Speaker 1: Okay, welcome to another episode on a crime pace that
bond he doesn't podcast. I'm here with my buddy Johnny Altamonte.
We're in the Philippines and he's with the Philippines Taxonomic Initiative,
which is an NGO. You started that, right, nob robbed it?
Okay anyway, but we're in this we're basically we were
in the van for like four hours up to the
edge of where the land clearance stops in the actual
wild habitat begins, and that's where we are. So tell
me what. I'm going to take photos of this mellowstone
while you're telling me, But tell me what Philippines Taxonomic
Initiative is. How you guys got started doing this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it was started by rab.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, that guy just has a like long
standing love for plants. He's a completely self taught taxonomist
slash botanist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he didn't go to school for this, right, No.
Speaker 3: Not at all, not at all.
Speaker 2: It was just really into plants. I kind of just
went so far down that rabbit hole, you know. And
then now he's like an expert on orchids into Philippines
had a couple of Taxa. So he's also an next
in like I think Amorphophallus and some others as well.
Speaker 1: Where's he from? Is he from Manila too? You guys
are all from Manila mostly or what?
Speaker 2: No, So he is from somewhere into Visia's originally and
then Palawan I think is where he really started doing
a lot of work.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean he also now is based out
of Manila.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean he put it up I think back
in twenty nineteen, I think informally, and then twenty twenty
is like really when it started kicking off, he was.
Speaker 1: Saying he kind of realized you needed to do an
NGO for what purposes, like to get funding and to
get permits.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So I mean the Philippines we have a lot of
good policy in place to kind of like protect everything.
I mean obviously implementation is another thing. Yeah, but it
also means if you're a researcher and if you want
to do things the right way, there's a really long
bureaucratic process of getting permits if you want to study,
and if you want to collect, and if you want
to describe anything new. So yeah, he put up an
NGO called the Philippine Taxonomic n issition of and we've
basically been using the ORG guess sort of a different
way to get all the different permits, the gratuitive permits,
like we have one here for example, in this forest.
Speaker 3: And basically let.
Speaker 2: Us go out and just study collect orbarian specimens and
uh yeah, mostly to describe a describe new species or
even just what we're doing here is pretty cool too.
We're providing like a checklist of flowering plants for the
forest and ultimately that turns into species protection plans, you know,
predicted area management plans.
Speaker 1: So like this area is understudied, there has been very.
Speaker 3: Super super understudied.
Speaker 2: We started doing maybe like one or two expeditions here
a year since twenty twenty, and we've i think more
than doubled the species checklist.
Speaker 1: Since Jesus Christ. That's crazy. Yeah, what made you guys
pick this area?
Speaker 2: So one of the foresters, Quia Leo Yudasco, he's been
like a champion here. He invited rab over just because
he wanted to, you know, rap to kind of come
out and check out some of the new stuff. He
thought we're new, but you know, really didn't have sort
of the experience to at that time to really describe anything. So, yeah,
Rab came out the first time.
Speaker 3: That was around like.
Speaker 2: Literally when COVID hit, like when the Philippines locked down.
Speaker 3: Rab was out here in the field.
Speaker 1: He was at the spot we were just saying, he said, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. And ever since then, you know,
we've gotten invited back over and over again, and que
Leo is now the assistant Protected Area Superintendent of this
whole place.
Speaker 1: But there, but I mean overall, you see, there's like
a value towards what's left of the remaining habitat though, right.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, it's insane. I mean we're we're hopefully a
lot of the work that we've been doing here ends
up with this place becoming a protected area just so
we can really just stop all the.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, you said, it's every year, it's been worse.
Every year they just take more, and it's just for
agriculture or what are.
Speaker 2: They Yeah, mostly for agriculture sometimes also just for I
mean people just coming here to settle also, right, So
I mean that place you saw that that lit the
carpet is flowering, Yeah, that wasn't there the first time
we were here.
Speaker 1: No ship and then they just clear it's just open land.
It's there's nothing there. Yeah, exactly, well there's nothing there, exactly.
