Speaker 1: It's another dark day afternoon, you fucking asshole. Welcome to
the crime pager. Body doesn't podcast. I'm driving, as you
could probably hear from the road noise on here on
Old I ten. We're headed west on I ten. We're
going through West Texas. It's a beautiful land. You can look,
but you can't touch because it's all private. Of course,
anyone that grows up in Texas has no idea how
abnormal that is, or shit the entire eastern half of
the United States. Anyway, I'm going to the New Mexico
Mycological Society COMOS say d nice meet up. It should
be fun. I'm gonna do a presentation Ellen, Ellen, my
friend Allan Rockefeller is gonna be there Mandy as well.
But anyway, we'll stay in West Texas tonight. By we,
I mean me and the dogs. I didn't see the
dogs for three goddamn weeks. Javier was watching them. It's
very kind of them. But we're reunited and now we're
just blazing through the ninety eighth degree West Texas sun
to go. We'll stay in West Texas night and then
you have be in New Mexico. New Mexico is always
so nice. It's a wonderful thing about Texas is that
it's so close to New Mexico. And then of course
when you to New Mexico, there's public land everywhere and
a lot of cool shit. I remember spending a few
days in the Capitan Range, in a little bit north
of where I'm going Epithy, Atlanta. Micromeris a little golf
ball cactus grows on the limestone out there. There's a
disjunct population, and I found this nice spot. It was
like the kind of spot where if you're rolling around
in your truck, you got a campushell on it. You
got a fucking mattress back there, you got a cooler
and one of those you know, something to sit on,
a little milk rate or leaving a fucking lawnchair. Yeah,
you can travel. I even advise traveling with the little desk,
one of those portable aluminum desks. You can get him cheap,
like thirty bucks, and you set up a little you know.
I I camped out there for a while under this
giant oak tree in the south end of the Capitan Range.
It was for like a couple of days. It was
a nice spot that just say that's the thing with
public land. I didn't see anybody. I think I saw
one other guy, you know, the whole two or three
days I was out there. But it's a cool Yes,
there's so much good shit and so much nice stuff
in New Mexico. If you got time to just roll
around and you know you're you're not broke, you got
like enough to just you know, you don't got to
be rich. You know, you're just living in your car.
But that was the thing when I was a lot
of the time I spent learning botany, you know. Between
I would say my first good mushroom trip in the
desert twenty twelve to when I left California twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, I would just all the whenever I
could get time off from work, I would just fucking
head out for a week and go live in the
Mojave or in Nevada or wherever, you know, northern Arizona,
just driving around, mulling around and blm land. You know,
get a truck, camp orshell, a nasty old filthy fouton
mattress you could throw in the back, brush it off,
and a cooler and a little camping stove like you
get from the Chinese grocers, you know, you know, they
got those little they got them little stoves. It's nice.
They take the buttane so you can make coffee or
a fucking you know, tea and cook occasionally and you
just roll around and it's nice. So just looking at
different stuff and just taking photographs and exploring and learning
about the land that you live on. It was nice.
I did that for years and it was very fulfilling. Shit.
During COVID, me and my daughter's mom were doing that
for like three months straight. It was really nice. But anyway, so,
uh so, yeah, it should be good. And I think
I'm just gonna dig around New Mexico for a week,
maybe check on some plants, revisit some old spots. Uh
And then of course I've got that little you know,
I'll put my post up in a certain spot. I
got some other work. I gotta do herbarium labels to
create emails and shit the respect, you know, just general
shit work, and hopefully get some drawing done as well.
But yeah, it'll be nice. So but yeah, cloud Craft
is in the Sacramentos, the Sacramento Mountains, and it's like
with the range runs from like eight ten thousand feet
at the higher elevations, and so that's where we're gonna be.
And I'm so I'm stoked to be in a sky
island again, much cooler temperatures, different casts of plants. Should
be a lot of fungi up there. You know, I
didn't know amanitas were, or rather circlecarpas, which is in
the rose family rose Ace, also known as mountain mahogany.
You get circlecarpas in West Texas. They're common throughout the West.
Mountain mahogany is the common name, but of course no
relation to true mahogany, which is in the family Meliace,
same family as that obnoxious China ball, China berry whatever
it is, shit, that invasive tree that's all over Austin.
It's got cool flowers. What is it, Melica Melia, that's
the genus. But I love sewing those things down, really
really horrible invasive in Central Texas. But anyway, that's the
mahogany family, and they're native to Eurasia. I'm sure they're
really cool where they're native. But here there, of course
horticultural atrocity and the noxious invasive but mountain mahogany circle carpus. Ah,
excuse me, you don't mind Circlecarpus is Michael Rizel, Ecto
Michael Rizel, you know, not just arbuscular mind za, but
Ecto micro hyzol with Amanitas and probably a number of
other genera of Ecto micro hyzel mushroom as well. So
it's not just pines and oaks. It's also eucalyptus and
obviously Circocarpus and alders and a few others, and of
course members of the blueberry family Era Casey and especially
Kamara Staphless and our Bautists that are Ecto micro rhyzol. Well,
with the arachoids, it's a little bit more complicated. The
Ecto mico rhisea reportedly behave Endo Michael Risley with them.
They don't just form the heart take net that like
little sheath that goes around the root. They actually penetrate
the root cortex. The fungal hyphae do. But anyway, it's
but they do that with Ecto microhizel species. At least
the are buttoids our Beautis and Camaro Stapfless. We were
in Costa Rica, the higher elevations there are ten thousand,
two hundred feet. Got the fucking Paramo we went to
was in such good condition. It's such a cool habitat.
You know, the sphagnum Magiclana come up there at the
fluffy red sphagnum flushing all those red pigments as a
result of the exposure to you know, harsh uv sunlight.
Since there's you're up at ten thousand foot elevation, I
like thirty three hundred meters, the plants up there, I
just went out that fuck, I just hit a butterfly.
God damn it. I hate it. I fucking hate it anyway,
But but yeah, we saw what was it. Lex Sinum
is a genus of ectomycorrhizo mushroom that kind of looks
like a bullied It's got pores on the underside, and
it associates with Camaro Staphalus r. Buttoides, which is a
super common shrub to large tree in Costa Rica. At
the higher elevations, at like nine thousand feet, we were
at temperatures of like sixty degrees the whole time. It
was really pleasant. It's so nice up there. So but
that was a that was a really cool I think
Lexynum montiicola only associates with with with with our buttoids,
while arochoids to it was with Vaccinium consanguinium. There are
so many Vaccinium species up there. I tried reaching out
to this guy that studies them from New York Botanical
Garden that studies the neotropical blueberries, that he didn't get
back to me. I don't know if he's on vacation
or you never know. You know, a lot of a
lot of these, you know, people in a professional stature.
They a lot of a lot of them, like coming
on the podcast. They know what crime PAS is. They're
not too vibed out by, you know, than others. Maybe
they are members of the square community. Maybe it vibes
them out. Maybe they don't know me, they want to
lose the prestige. Maybe you know I said that offendom.
I don't know, but I reached out, or maybe you
just didn't get the fucking email. But I would love
to have someone knowledgeable about neotropical blueberry, neotropical eraic Casey
diversity come on the podcast and talking because it's such
a huge group and so many of them are epiphytes,
uh and and just fucking wild. There's so much diversity
down there. It's and it. They're also cool, you know,
from the woody ligno tuber thing that they do, forming
that little storage mechanism, that little you know, swollen woody
knob to to I mean, the epiphytic habit, especially to
the hummingbird pollination syndromes, to the dispersal methods obviously a
lot of bird dispersal there. It's just a it's a
really cool group of plants. And then I'd like to
get someone to talk about the Apacrits too, a Packridity,
the apacrid subfamily, which of course you get in uh,
you know, Australia, New Zealand. That's a fucking another insane group,
you know, and they've got they've got the parallel of
a nation. They look like mono cos the draco phylums.
If you don't know about a Packrit's, you should go
read up on them. E. P. A, C R. I. D.
At Pacrid deity. They used to be their own family
at Packard a see. But if they're it's very obvious
they're blueberries when you look at the flowers, but you know,
they look like fifty million years removed from the rest
of the family, which is how a lot of shit
in Australia and New Guinea and New Zealand and New Caledonia,
et cetera. Looks it's such mind blowing flora down there.
A friend of mine's going to New Guinea in November.
I guess he's getting and you got invited to speak
about bromeliads. He's a bremeliad guy and he's going. He's
but he's gonna go to New Guinea too. New Guinea
seems fucking nuts. I would love to go to New Guinea,
but it's you know, it could be a real hot place,
figuratively speaking, not just you know, they've got sixteen thousand
foot tall mountains there. You have that much elevation at
that much low latitude, you know it's gonna be hyper diverse.
But I just dropped my little fucking macha container. I
hate this fucking bride. You know that, I really do.
It's just fucking mind numbing and it's bad for you too.
I gotta go. I'm gonna go do kettlebell swings in
the park when I get back in West Texas, go
run the fucking track or something. Louie is a little fat.
I gotta go. She gotta get some exercise too. I
missed her so much. You know, Jack just turned sixteen
last May. He's still kicking, doesn't show any sign of
slowing down, despite being deaf and having to peel a lot,
you know, and being maybe a little bit senile. But anyway, Yeah,
but I'd love to get someone to talk about neotropical
blueberries area Casey. So if you know anybody and you
know they're a little loose, they like to, you know,
talk about plants and let other people know about him
point in my direction. But I tried to get the
mustard guy, doctor al Shabaz too, really lovely man, very
kind man, but he was he was not up for
a podcast. I guess he just wasn't. He's having some
health issues or something. I don't know, but he's still
anytime I need help with brassa casey IDs, especially some
of the rare ones like thelipodiopsis or any of those.
You know, he's a response immediately. So it seems like
a wonderful man regardless right now. Age Well, anyway, yeah,
so I'm I'm we were we were. I'm always excited
whenever I meet a new mushroom to learn a psychology. Uh.
