytime

1139
01:08:16,000 --> 01:08:18,399
I go to Latin America, because the fucking air pollution

1140
01:08:18,520 --> 01:08:20,560
is so bad. There's no catalytic converters on most of

1141
01:08:20,560 --> 01:08:23,960
the cars. Mexico City smells like a fucking parking garage.

1142
01:08:25,000 --> 01:08:27,000
I love Mexico City, I just it smells like a

1143
01:08:27,000 --> 01:08:29,319
parking garage. The fucking auto pollution is terrible. It's all

1144
01:08:29,319 --> 01:08:31,520
car pollution. It gives me a fucking headache. I want

1145
01:08:31,520 --> 01:08:34,600
to puke. I literally get a nauseous when I smell that,

1146
01:08:35,159 --> 01:08:37,359
And I'm just like, man, you know, cars fucking suck.

1147
01:08:37,439 --> 01:08:40,319
But like if shit was electric, like infrastructure had slowly

1148
01:08:40,359 --> 01:08:43,279
been moved to electric. Of course it couldn't have been

1149
01:08:43,319 --> 01:08:46,680
because the technology didn't exist yet, and electric cars have

1150
01:08:46,760 --> 01:08:50,000
their own downsides, especially when it comes to temperature and

1151
01:08:50,039 --> 01:08:53,600
then the minerals required whatever. But either way, you're gonna

1152
01:08:53,640 --> 01:08:59,000
be you know, fucking robbing. You're gonna be looting the

1153
01:08:59,159 --> 01:09:01,880
habitat to get the materials you need for any of this.

1154
01:09:02,079 --> 01:09:06,239
But the answer is just less cars and better better

1155
01:09:06,359 --> 01:09:09,520
urban planning. But regardless, the whole time, I'm just thinking,

1156
01:09:09,600 --> 01:09:14,600
like God, man, like electric cars, like internal combustion engines

1157
01:09:14,600 --> 01:09:18,920
are just so inefficient, you lose so much energy to heat,

1158
01:09:19,520 --> 01:09:22,880
et cetera. Electric cars are fewer moving parts, better pick up,

1159
01:09:23,399 --> 01:09:25,960
they don't and most importantly, they don't fucking stink. They

1160
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:29,279
don't like spew poisoned into the air. All right, I'm

1161
01:09:29,319 --> 01:09:31,000
not a booster for any but anyway, so I shared

1162
01:09:31,039 --> 01:09:33,760
this Climate Town clip because I just got so tired

1163
01:09:33,800 --> 01:09:36,800
of seeing that landmank that from this TV show. You know,

1164
01:09:36,800 --> 01:09:38,960
I'm like, this is just I've been hearing these parroted

1165
01:09:39,079 --> 01:09:42,439
arguments when people parrot arguments, and you know, people on

1166
01:09:42,439 --> 01:09:44,640
the left do this too, of course, like the American left.

1167
01:09:44,640 --> 01:09:48,520
They part these stupid talking points and then like try

1168
01:09:48,560 --> 01:09:50,479
to pass them off like they thought on them themselves,

1169
01:09:50,520 --> 01:09:53,039
like they're they're educated, though you've never heard this before

1170
01:09:53,279 --> 01:09:56,920
or you know, and everybody's doing it right, especially of course,

1171
01:09:56,920 --> 01:09:58,960
and that's what they're always you always reading the comments

1172
01:09:58,960 --> 01:10:02,479
like those electric cars, the minerals and blah blah blah,

1173
01:10:02,800 --> 01:10:06,760
and you know, climate's always changing. The climate deniers have

1174
01:10:06,800 --> 01:10:09,920
their own round of this shit. But people basically they're

1175
01:10:09,960 --> 01:10:12,600
repeating shit that you've heard nine thousand times already, and

1176
01:10:12,600 --> 01:10:14,640
it was stupid as fuck the first time you heard it.

1177
01:10:14,680 --> 01:10:17,680
And then they're they're telling you to telling it to

1178
01:10:17,680 --> 01:10:19,760
you like you've never heard it before, like you're supposed

1179
01:10:19,800 --> 01:10:22,239
to be blown away by this. This is some new new

1180
01:10:22,279 --> 01:10:24,600
information they're going to blow your mind with. And then

1181
01:10:24,640 --> 01:10:26,920
they're like passing it off as their own and it's like, man,

1182
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:29,000
I know, you just heard that somewhere else. You didn't

1183
01:10:29,000 --> 01:10:31,319
even fucking think about this or look at look into it.

1184
01:10:31,960 --> 01:10:34,399
You're just using it to back up your dumbass opinion.

1185
01:10:35,119 --> 01:10:37,199
It just it's it irritates the fuck out of me.

1186
01:10:37,359 --> 01:10:39,079
You know, it's like, man, I wasn't born. Yesterday I

1187
01:10:39,079 --> 01:10:41,359
met a fucking idiot. And also you're not an original

1188
01:10:41,439 --> 01:10:46,520
thinker regardless. I shared this clip on the YouTube channel

1189
01:10:46,600 --> 01:10:51,600
yesterday and the amount of like climate deniers I was

1190
01:10:51,640 --> 01:10:53,760
seeing in the comments was blowing my mind. I'm like,

1191
01:10:53,760 --> 01:10:55,760
how the fuck did you get Why do you follow

1192
01:10:55,840 --> 01:10:58,760
this channel? Do you know what I do? Like? You

1193
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:01,039
just think the fucking you think like the fact I

1194
01:11:01,199 --> 01:11:03,560
curse or I have like a problem. I have a

1195
01:11:03,600 --> 01:11:07,800
problem with cursing, right, I curse far too much some time?

1196
01:11:07,840 --> 01:11:10,039
You just what is it that? How did you get here? Like?

1197
01:11:10,439 --> 01:11:13,439
What are you doing here? You know it's like seeing

1198
01:11:13,479 --> 01:11:17,279
a crackhead in an AA meeting? Well, actually that makes sense. Sometimes,

1199
01:11:17,439 --> 01:11:20,359
you know, people relapse and they just stand up back

1200
01:11:20,399 --> 01:11:22,520
in the meetings. You know, the door's always open, come

1201
01:11:22,560 --> 01:11:25,079
on in here. You know you could come into this

1202
01:11:25,199 --> 01:11:28,199
meeting still spun out of your mind. It's fine, you

1203
01:11:28,199 --> 01:11:30,279
know we're gonna give you the recovery you need, even

1204
01:11:30,319 --> 01:11:35,520
though we know it's not gonna work. Nobody's denied. But

1205
01:11:35,640 --> 01:11:39,359
you know what I mean, this the climate denial shit again,

1206
01:11:39,439 --> 01:11:43,159
this is just more I just can't fucking I need

1207
01:11:43,199 --> 01:11:46,439
to get out of this country at some point. You know,

1208
01:11:46,600 --> 01:11:49,960
every place has its own flavor of poison. Every place

1209
01:11:50,000 --> 01:11:54,920
is filled with idiots in human toxicity. And there's nice

1210
01:11:54,920 --> 01:11:57,000
things in every place too, of course, don't forget that.

1211
01:11:57,520 --> 01:12:01,239
Live laugh left, But I just need to I can't

1212
01:12:01,279 --> 01:12:04,199
sit still. So this is just the home base. I'm

1213
01:12:04,239 --> 01:12:05,760
just here from my daughter. And then, you know, I

1214
01:12:05,800 --> 01:12:07,520
don't know where. I don't know where to. Wind will

1215
01:12:07,560 --> 01:12:10,760
blow me later on, you know, hopefully not off a cliff.

1216
01:12:11,640 --> 01:12:15,840
But uh yeah, the US is rough, Texas is rougher,

1217
01:12:17,119 --> 01:12:21,159
culturally speaking. Wonderful plants and animals here, Okay anyway, So

1218
01:12:21,239 --> 01:12:23,479
Krishanthia Kueta, I'm gonna try to grow that. It's it's

1219
01:12:23,600 --> 01:12:27,159
drought tolerant. It's it's gotta grows in areas with a

1220
01:12:27,159 --> 01:12:31,319
seasonally dry climate. I really like those seasonally dry areas,

1221
01:12:31,399 --> 01:12:34,520
not quite deserts, you know, men as your eyes. Brazil,

1222
01:12:35,279 --> 01:12:38,239
parts of the Dominican Republic love to be there in

1223
01:12:38,279 --> 01:12:40,119
the wet season, so I could really you know, I'm

1224
01:12:40,119 --> 01:12:43,159
not misled into thinking it's more dry than it is

1225
01:12:43,279 --> 01:12:45,159
or that it's just whatever it's season. Like if you

1226
01:12:45,199 --> 01:12:48,600
go to Wahaka cloud Forest during the rainy season, you're like, oh,

1227
01:12:48,600 --> 01:12:52,079
this is just a cloud forest, you know, rainy whatever,

1228
01:12:52,279 --> 01:12:53,680
and it never dries out here. And then you go

1229
01:12:53,680 --> 01:12:55,680
there in the winter and during the dry season you're like,

1230
01:12:55,680 --> 01:12:58,439
oh shit, this is like the roads are dusty. It's

1231
01:12:58,479 --> 01:13:00,960
completely different. It's complete and you want to get that

1232
01:13:01,000 --> 01:13:05,680
full picture. Anyway, what are we talking about here? Where

1233
01:13:05,680 --> 01:13:11,039
are we going with this? Let's keep moving on. So

1234
01:13:11,119 --> 01:13:15,439
on another note, there was a really cool orchid that

1235
01:13:15,520 --> 01:13:18,359
we encountered, fragment Pedium, which I think is one of

1236
01:13:18,439 --> 01:13:23,159
five genera in subfamily and orchid subfamily siper pedioid E,

1237
01:13:23,319 --> 01:13:26,840
which has two anthers instead of only one anther like

1238
01:13:27,039 --> 01:13:31,479
orchid doity. The subfamily like the terrestrial orchids in North

1239
01:13:31,520 --> 01:13:35,680
America or Australia, or epidendroid E, a lot of which

1240
01:13:35,720 --> 01:13:40,359
are the most epidendroids I think are Epiphytes siper pedioid

1241
01:13:40,760 --> 01:13:44,920
the lady slipper orchids. What a stupid names. Lady slip,

1242
01:13:46,159 --> 01:13:48,760
what is that that's not culturally relevant to me? It's

1243
01:13:48,800 --> 01:13:51,439
a little bag. They're a bag orchids just what I'm

1244
01:13:51,439 --> 01:13:53,960
gonna call them, the Jewel bag orchids, like a bag

1245
01:13:54,000 --> 01:13:56,800
you get from the Jewel Osco, which is a Chicago

1246
01:13:56,880 --> 01:14:00,159
supermarket chain. Do they still do it? They still have

1247
01:14:00,199 --> 01:14:03,079
plastic bags? That did jewe Losco? Or do the woke

1248
01:14:03,199 --> 01:14:06,319
Bob type of away well, all plastics just like the

1249
01:14:06,640 --> 01:14:10,520
plastic straws. The woke Bob took away the plastuck straws

1250
01:14:10,680 --> 01:14:14,399
at a plastic bag. Anything's a woke mob. Anything you

1251
01:14:14,439 --> 01:14:16,840
don't like that tries to like do a little bit

1252
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:19,920
of environmental good in a world as a woke mob.

1253
01:14:21,520 --> 01:14:24,479
Just reminder for all the Americans here, what a what

1254
01:14:24,600 --> 01:14:29,439
an idiotic dystopi? Okay? Anyway, the Jewel bag orchids, the

1255
01:14:29,520 --> 01:14:32,880
Jewel Losco bag orchids, the siper pedioid E two anthers,

1256
01:14:32,880 --> 01:14:36,560
the staminos really cool flower morphology orchids of course always

1257
01:14:36,560 --> 01:14:39,600
have such a fascinating flower morphology. The flowers are like

1258
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:42,039
little puzzles where you look at this thing and you say,

1259
01:14:42,039 --> 01:14:43,800
what is it doing there? How is it doing it

1260
01:14:43,880 --> 01:14:48,600
what pollinates it lots of specialists pollinators, lots of deceptive pollination.