Well there's nothing there now, right, Yeah, I know. But
uh yeah, so I mean every year it gets a
little bit worse. People are clearing, people are settling, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean the place where staying is a it's a
fucking resort for God's sake.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the people coming in from like lower down to
build like resorts. And there's also a lot of development too.
Speaker 1: I mean, oh, the place where staying supposed to be
a resort, that's a resort of the SpongeBob.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's a resort technically.
Speaker 1: Or it was started as a guy. You can hear
the fucking cutting right now. Man, Yeah damn. So how
does it the land clear and start off? It starts
off as logging and then just turns into but it's
with the idea that it's going to remain clear and
then yeah, people will be able to comments gorgeous farm there.
Speaker 3: Look at these birds though there's playing around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the man, daybreak today sounded really nice. That was
pretty fucking incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's crazy that we hear logging right over there.
I mean, the forces are probably going to try to
maybe stop it.
Speaker 1: It's the tour man. It's just it's just what it
does society. That's what I just don't get is how
do people not value this at all? And it's everywhere,
it's not specific to any one reason. Certainly it's like
worse in some areas. God, you can really see the
poor cydal anthers on these fucking melastomes. Oh god, it's
so crazy.
Speaker 3: We'll also see a probably a couple of Mendelias later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I fucking go slow. What was it you
were telling me? You guys made some patches or something
about What did you say? Uh?
Speaker 3: What was I saying?
Speaker 1: We were talking about going slow yesterday the Botanist pace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, the Slow Hikers Club. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly
what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys made you made some nice merch too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: That's always fun, just kind of making stuff out of
like whatever ideas we have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whoever does your graphics man, they're fucking yeah, what
is this like us again? I guess uh, oh no,
that's NYC. Look at that those massive.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, shoot, I forgot.
Speaker 1: Stipules in the middle.
Speaker 3: I forget that.
Speaker 1: So how did you How did you guys hook up
with Jason?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Rob found him somewhere. Yeah, I mean Rob's good at that.
He kind of picks people who are kind of like
have an interest in that. And most of the people,
with a couple of exceptions in the in the organization,
most of them don't have a formal background bompany. Yeah,
and so Jason started out as a teacher, like a
like a high school teacher, like an elementary school teacher.
Speaker 3: But he's always left plants. He's also self thought.
Speaker 2: And then he just finishes Masters in botany after kind
of working with BT I. Oh really, and that's now
he's teaching at the at the University of the Philippines.
Speaker 1: Oh dope, So now he lectures on Yeah. I feel
like a formal education sometimes is a hindrance because it
just I feel like it locks people into this world
that may kill the joy in some ways. I don't
know what is it? What Jason's right here this with
the the these giant coreaceous leaves and then the stipules
in the middle. A beautiful red on that new leaf too.
Oh it's pubescent. What is this neoclea. That's not that's
ruby ac.
Speaker 2: That's all with the they're they're flowering by.
Speaker 1: The giant in florescence. Yeah, it looks like a cephalanthis
in fluorescence, which is also ruby acre. Oh wow, whine mania.
Speaker 4: Or what yeah? Formerly queen manya it's now terla.
Speaker 1: Oh they split it up. Yeah that's good.
Speaker 3: Was that a chainsaw?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I recorded it.
Speaker 3: God what cuele was here?
Speaker 2: So quel Leo the foster one who like brought us
here in the first place. That guy is like a
like batman or something.
Speaker 1: Oh really get them? Oh yeah, what happens? It's villagers
that come up. Where do people come from?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean around the area, honestly, So a couple
of them are oh come, so I mean there are
there are indigenous people's here, so sometimes I mean they
have a right. I mean that's the ancestor the main
But then you also have a lot of settlers coming
in from like the lowlands.
Speaker 1: Holy fuck is that a What the fuck is that?
That's an actual rock that looks like a satchel. It
looks like a black velvet satchel the size of a
fucking bulldozer. What is this? Man? Is all that's just
moss covering it. Huh? Or is that the actual?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, what is that material? Is that ultra matic? I
don't know what the fuck this is? Oh yeah, oh yeah,
scrape it?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, huh, you're right.