And then you know, try and see how that fits
into the things that I spend most of my time
studying and looking at with his plants, and so the
Michael Riisell relationships are always he's always pretty exciting to
learn about, like learning that Ornithostaphlos, which is you know,
related to madrones and kamaro Staphalis. It's a blueberry, you know.
It's Sarah Casey, our rb tite, the subfamily that's its
own clade, was Mike riisall with I think four or
five different species that we saw on in Baja California
and the maritime chaparral right there. And another thing I
want I should mention this before. This is totally unrelated
to anything I was talking about before, but you know,
me and my friend James Peace started a nursery. Well
he's got a nursery going on. He got shit canned
from the nursery he used to work at because they
want to grow bougain v's and create myrtles and all
the horticultural garbage that you know needs to be on
life support on irrigation in Texas, and they were. They
were actually throwing out native plants that he grew, like shit.
I gave him like rare stuff. Fucking assholes, like they
threw out a bunch of Prunus Texina, that delicious native apricot.
They you know, the old the owner passed away. She
was a really lovely woman. You know, other people took
over that. There's just a job of them. They don't
give a shit shit hand him through out a bunch
of stuff. And now they got boogain V's it's just
you know, a boring run of the mill nursery anyway.
But he inherited this other greenhouse and so we're growing
a bunch of stuff. But he's got he also inherited
all this stuff in the greenhouse as well, which is
a lot of tropicals. And you know, I joke. You know,
all you need to do is find like a food
court and a couple dozen different malls across the United States.
You could probably unload all this stuff there. You know.
It's I mean, there's some interesting stuff he's got, like
variegative vanillas and hoyas, which are that succulent milkweed vine.
Really cool genus, not native the New New World at all,
but you know, still still interesting interesting house plants. I
have a hooya that I've been unable to kill for
the last twelve years. It was above my kitchen in Oakland.
Now I got it outside in South Texas. I've given
cuttings to a million different people, and but yeah, Hoya
is a big genus. Anyway, He's got a bunch of
stuff and thurium's aeroids all that stuff. But it's you know,
this is like a very niche crowd that we want
to buy this stuff, and so we've got to clear
these tables off so we can grow more of the
native stuff in there. So if you know anyone you know,
get at me or or I would suppose contact him.
His His instagram is Peace Plants p E A s
E P l A n T s uh and just
message him and see if you can come by. He's
in Sageen, Texas. I'm sure if you want to buy
a shit ton of stuff, he could drive a box
truck or something up to you. But that's really I mean,
I don't know, it's a lot of shit to get
rid of. Man, he's got ulfias, those desert orchids, all this.
I mean, some of it's kind of cool, but you know,
it's a very niche It's like very like I mean,
if there was like another conservatory in the Midwest that
needed some stuff, that'd be a great spot to get
it to. But anyway, yeah, it's a lot to take
care of at the moment. But uh, other than that,
we're growing a bunch of rare native plants. We got
po Maria ostro texana, that cool weird legume that looks
like an orchid, the pea flower that looks like an
orchid flower, very glandular and sticky. From South Texas. Got
a bunch of Senegalias you know, Guahio nurse plant for payote,
a bunch of interesting stuff that not many people are growing.
So there's a you know, we always need more native
plant nurseries and wherever you live, no matter what part
of the country, you should start growing shit too, just
just for shits and giggles, you know. And uh, backyard
growers especially are like the backbone. California's got a lot
of I mean, it's still not enough, but they've got
more native plant nurseries than most. It's where the native
plant movement I feel like is strongest and where it's
been going the most, you know, for the longest. But
you know, Texas and southeast and east coast wherever there's
still still a lot of need for more more native
plant sources. But god, it just trives it. It tries
me nuts, man, especially where I live. It's like it's
it's such pure indoctrination to just want to cut everything
down and mow it. I fucking don't understand. So I
don't understand. Like you know, other places out west, maybe
in the mountains, maybe wherever they they generally have an
understanding that having plants on the landscape is good and
they're nice. But like Texas is so good at disrespecting
it's flora, you know, and just just getting horny for
cutting shit down, clearing it. Like there's no even if
you hate plants, and I say this all the time,
forgive me if this is you know, if this is
over overkill here, but like, even if you hate plants,
the pragmatic fact that having plant cover on the landscape
makes it twenty or thirty degrees cooler, Like, wouldn't that
be enough that it mitigates flooding you're providing you know,
it makes the soil more absorptive. It's like creating more
pores in the sponge so that it can soak up
more water for flooding. You know, lawn doesn't do any
of that shit. Kyle in Native Habitat Project just did
another clip where he takes a you know, what are
those COVID thermometers they use at the airport, you know
they're used to and he puts it on asphalt. It's
one hundred and thirty degrees. Puts it on concrete, it's
like one hundred and twenty degrees. Puts it on lawn.
Lawn was like the same temperature, only marginally cooler than concrete.
I assume as falls the hottest because it's darker. Concrete
it's generally a lighter color, doesn't get as hot. But
the lawn was almost as hot as the fucking concrete.
It's just the heat island, you know, And of course
it is. There's no you know, there's barely any leaf
cover maybe an inch or two preventing the sun from
heating up the ground. It's it's fucking nuts. I mean,
the how unpragmatic mode turf grass is. Now, if you're
playing bouchy ball or doing a picnic in the park,
I get it. But if you're just you know, you're
just some parts like like to do a movie night thing.
You know, you have, like a free movie night. You
roll out a fucking blanket and sit out there, eat
a bucket of chicken and snort cocaine with your I'm
just kidding around. I don't know why I picked fried
chicken and cocaine. But any well, you know what I mean.
You go sit out there and uh, you know, to
get some dried mango and green tea, watch a fucking
movie whatever they do movie nights in the park anywhere
in Texas. It doesn't seem like a great Texas thing.
It's god damn liverro We don't do that shit out her.
We sit in our cars and slowly give ourselves metabolic
diseases from not moving and eating greasy shit. But yeah,
I mean it's you know, Lan's got a place you
want to kick a soccer ball around or some shit,
But it's so fucking hot. That's what's so funny to
me too. Like again, another thing I say all the
fucking time, people like, well, I got you know where
our kid's supposed to play? What kid? If you got
a loan that's one hundred and twenty degrees, you're sitting
out there in the fucking sun. What kid, he's gonna
like playing? I never like doing that. Go, yeah, I'm
gonna go stand out in the middle of his field
of moe turf grass where it's one hundred and twenty
degrees and sweat my ass off. And no. Man, we
used to like to go by the creeks and the
bushes and the alleys and stuff to hide on her.
That was the fun stuff. But you know, kids don't
really go outside anymore these days anyways. Everyone is just
staring at a phone all the time. I think the
Internet shutting down for a day or two would be
hilarious and good for good for all of us. It's it,
really is. You's got to put that shit down, not
fucking stare at it sometimes, you know, uh, figure out
something to do, you know, look up shit on I Naturalist,
read about random stuff on Wikipedia, think about the world
around you, Think up questions to ask you know, at
least you could use you know, just get off social media.
Think of questions you want to ask the internet. You
want to ask the oracle anyway. But they love clear
and brush in Texas, they really do. They clear everything,
cut it down and don't let it be messy. You know,
don't let the plant covers messy. What a fucking twisted,
twisted way to think about things. So anyway, I'm gonna be.
I'm going to Minnesota in September. I'm getting paid to
go talk to some college class. I can't believe to
have me up there at college. They're gonna have me
at some university talk about a bunch of stuff on
a prairie's a prairie ecology. And so I'm going up
there in somewhere like northwest of Minneapolis mid September to
pay me. I gotta drive my ass up there. That
should be a long drive. And then what else did
you have? We got this Ecuador trip in November. I
think October. I'm open. Maybe I'll just try to relax
if I can do that. You know, do a bong rip.
When's the last time you did a bong rip. I
haven't done a bong rip in five years. Probably. I
don't like the pot, but every once in a while
it's nice. It's nice for trying to relax and calm
yourself down. I just went to go check on sorel
famnists Scoparius. It smells so good. It's in the amorphy tribe,
and I guess they just split up the genus sorel damn,
that's knots. There's a soorl famnists and sorodendron, And I
guess it was polyphyletic. I guess when they looked at it,
so I think it was written who wrote a column
be in her Mexican bonders. There's a paper on it.
It's open source, you get downloaded, but you know they're
doing this whole dn They look at the DNA, they
find out that it's you know, it's not as simple
as morphology. The relationships are as simple as morphology would
have you believe. But uh, you know, we're just outside
of El Pasa right now, driving along beautiful I ten.
I just saw the most the most lovely and just
baking in the sun. I can only imagine how it
smelled inside one liter bottle of urine that presumably had
been you know, discarded by one of the many truckers
on I ten, one of the bleakest freeways. It's like
the Texas equivalent between Fort Worth and I'll pass. So
I ten and what is it? I twenty are like
the most bleak section of freeway after I five in
central California. It's just, I mean, really, you just you
want an Americana experience. You want a good exp you know,
if you're from Europe or Australia or saying you really
want you really want a rough idea, not rough, very
very succinct, very articulate idea of what America is. Like.
Go hang out on an I five corridor, like around
the Bakersfield Fresno area, or I ten and I twenty
anywhere west of Fort Worth in Dallas, which are both shitholes.
No offense to anybody that has to live there. But yeah,
that's it's really the best way to get an idea
of what American you're I'm sitting there looking at that swollen,
ready to burst piss bottle, and I just said to myself,
I said, Wow, this is really the American experience right here.
You know, this is like statue of liberty to my
you know what it must have looked like the statue
of liberty to my great grandparents when they were coming
over here from Italy back in the twenties or fucking tens,
whenever the hell it was. You know, you see that piss,
You're like wow, I bet it smells wonderful, all that
mountain dew and high fruit, those corn syrup flushed through
some three hundred pound man's and testines or kidneys or
whatever the for kidneys I mean, you know what I mean?