1261
01:14:49,159 --> 01:14:53,720
Many times no nectar or pollen being offered. It's you know,

1262
01:14:53,960 --> 01:14:59,920
pheromones that are alluring in uh, pollinators to dupe them all, right, epipac,

1263
01:15:00,119 --> 01:15:03,039
this gigantea which we get here in Texas, all the

1264
01:15:03,039 --> 01:15:07,039
way west to California, is pollinated much the same way

1265
01:15:07,079 --> 01:15:11,199
that this fragment pedium is. It's it. It lures in

1266
01:15:11,720 --> 01:15:20,239
flies hoverflies that are are that mostly uh, I believe

1267
01:15:20,239 --> 01:15:23,560
they all are meant most of them lay eggs in

1268
01:15:23,720 --> 01:15:27,199
aphid colonies and then the eggs hatch, the larvae eat

1269
01:15:27,399 --> 01:15:31,640
the the aphids, and so to lure them in, yeah,

1270
01:15:31,760 --> 01:15:34,119
you need some sort of bait to fool them into

1271
01:15:34,159 --> 01:15:36,680
thinking that there's an aphid colony there, whether it's pheromones

1272
01:15:36,840 --> 01:15:40,039
or in the case that is fragment pedium. It's thought

1273
01:15:40,119 --> 01:15:44,960
that the lure is these splotches that look like aphids

1274
01:15:45,000 --> 01:15:48,880
on this bag flower. So uh, I believe all of

1275
01:15:48,960 --> 01:15:53,359
these not ladies, slipper orchids, but the jewel bag orchid

1276
01:15:53,439 --> 01:15:55,560
because that labellum is a little pouch. It's a big

1277
01:15:55,600 --> 01:15:59,039
inflated bag. The insects crawl in there, and then it's

1278
01:15:59,079 --> 01:16:02,600
got this trap and least pollination system, just like aeroids do,

1279
01:16:03,399 --> 01:16:09,119
and just like aristolochia do. Really fascinating It temporarily traps

1280
01:16:09,159 --> 01:16:11,760
the insect, makes it hang out in there for a

1281
01:16:11,840 --> 01:16:15,560
day or two Aristolochia does. I don't know how long

1282
01:16:15,600 --> 01:16:18,279
it is with the jewel bag orchids, the siper pedioids,

1283
01:16:18,680 --> 01:16:21,279
and then lets them out. But when they go out

1284
01:16:22,359 --> 01:16:24,319
in the case of fragment pedium, in the case of

1285
01:16:24,359 --> 01:16:28,079
like Aristolochia, the pipevines like Aristolochia erecta that we get

1286
01:16:28,079 --> 01:16:31,079
in Texas, which is a fucking wonderful species that I'm

1287
01:16:31,119 --> 01:16:33,319
trying to propagate a lot more of we need if

1288
01:16:33,319 --> 01:16:36,359
you live in Texas, propagate the shit out of Aristolochia erecta.

1289
01:16:36,399 --> 01:16:40,279
It's not grown enough. They're easy to grow from tuber

1290
01:16:40,399 --> 01:16:43,880
I think like to just take cuttings of and you

1291
01:16:43,880 --> 01:16:46,039
should just set aside a little area of your yard

1292
01:16:46,640 --> 01:16:49,000
to grow this plant. And they're also the host plant

1293
01:16:49,000 --> 01:16:52,560
for really dope caterpillar and butterfly, the swallow tails orange

1294
01:16:52,560 --> 01:16:56,880
black caterpillars. They turn into these fucking really cool butterflies.

1295
01:16:56,920 --> 01:17:01,479
And we saw some wild aristolochia down at this little

1296
01:17:01,479 --> 01:17:04,199
butterfly sanctuary this lady had set up in her yard

1297
01:17:05,359 --> 01:17:09,119
down there in Mara, Ecuador, and I've got to do

1298
01:17:09,199 --> 01:17:10,960
the video on it. God, it was fucking wild. It

1299
01:17:11,000 --> 01:17:15,039
was like a six inch eight inch tall bag of aristolochia.

1300
01:17:15,399 --> 01:17:18,039
And there were caterpillars there, of course, And there's caterpillars

1301
01:17:18,039 --> 01:17:22,720
on coca plants Erythroxylum coca as well, which makes sense

1302
01:17:22,720 --> 01:17:27,960
all those fucking alkaloids in the leaves. You know that's

1303
01:17:28,000 --> 01:17:30,760
you got a plant with strong toxic fhito chemistry, you're

1304
01:17:30,760 --> 01:17:34,680
gonna get a caterpillar that evolves to bioaccumulate that stuff

1305
01:17:34,880 --> 01:17:36,920
and hold it in its tissue, so that if a

1306
01:17:36,920 --> 01:17:40,439
bird comes neaeds the caterpillar of pukes, it's a great defense, right,

1307
01:17:40,880 --> 01:17:43,760
gain a tolerance to these compounds, then bioaccumulate them so

1308
01:17:43,880 --> 01:17:46,800
if anything tries to eat you with pukes and doesn't

1309
01:17:46,840 --> 01:17:50,520
try to eat any more of your species, selective advantage

1310
01:17:50,520 --> 01:17:53,880
in that. So God, the erythroxyland was so cool. What

1311
01:17:53,960 --> 01:17:56,239
a cool genus, not even just for like the stupid

1312
01:17:56,319 --> 01:17:59,720
drug aspect, because I think cocaine's fucking awful. It makes

1313
01:17:59,720 --> 01:18:03,119
people so intolerable to be around, almost as much as

1314
01:18:03,159 --> 01:18:10,760
alcohol does. But it's a really cool, curious genus. I

1315
01:18:10,840 --> 01:18:17,880
chewed on Erythroxylum grisillipes leaves that had been planted a

1316
01:18:17,920 --> 01:18:21,760
century or two before at this research station and at

1317
01:18:21,760 --> 01:18:25,199
forty eight hundred feet in the upper Amazon of Ecuador,

1318
01:18:25,319 --> 01:18:27,159
and it like made my mouth nomin and gave me

1319
01:18:27,199 --> 01:18:28,760
a little bit of a boost. I didn't like it

1320
01:18:28,800 --> 01:18:31,359
because I don't like blow. I haven't done blowing like

1321
01:18:31,439 --> 01:18:34,479
fifteen years. But the feeling of it is gross, Like

1322
01:18:34,520 --> 01:18:36,920
it's mostly the comdown too, Like I got like a

1323
01:18:36,920 --> 01:18:39,119
little peppa. It was like a coffee It felt like

1324
01:18:39,159 --> 01:18:42,479
a more unpleasant coffee crash. But the fact that it

1325
01:18:42,560 --> 01:18:45,000
numbed my mouth, I was like, Jesus Christ, this is potent.

1326
01:18:45,079 --> 01:18:49,359
The whole thing was covered in moss and lichens and

1327
01:18:49,479 --> 01:18:52,720
algae growing on the leaves too, really wet. Environment wasn't

1328
01:18:52,720 --> 01:18:55,960
that hot, Like it was chilly at night. God, that

1329
01:18:56,039 --> 01:18:59,000
was such a lovely morning, waking up after it fucking

1330
01:18:59,199 --> 01:19:02,119
pissed all night, and the sounds of the birds and

1331
01:19:02,199 --> 01:19:04,079
the forest, and you know, we were up on top

1332
01:19:04,119 --> 01:19:06,359
of this mountain where they built this research station. They

1333
01:19:06,359 --> 01:19:09,560
didn't haul anything up there. They built it with trees

1334
01:19:09,640 --> 01:19:13,600
from the surrounding area. Really dope, set up to drinking

1335
01:19:13,600 --> 01:19:18,159
Guayusa tea at night, solar panels, they had the fucking

1336
01:19:20,840 --> 01:19:25,880
starlink so they had good internet there, microscopes, a library.

1337
01:19:26,000 --> 01:19:27,640
It was like a dream. That's like what I want

1338
01:19:27,680 --> 01:19:30,359
to have at Thorn Scrubs Sanctuary sometime, like a research

1339
01:19:30,399 --> 01:19:33,279
station like this, and they host visiting groups. It was

1340
01:19:33,319 --> 01:19:36,760
so pleasant, you know, and it had it not been rainy,

1341
01:19:36,800 --> 01:19:39,359
you could look across and see these volcanoes. Like Alex

1342
01:19:39,479 --> 01:19:42,000
was showing me pictures, like nobody could see this giant volcano.

1343
01:19:43,039 --> 01:19:45,000
And he showed me pictures of like the volcano with

1344
01:19:45,039 --> 01:19:47,199
like lava spewing out of it too, like this is

1345
01:19:47,199 --> 01:19:51,319
a small eruption. Anyway, what was I talking about? So

1346
01:19:52,560 --> 01:19:56,920
the uh this trap and release mechanism, which aeroids do it?

1347
01:19:57,840 --> 01:20:02,159
Aeroids will temporarily trap their pollenate ARISTOLOCHI will temporarily trap

1348
01:20:02,199 --> 01:20:05,560
its pollinators. And this fragmentpedium did it as well. And

1349
01:20:05,600 --> 01:20:10,359
I looked up this paper called pollination of slipper Orchids

1350
01:20:10,359 --> 01:20:14,720
siper pedioid e review by Pemberton, Florida Museum of natural

1351
01:20:14,760 --> 01:20:19,800
history and it's fucking fascinating. And it turns out see this.

1352
01:20:20,039 --> 01:20:22,479
I was never into orchids before Peter Bernhardt got me

1353
01:20:22,520 --> 01:20:24,920
into them because he studies them and he studies their

1354
01:20:25,039 --> 01:20:29,199
unique pollination systems, and that's what is so cool about them.

1355
01:20:29,239 --> 01:20:32,319
It's like every fucking orchid is a puzzle. You know,

1356
01:20:32,359 --> 01:20:35,359
when you stop seeing these things, is this is the

1357
01:20:35,399 --> 01:20:37,439
pretty flower? Who gives a fuck about that? I don't

1358
01:20:37,479 --> 01:20:41,800
care about aesthetics, that's nice, whatever. I'm interested in this

1359
01:20:42,039 --> 01:20:46,199
like ornate morphology that's evolved in so many orchids, just

1360
01:20:46,279 --> 01:20:51,359
having like intricate ornate morphology to their flowers. It's like

1361
01:20:51,399 --> 01:20:55,640
a puzzle everything is. In this case, this Fragmentpedium pierci,

1362
01:20:56,159 --> 01:21:00,760
which we saw growing on these limestone rocks that are

1363
01:21:00,920 --> 01:21:03,239
on this river. That and the river is they're surely

1364
01:21:03,279 --> 01:21:07,279
submerged at some point because there's so much rain that

1365
01:21:07,479 --> 01:21:09,479
you get torrents. I mean, there was a giant boulder

1366
01:21:09,479 --> 01:21:12,199
in the middle of this river that I'm sure you know,

1367
01:21:12,199 --> 01:21:14,680
it was the size of a fridge, probably weighed, you know,

1368
01:21:14,800 --> 01:21:17,239
two thousand pounds. I'm sure it didn't be pushed there

1369
01:21:18,159 --> 01:21:21,800
in an epic flood however, long ago, right, and a

1370
01:21:21,800 --> 01:21:24,920
series of those epic floods, these epic torrents where the

1371
01:21:25,039 --> 01:21:27,840
river is just swollen and it ends up moving at

1372
01:21:27,840 --> 01:21:29,840
another one hundred feet, and then it sits there for

1373
01:21:29,880 --> 01:21:32,239
a century, and then another flood comes by. It sits

1374
01:21:32,239 --> 01:21:35,000
there for twenty years, then another flood comes by and

1375
01:21:35,039 --> 01:21:38,399
moves it a little bit further down the river. Just wild, wild,

1376
01:21:38,479 --> 01:21:42,119
fucking god, it was so cool. I mean, this habitat

1377
01:21:42,239 --> 01:21:45,760
is just so rich. I'm gonna fucking I'm gonna do

1378
01:21:45,800 --> 01:21:48,159
to Ayahuashka thing. I don't care, you know, I don't care.

1379
01:21:48,960 --> 01:21:52,239
It's a cliche. You know, the hanky's going down here,

1380
01:21:52,600 --> 01:21:56,560
the gringoes, whoever, you know, the techies to do psychedelics

1381
01:21:56,560 --> 01:21:59,000
in a place like that, because psychedelics and nature just

1382
01:21:59,000 --> 01:22:01,199
go hand in hand. That's what's psychedelics are. They're probably

1383
01:22:01,199 --> 01:22:04,560
a way, they're probably away for the plant to fucking

1384
01:22:04,680 --> 01:22:07,800
get us to chill out with whatever stupid shit we're doing.

1385
01:22:07,840 --> 01:22:10,720
You know, this race to nowhere where we're completely shitting

1386
01:22:10,720 --> 01:22:15,199
all over the place, right, behaving like a teenager that

1387
01:22:15,439 --> 01:22:17,800
just found a liquor cabinet. Now we're just puking and

1388
01:22:17,800 --> 01:22:20,000
shitting all over the place, you know, bottles, we're just

1389
01:22:20,079 --> 01:22:22,399
trashing the house, right This maybe what the plants are doing.

1390
01:22:22,840 --> 01:22:27,720
Maybe if I, you know, blow these people's minds, maybe

1391
01:22:27,760 --> 01:22:31,800
they'll they'll have a moment of clarity and settle down.

1392
01:22:31,880 --> 01:22:34,079
I don't know. I get a little woo wu. But

1393
01:22:34,119 --> 01:22:37,840
it's a nice theory. But to do ayahuasca, I mean,

1394
01:22:38,039 --> 01:22:41,119
when you do ayahuasca, you're not even there anymore. You're

1395
01:22:41,159 --> 01:22:43,920
off somewhere else. It's like a prolonged DMPT trip. But

1396
01:22:44,399 --> 01:22:47,600
to do any kind of psychedelic and we did encounter

1397
01:22:47,680 --> 01:22:52,359
quite a few silosophy species zop at the korum young

1398
01:22:52,399 --> 01:22:56,720
gensis or is it young ee I forget uh, and

1399
01:22:57,840 --> 01:23:00,239
a couple of a couple other like the more or

1400
01:23:00,640 --> 01:23:04,520
higher altitude Mexican species. Uh. We encountered there too. But yeah,

1401
01:23:04,560 --> 01:23:08,159
Zapata korn was there. We saw Zapata oh who chiganyi too.