Speaker 1: I can't tell what that materials made out of.
Speaker 3: No idea.
Speaker 1: But this is all This is all cleared land. This
was all forests and now it's cleared. And then you
can see where the forest starts.
Speaker 3: Literally there's a straight line with.
Speaker 1: So you've got a host of uh, pioneer species. I
guess some of these are probably native, and a lot
of these are neotropical. I saw a lot of neotropical
aster racy.
Speaker 4: What is this that?
Speaker 1: That's a the fuck that's insane? A leaya? We got
a slight we got leaves are about eight inches long,
petials like half an inch, and then these spikes of
tiny flowers. Oh that's cool, man, got bud Laya's everywhere.
The ficus we were seeing yesterday, I should say, for
the record, we're fucking insane. We saw massive ficus that
were enormous around with buttress roots. Then we saw little
vines too, right, and then that's crazy, and that Aristolochia
was pretty remarkable too. It's another one pseudo palma.
Speaker 4: It's a ficus that we have.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ I had no idea there was so much
diversity in ficus. Who's getting who's getting blown up? Well? Yeah,
so these these flower spikes are like nearly ten inches
to a foot long each with like, uh, you know,
these tiny white, four pedal flowers and a typical you know,
bud laya, and you know what the species on this.
Speaker 4: I think that's a shot.
Speaker 1: We're getting My body's uh, these little puppers, these little
what are little chihuah WA's what is it?
Speaker 4: Those are local mixed?
Speaker 1: Hey, Boddy, got a pepperoni? Now you run away? That's
what I thought. They all they all run away?
Speaker 2: Well something the a bipe though, trying not to try
not to get a bit.
Speaker 1: What is this? This is? Is this native to? This
is baraji and ac What is this thing?
Speaker 2: Sorry, Jason is getting excited about.
Speaker 1: Oh that's the magnolia we're going to find. Come here, buddy,
come here.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's magnia.
Speaker 1: But you guys get rabies out here. Yeah, yeah, fu
I had my raby shadow still pump the little chihuahua
room if it bites me.
Speaker 3: Though, Yeah, I'll kick it.
Speaker 4: High elevation.
Speaker 1: An animal lover, and I just want to let you
know if it bites you, that it's your fault and
you should just here we get some some Yeah, look
at this magnolia.
Speaker 5: Wow, this is a I'd be good the girls a
forestation species.
Speaker 1: This orange pubescence. I've noticed this orange pubescence on a
lot of plants in tropical climates. Why is it always orange? Though?
Speaker 4: No one asks that.
Speaker 2: Isn't that like mostly like an adaptation for just to
prevent that.
Speaker 1: This sun burning new tissue. Yeah, to prevent What.
Speaker 4: Is this, Jason, it's a Jamaican thing.
Speaker 1: Oh it's Jamaican. Yeah, it's boragina see it right, Oh
it's verbonac all right, yes, sorry, I just don't know
with the white flowers. Okay, you guys have a whole
Schmorgesborg of neotropical fucking invasive species here. Unfortunate because oh yeah,
the Spaniards. Yeah, what is so? What's the Philippines history
regarding Spanish colonization? They got here one five hundred. That's
that's why we were seeing. That's what we were seeing.
The intense Catholic Schmorgesborg. The intense Catholic bonanza? It was it?
Would you say it was a Catholic bonanza yesterday?
Speaker 3: I mean, how many Jesus do you see?
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot, but I thought it was
cheating because they the one that one guy sought off
the end of the crucifix and it easier to carry, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's some of them are pretty intense. We didn't
see any of them, but some of them are like
really flagellated.
Speaker 1: Is that native?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, meotropical? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where's it? Where's it from? You know?
Speaker 4: I think it's in Mexico.
Speaker 1: So the Spanish we're bringing this stuff over for you had.
Speaker 2: The Galleon trade. So I mean there's a lot of
stuff that they're bringing over.
Speaker 1: Wow, Jesus vcs quite narcotic.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's what is it narcotic?
Speaker 1: Oh? Really? Oh it's a it'll make you sick.
Speaker 4: It'll make you high.