Sorry anyway, but Sorol Faminists scoparius, which is such a
fucking gorgeous native like humanist shrub, a relative of Dahlia
d A l e a with the glands too. It's
got the same glance. And it was flushing big big
indigo flowers. When was it like a month or two
of go when they come out here? I can't fucking
remember I go, I go down pass so far too much.
Maybe it was in May, maybe it's two months ago,
but I was hoping to get seeds. There's no seeds.
Paddy Manning grow it. Not many other people, but it
should be more common. Imagine if you went to like,
you know again, like a depressing strip mall or you
know any of these like shopping you know what I mean,
shopping thoroughfare. Uh, you know, an a'l passo or something.
But instead of all this hideous home depot garden section ship,
they had Soro Feminist School Paris and that be nice.
God damn, maybe one day, but uh, you know, it's
not gonna change everything, but it'll make the turns of
life easier to swallow and maybe create some more life
in that in the these very arid, hot regions. Anyway,
it's ninety five degrees fahrenheit out, I'm blazing down. I ten. Oh,
look at Warez looks lovely. El Paso. Really he's got
a rough. They got a cool museum and like they're
near to college. They got like a nice native plant
garden with some rarities too. But I'm friends with one
of the dudes that's that works there. It's the at
the college and what is a uto passo? But anyway,
you know, they got a nice day a plant card.
But aside from that, and the museum is cool. But
aside from there's not a lot going on in a
Passo except that Italian restaurant I went to when they
filmed that wired uh plant Wired Plant Talk interview that
I did. When was it there? Was twenty twenty two?
Got it fit? That was three years ago. So Isacoma
plura flora? That was cool to see. Isacoma is a
composite genus? Very waxy leaves, and a lot of them
are very tolerant of hot, dry conditions. We get Isacoma,
Cornopofolio in South Texas Isacoma and z ci West. I
think there's a few in Mexico, you know. Exploring plant diversity,
the ast racy with the biogeographic with a biogeographical lens,
where is this genus distributed comostly? These nice I found out?
I guess I should have known this, or I should
have figured But the family ast racy comprises like ten
of the total population in existence of flowering plants, which
is nuts, So orchids must be ten percent too, So
twenty percent of angiosperms are astraraci or orchids. Well that's
not correct, not by biomass, but by species. You know,
if you're counting the total species in existence, I should
have been more articulate there. Oh, what of that putting
up here? It looks like a nice, bleak concrete data
center or some sort of fucking warehouse. It looks like
a goddamn external hard drive. How about that? Anyway, two
hours to go to beautiful Alamo Gordo, and then we're
gonna be up in the mountains fittally fucking around at
eight thousand feet. I just talked to Alan. Him and
Mandy are on their way to it. They're driving out here,
you know, they're going going their long haul in it.
Oh yeah, I forgot what I forgot what a shit
old El Paso is. And I only mean that in
this sense. I mean, like any city in Texas is
a shittle. It's just built for cars. You can't fucking
walk anywhere, you know, It's it's dangerous. Anyone who's seen
on a sidewalk walking is presumed to be poor or
homeless or otherwise just unable to afford a car. You know,
there's an old guy asking for spare change here on
the Median Strip. He's got a you know, there's two
of them. They got matching shirts. They got vests and
matching shirts that say God Loves sinners. The religious shit
in this day really does get to be a lot.
And of course I don't mind if people are religious,
but of course so many religious people, you know, don't
actually follow the parts about you know, the parts of
the religion about being kind and taking care of the
poor and shit like that. They're just really and they're
really horny for the culture worse stuff. It's all just
in doctrination, but it gets to be a fucking lot
where I live. Yeah, I was in my neighborhood the
other day. They went on a ten mile bike rad.
I've been biking around, which is fucking nice. Gotta get
some cardio without pounding the knees, you know. And so
and I used to bike a lot. I would like
smoke weed, bike from Chicago to Milwaukee, smoke a dube
and then just bike for eight hours because weed makes
repetitive exercise easier. This is I must have been like
twenty two or something, but I was really in the
bike in a lot and uh, but it's terrifying to
do it in Texas because the drivers are horrible. All
the trucks are oversized. And now especially since you know
half half the idiots that comprise the majority of the
American populace, they're on their phone all the time. Got
Jack's mouth is powerful. I'm sorry, he's you know, he's
he's panting. He's doing his nervous panting in the back
and the fumes are coming out. But anyway, but I
was in my neighborhood and I live in you know,
a poor Hispanic neighborhood, generally poor working classes Panic neighborhood.
And I saw some white girls driving around. You never
see white girls in my neighborhood. So I saw these
Caucasian women, these Caucasian young ladies, driving around in a
fucking I don't know, some sort of sporty small soccer momsuv.
And you know, I knew they weren't from it that
I knew they were. They were fucking Mormons or Jehovah's
witnesses or you know, one of the cults, all the
different you know, cults, the sects of Christianity come to
my neighborhood to prey on the poor people there, because
that's what they do. You know, you got to get
them in the door, you know, offer them salvation. If
they're not that well educated, they're really easy to fall
for it, you know. And I think that just the
whole missionary thing's part of the Mormon experience that sat
You know, I've met a lot of lovely Mormons, you know,
and I've got a lot of gay friends that grew
up in Utah. They grew up Mormon, and they're all
bubbly and always nice. But there's a you know, a
high propensity of homosexuals in the Mormon could, but at
least they come out, which is you know, and I'm
only saying that because I just noticed. That's that's the thing.
I don't know if it's the repression or what, but
I mean, they of course leave the church later on,
but uh, you know, bubbly blonde, very kind. Uh anyway, man,
how many? My friend Vanessa, my friend Joe? Who else?
I haven't seen Joe in forever. He was a wonderful man.
He was making fun of me for one. We went
on a road trip together for a few days, and
he was making fun of me for one to go
to all these geologic sites in northern Youthah. He said,
he said that he felt like, you know, a kid
who's dead was making you know, dragging their asses to
rock and roll Hall of Fame or something. I think
it's the way he put it, which was actually pretty funny.
Where the fuck did he go? Anyway? Yeah, but he's
you know, he's gay, he's gay as hell. He was
brought up Mormon. But but I met his family. They're
very nice people, and they didn't they you know, they
didn't They never disposed of him for being something that
their religion supposed to prohibits. I don't fucking I don't
never got that part. But anyway, but you know, but
not knocking Mormons, but I'm just saying I knew what
they were doing there. You know, they're salespeople, so you know,
and that kind of it just gets annoying. It's it's
I guess it's better than nothing kind of is it.
I don't know, you know, if you got to offer
people hopes somehow, but but it's still depressing and it's
predatory and anyway, so I figured I would just go
off to them and ask them some questions. I thought
this would be funny. They approached me. I had some
guys on bikes approached me a month or two ago,
and I said, fuck no. They said, can we have
a word with you for a minute. I said fuck no,
and they said wow, And I said, all right. You know,
I just said said, that's that's absolutely right, Yes, Wow
is right. Fuck no, stay away from me. But then
this time, you know, these these were like nice young ladies.
I couldn't be rude to them. So I said, I'm
gonna go back and uh and and try to indoctrinate them.
And that's what I did. So I just you know,
started talking to them about the geologic time scale, uh,
the evolution of life, great oxygenation event, evolution of land plants.
How that that fills the void of of an origin story.
Understanding evolution and natural selection fills the void of an
origin story that we all seem to need as people.
And it makes a lot more sense, and it's a
lot more quantifiable and measurable than some of the stories
that religion tells us, which of course are I believe
are just supposed to be metaphors anyways, not taken literally.
But but it was, you know, it was fun to do.
And also you know, I knew it wasn't gonna work
on them, of course, but it would get them to
it would drive them away. And so within two minutes
they were they were checking out of the conversation. I'm
gonna do that more. It's similar to what what I
do with cops too, Like if they stop me, I
just keep talking, Just start keep talking about plants. I
learned that from Allen. You would talk about mushrooms. Just
start telling them about different plants and blah blah blah
and native plants, how things evolve, biogeography, families and genus,
you know, families and genera that are native to certain
regions of the world, and you know, ecological strategies based
on whatever set of conditions a plant may have evolved. Yeah,
that kind of thing, and I think it's uh, it
does drive them away, but that's kind of what you want.
And then you know, if it doesn't drive them away,
then they're genuinely interested, then maybe you've you know, maybe
you've just indoctrinated someone else into the cult of the
living world. The thing that always drives me nuts about
the religious fault though, is that, you know, I don't
know why some of them takes so much issue with evolution.
Still that just seems fucking that just seems lazy minded,
because your religion doesn't tell you that you can't believe
in natural selection and evolution and things that are solidly
quantifiable things that we've seen in real time, you know.
And it's like if you were back in when was
Galileo sixteen hundreds, when was he doing his thing looking
at through his tubes, that'd be like if you were
if you thought that, like believing in the existence of
the solar system and that Earth wasn't at the center
of it. If you thought that that was was was heresy.
Holy Dick, I can't wait to be in New Mexico.
We're almost there. We're near to we're near to border.
Jack finally calmed down. No maybe not no, No, he's
still he's still panting, nervous. It's like a nervous panting.
You know what. He was a puppy sixteen years ago
when I first got him. He used to just puke
all over the back seat of my little Honda Civic.
I had a ready Honda Civic and he was you know,
he would he would barf all the time. So I
just would lay sheets down and then when we'd go places,
he just yeah, he got carsick. He didn't like driving
in the car. There's a lot of hideous development going
on in El Paso, just like just like most of
Texas doesn't seem very well thought out. New town homes
in a barren in a barren, rocky wasteland on the
outskirts of al Paso. Oh, what is this? This is
Baker as Sarahthroides forgot, that's dominant here. You know, al
Paso's got some nice stuff. We're at elevation four thousand feet,
so it's hot as balls, but the air is dry
and it cools off. It's still not as hot as
where I live, as in South Texas, but it's gonna
be chilly up at the nine thousand foot elevation and
his Sacramentos. But yet next time, some you know, some
religious nutter. And again, not all religious people are nutters.