1402
01:23:09,479 --> 01:23:12,880
The psilosophy with the sharpest nipple saw that as well.

1403
01:23:13,279 --> 01:23:15,880
Mushroom trip in it that kind of habit. That would

1404
01:23:15,880 --> 01:23:18,560
be amazing too, because that's what, you know, that's what peyote.

1405
01:23:18,640 --> 01:23:22,279
Any of these things therefore talking to the plants, therefore

1406
01:23:22,640 --> 01:23:25,119
being surrounded with nature, and also, you know, facing the

1407
01:23:25,159 --> 01:23:26,600
shit you don't want to face so you can become

1408
01:23:26,600 --> 01:23:30,520
a better person, a little bit of introspection. Anyway, this

1409
01:23:30,600 --> 01:23:33,680
fragment pedium was growing on these boulders of limestone that

1410
01:23:33,760 --> 01:23:35,760
had fossils in them. On this river. It had been

1411
01:23:35,800 --> 01:23:37,640
pissing all day, it had been raining. I was trying

1412
01:23:37,640 --> 01:23:40,840
to keep my camera dry. I still got it wet.

1413
01:23:40,920 --> 01:23:43,760
But if you ever get a camera wet, the way

1414
01:23:43,880 --> 01:23:48,239
around that is buy some fucking silica packets online and

1415
01:23:48,319 --> 01:23:49,920
put it in a bag with a shit ton of

1416
01:23:50,000 --> 01:23:52,560
silica packets and they will absorb the humidity. And then

1417
01:23:52,600 --> 01:23:54,800
of course you could just dry the silica packets out

1418
01:23:55,159 --> 01:23:59,199
in the oven. Great method for you know, especially for

1419
01:23:59,279 --> 01:24:04,159
phones too. Fuck rice, get the silica. Get the silica packets.

1420
01:24:04,159 --> 01:24:06,199
You know, the stuff, you know, the ones that say

1421
01:24:06,239 --> 01:24:07,800
do not eat when you get a bag of that,

1422
01:24:07,920 --> 01:24:12,800
the seaweed stuff, you know. But this fragmentpedium, the floral

1423
01:24:12,840 --> 01:24:15,920
structure was insane. And there's I'd later found out from

1424
01:24:15,920 --> 01:24:19,840
this paper it's pollinated. It's dependent supposedly on a single species.

1425
01:24:20,399 --> 01:24:22,279
Three of the four I'm quoting the paper now three

1426
01:24:22,319 --> 01:24:26,039
to four insect pollinated. Fragment pedium species are narrow specialists,

1427
01:24:26,079 --> 01:24:30,520
being pollinated by a single insect species. Fragment Pedium perci

1428
01:24:30,760 --> 01:24:34,319
and fragment pedium called datum are each pollinated by female

1429
01:24:34,319 --> 01:24:39,199
hoverflies of a single species Pemberton twenty eleven. Fragment Pedium

1430
01:24:39,279 --> 01:24:41,840
longe of folium is pollinated by both a female hoverfly

1431
01:24:41,920 --> 01:24:44,840
and a halictid bee. See. I don't even know what

1432
01:24:44,880 --> 01:24:47,840
a helictid bee is. Now, I gotta look it up. Now,

1433
01:24:47,840 --> 01:24:49,560
I gotta look this up. What's what the fuck is

1434
01:24:49,560 --> 01:24:54,560
a helicted bee? Sounds fascinating? What is it? Now? Are

1435
01:24:54,560 --> 01:24:58,760
sweat bees? All right? Helictid bees belonging to the family

1436
01:24:58,800 --> 01:25:01,760
Helictity are known as sweat bees. They are at a

1437
01:25:01,840 --> 01:25:04,079
verse group of bees found worldwide, with over forty five

1438
01:25:04,159 --> 01:25:07,960
hundred species described. Here are some key characteristics and facts

1439
01:25:08,439 --> 01:25:12,520
about helicted bees, size and appearance. Helicted bees are generally

1440
01:25:12,560 --> 01:25:15,399
small to medium size, ranging from three to ten millimeters.

1441
01:25:15,720 --> 01:25:17,840
Where did I encounter one of these that wouldn't leave

1442
01:25:17,880 --> 01:25:20,920
me alone? I encountered a sweat bee. They literally go

1443
01:25:21,000 --> 01:25:24,840
for sweat. It wouldn't It was a mean all the time.

1444
01:25:24,880 --> 01:25:27,359
It was kind of cute. It never stung me. I

1445
01:25:27,399 --> 01:25:29,039
don't even know if this thing could sting, but it

1446
01:25:29,119 --> 01:25:31,800
was really interested that I was sweating like a pig,

1447
01:25:31,880 --> 01:25:36,319
sweating like a whore in church, and I just, you know,

1448
01:25:37,000 --> 01:25:39,079
I forget where that was. I remember it was in

1449
01:25:39,079 --> 01:25:44,600
a video. Interesting. You know, the sweat bees are called

1450
01:25:44,640 --> 01:25:47,079
sweat bees because they're attracted the human sweat. You know,

1451
01:25:47,520 --> 01:25:53,119
this is because they need salts and minerals. So where

1452
01:25:53,119 --> 01:25:54,840
would they get that if there weren't people around now?

1453
01:25:55,479 --> 01:25:58,840
And if there's an OrCAD that's pollinated by halictied bees,

1454
01:25:58,920 --> 01:26:03,600
by sweat bees, what does it do to get him

1455
01:26:03,640 --> 01:26:05,319
in there? How do you get those guys in there?

1456
01:26:05,359 --> 01:26:07,880
I don't know. Now, I gotta look up this species

1457
01:26:07,920 --> 01:26:12,359
fragment Pedium, lounge of folium, this stuff. I am endlessly

1458
01:26:12,399 --> 01:26:14,760
fascinated by this kind of shit, these relationships, How does

1459
01:26:14,800 --> 01:26:17,760
this stuff evolve? The floral morphology and the things are

1460
01:26:17,800 --> 01:26:21,560
just fucking beautiful too. But this this uh orchid had

1461
01:26:21,560 --> 01:26:24,239
had two anthers, which was unique. Again, most orchids only

1462
01:26:24,279 --> 01:26:29,000
have one, a single anther, with each anthro theica uh

1463
01:26:29,680 --> 01:26:35,920
per ethiki producing a a polinia, a pollinium. Excuse me,

1464
01:26:36,800 --> 01:26:39,640
you know, because orchid pollen is arrogated into these little

1465
01:26:39,680 --> 01:26:45,920
knobs called the polinea, just like milkweeds. And then so

1466
01:26:45,960 --> 01:26:48,079
it had two anths. And then this stamino with these

1467
01:26:48,079 --> 01:26:52,279
little eyelash looked like a mustache kind of. And then

1468
01:26:53,079 --> 01:26:56,000
the whole column is fascinating. And then of course that

1469
01:26:56,039 --> 01:26:59,920
big bag pouch with the splotches on it. But you know,

1470
01:27:00,079 --> 01:27:01,560
you see these things and you're like, I know something's

1471
01:27:01,600 --> 01:27:05,199
going on there. That's an incredibly ornate flower. It's incredibly complex.

1472
01:27:05,279 --> 01:27:09,199
What the fuck? And you look into it and sure enough,

1473
01:27:09,600 --> 01:27:11,960
I would love to sit there and do pollination studies.

1474
01:27:12,000 --> 01:27:14,640
They don't quite have the patience for it. Maybe you

1475
01:27:14,640 --> 01:27:19,720
could put a little camera or something that might be hard.

1476
01:27:20,960 --> 01:27:23,279
But I fucking hate sitting still. That's the big problem

1477
01:27:23,319 --> 01:27:27,119
with me for for like getting work like this done,

1478
01:27:27,239 --> 01:27:29,079
you know, like for like writing or whatever. It's like,

1479
01:27:29,119 --> 01:27:32,359
I just I gotta get some fucking activity. Can't sit down,

1480
01:27:32,439 --> 01:27:34,560
you know, you stand up and do squats. That was why,

1481
01:27:34,720 --> 01:27:36,720
you know, when I got my locomotive license, I knew

1482
01:27:36,760 --> 01:27:39,399
it was wasn't gonna last. I couldn't do that. I'd

1483
01:27:39,399 --> 01:27:44,079
be fucking miserable being trapped sitting down anyway, before I forget,

1484
01:27:44,199 --> 01:27:46,920
I want to play the sound of an oropendula, and

1485
01:27:46,960 --> 01:27:49,319
I'll probably play this again. These are these birds that

1486
01:27:49,359 --> 01:27:52,680
make these hanging nests. They're related, They're in the same

1487
01:27:52,760 --> 01:27:55,279
family is the birds that make the hanging nests here

1488
01:27:55,279 --> 01:27:59,600
in South Texas, the ultimira orioles. And this is what

1489
01:27:59,680 --> 01:28:01,840
I woke up to every morning. Just listen to this.

1490
01:28:01,920 --> 01:28:04,359
I had to. I should have recorded these guys earlier.

1491
01:28:21,039 --> 01:28:23,520
Those are two separate verds. One does the little water

1492
01:28:23,560 --> 01:28:35,079
drop puts down in the other response the fuck? What

1493
01:28:35,159 --> 01:28:40,880
did I saying to each other? I don't know? Oh god?

1494
01:28:41,880 --> 01:28:45,479
So uh anyway, shout out to Cora. The genus Cora

1495
01:28:45,600 --> 01:28:50,279
a basidio liking. Most liking is asco my seats. This

1496
01:28:50,439 --> 01:28:54,640
is a basidio my seat, and it associates with cyanobacteria too.

1497
01:28:55,039 --> 01:28:57,439
I put an Instagram post up about that, if you

1498
01:28:57,439 --> 01:29:02,760
want to see photos a fucking gorgeous organism. It looks

1499
01:29:02,880 --> 01:29:05,640
like a basidium my seat. It looks like a shelf fungus,

1500
01:29:07,680 --> 01:29:10,760
but it's got the habit of a lichen and it's

1501
01:29:10,800 --> 01:29:14,279
growing epiphytically with a bunch of moss. Where I encountered

1502
01:29:14,279 --> 01:29:16,159
It was growing epiphetically with a bunch of moss and

1503
01:29:16,199 --> 01:29:21,640
a little blueberry member called spherrospermum bucks of folium with

1504
01:29:21,920 --> 01:29:25,880
bright purple fruits, an epiphytic one of the epiphytic bloomberries.

1505
01:29:25,880 --> 01:29:30,560
What are the many many species? And I think the

1506
01:29:30,600 --> 01:29:32,319
first time I saw where else? I saw it in

1507
01:29:32,319 --> 01:29:35,359
Brazil And maybe I saw it that. Where else did

1508
01:29:35,359 --> 01:29:38,880
I see? Let me look this up? Got inga edgeless

1509
01:29:39,520 --> 01:29:42,720
the ice cream bean with a bean pod three feet long,

1510
01:29:43,880 --> 01:29:46,760
tried growing at once that hated South Texas. Where did

1511
01:29:46,760 --> 01:29:48,640
I encounter this? I think it was just maybe it

1512
01:29:48,680 --> 01:29:50,119
was just Brazil. I feel like I've seen it in

1513
01:29:50,159 --> 01:29:53,199
other places too. Yeah, it was near Nova Friebergo, Brazil.

1514
01:29:53,319 --> 01:29:55,600
Different species of cora, there's probably I think there's like

1515
01:29:55,800 --> 01:30:01,920
hundreds of species of Cora, each growing in different habitats.

1516
01:30:02,840 --> 01:30:06,920
But uh god, it's just a fucking beautiful, beautiful organism.

1517
01:30:06,960 --> 01:30:10,880
This one was like this bright turquoise teal color with

1518
01:30:11,119 --> 01:30:17,399
you know, striations in it. A fucking yeah, man, And

1519
01:30:17,439 --> 01:30:18,640
I don't think you get them in any of the

1520
01:30:18,720 --> 01:30:21,640
northern latitudes. Actually, let me see, like you know what,

1521
01:30:21,720 --> 01:30:25,399
let's see that. Let's see you get Cora's in uh

1522
01:30:25,479 --> 01:30:31,199
anywhere in North America. I should have checked this earlier.