Speaker 1: Oh really not in a pleasant way though, in a
food poising like fever and I'm pissing out my assway. Yea,
and my electrolytes are depleted.
Speaker 3: What is that? This one? This shrub?
Speaker 1: So okay? So Rob started Philippine taxonomic Initiative and then
you guys got a grant to do this. You're electing
trip right now? Is this chrome Alina looks like it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 4: I honestly don't know.
Speaker 1: This is Odorata? Oh god, that's such a great native
where we're from, but where I'm from, but uh, yeah,
it's horrific here. I've heard this was real bed in
base of all over the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially here in all these disturbed areas.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So do you think I mean, do you oh yeah,
look there's a massive field. There's some brass like I
done there. So do you think that the the land
clearance will stop at some point if it's protected?
Speaker 3: Or yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean right now, you have like ninety plus thousand
hectors of like this forest, specifically the forest boundaries about
ninety thousand hectares. Yeah, and you have about twelve foresters
that are managing the whole place.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I mean what one forester every.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just no enforcement.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: So there's not enough money just to protect it. Once
it becomes acted area, you do get a lot more
money flowing into into the land. You also get a
lot more rights to protect it, you know, land use
will be more difficult. It's not gonna stop, but it'll
slow down.
Speaker 5: You'll still get fun with like this trying to exactly
yeah exactly, So what.
Speaker 1: Are they cutting then? Probably probably the tarotcarps.
Speaker 2: Or what yeah, yeah for a lumber.
Speaker 1: God this geology rules. Look at these rocks, they're like
they look like they're covered in black velvet. Oh yeah,
and you gotta here you can see a little bit. Okay,
it's like a granite. This looks like metamorphic almost. There's
a large grain size, but then like it's been cooked
or something, and there's this red material seeping out. You
got like a iron rich materials seeping out of it.
But there's an area where there's no none of this
bio crust. The ship is this This looks kind of
like something I saw in New Caledonia.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, like.
Speaker 1: These like uh peridotite or ga even gabbro boulders. They're
fucking massive though, they're really pretty Oh yeah, I look
on the underside you can see it. Yeah, it looks
like oh yeah, huh, I don't know what this would
be what those it's not sedimentary though, we could say that,
yeah for sure. Yeah, it's igneous and maybe metamorphic. I
don't know, but I mean, you guys have two subduction
zones on Holy fuck, how weathers. You guys have two
subduction zones on either side of the island. Right, Yeah,
there's like two subduction zones converging. It's a tectonic clusterfuck,
So there's got to be there had to have been
some uplift at some point. It last hundred million years.
Of the more deep rocks like peridotite and serpentine. You
guys have ultramatic areas too.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh yeah, a lot, a lot.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is pretty careful. Don't wander too far because
the bluetooth might not pick up the micro Oh yeah, oh,
here's that's cracked open. Okay, it's a few hours earlier,
and this fucking MIC's about to die. But we worth
these forests about four thousand feet elevation. Now, it's remarkable
that there's no mosquitos here.
Speaker 3: What is that?
Speaker 1: What do you see? It's a nice collie after ooh,
it's all shiny shit. Yeah, it's nice. So Jenny, tell
us about your pandanus obsession.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Well, honestly, the way it started was when
I first came up here.
Speaker 1: The screw pines, pandemaces, the family Pandanus. They're fucking weird.
They've got prop roots like palms. There's they're hyper species.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Philippines they have a whole bunch of them too.
But the big reason I studied them is becus no
one else does. And when else. When I came up
here with Rob and I was thinking, like, you know,
what should I focus on? He was like, you know,
nobody's studying pandemic Why did you do it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Huh, all right?
Speaker 2: So I played for this fellowship with the Zoological Society
of London called.
Speaker 3: The Edge of Existence Fellowship.
Speaker 2: It turns out pandance are all edge species that are
evolutionarily distinct and endangered.
Speaker 1: What does edge mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's uh, what is edge in reference to? Yeah,
evolutionarily distinct.