Some are very kind and and wonderful, you know, especially
if they're you know, gay Mormons. But but next time
some religious mat or whether it's you know, anybody who's orthodox,
I feel like, next time they come at you with
some anti evolution shit and they don't understand, you know,
they say it's uh. Which again this is really I
feel like, only if you're in the southeast or in
Texas are you gonna encounter this level of shit for
brinth But should you, should it happen, just ask them,
you know, if they can explain what haployd and diployd
mean and how it's you know, so much of the
things that back up evolution or the basis for modern medicine,
especially you know, cancer research, that it's elementary genetics, things
like that, and UH and see what happens. That's the
thing about you know, with humanity, it's it's a small
minority of people that you know, are smart enough to
make room for technological advancement. Then the rest of the
population benefits without really understanding how it works. This is
something you know, and if they understood how it works,
it would better all of society. This is something Carl
Sagan brought up all the time, but it just it
escapes people. And I think we're only getting dumber, especially
now that we have AI and and smartphones all the time.
I mean, these things do the thinking for us without
without us having to really comprehend any of the knowledge
that we can ask the oracle that is the internet.
You know, people you could just dictation, especially holy shit,
what's going on with kids? And AI too. You don't actually,
you don't actually have to think about problems anymore. You
just have to be smart enough to look shit up
online and then remember it, memorize it for a test,
and then you get the degree. And then you know,
I don't know how we where are we headed? Oh
it's gonna be gnarly, just increasingly dumber populace, But maybe not.
I don't know who knows. Oh nice, thunder start off
in a distance. Oh that's nice. We're driving by Fort
Bliss right now. You know, it's all dunes out here.
It's this red sandy. It's a very large patch from
here to fucking Carlsbad southeast to the oil fields of
Midland and the I mean, you want to talk truck
or piss bottles and bleakness. That's spoy Midland Odessa area anyway.
But it's all this red sand. And then there's just
and there's you know, little patches of miskuit. The misky's
here top out of two or three feet tall instead
of thirty feet tall. But there's just this giant wall
of dust and rain. And to my east it's fucking
it's massive. I could barely see the mountains in the distance.
I'm so excited to be in New Mexico. How nice
doesn't feel anywhere near as bleak as Texas or off limits.
So we're up here now you could probably tell there's
no road noise left. But we're up here. And now
we're like eighty five hundred feet more storm clouds in
the distance. Man, These these clouds, these masses of water
vapor rising into the sky. Oh they're so lovely to see.
But yeah, we're eighty five hundred feet doug Fur Forest,
Gamble Oak Forest just outside of Alamogordo, beautiful Alamogordo, New Mexico.
And I already found a bunch of cool stuff. Found
a gymnapolis ludiefolius someone had found, which has silosin in it,
which is what psilocybin polymerizes into. But it's got trace amounts,
so it's technically an illegal mushroom. But there were only
trace amounts that. There's Allen fucking around on the I
should go go get him. But but yeah, Ryby's where
we're at. Now, there's Ryby's. There's doug Fur. A lot
of the doug Furs are dropping needles, which is concerning.
There's like not just needles, but entire branches like it
looks like it might be insect I guess it could
be hailed too, but it's really kind of extensive. But
the trees look healthy. Otherwise they're not. There's no orange
and needles at the top. It looks maybe, yeah, maybe
it was a insects removing it. What else we saw
we saw? Uh no, no micro rhyzl stuff. Yeah, oh no,
we saw an iosby, which is micro rhyzol, but uh,
nothing else. Here's here's an We're gonna go see how
to own else about the tricholo my own.
Speaker 2: This is a Tricholoma aurantium. Really cool tricholoma. Look at
that snake skin pattern on the stem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what the ship? That's crazy. It looks like fading paint,
like dripping fading paint almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And if you taste it, you'll be really
sad that you did, because it's very better.
Speaker 1: Okay, And this is this is probably not edible, but no,
there's no reason to try because it tastes like hell anyway, exactly. Yeah,
and this is michael rhizol. We got what how big
is that cap? That's probably five inches across and the
little ones maybe two inches?
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty big, stocky trichyloma.
Speaker 1: And so this is there's staying with the doug Verson
Quircus gambelia here, and there's and then abs AB's as well.
Aby's kind of color. Yeah, these are big. How do
these smell? They stink or what the oh? Yeah they do?
Oh wow? Yeah that color so tricholoma orantium you said,
are they yellow color? Orange orangish yellow, and then what's
that greening? It's just rotten or what?
Speaker 2: No, they do that they have green color sometimes.
Speaker 1: And kind of like this revolute margin a little bit
fold it over. Do they mature? Does that end when
they mature? Oh? This guy's still in the ground. Huh uh?
Always wonder how extensive the myceelium is underground?
Speaker 2: Have you tasted it yet?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I got it like putting it in my mouth. Oh yeah,
look at that. That's crazy. It looks like what paint
does on a wall if there's a fire indoors or something.
That's kind of what it looks like. So are these
these are dropping spores right now? Probably? Huh oh yeah,
tell have nice white prints. If I were to take
a hand lens up to them, what it could would
I be able to see them? Or is it a
little bit?
Speaker 2: We stacked one hundred spores and they'd be one millimeter,
so they're a little too small for HandLens.
Speaker 1: And it's a little yellow one. Okay, tell tell me
about this one. This is this is Hygrophers.
Speaker 2: Crysodon, a little yellow ones macarizol, And like everything in Higraphrius,
it's edible. Usually they're a little bigger than that.
Speaker 1: Okay, we got a revision. What do you call this? Yeah,
look coming right off the stick. Trauma, Watch out for
the dog shit zipto. What is it?
Speaker 2: Cypto trauma?
Speaker 1: Cipto trauma. Yeah, look at it? How would you? It's
got like a convex cap. Yeah, really pretty. But then
there's stipe textures. Fucking the texture. You pay a lot
of attention to texture when you're looking at mushrooms. Huh. Yeah,
it's not just colors and shapes, but texture of stipe,
texture of cap. What was what was the thing with
the really nice what was it that I showed you?
It was like a pink and had a crazy texture
to the cap. Castania what was it? Folliota castannia no lepiota.
Oh yeah, but that's just a separate lepiota is. Yeah,
it was nice. So, you know, I just put the
phone down for a minute. We just found like Goosta
comporter eye, which is an apa ced carrot family. It's
also known as Osha, which you know, back when I
used to know people that were into herbalism, not so
much anymore. It's a little hippie dippy for me. I
mean whatever. It's fine, whatever you're into. But you know,
it's not always the most practical. I think there's like
a little bit of cosplaying alchemists in there sometimes just
saying sometimes right, no shade to anybody. But it's a
cool plant, and it's somewhat rare, kind of looks kind
of like a Queen Anne's lace look to it, but
there's no hairs on it. And reportedly it's really hard
to grow. You know, we're up here at eighty five
hundred feet is you could probably tell because I'm a
little fucking winded too. But it gets up like, you know,
three feet tall. It was growing in the shade of
some gambles oaks which were maybe fifteen feet tall. It
was grown with acer Grande and tatum this little maple
up here. But I haven't seen it. I've only seen
it in a few places in the West. I've seen
there's another, like there's a couple like eustacumb species in California,
remember like Gustacombe gray was one I would encounter. But
you know, you go to these high elevations in the
montane West and you find all these cool carrots simopterus
like goose to coumbhit. There's a bunch more drawn a blank,
but anyway, I hadn't seen it in a while. Like
gets poached a lot too, because it's an herbal remedy.
So you know, if you've convinced yourself that you are
sick or otherwise need some sort of medicine, you get
the play alchemists make a potion out of it. The
roots smell really good, but of course when you take
the roots, you kill the plant. And has anyone ever
successfully grown Oh shit, I don't think so. Anyway. Oh,
it's a little it's getting a little hot, just a
little bumy. But there's a thunderstorm on the horizon. So
but that was great to see. It was cool to
see like goose to come. And we saw some more
tricolomas as well. Always like noting the micro rhizal affiliates.
And I just when I was laying down taking a
picture of what was it a I figured some sort
of shelf mushroom. I got up and noticed all these
things crawling on me, which I was, you know, I shit,
damn near gasped in horror. I thought it was seed ticks,
but it turned out, damon tye, I sent them a photo.
He thinks it's just in stars of batbed bugs. So
still a bloodsucking parasite. But you know, at least it's
not a tick. So get some fucking ivermectin. You know,
you gotta take the IV. Gotta have some ivermectin on
hand for dealing with parasites. You know, Oh they got
a little they got a little sign, they got a
little label. But you know, you get to take some ivermectin.
Then you get to joke about taking fucking ivermectin too,
which is which is funny. Albendasoul and ivermectin. Always whenever
you leave the country, go pick up two of those
two sets. Look up the adequate dosers. Pick up two
sets and just have them on hand. You know they're
they're de wormers and for parasites, and the ivermectin is
good for the ticks and the chiggers as well. Ah,
I'm back in a hotel now, and you know, Jack,
he pete on a floor right by the door. You know,
he's he's sixteen years old, and he's a floor piss
her in his old age, which if that's the only
you know, if that and aimlessly wandering around and having
the issue with silver alert every once in a while,
if those are the only cons to his you know,
him being old as hell, it's not that bad. But
uh yeah, I just you know, it's okay. You just
clean it up, Just get the kids, get the hotel
towels and throw them on the floor and then put
them in the bath. That you just you just want
to hide the piss from the cleaning lady. Otherwise she's
got to report it and then you get charged, as
I learned when you know, my daughter pissed the bed
we were sleeping in at the hotel. We got forced
to stay up by United Airlines after they canceled oura
our flight out of Houston, so we got stuck in
a in a what was it? What was was a
Marriott They put us in, like the Marriott, one of
those rich hotels that doesn't give the free breakfast. None
of the rich hotels give the free breakfast. So that
means you got to just steal more towels to make
up for it. But if you ever have a chance
to go out and vandalize the Marriotte Hotel u uh
near George Bush International Airport in Houston, please do it.