1523
01:30:31,359 --> 01:30:35,319
I gotta eat something I didn't fucking eat today. Just

1524
01:30:35,439 --> 01:30:45,319
had some way USA. Let's see taxonomy, Cora. Now, I

1525
01:30:45,319 --> 01:30:47,960
don't think none of the United States. No observations in

1526
01:30:47,960 --> 01:30:54,399
the US. Some in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile. Oh yeah,

1527
01:30:54,439 --> 01:30:56,840
did I not see? Did I not? You know? I

1528
01:30:56,880 --> 01:30:58,600
think I saw some in Chile. Maybe I didn't get

1529
01:30:58,600 --> 01:31:02,399
any photos. What a jackass? What a jig? None in

1530
01:31:02,479 --> 01:31:07,199
the Amazon. None in Central South America, like this center

1531
01:31:07,239 --> 01:31:08,640
of the con that. I'm not sure if that's just

1532
01:31:08,800 --> 01:31:12,680
not been observed or what. I'm so curious, you know,

1533
01:31:13,479 --> 01:31:16,720
get your shots. Go to the state of Amazonas in Brazil.

1534
01:31:16,800 --> 01:31:19,279
I just want to see what it's like. Just take

1535
01:31:19,319 --> 01:31:25,159
a little just go down a river there. God man,

1536
01:31:25,479 --> 01:31:29,119
so much, so much cool stuff out there, you know,

1537
01:31:29,680 --> 01:31:32,560
so much cool stuff to observe. Well, you want to

1538
01:31:32,600 --> 01:31:36,840
spend your time thinking about depressing things and this this

1539
01:31:37,000 --> 01:31:45,720
flailing ending empire. Okay, anyway, let's uh, let's go back

1540
01:31:45,840 --> 01:31:51,199
and keep talking here another yes, anyway, inga edgelist. I

1541
01:31:51,199 --> 01:31:53,359
talked about that briefly, but that was another plan from

1542
01:31:53,359 --> 01:31:58,479
the Ethnobotany market. Three foot long bean, delicious fruit, white

1543
01:31:58,800 --> 01:32:03,079
mealy pulp around the the relatively large inch and a

1544
01:32:03,079 --> 01:32:08,159
half long seeds. And they're fucking delicious too. Yeah, but

1545
01:32:08,159 --> 01:32:10,359
they you know, I think they grow in Veracruz, Mexico,

1546
01:32:10,439 --> 01:32:13,680
it's probably the closest. But they need warmth, they don't

1547
01:32:13,720 --> 01:32:16,640
tolerate freezing, and they also need a lot of water.

1548
01:32:16,760 --> 01:32:18,840
So this is gonna, you know, during those long dry

1549
01:32:18,840 --> 01:32:21,039
spells we get in South Texas, it's going to be miserable.

1550
01:32:21,079 --> 01:32:23,439
You could probably grow them in part portions of Florida

1551
01:32:24,119 --> 01:32:31,119
before it's you know, submerged beneath the Atlantic Ocean. But yeah,

1552
01:32:31,239 --> 01:32:34,000
fucking delicious. But that's I mean. The cool thing too

1553
01:32:34,119 --> 01:32:37,119
is they were volunteering in disturbed areas like roadsides and

1554
01:32:37,119 --> 01:32:41,720
shit all over, you know, this little area near Marra

1555
01:32:41,880 --> 01:32:45,359
and Puyo, Ecuador, which makes sense. I mean, you buy

1556
01:32:45,359 --> 01:32:48,800
this thing at a market for fifty cents. You lit

1557
01:32:48,880 --> 01:32:51,600
me fifty cents for this three foot long bean, and

1558
01:32:51,640 --> 01:32:54,640
then it's got like forty thirty seeds in it. You're

1559
01:32:54,680 --> 01:32:56,840
eating all of them, eating this stuff around them. You

1560
01:32:56,920 --> 01:33:00,079
spit them out land, you know, the seed lands and

1561
01:33:00,079 --> 01:33:02,680
and doff. The climate here barely ever dries out, so

1562
01:33:02,760 --> 01:33:04,600
it's moist all the time. The duff is going to

1563
01:33:04,680 --> 01:33:07,000
be moist all the time. And you could see how

1564
01:33:07,079 --> 01:33:12,159
these things just they spread like cow. I mean that is,

1565
01:33:12,279 --> 01:33:14,720
it's a plant that's taken very well to producing the

1566
01:33:14,880 --> 01:33:19,399
sweet material that's you know, enjoyed by humans, and then

1567
01:33:19,479 --> 01:33:25,840
the humans basically distribute the seeds everywhere. God, there was

1568
01:33:25,880 --> 01:33:27,720
so much cool shit in that fruit market. You know,

1569
01:33:29,840 --> 01:33:31,840
tons of back rist species. Two up in a paramo,

1570
01:33:31,920 --> 01:33:34,880
we saw back risk and this the Looides, which is

1571
01:33:35,119 --> 01:33:40,000
one of those winged leafless stembackris stem coyote bush. Saw

1572
01:33:40,039 --> 01:33:43,520
some cool flug marrieurs up there, to those really weirdlycopods

1573
01:33:43,560 --> 01:33:46,800
that look like you know, inch diameter worms that can

1574
01:33:46,840 --> 01:33:51,239
be two feet long in some cases. Jamisonia, which is

1575
01:33:51,520 --> 01:33:56,520
one of the Chylanthoid fern genera, some really fucking weird

1576
01:33:56,560 --> 01:34:01,239
ones in that that genus. But I want to I

1577
01:34:01,279 --> 01:34:03,479
want before I go back to talking about the parmo,

1578
01:34:03,560 --> 01:34:07,079
I do want to focus on the lower elevations because

1579
01:34:07,079 --> 01:34:08,680
this is where a lot of the weird stuff was.

1580
01:34:10,079 --> 01:34:13,600
How have I not even mentioned the genus Socropia yet? Right?

1581
01:34:13,680 --> 01:34:17,119
These are most. I think all Cycropia are New world

1582
01:34:17,159 --> 01:34:21,880
they're all neotropical, but they're they're a pioneer. They're all

1583
01:34:21,920 --> 01:34:24,079
pioneer species for the most part. You know, they're the

1584
01:34:24,119 --> 01:34:28,239
first to re colonize disturbed land, the first to start

1585
01:34:28,239 --> 01:34:31,640
to reclaim the land after humans have fucked it or

1586
01:34:31,720 --> 01:34:36,960
ruined it. You know, they they get around easily, and

1587
01:34:37,239 --> 01:34:40,680
they have huge peltate leaves. There's quite a few species.

1588
01:34:40,680 --> 01:34:44,399
I remember seeing what species did I see in Brazil

1589
01:34:45,039 --> 01:34:50,800
with the silver undersides? The family is ertic Casey and uh,

1590
01:34:52,319 --> 01:34:55,399
let's see what species was it? I think they were

1591
01:34:55,399 --> 01:34:59,239
in their own family for a while, or they've been

1592
01:34:59,279 --> 01:35:03,359
in more ac as well. It was yeah, Socropia hollow Luca,

1593
01:35:04,319 --> 01:35:08,760
Socropia hollo luca. And uh, where do I see shriber

1594
01:35:09,119 --> 01:35:12,920
shri bariana? Where was that? Oh that was in the

1595
01:35:12,960 --> 01:35:16,800
d Aren't the Meinican Republic. But really cool leaves umbrella

1596
01:35:16,960 --> 01:35:20,920
like leaves, peltate leaves, a really cool pilotaxi. When the

1597
01:35:20,960 --> 01:35:23,520
leaves are emerging, they look all wrinkled and just have

1598
01:35:23,600 --> 01:35:29,439
this beautiful form as they emerge from the bud. And

1599
01:35:29,479 --> 01:35:33,159
then the fruits of course are you know, eaten by

1600
01:35:33,279 --> 01:35:37,680
a number of animals. These are immensely ecologically important trees,

1601
01:35:37,760 --> 01:35:42,239
especially since they're they're i mean, being a pioneer species.

1602
01:35:42,239 --> 01:35:44,640
They're one of the first plants to show up and

1603
01:35:44,680 --> 01:35:47,359
then get the land ready for the next succession of

1604
01:35:47,439 --> 01:35:50,560
species that are not pioneer species, for next you know,

1605
01:35:51,399 --> 01:35:55,520
the next line of plant species that wind up growing there,

1606
01:35:55,520 --> 01:35:57,680
that need a little bit more forest cover, that need

1607
01:35:58,279 --> 01:36:00,880
that living skin on the earth. They can't just you know,

1608
01:36:00,960 --> 01:36:04,479
before they can get established, you know, they can't do

1609
01:36:04,600 --> 01:36:09,800
the species that are secondary or third in succession to

1610
01:36:10,680 --> 01:36:13,880
you know, to recolonize an area after it's been cleared

1611
01:36:14,000 --> 01:36:18,840
or destroyed for agriculture or pasture or whatever. You know,

1612
01:36:19,039 --> 01:36:21,399
those pioneer species are important. That's basically what you're doing

1613
01:36:21,399 --> 01:36:24,640
when you kill your lawn, You're you're you're helping the

1614
01:36:24,760 --> 01:36:28,199
land reclaim. You're helping the life, the living skin reclaim

1615
01:36:28,880 --> 01:36:34,359
what was taken and destroyed. You know. So those pioneer

1616
01:36:34,399 --> 01:36:38,720
species are important, and then you plant those first so

1617
01:36:38,760 --> 01:36:44,119
that the secondary, secession secessional species can get established. The

1618
01:36:44,159 --> 01:36:47,439
stuff that might need a little bit of shade or

1619
01:36:47,680 --> 01:36:50,560
might not be able to thrive, you know, on barren soil.

1620
01:36:50,600 --> 01:36:53,159
That's getting beaten to death by sun might need a

1621
01:36:53,159 --> 01:36:56,560
little bit of cover. Maybe can't compete with weedy stuff

1622
01:36:56,560 --> 01:37:00,920
too well. You plant, you know, it's a process, and

1623
01:37:00,960 --> 01:37:04,000
then after a decade or so, you've got the hopefully,

1624
01:37:04,279 --> 01:37:08,800
you know, maybe you could create not a climax community,

1625
01:37:08,840 --> 01:37:10,600
but close enough to it. That's basically what I did

1626
01:37:10,600 --> 01:37:14,560
here in South Texas. That's what I do when I

1627
01:37:14,640 --> 01:37:17,159
kill lawns. I'm not like, I'm not so much. I'm

1628
01:37:17,159 --> 01:37:20,119
not a fucking designer. I'm trying to just recreate the

1629
01:37:20,159 --> 01:37:24,359
living skin. You plant the stuff that's gonna cover. Especially

1630
01:37:24,359 --> 01:37:26,000
where I am the sun is so hot. You plant

1631
01:37:26,039 --> 01:37:29,399
those pioneer species first with the full intent of maybe

1632
01:37:29,439 --> 01:37:33,920
later removing them or having them only be temporary, just

1633
01:37:34,600 --> 01:37:38,399
as a way to increase the immediate humidity, which they

1634
01:37:38,439 --> 01:37:42,520
do to act as a living shade cover, et cetera.

1635
01:37:42,640 --> 01:37:44,840
Because there's a feedback loop at some point. Anytime you

1636
01:37:44,920 --> 01:37:48,800
kill a lawn, you know, the plants start thriving. When

1637
01:37:48,800 --> 01:37:52,199
it reaches a certain density, stuff starts growing a hell

1638
01:37:52,239 --> 01:37:56,920
of a lot faster because the immediate humidity's been upped.

1639
01:37:57,039 --> 01:38:01,560
The plants are creating humidity for themselves. You know, holding

1640
01:38:01,680 --> 01:38:05,119
helping hold humidity in and that layer of air beneath

1641
01:38:05,119 --> 01:38:07,279
the little canopy they've created, even if it's just a

1642
01:38:07,279 --> 01:38:09,479
shrub layer or a you know, you've got like a

1643
01:38:09,520 --> 01:38:13,560
scrubby setting, if it's only four feet tall, they're preventing

1644
01:38:13,600 --> 01:38:16,600
the sun from hitting the ground, baking the ground, you know,

1645
01:38:17,479 --> 01:38:20,239
causing the ground to lose less moisture than it otherwise

1646
01:38:20,279 --> 01:38:22,600
would be. You know, they're acting like a living mulch

1647
01:38:22,640 --> 01:38:25,880
in a way, well, performing the same the same service

1648
01:38:25,920 --> 01:38:30,159
that mulch does, you know, just more cover and then

1649
01:38:30,199 --> 01:38:32,560
you just you know, go in there, let it get

1650
01:38:32,560 --> 01:38:34,560
out of control, and then just go in there and

1651
01:38:34,600 --> 01:38:36,640
just give it a haircut so you can walk through it,

1652
01:38:36,760 --> 01:38:41,000
keep it trimmed, keep the city off your back. Whatever. Anyway,

1653
01:38:41,039 --> 01:38:47,800
I digress. Socropio is everywhere beautiful plant, immensely important and

1654
01:38:47,960 --> 01:38:51,800
especially important ecologically, you know, for the services in food

1655
01:38:51,800 --> 01:38:57,880
it provides to the things that eat the fruit as

1656
01:38:57,880 --> 01:39:01,000
well as the things that palm it. You know, cecropia

1657
01:39:01,119 --> 01:39:06,199
are wind pollinated, but you know some insects can assist.