Speaker 1: Oh it's an acronym.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I forgot what gs but endangered generally endangered and
I'm a horrible edge fellow.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what it sounds for.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so they're both evolutionary distinct and there are
also some level of endangered, so like on the Ice
and Red List, and a whole bunch of the pandanas.
So most of them in the Philippines actually are edge species.
Speaker 5: What pollinates them beatles Actually.
Speaker 1: Beatles pollinate pandemics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you look at like the reason they're
so hard also to like identify, the staminate flowers only
last a day. Yeah, they last a day and then
like most like beetles eat them because they're kind of they're.
Speaker 3: Oh look at us, snowshell.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus Christ, the thing's massive. Yeah. We should also
mention we saw a mountain crab, which I didn't even
know it was a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, the stamina flowers are like really nectary,
and beetles eat them.
Speaker 3: And now I don't know where we're going. I think here.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean they look like Giana gave is the
new species that you saw, that giant one. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it looks it's like twenty feet across. Yeah,
they're six meters across.
Speaker 2: Uh, they're super massive, so getting like a leaf sample
as such a painted ass.
Speaker 1: And they've got those like weird gutter like formations in
the mid rib of the leaf.
Speaker 3: They have those pleats in the middle.
Speaker 1: But the ship has this a raspberry What the fuck
it's native? I take it or what.
Speaker 3: Probably if it's here. Oh yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's wild. That's pretty cool. So anyway, so how
do you figure out this was a new species.
Speaker 2: We thought it was this other big species called simplex,
and we just assumed it was for the longest time.
And then last August when we were here, we finally
found a fruit and it was so different from anything else.
Speaker 1: What did the fruit look like?
Speaker 3: It's just almost like a jackfruit.
Speaker 1: I guess you said it was five kilos.
Speaker 3: Yeah, huge, huge.
Speaker 1: But it's an aggregate fruit, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a droop.
Speaker 1: Huh. Yeah, it was just massive and giant strawberry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't look anything like the species we thought
it was. Like, the fruit was so different, and if
the habit also once you kind of really look into it,
the habits a little different. It's akolescent, well mostly apparently
not all the time.
Speaker 1: Someone stems through this. So these things look like crosses
between gaves, bromeliads and yuccas.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually, and we've got prop roots like poems.
Speaker 3: Some of them are properly some of them don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, related to phrase Sinetia, which is the other genus
in the family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're all epiphytic.
Speaker 2: There's two more in the genus, Dure's Benstonia, which used
to be under fandanas, named after the legend himself, Ben Stone.
Who's it The guy is telling you about the one
who was the pandemic expert and then he died on his.
Speaker 1: Just croaked at his desk.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's why nobody wanted to study pandic Do.
Speaker 1: You believe there's no mosquitoes here? Yeah, at all, just
the occasional king.
Speaker 2: Cobra hopefully not hopefully not here. I would love to
see some colibrids though, a pit piper.
Speaker 1: What the fuck is this? Look at the Spraycenetia. Man, Oh,
there we go.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's flower. So these are bracts.
Speaker 1: So they were just bracts with Yeah, if we can
at the base of those eight inch long leaves, it's
like this red attractive.
Speaker 3: Oh shit, yeah, these might be britpon.
Speaker 1: It looks like it with that red.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially they usually flower up high. Let's let's open
this up.
Speaker 1: We can get a nice photo of that really quick.
Yeah all right, Uh, that wasn't working. That was it
was a little distracting, but we just got back. It's
two days later, the cicadas here sound like burglar alarms.
This ship is this? Is that a crowd time? What
is this thing? Oh no, it's some sort of weird
u form. Yeah, this rusty pubescence you see on so
many plants in the tropics is really, uh, it's an
unusual convergent trait. I've seen it Eastern Hemisphere, Western Hemisphere
always at low latitudes though, and I think that's it's
got something to do with the uh, the humand since
it's not really a dry environment that's seasonally dry, there's
also high rainfall and so there can be high humidity
as well as well as heat. I'm sure there's other factors,
as you know, but that like orangish hair, that orangish
pubescence that you see on a lot of plants normally
on their ab axial surfaces in their stems, we really
only see in the tropics at low latitude. So there's
a former patch of forest that's been cleared, the produced tomatoes.