I would recommend some sort of well what I would do,
And I'm not telling you to do this. I'm just
saying because they charged us. You know, she was my
daughter was on cancer manage at the time. She peed
the bed. I didn't. I made the mistake of not
and it was only a little bit of piss. She
had a diaper around, but she still a little bit
of piss, and so I just i'd made the mistake
of not cleaning it up that in there, and they
charged us five hundred bucks. So it was fucking brutal.
But anyway, this is what you would do, This is
what I would do. You get you get some etch
bath from the And again I'm not encouraging anyone to
vandalize anything unless you really got a hankering for it,
which this is a really shit bag hotel too, which
run by terrible people. You know, you get some of
that etch bath, you mix it up, throw it on
their windows, right, you can cause a few hundred, if
not thousands of dollars worth of damage. Now this is
not again, I'm not a I'm not telling you to
do this. I'm just saying, if this were a parallel
dimension and you wanted to do it, that would be.
That would be a way to do it, you know,
to just really quick vantage you can just walk by
and just just you know, just splatter it anyway getting distracted.
So I remectin. We always telling you to take ivermectin
for the ticks and chiggers. You can do that if
you've got a bad infestation of like seed ticks, I
would recommend, But otherwise, you know, you don't do it
as just the preventative. But I remect it's not that,
you know, iromectans not that toxic. And it's actually kind
of sad. It saddens me that it got such a
bad rap because all those morons were using it during COVID,
because it's actually a pretty wonderful drug. And this story
of how it was discovered is pretty amazing. Some guy
in Japan was doing soil samples scanning for microbes. Uh,
and you know, the microbial diversity in soil, especially among bacteria,
is impossibly diverse and just massive. I mean, there are
so many species and he happened to find this one species.
What was it it was? I think it was streptomyces.
Avermectin is the precursor to ivermectin. But you know it
basically gave the blueprints to scientists for this compound and
they can then synthesize ivermectin. But uh, avermectin was a
compound produced by this bacteria probably is protection against nematodes.
And so he found this one specific species out of
after scanning thousands, he found it from like a golf
course in Japan. Fucking wild. He found this one species
and then he they were able to culture it successfully
and in the lab it did well, and so it
produced avermectin and they that's how that was the discovery
of this. But this was a game changing compound because
it could cure all these weird, fucked up you know,
diseases that you get in the tropics that are caused
by protis and amibas and different invertebrates. So so so
it was a wonderful I mean it was. It was
like penicillin. It was as important it did for protus
what penicillin did for bacteria. Excuse me, not not Protozola
parasitic worms. I'm confusing the two, you know, I I'm
messing up the taxonomy of different lineages of various eukaryotes.
But yeah, nematodes. Nematodes and worms were the main and
and insects and invertebrates are arthropods. So but this is
you know, it's a it's a it's a groundbreaking medicine.
But what are the different phyla that nematodes in flatworms? Okay,
philum nematoda that clade, and uh philum Plata hell menthes,
plati hell minthis the flatworms and thorny headed worms philum acanthocephala.
Jesus Christ who studies these things. Oh, and subgrew too
of Plata hawmant These the tapeworms class Cistoda, and there's
many different u Jesus Christ. Liver flukes, blood flukes, pork tapeworm,
heightatid disease. Uh what else, intestinal roundworm? Oh yeah, river blindness,
that was a big one in Senegal lymphatic philariasis. These
are all diseases caused by different worms. So these you
know this, I really need to read up on some
of his taxonomy because I am not I'm pretty clueless
when it comes to some of this stuff. And you know,
being that they caused so many different human diseases, it
would be good to be aware of them. But again,
these are not protozoa. These are not it's a whole
different I think protozoa is. It's I mean, listen to
the you know, if you're interested in any of this,
listen to the podcast I did with my friend Julia.
It was what did Julia doctor Julia van End What
was the name of that. It was like a year ago,
but it was a really fascinating podcast. She's a microbiologist.
But anyway, so don't knock. I've remeact it. And it's
good to have some on hand, especially if you're visiting
the tropics. Anyway, we had a really nice day yesterday.
We did a little We did that mushroom hunt which
you just listened to part of it, and there was
osha nearby, which was cool to see that again high
elevation medicinal apac. And then after that there was a
plant I wanted to see called paridally, which got split
up into the genus paridally Lafamia Laphamia l A. P
h A M I A. You know what. I read
the paper that did this that split these up. A
while ago. My friend Isaac was studying this and I
was actually traveling around with him in twenty nineteen through
Sonora and various sky islands in the American Southwest when
he was out there sampling and collecting and sampling different
paridley species. But it's a really cool I wanted to
see U. Paridalis Storophila, which is the New Mexico rock daisy.
And this is a really cool group of plants because
they've had an adaptive radiation throughout the American Southwest, you know,
basically speciating on sky islands, so they would get you know,
the idea of what this is called this typical You know,
you've got a larger population that then gets split up
into different groups and isolated, much like happened with the
California cypresses. The genus has sparaciprus, so you know, it's
it's a classic case of just good old allopatric a speciation.
But you know, if you can think of it, the
way I always thought of it, like with the cypresses,
was imagine you have in this I guess this works
for the rock daisies too, but you got imagine there's
like a big valley and a river runs through it,
and then some ship for brain humans roll roll up.
You know, after millions of years of this valley, this
this plant one splant plant species growing in this big
broad valley that's bordered on all sides by mountains. And
they decide they're gonna damn the river and basically flood
the valley. But in this valley there's these little hills
and the tops of the hills would be above the
water level of the reservoir that then fills the valley.
Once that valley, that dam is put up. And so
this plant species that grows all throughout this valley, but
it also grows on tops of these hills, and they're
all exchanging genes. Well, this doesn't work so well. Imagine
the hills are farther, much farther apart, and when they
can't exchange polland the plants can't exchange pollen when they're
on these hills. Anyway, to point this, the valley gets flooded,
the population in the lowlands gets in the lower areas
gets wiped out by the inundation, and then now you've
just got these isolated hills that can no longer. You know,
the gene flow is restricted. There's no pollen flow between
between these plants anymore. The pollen vector, whether it's insect
or wind, can't go between the hills. And so now
you've got these basically islands in this reservoir, each with
its own, its own population of what started as a
single species. And then as time goes on, since you
know these plants, these populations are restricted from each other,
they're no longer sharing genes. They start the speciating according
to the different climates and environments on each island. Now
remember this is an analogy, so it's got to be.
It doesn't it doesn't work so well. But that's basically
what happened with the Sky Islands in the Southwest is
the climate changed and you had, you know, whatever conditions
existed five hundred thousand, one million years ago that were
somewhat uniform in the lower elevations, probably much more music
and more more pleasant for plant life, easier for plants
to grow in that it starts drying and the lowlands
dry up become deserts. The plants, of course are able
to move over time just by seed dispersal, gradually up
to more beneficial growing conditions and higher elevations, but they're
also becoming isolated. So this one population is now broken
up into twenty or thirty different populations subpopulations that then
become their new species. And so that's what happened, not
only with the California cypresses Haspero cyprus. There's like ten
species in California. A lot of them are fucking cool
and really really beautiful plants, but they're restricted to certain
soil types like gabbro or serpentine or whatever. That's also
what happened with the peridles, the rock daisies. And to
make this plant lineage, which is just again a little
fucking daisy looking thing, to make it even cooler is
that they only grow these ones, at least this clade,
they only grow out of cracks and rock walls, So
they're cosmo fights. A cosmo fight is a plant that
grows out of a crack in a rock wall. Now,
I wonder if you got, like a plant that grows
out of concrete retaining walls in cities, is that still
technically a cosmo fight, A ruteral cosmo fight, probably I
would call it that. But anyway, traveling around with Isaac
in twenty nineteen when he was doing his PhD, and
this is what got me interested in this lineage in
this clade, and so I learned there was a new
Mexico one that I hadn't seen yet, so I wanted
to go see it. My fucking camera died too, My
nice camera for taking nice pictures died when I got there.
The battery, I didn't have any extra batteries in the battery.
Shit the bed. But it was a short hike down.
We were like six thousand foot elevations, so it's transitioned
from Chihuahua desert to the higher elevation dug fir forests
in the Sacramento Mountains. But it was a was always intermediate,
so you're getting some of the stuff from up above.
You could tell it's the climate's getting a little bit
more conducive to plant life. It's not just creoso bush,
scrub and misk like it is at four thousand feet.
But uh, but we're not right. We're not quite at
the dug fur force yet, which meant a lot of
them looked like shit. There was a lot of branch
die back, I guess from a tussock moth, which is
I think it native. I think that the dug fer
tussick month is native. But I know I had seen
a paper where they were not a paper, a news
report where the tussock moth was causing branches to just
ebb size from planted dug furs in Santa Fe. Have
you ever been to Santa Fe before? Has anyone ever
been banned from Santa Fe before? It seems like a
really easy town to get banned from. Uh, it's like
the Berkeley of New Mexico. Is that is that right?
Or what about tows you anyway? Uh? The point is
we were. We went on this nice little hike going
down and it's all limestone affiliates. There was Sydney at
Tenuifolio there, which is Chihuahua desert daisy bush basically asta racy,
great in a native plant garden. I got a bunch
in my yard. They do great, happy as a pig,
and shit in full sun. As long as you water them.
Every once in a while they take take off and
they can turn into like a five foot easily hedgeable
bush with daisies that come off of it, very waxy leaves,
pleasant smells and leaves too. Skeleton leaf GoldenEye is the
common name. I don't know where the fuck that name
came from, but that was there. There was Coberlinius spinosa,
which of course is a monotypic family. It's the only
species in the family uh photosynthetic stems. You know, the
taper into sharp spines looks like it looks like a
crucifixion bush. Which there's like, you know, two other two
or three other plant species that do that, Castilla and
morai Castillas duertie and uh Kenosia halakanta. But oh and
a bunch of Dasilirium wheeler right too, which is a
beautiful So it's the blue sodol I want to get
seeds of that. That's Ailirium. Sodos are easy to grow.