1658
01:39:06,239 --> 01:39:09,399
There is I'm sure even with a lot of wind

1659
01:39:09,399 --> 01:39:11,600
pollinated plants, I'm sure there's still insects going in there

1660
01:39:12,079 --> 01:39:15,800
and eating pollen. But but yeah, the main the main

1661
01:39:15,840 --> 01:39:20,760
benefit is in the fruits. But yeah, they're fucking everywhere.

1662
01:39:20,800 --> 01:39:24,359
They get huge and multiple species. I mean, it's they

1663
01:39:24,399 --> 01:39:26,600
could be hard to identify because often the leaves are

1664
01:39:26,640 --> 01:39:30,279
so high above the canopy unless you're in a disturbed

1665
01:39:30,319 --> 01:39:33,840
area where they just grew. But you know, you see

1666
01:39:33,840 --> 01:39:35,800
a lot of them in the forest too. Especially they're

1667
01:39:35,840 --> 01:39:38,479
especially easy to make out, like when you're on the

1668
01:39:38,520 --> 01:39:41,199
other side of a river on a narrow, sketchy road

1669
01:39:42,399 --> 01:39:44,840
in a canyon and you can see just these giant

1670
01:39:44,840 --> 01:39:48,680
peltate leaves, especially if some of the more silvery species,

1671
01:39:49,199 --> 01:39:53,560
you know, like Howlo Luca for instance, I mean, they

1672
01:39:53,600 --> 01:39:57,239
stand out, like the leaves look so unique and different

1673
01:39:57,279 --> 01:40:01,039
from anything else. Another common plant that that I encountered

1674
01:40:01,039 --> 01:40:04,720
there was triplerois comingiana, which is in the family Polygones.

1675
01:40:04,840 --> 01:40:07,880
It's in the buckwheed family. But it's like an eighty

1676
01:40:07,880 --> 01:40:10,600
foot tall tree, if not taller, and you could see

1677
01:40:10,640 --> 01:40:13,279
them from far away because they've got these the flowers

1678
01:40:13,279 --> 01:40:15,920
have these bright red bracts. No idea what pollinates. It's

1679
01:40:15,920 --> 01:40:19,159
probably a hummingbird or something like you know what I

1680
01:40:19,159 --> 01:40:23,760
should look that up while I'm here. Oh wow, wind. Okay,

1681
01:40:23,800 --> 01:40:28,000
I guess that makes sense. And so it's wind just

1682
01:40:28,079 --> 01:40:32,520
like cecropia, it's dioecious. So the individual plants, either male

1683
01:40:32,600 --> 01:40:37,039
or female, just like cecropia. And those red bracs, of course,

1684
01:40:37,079 --> 01:40:40,680
are only on those red bracts are they're like wings

1685
01:40:40,680 --> 01:40:44,960
for dispersal, They're only on the females. That red color.

1686
01:40:45,000 --> 01:40:49,680
I'm curious about that. I wonder why why so bright red?

1687
01:40:49,720 --> 01:40:53,239
I suppose it's Oh, you know what, this actually makes

1688
01:40:53,279 --> 01:40:55,760
sense because there was an article that just came out

1689
01:40:56,079 --> 01:41:00,119
recently about the red color on stigmas or on other

1690
01:41:00,479 --> 01:41:03,720
tissues of wind pollinated plants. Why the red color if

1691
01:41:03,720 --> 01:41:06,600
it's wind pollinated, the flowers don't need to be showy,

1692
01:41:06,640 --> 01:41:09,680
there's no why would they be creating this this pigment.

1693
01:41:10,479 --> 01:41:13,560
Turns out that, of course that red color is created

1694
01:41:13,600 --> 01:41:20,000
by anthocyanins. In the case of polygonace, this would be

1695
01:41:20,279 --> 01:41:23,760
you know, since there are carriophilales, this would be it this,

1696
01:41:24,159 --> 01:41:27,079
it would be beta aine pigments. But still beta aine

1697
01:41:27,079 --> 01:41:32,279
pigments are of course analogous to to anthoscionance. Just for

1698
01:41:32,439 --> 01:41:35,359
the order Carriophilales, the cactus and beat order. Anyway, it's

1699
01:41:35,399 --> 01:41:38,079
it's it's protective, it's it's basically like a like a

1700
01:41:38,119 --> 01:41:41,079
plant sunscreen. There was this article that came out I

1701
01:41:41,119 --> 01:41:43,880
think it was from Washington University where the research was done,

1702
01:41:43,880 --> 01:41:48,000
but it was about windo. I forget what what plant

1703
01:41:48,079 --> 01:41:49,760
genus they were looking at, but it was a wind

1704
01:41:49,760 --> 01:41:54,319
pollinated plant. And this researcher was curious because the stigmas

1705
01:41:54,319 --> 01:41:55,880
were red. What's the point of that? And I'll see

1706
01:41:55,880 --> 01:41:59,560
that in a lot of carric species sometimes or even grasses,

1707
01:41:59,600 --> 01:42:03,000
the stigma will be red. Well, it's that tissue on

1708
01:42:03,079 --> 01:42:06,359
the stigma is extra thin. We meaning it's also you know,

1709
01:42:07,680 --> 01:42:11,039
much more susceptible too. And it's thin because it has

1710
01:42:11,079 --> 01:42:13,479
to be so pollen grains can land in Germany out

1711
01:42:13,520 --> 01:42:15,279
germanate on it and when it since it's so thin,

1712
01:42:15,319 --> 01:42:18,680
it's also that makes it more susceptible to UV damage

1713
01:42:18,760 --> 01:42:21,960
or cold damage, et cetera. Which, of course, these red pigments,

1714
01:42:21,960 --> 01:42:28,159
whether it's anthocyanins or betolanes, whatever, stress pigment provides some

1715
01:42:28,199 --> 01:42:32,439
protection against. So that that makes sense, I guess, because

1716
01:42:32,439 --> 01:42:38,640
there's there's no attractive benefit in the fruits of a

1717
01:42:38,760 --> 01:42:42,680
well maybe I guess for dispersal. But these wings on

1718
01:42:42,720 --> 01:42:47,800
this triplearis, this tree, the polygones look they certainly look

1719
01:42:47,880 --> 01:42:51,399
like maple samaras. They've got that like helic helicopter thing

1720
01:42:51,479 --> 01:42:57,439
going on. Surely wind dispersed anyway, I I guess I

1721
01:42:57,479 --> 01:43:00,399
should look home on. Let me look into this too. Yeah,

1722
01:43:00,439 --> 01:43:03,640
it is, it is pollen. It's it's or wind dispersed,

1723
01:43:03,880 --> 01:43:08,600
wind pollinated, wind dispersed. Another study said insect pollinated. But

1724
01:43:08,640 --> 01:43:14,079
that's not fucking right, there's no I no. I didn't

1725
01:43:14,119 --> 01:43:16,159
see any males though, but again the males wouldn't be

1726
01:43:16,159 --> 01:43:17,760
showy because they don't know those red bracks, so they

1727
01:43:17,760 --> 01:43:20,880
wouldn't be as not showy, but as conspicuous the either way.

1728
01:43:20,920 --> 01:43:25,760
Triplais kaminguiana is another pioneer species. Like Ciba, it very common,

1729
01:43:25,800 --> 01:43:31,920
it's fast growing again families polygonac, the buckweed family, and

1730
01:43:32,000 --> 01:43:37,760
it's got mutualisms with ants, which with the which Cycropia

1731
01:43:38,840 --> 01:43:45,960
also does. Like Cycropia, it's wind pollinated and uh and

1732
01:43:46,119 --> 01:43:48,920
got a mutualism with ant with ant species. This was yeah,

1733
01:43:48,920 --> 01:43:53,359
I mean, this was a really conspicuous tree that I

1734
01:43:53,439 --> 01:43:58,199
just was completely unfamiliar with until Now another another plant

1735
01:43:58,239 --> 01:44:02,520
that fucking blew my mind down there with Guadua and Gustafolio,

1736
01:44:02,600 --> 01:44:07,239
which is a bamboo, some of the shoots of which

1737
01:44:08,399 --> 01:44:10,479
can reach ninety feet tall. I mean, this is a

1738
01:44:10,479 --> 01:44:14,399
monstrous bamboo species. It's a native New World bamboo, a

1739
01:44:14,479 --> 01:44:17,880
native neotropical bamboo that forms these massive colonies and the

1740
01:44:17,920 --> 01:44:23,279
forest there, and I'm curious how to get established and

1741
01:44:23,279 --> 01:44:26,319
how big the seeds are. But you'll see new shoots

1742
01:44:26,800 --> 01:44:30,800
that are six feet tall and just look like these

1743
01:44:30,880 --> 01:44:34,920
these sharp asparagus buds six foot tall asparagus buds sticking

1744
01:44:35,000 --> 01:44:38,439
out of the forest floor there. And then you know,

1745
01:44:38,560 --> 01:44:43,199
forming these massive colonies. I mean that the diameter of

1746
01:44:43,239 --> 01:44:46,479
these things is like ten inches in some kind. I mean,

1747
01:44:46,520 --> 01:44:49,279
they're fucking massive. And then they form these lateral branches

1748
01:44:49,279 --> 01:44:52,720
that are covered in spikes that nobody likes. They make

1749
01:44:52,760 --> 01:44:55,039
it very unpleasant to touch these things, you know, like

1750
01:44:55,039 --> 01:44:58,720
an inch long spike. Maybe they can be bigger. The

1751
01:44:58,760 --> 01:45:03,079
ones I saw were an inch. And then the deligules

1752
01:45:03,880 --> 01:45:07,680
of these bamboos, well, I guess it would be the lamina,

1753
01:45:07,920 --> 01:45:12,079
like the little leafy part, but it's like a bract

1754
01:45:13,159 --> 01:45:18,079
that in many cases of the guad the guadua. Probably

1755
01:45:18,119 --> 01:45:21,279
pronounced it wrong, guad dua it was. You know, it's

1756
01:45:21,279 --> 01:45:25,399
like a foot to eighteen inches tall, the fucking little

1757
01:45:25,439 --> 01:45:28,640
protective bract is, and it's covered in these like rusty

1758
01:45:28,720 --> 01:45:33,279
maroon hairs, these little that feel like a shark tongue.

1759
01:45:33,439 --> 01:45:36,760
Just fucking crazy. Such a cool that's such a plant.

1760
01:45:36,800 --> 01:45:39,039
I would have loved. I would have loved to spend

1761
01:45:39,640 --> 01:45:42,119
more time with it, observing it. You know, I'm curious

1762
01:45:42,159 --> 01:45:44,359
what the flowers look like. How often it flowers, probably

1763
01:45:44,399 --> 01:45:48,880
not very often. What are the inflorescences look like? A

1764
01:45:49,000 --> 01:45:52,520
wild species? The ant? I mean, this is a nothing

1765
01:45:52,560 --> 01:45:54,359
I need to look into, Like I've got notes of

1766
01:45:54,399 --> 01:45:56,119
all this shit I need to look into and research.

1767
01:45:56,479 --> 01:46:01,680
But like the the the abundance of ant symbiosis down there,

1768
01:46:01,880 --> 01:46:06,920
like tripleeris uses ants as defenders. It's got this mutualism

1769
01:46:06,960 --> 01:46:11,439
with the ants. These these scale insects are they eat

1770
01:46:11,600 --> 01:46:15,680
the tripleris, But apparently there's a payoff because the ants

1771
01:46:15,720 --> 01:46:20,520
then farm the scale insects and also provide protection to

1772
01:46:20,640 --> 01:46:24,560
the tree, like ant bouncers, you know, from things that

1773
01:46:24,680 --> 01:46:30,279
might eat it. Socropia of course has ant bouncers. In it.

1774
01:46:30,319 --> 01:46:32,279
There's someone sent me a paper of these ants that

1775
01:46:32,359 --> 01:46:35,800
hang out on socropia leaves, kind of looking like they're

1776
01:46:35,880 --> 01:46:38,079
questing like ticks to you know, like hanging on to

1777
01:46:38,199 --> 01:46:42,560
it with their legs and then another set of legs

1778
01:46:42,560 --> 01:46:45,600
and a pair of legs reaching out and they'll catch

1779
01:46:46,920 --> 01:46:50,319
things like moths and shit, just and you know, like

1780
01:46:50,760 --> 01:46:55,119
essentially trapping other insects and then eating it. It's fucking

1781
01:46:55,399 --> 01:46:58,119
it's crazy down there. There's so much to study ecologically,

1782
01:46:58,880 --> 01:47:04,119
but the ant relations were especially cool. It was a

1783
01:47:04,159 --> 01:47:07,760
really just mysterious thing to see. I mean, you go

1784
01:47:07,840 --> 01:47:09,680
there and if you're paying attention, you just end up

1785
01:47:09,720 --> 01:47:14,520
walking away with so many questions. So ant the ant

1786
01:47:14,720 --> 01:47:18,319
symbiosis was abundant there. I have a new appreciation for

1787
01:47:18,399 --> 01:47:23,000
ants after spending ten days in the Upper Amazon, I

1788
01:47:23,039 --> 01:47:25,520
will tell you that. And again I also saw that

1789
01:47:26,319 --> 01:47:30,079
native Ada species. What's the leaf cutter? I mean, I

1790
01:47:30,119 --> 01:47:34,079
gotta consult that naturalist again. What is the species of Ada?