There's some guys, like a lot of guys on crowdrockets here.
I wouldn't say crowdchrockets are a little dirt bikes, but
it's you know, it really is a more efficient way
to get around. It's a more efficient form of transportation,
especially in these hilly areas, much rather be around a crotch.
It's then, you know, fucking cars, God, the fucking the
Ruscity pubescence is really something else. I'm walking down. We're
going down that this little store so I can use
the fucking wi Fi. I was not prepared for how
many species of Ficus there would be. There was numerous
species of ficus, you know. And if you were just
you know, hiding out in the bushes watching me walking
down a road right now, you'd say that guy's fucking insane.
He looks like he's he's just full on having a
conversation with himself. So hopefully you can get a chuckle
out of that in no matter where you got the
fucking figs here, there are a vining ficus, there are
a large ficus. There's herbaceous ficus. Here's an acalifa eupourbac.
That fucking lukena that's so invasive in South Texas is
also here as well, which is a memosoid with the
pinnate leaves, but the leaflets are a little bit larger.
It's like a it's called the fat Gordito Tepewahey looks
like our native South Texas tepe waye. Oh that's sun
the increased a violet. But the forests here are fucking fantastic.
We went on this hike. We ascended to about fifty
eight hundred feet on this ridge, got to see the penthes.
Oh my god, is this a clittoria? No, it's the
other one. What is it? The central sema? And I
gotta get it looks like a volva. I'll just say
it straight out. It looks like you know, it looks
like some sort of the This looks like a like
a general shot right there, beautiful pa resupinate flower with
a large banner petal. But anyway, so, but these forests
are just fucking incredible. But it's you know, it's NonStop
land clearance here too, for for agriculture, not subsistence agriculture,
market agriculture. And it's just kind of you know, as
people spread, there's more everywhere. You know, who are you
to tell them? No? Right? But there's got to be
room in the culture for plants. I wasn't there. That's
how you prevent this. You teach people to respect it
and they or you culturally teach people to respect it,
you know, if you make room for the plants and
the culture. Like they have strongeload on the jadevine on
the fucking currency here on the coins. They have other
plants on the coins as well. New Zealand also does this.
Australia also does this. In the United States, we don't
have that. We just have dead honkeys and maybe a buffalo,
which is, you know, a testament, kind of insulting testament
to how we almost drove them extinct. Lots of invasive
Upatorium different upuatoree, that's the tribe of Upatorium species on
the side of the roads here. I can see that
they're neotropical. They've got very strong fhital chemistry that discourages herbivores.
And so you take them to a place they've never
been before and now there's no herbivores, microerbivores, there's no
insects that can keep them in check. Lots of Astraci
are really good at at avoiding herbivaly with the due
to their chemical signatures, the chemical cupounds. But uh, but yeah,
this fucking force we went there was incredible yesterday. It
was a brutal fucking hike. I felt like an old
man when I was done, because I've been carrying all
this shit. I'm wearing these stupid like pull on steel
toe boots. They're they're like bluntstones, They're like knockoff blunstams.
I think they're wolverine. Totally inappropriate footwear for the ship
we were doing yesterday. It rocked my fucking what is
it plant or fasci itis when you when you're the
heels hurt. I don't know what it was, but it
felt like shit. I needed to do some yoga. It
really kicked my ass. But uh, that's nice. The kid.
The kid just waved to me. It's they see people
are friendly. Kid on the back of a motorcycle. But man, though,
So there was the cretty impacted natum up there. It's
probably a new species because Pectinatum is uh I think from.
It's probably a new Decridium species or undescribed not new,
but it sounds weird. New undescribed Deacritium species, which is
taxonomically distinct from Pectinatum, which is seen uh in the
islands further west. Where was it Pectinatum is from? Where?
Like Indonesia? I gotta look, but there was. There was
Nepenthes Vaccinium leptospermum, which is mertesi ah Simplokos, which is
I think the family is simple casey, but that's in
h Eric Calees. It's another era Calees member, blueberry order member.