They just take a while. And I feel like, you know, well,
the seeds won't germinate unless they're at seventy degrees fahrenheit
or less. They don't like a lot of heat. I mean,
I don't know if it's exactly seventy degrees fair hut,
but you just you don't want these things to be hot.
You don't want it hot in the you know, when
you're trying to germinate these things, you don't want it
ninety degrees fahrenheit. So what is it in Celsius it's
what's the equation. It's fahrenheit degrees divided by two minus
what is it thirty? Oh my bad, it's it's it's
subtract thirty from the fahrenheit temperature, then divide by two.
So when you're doing fahrenheit the celsius, subtract thirty from
the fahrenheit temperature, so it would be ninety minus thirty.
It's sixty divided by two. It's thirty degrees celsius rough estimate,
and then celsius the fahrenheit is just the exact reverse that.
Multiply by two, then add thirty, So like you know,
twenty degrees celsius times two'd be forty forty plus thirty
seventy degrees fahrenheit, which actual is like sixty eight degrees fahrenheit.
But that's that's a good conversion. Now I just need
a proper one for meters to feet because it's not
always so easy as divide by three anyway. But so yeah,
so that's the Lariu wheel. I was there Cobralinius spinosa
condalia worn nakii, which is ramnasy. It's also got spines
that just taper it the sharp points very reduced leaves,
linear leaves, and tiny fucking flowers that look like sion.
Note this's flowers or is the zeiphis flowers you know,
is the snapomorphies of ramnacy or just even the gestalt
of ramnacy in dry areas. Ramnacy the Buckdorne family of course,
very diverse in dry areas. That was down there, and
then well really surprised me when you get so I
knew this thing grew out of rock. I knew this
peridley species. Now at Lefami it grew out of rock.
And so I was looking for the rock out crops
which were down at the base of the canyon where
the river has cut through, and so anyway, so we
kept walking and then sure enough we hit the rock
out crop like right there. Boom was First off, I
saw this fucking salvia species that I prior to this
I had only read about. I'd never seen it. Salvia pinguefolia,
which is a bush sage. Smells incredible. It's got purple flowers,
and it's growing. It only grows in habitat out of
pure fucking limestone. So it's a it's a it's kind
of like Salvia funaria in the Majave Desert, but it's
not as white and wooly. I mean, Salvia funerea is
an extreme, you know, because that's the driest desert in
North America, the Mojave Desert. It grows in Death Valley.
But this thing, it was still covered in pubescents. It
had some hair, but it was the leaves, aren't you know.
They don't look like a cotton swab like Salvia funerea does. Anyway,
I was, I was so fucking stoked to see this species.
And I guess it's pretty rare. It only grows in
southeastern Arizona, southern New Mexico, and then supposedly in West Texas,
you know, but probably on some rich pricks land who
won't give you access, you know, like so much. It's
it's the Texas conundrum. I'm really getting fucking tired of
that state. I love it. There's things I love about it, certainly,
not the culture, but you know, I like the plants
and the geology, some of the some of the other
shit out there anyway, So so that was really exciting
to see. And then there was a seedum. Of course,
you always find the cool shit on the rocky outcrops, right,
because it's you're going to find stuff that can grow
or that can't tolerate other conditions, it would get smothered.
And then of course you're gonna find you know, they
can the stuff you find on rocky outcrops doesn't have
any competition because a lot of shit can't grow out
of pure rock without any soil. It's just so you've
got to have drought tolerance. So you've got to be
able to grow send your roots into the cracks in
a rock wall or whatever. And so that's where the
salvia was growing. That's where this seedum was growing. Seedums
of course have you know succulent storage mechan and they
could just little fleshy, crassillaceous bastards. And there was a
cool gallium, I think it was gallium righty eye, which
is you know, bedstraw ruby ac the coffee family, but
this one had tiny red flowers. To see a gallium
with red flowers, And then the fuck else was there
and then there was a kind of serious thing. It
was just Coccinius, one of like the five different subspecies.
And then sure enough there was the perridally just growing
on this this limestone cliff thirty feet above. You know,
definitely got to be sure not to fall and break
your ass. It's a sketchy it's this sketchy fall, but
it was, you know, another variation on the theme. I've
seen so many different prittley species in New Mexico, maybe
four or five. And then there's a shif ton in
West Texas, a bunch you can't access because they're on
private land. They could go at any moment, you know,
if the land and donor sides to get rid of
them for whatever reason. But oh god, there was ah.
And then on the gypsum there were these gypsum exposures too.
You could see White Sands National Monument from the top
of the mountain range. Like when I was in the
dug Fur Force. You can look out and see this
vast expanse of white dunes, gyps some sand dunes from
the top of this mountain range. It was fucking wild.
I didn't realize, I mean, I didn't realize we were
that close, I guess. But but where we were the
spot we were hiking at six thousand feet lower down
where the peridally was, there were there were these exposures
of gypsum and they just they erode so differently. You know,
they're they're much more soluble in water, so they look
like eroding sand castles, like you'd be walking up this
limestone hill and then there's a gypsum exposure which has
a different color and texture, and the soil just suddenly
looks like this barren, eroding gray sand castle. It's got
the sand castle look to it. And that's where I
saw a cleasanthis diffusa everywhere, which is like it's a
nic tageneci. It's it's which there's a ship ton in
the desert, you know, bougain Via family, Mirabilis family. But
this thing was it's got these little, these little winged
fruits and it's it's a woody subshrub. God, it was
cool to see and it was it was like the
only thing growing on some of these gypsum exposures. And
there was another I think we saw Cipho maris, another
weird nicktag. But you know, the nicktags normally have opposite leaves,
their carry off fyle leaves, so they've got betelene pigments,
so like any pinks or reds in them, or purples
look more like the pigment you would see in a
beet or a cactus fruit than you know, the red
pigment you might see and you know something like that's
a member of the blueberry family or the rose family,
et cetera. So it was. But these things, these things
are like tough as nails. It's like growing out a
barren gypsum. And then you realize that this gypsum eroding
is what is constantly eroding from gypsum exposures like this
in these mountains is basically what formed White Sands National
Monument where they got that rare earless lizard. My friend
Spencer just saw it. I guess, fucking earless lizard. You know,
it looks like a reptilian overlord theme, like when they
don't have yours. They look really that's when I start
looking real real, you know, they look more human. It's disconcerting.
I'll say that. He showed me a picture of it.
Was disconcerting. Oh wow, you know, unrelated, but I just
got noticed that, Oh that's fucking dope. That this plant
that I thought was just a boring old sedge. No
offense to anybody that's that likes the ciperacy, but I
saw it in these ephemeral pools up in the paramo
of Costa Rica. Really weird looking monocot looked like an octopus,
was spiny tentacles upside down. When I saw it, I
looked like an isoetes. But I you know, I picked
off a leaf or two and there were I didn't
see any black sporangia, but I guess it just wasn't
producing sports at the time. But I just got word
from eye naturalist. Thank you. By the way, fucking einad Is.
It blows my mind that some people shit on that app,
mostly old Caucasian. Mentally, you shouldn't listen to them anyway.
I'm not not a hashtag, not all old Caucasian men.
But I'm just saying the only people I've heard complain
and shit on it are old, old white guys. But
uh it, professional botanists in a professional capacity, they're very professional.
They do professional work, and they're very career oriented in
the field of botany. They do wonderful things, very important things,
important work, important field work in a professional capacity for
botany in the state of Texas anyway. Yeah, but you
should listen to those people anyway. But the point is,
you know the fact that people would shit on on
I natural suppose of mine. But but this thanks to
the I naturalist uh Rafael rafaela Cuna, Rafael acunya. Excuse me,
it just it was all one word. I couldn't read
it the right way. An I naturalist went through he
was going through Allen's observations, saw it, and then he
had hit some of my observations. But I guess he didn't.
I've got so much shit up there for plants. So
he was he was going through Allen's observations, saw it,
commented Alan contacted me, said does this look like more
like an isoetes? And I said, yeah, it does. But
you know I there was. There were none reported from
the flora of the Talamanca Mountains. I guess they just
maybe they just left out Sela janella or like a potiac.
I don't know, no, because they didn't. I remember looking
up WHUPERSI a species. Anyway, I didn't see it there,
so I figured maybe there's none here. But the fucking
habitat sure seemed right. I mean, like an ephemeral shallow pond,
you know, ten inches deep. I was there in the
dry season. It was empty. We were just there in
mid July early July, and it was full. But that
was a goddamned Isoetes. And then yeah, just I normally
I've only seen one or two is Isowhetes species before,
so I wasn't entirely familiar with it. But I know
that the sporangia at the base of the leaves underwater.
I pulled some up, didn't see any and I figured, okay, well,
I don't know. I thought it was just an allocaris
because it's you know, sedges. And also there was a
mishap we had in Tasmania and I still never got
resolution on this. We were looking for this really cool
same thing, an aquatic plant that grows in ephemeral, shallow
ponds in rocky areas. That plant was Tritheria philamentosa. And
it's still I still never got any resolution on this.
You know, this is a weird basal angiosperm. Let's see. Yeah,
and I still don't know if it was Tritheria or
if it was a sedge. I think it was Tritheria,
and I collected a little piece for DNA sampling and
sent it to Allen, but I think he lost it.
He's got too much shit. To sequence anyway, really doing
good work. Though by a way, I wish it was
as easy to DNA sequence plants. If anyone out there
wants to teach me, so I can teach others, and
you work in a DNA sequencing lab. Well, also there's
he's just using its for a lot of this stuff
which works with plants. It gets a little bit more complicated.
There's like five or six more gene regions. But if
anyone out there wants to teach me and needs help
in the lab, I will come work in your lab
for free if you could teach me DNA sequencing, and
then so I can teach others, so we can start
doing what all the funky people are doing with plants,
you know, which is citizen sciences, not people who work
in a professional capacity. They don't work professionals than not experts,
but just citizens, you know, citizens scientists, criminal scientists. Starts
sequencing plants and then uploading those sequences of various gene
regions to GenBank. It could really do a lot of good.
I mean, the more people we have sequencing stuff the better.