1791
01:47:34,359 --> 01:47:38,359
The leaf cutter? Genus any Amazon? Right? Not like the

1792
01:47:38,399 --> 01:47:40,039
ones that we get in Texas. You know, the little

1793
01:47:40,079 --> 01:47:43,880
bastards I let hang out my front yard. I appreciate them.

1794
01:47:43,880 --> 01:47:46,079
I was happy to see them. It's cold as hell

1795
01:47:46,159 --> 01:47:49,880
right now. It's thirty four degrees on a Texas Mexican

1796
01:47:49,880 --> 01:47:53,560
border right now. But just yesterday they were out and

1797
01:47:53,600 --> 01:47:55,800
they were mad at me too because accidentally stepped on them.

1798
01:47:55,840 --> 01:47:58,840
They'll let you know, they'll fucking bite you. And then

1799
01:47:58,920 --> 01:48:02,159
Ada Cephalodes that's the one in the Amazon. That's the

1800
01:48:02,199 --> 01:48:06,439
leaf cutters in the Amazon, at acephalodes, and boy, they

1801
01:48:06,439 --> 01:48:08,039
were you know, they were busy. They were getting to

1802
01:48:08,079 --> 01:48:12,760
work feeding their little fungus underground. Which was exciting too

1803
01:48:12,800 --> 01:48:15,800
because unrelated to this was with termites. But there were

1804
01:48:15,800 --> 01:48:18,600
these termite mounds we would see at the lower elevations

1805
01:48:18,640 --> 01:48:21,079
at like three thousand and thirty one hundred feet what

1806
01:48:21,199 --> 01:48:23,720
is that meters nine hundred meters and we would see him.

1807
01:48:23,800 --> 01:48:25,560
They'd be at the base of a tree. These are

1808
01:48:25,560 --> 01:48:27,359
not the termites that are gonna do well. Maybe they

1809
01:48:27,399 --> 01:48:29,560
would destroy your house, I don't know. I think they're

1810
01:48:29,600 --> 01:48:34,079
mostly just recycling nutrients. They're performing a very essential ecological function,

1811
01:48:34,840 --> 01:48:38,880
you know, akin to fire in terms of recycling dead

1812
01:48:38,920 --> 01:48:42,560
plant matter and nutrients. They're they're raking and cleaning the forest.

1813
01:48:43,159 --> 01:48:46,000
Circa what fucking year was it that moron said at

1814
01:48:46,039 --> 01:48:48,840
twenty seventeen. Why did he say raking and cleaning the forest?

1815
01:48:48,880 --> 01:48:51,279
There was twenty seventeen. That's what the termites are doing.

1816
01:48:51,279 --> 01:48:54,920
They're raking and cleaning the Amazon. But they build these

1817
01:48:54,920 --> 01:48:57,680
little wood, these little nests, these little mounds like the

1818
01:48:57,720 --> 01:49:00,439
size of a yoga ball, like the sigh of an

1819
01:49:00,439 --> 01:49:03,680
erotic yoga ball. You know, I knew this guy. I'm

1820
01:49:03,720 --> 01:49:05,600
really all over the place today with the ad D.

1821
01:49:05,880 --> 01:49:09,159
I knew this guy who had a fucking what are

1822
01:49:09,319 --> 01:49:14,520
the super neurotic dogs, the border collie, And he got

1823
01:49:14,560 --> 01:49:16,520
at a yoga ball that he would take it to

1824
01:49:16,520 --> 01:49:18,840
the park and let it heard the thing, because it

1825
01:49:18,880 --> 01:49:20,800
wasn't enough just to taste the fuck just to take

1826
01:49:20,800 --> 01:49:23,039
a fucking tennis ball. He take the yoga ball out

1827
01:49:23,039 --> 01:49:25,239
there and throw it his thing with chase the yoga ball.

1828
01:49:26,840 --> 01:49:29,239
He lived in Sacramento. There was a long time. It

1829
01:49:29,279 --> 01:49:31,359
was like ten years ago. Maybe I don't know anyway anyway, Okay,

1830
01:49:31,399 --> 01:49:35,119
but so back as we saw this termite mound and

1831
01:49:35,159 --> 01:49:37,960
it had a mushroom growing out of it, and that

1832
01:49:38,119 --> 01:49:41,560
was because and the mushroom species was luco A garrighis.

1833
01:49:41,760 --> 01:49:45,840
Let me see what what was this? Uh? I think,

1834
01:49:46,039 --> 01:49:48,159
let me see what this was, basidio my coda, because

1835
01:49:48,159 --> 01:49:49,920
I don't know my mushroom family is that. Well, what

1836
01:49:49,960 --> 01:49:52,399
the fuck was this? I got a photo of it. Yeah, oh,

1837
01:49:52,399 --> 01:49:55,760
it was a garricus. It was just an Agaricus species

1838
01:49:57,840 --> 01:50:04,079
probably undescribed, had a really ahead of really distinct wardy look,

1839
01:50:04,479 --> 01:50:06,640
barnacle look kind of on the top of its cap.

1840
01:50:06,640 --> 01:50:08,359
But it was fruiting out of a termite mound. And

1841
01:50:08,399 --> 01:50:10,960
that's because it was the fungus. It was the mushroom

1842
01:50:11,000 --> 01:50:15,319
to the fungus that the termites were farming, and I

1843
01:50:15,359 --> 01:50:18,279
guess they would eat this fungus this hole. And you

1844
01:50:18,279 --> 01:50:21,399
could see my selam all over this giant yoga ball

1845
01:50:21,479 --> 01:50:24,479
sized termite nest. Fucking fascinating, but it was cool to

1846
01:50:24,479 --> 01:50:27,680
see the fungus fruiting. And these these leaf cutter ants,

1847
01:50:27,680 --> 01:50:29,880
whether it's the ones the added Texana that are in

1848
01:50:29,920 --> 01:50:34,359
my front yard here in South Texas or or the

1849
01:50:34,920 --> 01:50:38,520
ad of Cephalodes down are on the Amazon, have a

1850
01:50:38,560 --> 01:50:41,359
fungus too. That's what they're bringing the leaves for to

1851
01:50:41,399 --> 01:50:47,000
feed the fungus, and it would fruit too, presumably when

1852
01:50:47,239 --> 01:50:50,560
the when the nest dies. If the nest does die here,

1853
01:50:50,560 --> 01:50:52,880
I don't know one of the leaf cutter fungus. How

1854
01:50:52,880 --> 01:50:55,239
do you get them to fruit? I think it's a

1855
01:50:55,560 --> 01:50:57,840
what is the what is the fungus? Let me let

1856
01:50:57,840 --> 01:51:01,920
me ask the oracle here? What is the fungus that

1857
01:51:02,119 --> 01:51:12,399
leaf cutter ants farm? Luko Agaricus gongola gongolo for us,

1858
01:51:13,479 --> 01:51:19,600
Luco gericas, gongal gonglaers gong You ever have a bad

1859
01:51:19,720 --> 01:51:23,239
case of gongalapherus? Uh? You know it's so hard to

1860
01:51:23,239 --> 01:51:25,479
get antibiotics these days. That's what you gotta have your

1861
01:51:25,479 --> 01:51:28,560
friend in Mexico purchase them for you, because you can't

1862
01:51:28,600 --> 01:51:30,600
really just cross the border and go to the pharmacy

1863
01:51:31,119 --> 01:51:35,039
and get the antibiotics because those are probably fake. They're

1864
01:51:35,079 --> 01:51:38,279
probably knockoffs, you know, knowing if you know the border

1865
01:51:38,319 --> 01:51:40,720
towns like I do, you know they're sleazy, slimy and

1866
01:51:41,319 --> 01:51:46,000
full of uh miscreant entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes.

1867
01:51:46,880 --> 01:51:49,359
And a lot of the drugs you're probably getting are

1868
01:51:49,359 --> 01:51:53,680
probably fake too, So be careful with those inhalers, and

1869
01:51:53,880 --> 01:51:56,119
certainly be careful with an if you're going there for

1870
01:51:56,159 --> 01:51:59,920
ozempic or something, which, uh, what is the connection with

1871
01:52:00,000 --> 01:52:03,359
between no zembic and helo monsters. Isn't there one there?

1872
01:52:03,960 --> 01:52:06,039
There certainly is. I'm not gonna we're not gonna talk

1873
01:52:06,039 --> 01:52:08,119
about that now though, because it's not related to the Amazon,

1874
01:52:08,159 --> 01:52:11,119
but just should you should just know, you know, the

1875
01:52:11,159 --> 01:52:15,239
helo monsters are helping the American fatties live their cardependent

1876
01:52:15,319 --> 01:52:19,159
lifestyles by reducing the appetite. So thank a helo monster

1877
01:52:19,279 --> 01:52:25,600
near you. Right, America. What a wonderful land. It's made

1878
01:52:25,640 --> 01:52:31,680
walking obsolete. Okay, So anyway, but these aunt symbiosis are

1879
01:52:32,119 --> 01:52:36,359
there were ants everywhere and let me see. Did I

1880
01:52:36,359 --> 01:52:38,079
get bit by any of them? I think so, I

1881
01:52:38,079 --> 01:52:43,680
can't remember. I don't know, but but yeah, I mean

1882
01:52:43,760 --> 01:52:45,720
the ants are a bun in the Amazon, and there's

1883
01:52:45,760 --> 01:52:49,399
tons of mermeco fights. There's tons of ant symbiosis. And

1884
01:52:49,439 --> 01:52:52,520
one of my favorites was from the family Melostomatasi. Well,

1885
01:52:52,560 --> 01:52:55,359
first off, like triplayis we talk about that Triplaris That

1886
01:52:55,399 --> 01:52:57,840
Trio was just telling me about polygon Ac. The buckwheed

1887
01:52:57,880 --> 01:53:02,600
family gets up to eighty feet tall when pollinated, probably

1888
01:53:02,600 --> 01:53:05,199
insect pollinated to I believe bees have been observed going

1889
01:53:05,199 --> 01:53:07,359
in the flowers. The only way to really tell is

1890
01:53:07,399 --> 01:53:10,880
to get up there and go observe the flowers firsthand,

1891
01:53:10,920 --> 01:53:13,840
but you would have trouble getting up there climbing the

1892
01:53:13,880 --> 01:53:17,600
tree because the stems are hollow and they're inhabited by ants.

1893
01:53:17,960 --> 01:53:23,359
It's another more mecophyte obviously. But there was a tree.

1894
01:53:23,439 --> 01:53:26,840
It was I thought it was called Demia in obcepta,

1895
01:53:26,960 --> 01:53:29,079
not a tree. It was a small herb two or

1896
01:53:29,119 --> 01:53:34,039
three feet tall, and it was it's Melastoma tases. So

1897
01:53:34,039 --> 01:53:36,439
it's got those really cool flowers with the really fucking

1898
01:53:36,439 --> 01:53:43,439
weird anthers, those inflated porcidal anthers, and the distinct leaf pattern.

1899
01:53:43,439 --> 01:53:45,880
Remember all melastomes, they're like se and note this, they're

1900
01:53:45,920 --> 01:53:48,000
like the genus c and note this is completely unrelated,

1901
01:53:48,159 --> 01:53:49,960
but they're like it in the sense that the leaves

1902
01:53:50,399 --> 01:53:55,000
have that distinct venation to them. Most notably, I think

1903
01:53:55,039 --> 01:53:58,279
in most cases it's it's three main primary veins well

1904
01:53:58,319 --> 01:54:01,600
on one mid vein, and then two lateral veins, one

1905
01:54:01,600 --> 01:54:03,880
on each side of the mid vein. But it's I mean,

1906
01:54:03,920 --> 01:54:06,000
you can see it's one of the few plant families

1907
01:54:06,000 --> 01:54:07,560
where you could see leaf and be like, yeah, it's

1908
01:54:07,560 --> 01:54:09,600
a it's a melostom. Even if it's not in flower,

1909
01:54:12,119 --> 01:54:14,359
there's a few exceptions, of course, but for the most part.

1910
01:54:14,399 --> 01:54:17,359
But anyway, Clydemi and abcept. It was a plant I encountered.

1911
01:54:17,760 --> 01:54:20,079
It was everywhere, and only a few places that I

1912
01:54:20,079 --> 01:54:22,760
see at flowering with these pink flowers, with these really

1913
01:54:22,840 --> 01:54:26,000
cool flower morphology. Fun is fuck to draw like that

1914
01:54:26,119 --> 01:54:27,880
kind of you know, that kind of fun, like the

1915
01:54:27,920 --> 01:54:32,000
flowers that the anthers are inflated, their portcyl their hollow tubes.