But anyway, if you want to teach me, that's oh,
I don't care where you are. If you're in fucking Germany,
I'll go to German. If you're in Hong Kong, I'll
go to Hong Kong. Teach me sequencing. Put the word
out there, please, and then I will fucking teach other people.
I'll do what Alan's been doing for fungi. But Tritheria
philamentosa was thought to be It was thought to be
something else. What was it it said or something, and
then when it was sequenced, it was discovered. Holy shit,
this thing is in one of the more basal angiosperm orders,
the Nimphiales. Along with along with the quote water lilies
and all, this one of the families in Nymphiales, right,
it's the order after amber l a Lees, which is
the most basal of the orders of angiosperms with flowering plants. Yeah,
Hi to Telac Cabambase and ninmphi ac are the three families,
and Nymphi a Lees, which is the nmphi Alies. I
need to remember anytime it ends in Alies. It's an order.
Ninphi Alis is sandwich between amberrell A Lei's everybody knows Amberella.
If you don't, you're really fucking them. You gotta learn
about You gotta read about amborella. You know, maybe if
you're just new to this, read about amberrella. It's a
fucking fascinating plant. Doesn't get enough respect. It's so so
weird looking. I've seen it in New Caledonia in those humid,
humid tropical forests at a thousand meters. Maybe they're less
than that. Maybe it's like three thousand. Maybe it's less
than three thousand feet. I don't know, but there's flying
foxes and tree ferns where they grow. It's an understory plant,
but it's the basalmost angiosperm wild ninpa Ale's the sandwichween
amberrell A Leis and Austro Bailey Alies, which is where
Skysandra and strabaili ac Sky's in. I gotta make that
that's the rare plant from the Atlanta area. I got
to make that video. Still put that out there. Really
been slacking on the videos. I apologize. I need a
fucking break, man. I've been going through hard. I'm doing
other stuff. You know, I'll be back on a game soon.
Don't worry. But uh hind to tell ac I think
is the family try Thuria t r I t h
u r I a if you if you need some
shit to read and like a lunch breaker, some read
about try thuria. It's a fucking weird one. Ask deep
Seek about tri Thuria philamintosa and he's in you AI,
you know, using AI to read research papers and teach
yourself Spanish or teach yourself, you know, plant taxonomies. Not
it's not like you're making, you know, posters of cartoon
dogs driving fucking fire trucks and jerking off. Actually could
you do that? How much? How much water would that take?
How much water and energy would it take to make
a dirty cartoon AI of a Dalmatian in a fire
truck driving a fire truck, but maybe like with a
scowl on, like he just stole it and jerking off
in the driver's seat. Only my sick mind could think
of something as ridiculous that, But it is kind of
funny at the same time. What a waste of energy
and water for the modern age. But anyway, read about tritheria.
But that was my that was my bad running because
when you get to these these highly reduced monocot look
and aquatic bastards, it can be you're looking at such
subtle traits, especially if there's no reproductive structure that it's
a real mind fuck trying to look at what trying
to figure out what you're looking at. So my tritheria
identification on a naturalist is still unresolved. I think it's
not a research grade yet and it shouldn't be. But
let's see. Miguel looked at it. He said, I think
it's too unlike any of the other possibilities. But you know,
you need someone who's a real sedge nerd to really
come at this. And because any so much cool shit
can look like sedges. And I'm not saying that sedges
aren't cool, but Cyperasi I lose. I lose a little
bit of my enthusiasm, you know, unless you're talking about
you know, some of the the what is the button
sedge in Tasmania, Jim no, sheenis Spherrocephalus, which is a
keystone plant and also the foundation of much of the
peatlands that comprise the acidic soils of a lot of Tasmania,
which and you getting you need those acidic peatlands to
get all the cool carnivorous plants like drossers. And I
gotta go back to fucking Australia. I love it there.
Australia is so nice. They're so nice. You know, they
really are not as fucked up as we are. I
like guns, but I you know, I could gladly do
without them. You know, the sad fact of the reality
in the United States is that guns are never going away.
And you know, you mix that with the insanity and
stupidity here. You just got to own a gun. It's
just the way it is. You need to have a
you need to have a gun, and you need to
know how to shoot. If you live in the United States.
I would not miss them if I moved to Australia,
though I might still go hunting for feral cats and pigs.
I was some guy sent me a video of h
of this uh Bogan this AUSSI is Bogan offensive? It's not.
It's not offensive, right, It's like redneck here some people
self identify as Bogans. But this bogan shooting feral cats
and pigs using all this like thermal vision sculpts and shit,
wild crazy stuff. We just got two more feral pigs
at Thorn scrub by the way. Drew Drew Niedo went
out there and he they died in the trap. Which
sucks for them. You know, they were they just got
too hot, but they were destroying uh, you know, probably
hundreds of plants, uh in the meantime, but they died
in the trap. And so now it's just a vulture party.
And we didn't have to use any bullets, which means
we didn't you know, especially for the I used lead
free bullets now. But because I don't want to poison
the vultures in the car cars, you know, and those
are my guys, I want I want to take care
of them, you know, And so I think how many
have we gotten now? Eight? We'll be doing this for
the rest of Thorn Scrubb's existence as a conservation property,
because the pigs aren't going away. It's just like weeding,
you got to keep doing it. And there's so many
of them. It's so sad, I mean, the damage they're doing.
We'd like to eventually fence the whole property, but that's
gonna cost twenty or thirty grand. But anyway, Yeah, I'm excited.
We're gonna we're probably gonna have a I guess they're
gonna at some point this winter. We're gonna invite the
comanches down to have a prayer ceremony, then a paoty
ceremony maybe and then just fence off more of the
the gardens, so the wild gardens, the wild payoty gardens.
But anyway, but yeah, I gotta get back to Australia.
You know I could do without. You know, I'll gladly
trading the gun thing for the free or affordable healthcare
and just a generally more pleasant uh less idiotic, which
isn't saying much civic populous. And plus the plant diversity
is just epic. You know, the lapids, the venomous snakes.
They're cool from a distance, but they still freak me
the fuck out. Remember seeing a tiger snake in the
alpine areas of Tasmania, a melanistic tiger snake, and just
being like, you're not expecting to see a cobra relative
in a in a place where you've got to like
wear a daygo tea and like a thick hooded sweatshirt
to stay warm. But that's what goes on, you know,
chillin in the athro Texas forests of highlands of Tasmania.
But yeah, anyway, God, there were still some videos from Tasmania.
I didn't finish making like we saw that weird quote
the shrimp. It was an arthropod. It's like a weird arthropod.
It's a Gondwana and arthropod that's got relatives in Chile
and in Tasmania, Like the just dispersed across southern Chile,
in South America and Tasmania. So it's you know, total
gondwan and reliced. And I didn't put that video in there.
I got a fuck man. It breaks my heart. You know,
some of the stuff I gotta do, I wish I
just it's it's hard though. Editing sucks. It takes a
lot of time and you kind of have to put
life on hold for it. But yeah, the Jim nosenis
sphere ofcephalis there. It's a really cool button sedge. It
sends up a scape and then it's got this this
button like inflorescent stuff top looks like a little ride
kind of looks like a button willow in fluorescence, like
a little spherical globe on a rod. And then when
those roots die, it makes those peat lands. And that's
the same phenomenon I saw happen in the Paramo with
Cheskea subtests a lot of this bamboo that's just fucking everywhere,
and when it dies, it makes this peat material that
you know is highly acidic, uh, and it causes this
you know, this basically the sub straight of this plant
community to be vary acid its only a few things
can thrive there. And I think it also is part
of what helps the forest surrounding forests because you're not
in the alpine area. It fills alpine, but there's trees
can grow at this altitude, at ten thousand feet in
you know, nine degrees north latitude. And I think that
acidic soil that peatland created by the roots of the Chiskea,
the New World bamboo excellent fur caning is what helps
keep the forest from moving in and also dictates what
grows there. I mean, it's such a bizarre habitat. It's
like peatlands with this bamboo that gets six feet tall,
forming these little clumps of islands and then these intermittent ponds,
which is where this Isohetes was growing. You know, Isoetes
relative of the lepidodendron scale trees from the carboniferous. So
you know, I did think that was the isohetes thing
when I I first saw it crossed my mind, but
I didn't see any sporangios, so I just put it
down as a sedge, you know. But yeah, tri Thuria
isowetes much cooler than sedges. No offense, all right. In
other news, I gotta give a shout out to whoever
sent me this BLM Colorado Special Status Plant Species Guide
revised March twenty twenty five. It's someone asked me. I
forget whether it was over Instagram or email, but they right,
they wrote me and said, hey, we just put this out.
You want one? I said, sure, and uh, I guarantee
there this this kind of cool shit is going to
stop since Trump's dumbass defunded, you know, basically defunded every
It's amazing how dystopic it has gotten. I try to
not keep it too political here because there's Trumpers that
I want to, you know, get into my cult. But
it's just this shit. I mean, if you're still for
this fucking guy, I mean, we could still get down.
Don't talk to me about anything that requires intellect because
I just can't trust you anymore, but we can still
get down and talk and hang up. But fucking hey,
it's just it's unbelievable, you know, the shit he's doing.
Not to mention that, you know, kidnapping people all the
ice shit is disgusting. Again. I just I don't know
how we got here in this country, but I'm starting
to you know, I want by the end of my life,
no matter how long I live, I want my time
in the US only to be you know, moonlighting and
only coming back here because I have to very very intermittent.
It's just it's it's not getting any better. It's a dystopia.
The public's only getting dumber. People are so bamboozled here,
it's just fucking mind blowing. And not to mention, we've
created the ugliest landscape in the first world. You know
that's bad for the physical, mental, and spiritual health. Just
driving from parking lot, the parking lot completely isolated from
each other, ugly plastic scigns. But you've heard me go
through this before. Parking lots fucking used car dealerships or
just car dealerships in general, then't have to be you us,
you know it could be. It's normally you don't make
a lot of money and used cars. You make most
of the money selling the new ones and duping people
into you know, into basically getting locked into a finance contract,
so they spend twenty k more than they would have
otherwise if they were able to just buy it hour. Anyway,
I forget how even got on that fucking disjointed rant.