1916
01:54:32,279 --> 01:54:34,520
It's got the five pedals, it's got a fuzzy klyx,

1917
01:54:34,920 --> 01:54:38,439
fuzzies hell, got the hairs all over it, on the stem,

1918
01:54:38,479 --> 01:54:40,199
on the leaves, on the ounder side of the leaves,

1919
01:54:40,199 --> 01:54:43,079
and the and the on the sepals and the klyx

1920
01:54:43,119 --> 01:54:46,840
of course, and uh, the veins are red, the leaf

1921
01:54:46,960 --> 01:54:51,039
is green. And then it's got these swollen petioles. Put

1922
01:54:51,119 --> 01:54:53,399
I did a video on us on the integram if

1923
01:54:53,399 --> 01:54:55,279
you want to go find it, if you give a shit,

1924
01:54:55,319 --> 01:55:00,119
If not, that's fine too. But those swollen petioles and

1925
01:55:00,439 --> 01:55:05,600
there they look like little knobs. They're very conspicuously swollen,

1926
01:55:05,800 --> 01:55:09,479
you know, and you cut them open and there's ants inside.

1927
01:55:09,520 --> 01:55:12,760
There's these little orange aants that don't bite, and they're

1928
01:55:12,960 --> 01:55:16,680
they're raising their young in there. They enter on the

1929
01:55:16,760 --> 01:55:19,600
underside of the leaf, at the distal end of the knob,

1930
01:55:20,119 --> 01:55:22,760
so kind of where this lead the swollen petiole actually

1931
01:55:22,840 --> 01:55:25,359
meets the leaf. They crawl in there, there's a little

1932
01:55:25,399 --> 01:55:28,920
hole and you can eat them. They taste like lemon.

1933
01:55:29,000 --> 01:55:30,840
I didn't eat them because I felt bad. I already

1934
01:55:30,880 --> 01:55:33,439
fucked up their day by cutting their home open to

1935
01:55:33,560 --> 01:55:36,680
film it and take some photographs. This turned out to

1936
01:55:36,680 --> 01:55:41,479
not be Clydemia and Abcepta. It was uh, Miconia, it

1937
01:55:41,520 --> 01:55:44,359
was I thought it was a Clydemia got changed to

1938
01:55:44,439 --> 01:55:48,840
Maconia and Abcepta. And then one of these aspy you know,

1939
01:55:48,880 --> 01:55:52,319
one of the aspy uh I naturalist people, you know,

1940
01:55:53,199 --> 01:55:55,960
God bless them, bless their hearts. The people that are

1941
01:55:55,960 --> 01:55:59,920
on I naturals all the time but rarely doing much fieldwork.

1942
01:56:00,319 --> 01:56:03,800
We need those people. I'm not knocking them. Someone in

1943
01:56:03,840 --> 01:56:10,199
Europe who was certainly aspy, very very aspy, just being

1944
01:56:10,239 --> 01:56:13,199
like so ablest right now. Uh you know, I'm on

1945
01:56:13,279 --> 01:56:15,199
a fucking spectrum to so take it easy with your

1946
01:56:15,279 --> 01:56:19,199
with your stupid buzzwords, right, I'm not not being ablest,

1947
01:56:19,239 --> 01:56:20,880
I'm just you know, whatever you got to be on

1948
01:56:20,920 --> 01:56:22,880
the spectrum a little bit to fucking be on. I

1949
01:56:23,000 --> 01:56:28,520
n astress all the time, getting people's identifications to this

1950
01:56:28,520 --> 01:56:30,880
this degree. I don't identify shit on aign astress. I

1951
01:56:30,880 --> 01:56:34,279
don't care. He was strictly for myself, Okay. I have

1952
01:56:34,319 --> 01:56:36,960
a love hate relationship with people like this. I love

1953
01:56:37,000 --> 01:56:39,359
the work they do. They can also be extremely fucking annoying.

1954
01:56:39,760 --> 01:56:42,239
But uh, and I don't know how to hell this

1955
01:56:42,319 --> 01:56:44,880
dude knew this because he was in Denmark. Again, bless

1956
01:56:44,920 --> 01:56:48,880
his heart or her, whoever it is. But he said,

1957
01:56:49,000 --> 01:56:55,079
certainly not mconya in obsepta, because genus mcconia. It's just

1958
01:56:55,199 --> 01:56:59,960
Jenus mconya because genus because mcconyan upsepta has strongly initial

1959
01:57:00,079 --> 01:57:05,560
filess leaf pairs and axillary inflorescences. I mean the inflorescence

1960
01:57:05,560 --> 01:57:07,800
has just come out of the stems, out of the

1961
01:57:07,840 --> 01:57:12,439
leaf axles. This one belongs to the old genus of tococa. Now,

1962
01:57:12,439 --> 01:57:15,000
how to fuck would this guy notice if he's not

1963
01:57:15,039 --> 01:57:18,760
an expert in melastomes, I don't think power to him.

1964
01:57:18,760 --> 01:57:20,600
He's just a little ass by, which is fine. That's

1965
01:57:20,640 --> 01:57:24,600
fine too, I could certainly relate. And plus people just

1966
01:57:24,640 --> 01:57:27,119
go nuts about melastomes. Watch this is like, I don't

1967
01:57:27,159 --> 01:57:28,760
know who this is too, but if this is like

1968
01:57:28,800 --> 01:57:33,520
a famous melastome researcher, and I'm just like, I'm not slandering.

1969
01:57:33,600 --> 01:57:38,159
I'm just teasing. Loosen up, okay, unpucker, all right, unclench.

1970
01:57:40,720 --> 01:57:43,000
But it would probably key to Mconia to coca. But

1971
01:57:43,079 --> 01:57:46,800
that species has a very wide circumscription, meaning it's it's

1972
01:57:46,840 --> 01:57:49,279
probably very broad and needs to be split up. It

1973
01:57:49,359 --> 01:57:54,520
encompasses many different ecotypes and species probably species in there

1974
01:57:54,640 --> 01:57:58,079
in Meconia tocca. So you just put it in Maconia.

1975
01:57:58,880 --> 01:58:01,319
So I need someone who who's a mellostone expert to

1976
01:58:01,359 --> 01:58:05,640
go in there and figure out a Nissophilus leaf pairs.

1977
01:58:05,640 --> 01:58:08,600
A niophiley is one of a leaf as when a

1978
01:58:08,640 --> 01:58:12,600
plant has leaves of different sizes of not a uniform size,

1979
01:58:12,920 --> 01:58:15,239
and a lot of tropical plant families do. This especially

1980
01:58:15,279 --> 01:58:18,640
gives ni a ace the African violet family. What a

1981
01:58:19,039 --> 01:58:23,479
silly common name, huh gives nari As is those hairy bastards.

1982
01:58:23,560 --> 01:58:27,239
You know, flowers are hairy. John Clark Studies and we

1983
01:58:27,319 --> 01:58:29,239
had John Clark here in a podcast a year or

1984
01:58:29,239 --> 01:58:33,319
two ago. Wonderful conversation I wish I remembered more of

1985
01:58:33,319 --> 01:58:38,560
it in my extremely overpacked and fucking neurotic brain, but

1986
01:58:38,600 --> 01:58:42,239
I don't. But that podcast is out there. Gais nari As.

1987
01:58:42,399 --> 01:58:44,000
It's one of those plant families where you'll you know,

1988
01:58:44,000 --> 01:58:47,079
it's in lamey a least, so it's got biletteral symmetrical flowers,

1989
01:58:47,640 --> 01:58:52,880
it's got opposite leaves, it's got the very hairy you know,

1990
01:58:52,880 --> 01:58:56,680
the abundant in the tropics, both New World and Old

1991
01:58:56,680 --> 01:59:02,159
World tropics, and very hairy. Everything's harry and a lot

1992
01:59:02,199 --> 01:59:05,000
of hummer pollination, and it's very distinct. There was a

1993
01:59:05,000 --> 01:59:07,319
ton of Gazneria diversity. I could do a whole other

1994
01:59:07,359 --> 01:59:12,600
podcast and the gasnieri Ac diversity in the Upper Amazon,

1995
01:59:14,079 --> 01:59:16,720
but obviously won't go into it too much. But yeah, anyway,

1996
01:59:16,760 --> 01:59:21,359
a Nissophilus and nissophile isophiley is when all leaves are uniform,

1997
01:59:21,399 --> 01:59:23,720
which is what most people are used to, uniform size,

1998
01:59:24,119 --> 01:59:27,399
uniform shape, and nisophiley is when they're not uniform. And

1999
01:59:27,439 --> 01:59:33,319
it's a very common thing, especially in Melostoma tase this family,

2000
01:59:33,359 --> 01:59:36,800
and in Gasneriac and a few others in the tropics.

2001
01:59:36,800 --> 01:59:41,600
It's a way to basically maximize light exposure or light

2002
01:59:41,720 --> 01:59:46,760
catchment in the understory of what are generally dark forests.

2003
01:59:47,760 --> 01:59:51,960
So anyway, speaking of the leaf cutters, and it's so

2004
01:59:52,439 --> 01:59:55,199
fucking cold right now in South Texas. It's thirty four

2005
01:59:55,960 --> 01:59:58,760
and it's gonna be here for the next three days

2006
01:59:58,800 --> 02:00:01,640
at these lower and then hopefully that's it and then

2007
02:00:01,680 --> 02:00:04,399
it'll be It was just like we were setting up

2008
02:00:04,399 --> 02:00:08,000
fencing at Thorn Scrub two days ago, no, yesterday too,

2009
02:00:08,119 --> 02:00:10,640
Jesus Christ. We got so much stuff going on. I'm

2010
02:00:10,720 --> 02:00:13,199
so busy. It's it's stressing me out. It's kind of

2011
02:00:13,199 --> 02:00:18,039
making me miserable. Videos, to edit, presentations, to give it,

2012
02:00:18,039 --> 02:00:21,239
a book to finish. I'm just fucking done. I'm done.

2013
02:00:21,439 --> 02:00:23,960
But we were at Thorn Scrub yesterday or two days ago,

2014
02:00:23,960 --> 02:00:26,760
and it was like eighty five and now it's getting

2015
02:00:26,760 --> 02:00:28,560
down to thirty fourth. The you know, the get dream

2016
02:00:28,600 --> 02:00:31,600
is all fucked up. It's wavering. So being that we're

2017
02:00:31,640 --> 02:00:36,640
in a trough, some the longitude just to the west

2018
02:00:36,680 --> 02:00:39,840
of us at higher latitudes is in a crest, and

2019
02:00:39,880 --> 02:00:44,720
so it's abnormally warm up there and abnormally cold down here.

2020
02:00:44,760 --> 02:00:49,479
But anyway, I guess the Texas leaf cutters are limited

2021
02:00:50,479 --> 02:00:53,640
from spreading further not by their tolerance to the cold,

2022
02:00:53,680 --> 02:00:56,880
but by their fungal food sources tolerance to the cold.

2023
02:00:56,920 --> 02:00:59,720
And I guess the genus of that fungus used to

2024
02:00:59,760 --> 02:01:05,119
be adam mice's uh ata, after the genus of ant,

2025
02:01:05,199 --> 02:01:07,239
but I guess now it's just it's all. And then

2026
02:01:07,279 --> 02:01:09,479
it was Luco coprinus for a while, and now it's

2027
02:01:10,760 --> 02:01:16,199
Luco Agericus gongailapherus, and it creates this was kind of interesting.

2028
02:01:16,239 --> 02:01:19,560
I didn't know this, but it produces uh, it's well.

2029
02:01:19,560 --> 02:01:23,079
First off, it's completely dependent on ants for survival, with

2030
02:01:23,600 --> 02:01:26,960
the workers feeding it cut plant material, and it produces

2031
02:01:27,079 --> 02:01:31,399
gonga lydia that's the name. Gonkilophorus and gonga lydia are

2032
02:01:31,479 --> 02:01:35,000
nutrient rich hifel swellings, so like these little knobs along

2033
02:01:35,119 --> 02:01:39,439
the heifelstrands upon which the ants feed. And so this

2034
02:01:39,560 --> 02:01:44,239
seems to be a specific adaptation for its co evolutionary partner,

2035
02:01:45,520 --> 02:01:52,560
which is amazing. It's so fucking amazing. But anyway, the

2036
02:01:53,119 --> 02:01:56,840
I guess the fungus uh, you know, at higher latitudes,

2037
02:01:56,920 --> 02:02:00,000
is much more cold tolerant than ecotypes of the funk

2038
02:02:00,399 --> 02:02:05,159
or populations of the fungus or phenotypes of the fungus

2039
02:02:05,199 --> 02:02:09,239
at the lower latitudes, and so the ants. But still

2040
02:02:09,239 --> 02:02:11,439
even during cold because you get Texas leaf cutters in

2041
02:02:11,479 --> 02:02:15,439
Louisiana too, but the ants during cold periods will actually

2042
02:02:15,560 --> 02:02:18,279
move these fucking I mean, and I know this because

2043
02:02:18,439 --> 02:02:21,720
you know my yard, my house is tiny, My yard

2044
02:02:21,760 --> 02:02:24,920
is like a quarter acre almost, but they'll be there's

2045
02:02:24,960 --> 02:02:27,439
ant holes all over it. I get harvest the ants,

2046
02:02:28,680 --> 02:02:31,800
which I appreciate to and then the leaf cutters as well,

2047
02:02:31,920 --> 02:02:34,239
and they don't really do get out too much. But

2048
02:02:35,439 --> 02:02:37,520
I think that's why I probably get so many because

2049
02:02:37,560 --> 02:02:39,560
I've got those ants. That's why I get like four

2050
02:02:39,600 --> 02:02:44,039
different species of lizards, including the Texas spiny lizard, which

2051
02:02:44,439 --> 02:02:46,680
a fucking one. I feel like one that was the

2052
02:02:46,760 --> 02:02:49,119
size of a hamburger ran by me yesterday, no three

2053
02:02:49,199 --> 02:02:56,880
days ago. But anyway, these caverns, these underground their underground layer,

2054
02:02:58,239 --> 02:03:01,600
I just want to say the word. Their underground layer

2055
02:03:01,640 --> 02:03:04,680
will be like one hundred you know, they'll be enormous

2056
02:03:05,479 --> 02:03:09,800
in some cases, you know, one hundred feet deep supposedly,

2057
02:03:10,359 --> 02:03:13,520
and so that seems a little excessive though, really, like

2058
02:03:13,600 --> 02:03:17,560
who did did some entomologists dig one hundred feet into

2059
02:03:17,600 --> 02:03:20,000
the ground. The point is they're fucking massive and they

2060
02:03:20,000 --> 02:03:22,960
can probably span for a few a few city blocks.