Oh yeah, I was just shitting on the Trump administration. Anyway.
This is a wonderful guide I got sent. It's spiral bound,
no hardcover, it's all paper. They got a little plastic
thing on the back, but it is. The photos are incredible.
I'm not sure who compiled it, but it's all these
rare plants for Colorado, and of course the coolest ones
occur on barren landscapes like gypsum or some sort of
limestone talus. Here's Ipomophsis pollyantha, Gentianella tortiosa. I mean, I
look at these landscapes and they're all somewhat low elevation
for Colorado. They're not high up. They're not like alpine
Ariogonum tumulosum woodside buckwheat. They just look incredible. There are
places where I would see out a map and I'd see,
you know, the contour lines of the betting planes of
the limestone from a satellite map, and the generally barren,
whitish gray nature of the substrate, and immediately know there
was cool shit there. They may not be hyper diverse,
but what's growing there is probably going to be restricted.
And you know, have that kind of matted cushion look
to it. I mean, just really fucking crazy stuff. I mean,
plants shouldn't be growing here. It's high, it's exceptionally dry
and windy, it gets really cold winters. But there's stuff
just thriving. Tons of astragglers, you know, and most of
the species in this book, this little booklet are astraggoluss.
And you know there's not many different genera. You know,
you've got your family's apac, plantagenac. You know, penstemen's simopterouslamation.
Oh there's cactus in here, Sclero Cactus dasoni grows in
western Colorado near Grand Junction Fizaria. There's a few physarias,
of course, a bunch of penstemens, bunch of astragolis. What
is this parthenium looking think Parthenium ligulatum. It's like a
dwarf matted parthium that grows in northwestern Colorado by a
Dinosaur National Monument, only known from four populations, probably grows
in Utah too. Holy shit, what is this Oxytropius bessii
variety ob napiformist Bessie's loco weed. And it's grown on
these shale barrens with you know, very sparse plant cover.
And then there's just these giant pink flushes of flowers.
There's Oreo carrier ra Lindsayi baragein ac and a little
white popcorn flowers. Everything's covered in hairs. Almost every plant
is covered in tiny hairs. Oreo carrier revelii named after
Jim James Reveal obviously that grows in southwestern Colorado. It's
got maps on every species page. I mean, this is
a Whoever put this together did a great fucking job.
This is an excellent booklet. I am inspired. Whoever sent
this to me? Who sent this? I can't find out
who sent this to me either. I searched my Instagram messages,
I searched Gmail. I couldn't find shit. This thing's amazing.
Look at this. They got landscape photos too, wonderful photographs.
You got habitat photos as well as flower and leaf photos.
It looks fucking spectacular. Neoperia lithophila, which is a carrot
it's APAC bills, Neoperia and my friends have photos in it.
Matt Berger, Matt reala damn man. I don't know. I
don't know, but if you can get your hands on it, Oh, Gudirizia,
Ela Games. I don't even know that. But tons of
unheard of, little known plants. If you live in uh,
if you live in Colorado, I would only put this
on your your to do list, you know, acquiring this
booklet somehow. I don't know if it's online again BLM
Colorado Special Status Plant Species Guide from the US Department
of the Interior Bureau of Land Management. But Trump's going
to cancel all that. Don't worry. It's so counterintuitive, the
shit this fucking idiot's doing. I saw another There was
a video today showing the graph of China's electricity production
compared to the United States. Is electricity production and China
is I mean, granted it's all feeding the tumor, but
still you need electricity if you're It just goes against
everything that the United that would be beneficial to the
United States. And you know, China's is shooting up. The
US is is just staying at a mid level plateau
because Trump's canceling all the renewables and oil and gas.
He's just you know, he's just pleasing the oil and
gas oligarchs, which have done such a great job of
duping the American public, you know. And I don't think
the US is investing in nuclear at all, which they
probably should. I don't know. It's just fucking nuts, man.
I mean, this country is just so it's so toast.
It's so over and sad, you know. But you know,
you spend forty years defunding education and you know, widening
the wealth gap and rewarding oligarchs. That's what's gonna happen. Anyway.
Let's look at the I don't know if you've ever
heard of California Carnivores. It's a carnivorous plant nursery. It's
a my friend Damon's carnivorous plant nursery, and I think
it's sin Sebastopol. And I used to visit it when
I lived in California. I would go visit him and
see all the wild shit he's got growing on. He's
got heliamphoros growing, and he's got him growing under lights
in a in a soda fridge because there of course
from the Tipui habitats. They like it much cooler. He's
got Darlingtonia's, he's got a bunch of drossers, and he's
hybridizing a bunch of the penthes. But he hybridized this
in the penthes. It's basically a living rat trap. It's
a hybrid between a Nepenthes species that you know, is
a true carnivore eats other things, and another the Penthes
species that's known as the toilet Nepenthes. It's the lid
of the pitcher leaf produces an exitit that shrews go
and eat, and then they shit inside the the trap.
It's funny. It's like a gg Allen the Penthes. But
he hybridized these two. And so the lid that holds
the exitit, which is the bait for the shrew. And
again this Nepenthes lowii doesn't eat the shrew. It just
gets the nitrogen from the feces once the shrew takes
a shit, you know, because these these little guys they
shit a lot. If you've ever noticed rodents, and they
shit a lot. But this the lid doesn't, it doesn't.
It's not laid flat. It's upright so it basically this
hybrid that he created still lures the rodents in, but
then they end up falling into these giant pitchers. And
he shows Oh, this nepenthes digesting how efficiently it digests
the rodent is mind blowing. I mean it's there's only
like a few bones left. It's like a mealy soup.
It's fucking well. Here, we'll watch it right now.
Speaker 3: This is actually the penthe's truncata by a low eye.
And here at the nursery for the first time ever,
I did something that it's really kind of amazing, and
we brought my nephew here, Sam, who just wants to
see this. So Loli has a complicated interaction with the
tree shrew in Borneo, and it produces this exitit underneath
the lid. It's pure lowye, that is, and it draws
in the tree shrews and they eat that exitit, and
then they reward the plant by pooping into the picture,
which is kind of gross, but that's that's food for plants.
Speaker 1: For most plants, that's what they need.
Speaker 3: So when you cross it with truncata, which is one
of the biggest of all the nepenthees, you get this
kind of crazy monster plant that has an exitit for
drawing in rodents, but it's big enough.
Speaker 1: To actually eat them.
Speaker 3: And so here this year, this picture back here actually
pot all.
Speaker 1: On its own a rat or a mouse.
Speaker 3: We're not really sure what's inside there, but we saw
hair floating and then that's all sunk to the bottom
and you can see it's made this explosive growth because
now it's making all these huge pictures, and this pictures,
you know, they're like surreally big. So what we're gonna
do now is.
Speaker 1: We're gonna cut. And that's what they do. If I
if I like, if I every time I get the
mosquitos out of the mosquito trap and I put them
on a pinguicula, or I got a little in the
penthes hybrid too. I'm not much in a the penties
because they'd be a pain in the answer to take care.
But there's one that just sits in water like all
the carnivorous plants under lights in the ac because of
where I live, it's too fucking hot. And every time
I dump mosquitos in there, you get bursts and new growth.
And same thing with the pings. You feed them nitrogen
you get burst of new growth. It's pretty cool to see.
Speaker 3: Put this off because it's digested all the soft parts,
we think, and gotten a lot of benefit from it.
Speaker 1: Otherwise we leave it on there. We're gonna cut it
and then we're gonna go over here, jump it into
the soil sift here.
Speaker 3: To see what's actually inside.
Speaker 1: Let's do that right here, right, he's got a sifter.
He's got a soil shifter. He's pouring out the water. Oh,
it looks like puke, but there's no large particles in there.
Speaker 3: You know it's weird is that it actually doesn't smell.
It's grossy shack concoction looks there's really no smell.
Speaker 1: It looks like bean puke.
Speaker 3: There's not smelling off because the penthes are actually properly digesting.
So there's acids and enzymes in there. But then there's
also antibiotics and anti fosls that keep it from rotting.
And you can see almost everything is gone. The bones
are gone. There's a little foot.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that is bizarre.
Speaker 3: There's a little foot that's left.
Speaker 1: Disgusting.
Speaker 3: There's a little segment of vertebrae and the teeth are left.
But I think if we left it in there, it
would have digested all the bones and everything, so plants,
the vertebrates, mammals.
Speaker 1: Even that's fucking fast. You know, that thing would have
wonderful applications. Is a rat trap in a city if
you could find a way to you know, if you
could find a way to provide the conditions it needs
in any you know, large American city where you could
you know, create a moderate and mild enough climate for it,
but still have it be outside. I mean, the applications
are endless. But uh, I wonder could a Norway rat
shoo its way? Maybe maybe you gotta get it. But
this looked like a big fucking rat in there. I
don't know. It's pretty amazing though. He basically the guy
basically hybridized a living rat trap. All right, that's hour
and forty minutes. This has gone on far too long. Anyway,
I'll try to get another one of these out next week.
I'll be fucking around gallivanting throughout New Mexico possibly southern
Colorado for the next week, then headed back to Texas
for a brief spell doing some stuff at Thorn Scrub,
and then heading up to Chicago and Minnesota for September.
So if you're in those areas and know something interesting
going on, get at me Crimepace. A body doesn't it
Gmail And yeah, I guess that's if you want to
order thorn Scrub shirts. We still got a bunch. Email
me about that too. Stickers are twenty bucks for nine
and uh, you know I did to draw on the
envelopes depending on how much time I have, so I'll
give you a nice little doodle or something too. But
other than that, shout out to everybody who arranged the
New Mexico Mycological Society Fest this year. It was fun
and it was uh, it was a good time, so
fucking New Mexico, the Sacramento Mountains. Uh yeah, all right,
Well thanks for listening, have a grocery day, go fuck
yourself by