2061
02:03:23,560 --> 02:03:27,640
But the ants will you basically cultivate these gardens of

2062
02:03:27,720 --> 02:03:34,560
fungus and keep keep basically, you know, manicure these gardens,

2063
02:03:34,640 --> 02:03:37,279
make sure that humidity is right, and then also move

2064
02:03:37,319 --> 02:03:41,079
the fungus up and down. You know, obviously move it

2065
02:03:41,159 --> 02:03:43,720
deeper if temperature extremes are coming, like if it's getting

2066
02:03:43,720 --> 02:03:48,359
too hot or it's it's it's gonna freeze, et cetera.

2067
02:03:48,439 --> 02:03:50,800
Which is fascinating all this stuff. I used to never

2068
02:03:50,920 --> 02:03:53,079
give a shit about ants, but you start seeing how

2069
02:03:53,119 --> 02:03:55,800
everything's connected. It's like anything. I start seeing how everything's connected,

2070
02:03:55,840 --> 02:03:58,239
and you're like, oh shit, it's kind of cool. There's

2071
02:03:58,279 --> 02:04:03,640
a whole system here. There's a whole pyramid of interrelatedness

2072
02:04:03,720 --> 02:04:08,640
that's evolved over millions of years. So anyway, I appreciate

2073
02:04:08,720 --> 02:04:12,840
the Texas leaf cutter ants, and I mean, fuck, I

2074
02:04:12,840 --> 02:04:16,680
appreciate all of them now. But yeah, ants, ambrosia, beetles,

2075
02:04:16,720 --> 02:04:19,760
and termites are the only groups of insects to use

2076
02:04:19,800 --> 02:04:23,760
fungus based agriculture. To have this kind of co evolution

2077
02:04:24,000 --> 02:04:29,000
with a fungus but just fucking insane when you think

2078
02:04:29,039 --> 02:04:32,239
about it. That's basically what humans are doing with different

2079
02:04:32,279 --> 02:04:37,279
plant species, right, like weed especially. I imagine the amount of

2080
02:04:38,399 --> 02:04:41,800
weed lords. I mean, I don't get it. Don't get

2081
02:04:41,880 --> 02:04:44,199
I mean, I enjoy I've grown pop before I grew

2082
02:04:44,279 --> 02:04:46,560
up my backyard when I lived in Oakland, and I

2083
02:04:46,600 --> 02:04:50,159
would just give it away, generally to the dudes that

2084
02:04:50,239 --> 02:04:52,199
hung out on a corner. You know, these old guys.

2085
02:04:52,640 --> 02:04:54,840
They would hang out on a corner and they they'd

2086
02:04:54,840 --> 02:04:57,319
be drinking, and I realized, you know, you give them

2087
02:04:57,399 --> 02:04:59,439
some weed, maybe they'll lay off the booze a little bit.

2088
02:04:59,479 --> 02:05:03,439
I don't know, but uh but it's it smells good

2089
02:05:03,479 --> 02:05:04,920
and it was a fun plant to grow, and it's

2090
02:05:04,920 --> 02:05:08,560
easy too. But I guess you know, that's what humans

2091
02:05:08,560 --> 02:05:12,039
do with so many plant species. That's what humans do

2092
02:05:12,399 --> 02:05:16,159
in the Upper Amazon with ice cream bean, which again,

2093
02:05:16,199 --> 02:05:19,199
those pods, those three foot long bean pods were everywhere

2094
02:05:19,840 --> 02:05:23,880
fucking delicious, What a delicious plant. I would have loved

2095
02:05:23,920 --> 02:05:28,119
to spend so much more time in that fruit market

2096
02:05:28,239 --> 02:05:33,479
or in markets like that. God is it was so cool.

2097
02:05:33,720 --> 02:05:36,680
It's such a it's such a like unique just I

2098
02:05:36,680 --> 02:05:39,600
don't know, man, you know they're really it really sowed

2099
02:05:39,600 --> 02:05:41,920
the seeds of ethnobotany. I mean, plenty of things do.

2100
02:05:41,960 --> 02:05:43,479
I'm paying attention to that shit all the time, but

2101
02:05:43,600 --> 02:05:47,199
especially being there, you know where it's mostly native fruits

2102
02:05:47,680 --> 02:05:53,039
and native native plants being used, you know, for rope,

2103
02:05:53,239 --> 02:05:56,520
for bowls, for whatever. I wonder if I could grow

2104
02:05:56,600 --> 02:06:01,520
Christynthia the Calabash tree, big non eac down here in

2105
02:06:01,560 --> 02:06:06,000
South Texas. Anyway, It's been two hours and I could

2106
02:06:06,079 --> 02:06:08,279
keep going, but I'll say it for another episode. So

2107
02:06:09,279 --> 02:06:13,399
with that being said, i'lbe at the Wild Things Conference

2108
02:06:13,439 --> 02:06:18,359
in Chicago on the twenty eighth, twenty ninth, and thirtyth No,

2109
02:06:18,560 --> 02:06:21,359
there's no fucking twenty you know what I mean, February

2110
02:06:21,439 --> 02:06:27,079
twenty eighth and March first and second. I forgot, there's

2111
02:06:27,119 --> 02:06:30,000
no it's not a leap year, and February's only got

2112
02:06:30,039 --> 02:06:34,119
twenty eight days. But I'm going to Chicago for the

2113
02:06:34,159 --> 02:06:38,439
weekend in beautiful Roseman at the Rosemont. We're gonna bring

2114
02:06:38,479 --> 02:06:41,840
back the Rosemont Horizon. Did you ever go to see

2115
02:06:41,880 --> 02:06:45,760
the WWF SmackDown? What do they call it? This? What

2116
02:06:46,039 --> 02:06:48,520
is it? Those guys in a rubber underwear slapping each

2117
02:06:48,560 --> 02:06:50,560
other around, hitting each other with chairs and shit in

2118
02:06:50,560 --> 02:06:54,199
the That was That was a remember scene. I remember

2119
02:06:54,199 --> 02:06:55,840
when I was a kid. I always see the commercials

2120
02:06:55,880 --> 02:06:59,680
for the Rosemont Horizon. They'd be wwf in it everywhere.

2121
02:07:01,800 --> 02:07:04,079
I don't think the Rosemont Horizon exists anymore. What is it?

2122
02:07:04,119 --> 02:07:07,920
The All State Arena. Some fucking corporation owns it now,

2123
02:07:07,960 --> 02:07:15,439
those fucking crooks. God, ah, it's just the pollution. They

2124
02:07:15,439 --> 02:07:18,079
got to put their name on everything. The mental pollution.

2125
02:07:18,880 --> 02:07:22,039
It's like a bad fart in an elevator of life

2126
02:07:22,039 --> 02:07:25,640
that you can't escape. It's just the corporate branding. God,

2127
02:07:25,680 --> 02:07:32,319
it's awful. But I'll be there, uh speaking, and then

2128
02:07:32,359 --> 02:07:34,600
I'm gonna what else do I don't know. I like,

2129
02:07:34,760 --> 02:07:37,439
I said yes to all these things and then forget

2130
02:07:37,439 --> 02:07:39,359
what they are, and all I have to protect me

2131
02:07:39,399 --> 02:07:42,399
and remind me that they're occurring is the little Google

2132
02:07:42,560 --> 02:07:45,880
calendar app. So uh, I don't know. I need to stop.

2133
02:07:46,000 --> 02:07:48,279
I need to start saying no, but I probably won't

2134
02:07:48,319 --> 02:07:51,000
because I enjoy this stuff. I just you know, my

2135
02:07:51,119 --> 02:07:54,560
time is so fucking limited and my brain is going

2136
02:07:54,680 --> 02:07:59,199
nine different directions. So uh, anyway, I just want to

2137
02:07:59,199 --> 02:08:01,159
go out and look at it again. I had trips.

2138
02:08:01,159 --> 02:08:02,920
I was going to try to go to Mexico in

2139
02:08:02,960 --> 02:08:05,600
Mars too, but I probably can't. I've got a lot

2140
02:08:05,640 --> 02:08:10,159
of shit work to do and anyway, Yeah, but I'll

2141
02:08:10,199 --> 02:08:13,359
be doing another podcast episode soon about more interesting stuff.

2142
02:08:14,039 --> 02:08:15,840
I want to talk about the work we've been doing

2143
02:08:15,840 --> 02:08:18,359
at Thorn Scrub two setting up fencing, which has been

2144
02:08:18,359 --> 02:08:21,239
a pain in the ass, but I'm hopeful trying to

2145
02:08:21,279 --> 02:08:26,399
shoot the feral pigs there, and yeah, and just good

2146
02:08:26,399 --> 02:08:30,880
old habitat preservation. I'm really hoping that we get rained

2147
02:08:30,880 --> 02:08:33,880
soon so the biocrust out there can come back to life,

2148
02:08:34,159 --> 02:08:38,000
because what is life if it's not filled with little

2149
02:08:38,000 --> 02:08:40,560
bits of bio crust here and there, you know, those

2150
02:08:40,640 --> 02:08:44,039
little bits of the living, the literal living skin of

2151
02:08:44,079 --> 02:08:47,000
the earth that nobody pays attention to. Anyway, that's all

2152
02:08:47,000 --> 02:08:50,079
I got. Have a good rest of your day. Try

2153
02:08:50,119 --> 02:08:53,560
not to puke. Okay. It's so hard for me coming

2154
02:08:53,640 --> 02:08:57,960
back into the United States and looking at the billboards

2155
02:08:58,000 --> 02:09:00,800
with the shit eating grins on them everywhere, and people

2156
02:09:00,840 --> 02:09:02,880
trying to sell me shit I don't want or need,

2157
02:09:03,600 --> 02:09:08,560
and just this money worshiping culture that is so predominant,

2158
02:09:08,600 --> 02:09:12,920
not everywhere, but in many places, as if there's nothing

2159
02:09:12,920 --> 02:09:16,000
else to live for except just the accumulation of dumb shit,

2160
02:09:16,239 --> 02:09:19,680
of dumb bullshit, of shiny shit. No creativity, no art,

2161
02:09:19,720 --> 02:09:25,359
no imagination, no adventure, no fun, just fucking buying shit

2162
02:09:25,479 --> 02:09:27,920
and status. And it's so hard for me to be

2163
02:09:28,039 --> 02:09:30,720
around all that and a culture that just worships that

2164
02:09:30,880 --> 02:09:33,680
and not puke. So I think I will puke every

2165
02:09:33,720 --> 02:09:35,359
once in a while. You got a puke, just let

2166
02:09:35,399 --> 02:09:39,199
it out, right, If not literally, then figuratively, just just

2167
02:09:39,319 --> 02:09:42,520
go puke everywhere, Just let it out, Just barf all

2168
02:09:42,560 --> 02:09:47,159
over the place, figuratively speaking literally if you have to. Okay,

2169
02:09:48,239 --> 02:09:50,800
don't make yourself bulliem it, don'n't be doing it too much.

2170
02:09:50,960 --> 02:09:52,840
Just every once in a while. It's a great it's

2171
02:09:52,840 --> 02:09:54,720
a great act, all right. Just a little bit of

2172
02:09:54,760 --> 02:09:57,800
vomit here in there. It really does you good. If

2173
02:09:57,840 --> 02:10:03,880
you're not vomiting in today's dominant society and something's wrong

2174
02:10:03,880 --> 02:10:05,479
with you, you're not healthy, you know, you've got to

2175
02:10:05,520 --> 02:10:07,399
purge every once in a while. Better out that and

2176
02:10:07,439 --> 02:10:09,239
then the other, you know what I mean? All right,

2177
02:10:09,319 --> 02:10:10,880
that's all. I gotta have a grocery day. Go fuck

2178
02:10:10,920 --> 02:10:11,279
you somebody,