Absolutely wild shit. This decritium was just fucking what a
banger of a plant, Just these Jurassic age conifers growing
all scraggly and shit in the forest. You know, the
the foliage looks like lycopod leaves. Just the really remarkable plant.
I love seeing poto carbs because they're just so fucking old.
There was also Agathis, which is another you know, it's
the quote unquote monkey puzzle family, Eric Carreyace. There was Agathis.
I think it's been lumped in with Alba, but it
used to be Agatha's philippinensus. I don't know if that's
a valid lump. You know. I always prefer splitting as
opposed to lumping. Oh shit, we got a chicken in
the variety store in a sorry, sorry store. I don't
know what are you doing in are you can't hang
out in air? I came down here to use the internet,
but it's closed. You know, these fucking Catholic holidays. The
Catholic is hell here due to the Spanish colonization and whatnot.
You know, you know, if you could take how crazy
Albolinas and shit get everybody gets about their religions. Oh
you know, fucking eyes rolled back in the head, hands
up in the air. Oh god, they're just feeling the glory,
the orgasmic glory of whatever in visible friend they have.
If you could take that and teach people to have
that kind of feeling about the biosphere and the living world, Yeah,
you got it. You don't have to worry about conservation anymore.
It'll be handled. Oh look a puppy. Anyway, I gotta
do some work right now. I'll get I'll check back
with you in a little bit. Oh, these dogs are
coming by to vet me. All right, here we go.
It's this should be fun, all right. Uploaded a bunch
of iron Aid observations and uh now I'm headed back
up the hill to the quote unquote resort. I mean
for a resort, I don't know if I would call
it a resort. It's more like a uh it's like
a cinderblock hostile that's got two rooms and a shitter.
You know what's nice though, it is all the shitters
here have bid days. How the fuck can you call
the United States a civilized country if we haven't normalized
bid days yet. It's disgusting, it's fucking repulsive. You know,
using toilet paper, you're just rubbing the shit into your ass.
This is why you listen to this podcast so we
could talk about toilet at a kid. Do you hear
that cicada? Still? It sounds like a burglar alarm. I'm
fucking walking up a very steep grade, so you're just
gonna have to deal with my windedness. But yeah, there's
mid days everywhere, and it's the ones that actually hang
up on a wall and you know, you squirt your ass,
you can. You know. I went into a Denny's. We
stopped in a fucking Denny's and there was a bid
day in the Denny's. I was impressed. I said, wow,
Oh Jesus Christ. So anyway, lots of fucking pandanas here
and it's a remarkable genus that I'm really coming to
appreciate more and it's amazing. Oh yeah, this is Steve.
I wanna take a break. God damn man, the pavement's
got grooves in it, so you know, people coming downhill
don't slip and slide all over the place during the
wet season, which is most of the year. This is
tropical rainforest, but Pandanus is everywhere, man, and I think
we sell like six species yesterday, including the new one.
And it's amazing the convergent evolution between the dick like
prop roots of pandanas and the dick like prop roots
of Iriardia del toidia, the quote unquote walking palm, which
doesn't really walk, it's a dick palm. It just sends
out prop roots. So being monocots, of course, these plants
don't get growth rings. Beautiful fucking butterfly. These plants don't
get growth rings, and they don't have lateral growth, just
apical growth up and down. Roots grow and the shoots
grow just like palm trees. They don't grow wider, but
for that to compensate for the increased need for vascular
supply as the plant grows up. Because many of these
pandanas pandani is that a word, Many of these pandani,
I'll just make it up. That's what I call it.
Many of these pandani branch to make up for that
increased vascular supply as well as the structural support in
these soils. They send out these prop roots, and the
way that the root cap is situated on the prop root,
it really looks like a dick. It's very oppressive, you know.
And if you got if your mind's in the gutter
like me, well you know what to do with that.
But some of these pandanas, I mean, they look like
they were mildly reminiscent of a gave Atroverians known from
the cloud force of Wahaka, the generally biggest fuck agave,
probably the largest agave that exists. Jeremy Spath sells it
a hidden a gave nursery, and Encinitas think he sells
all the agaves, most of them, including some gentry Eye
that I sent him seed for which if you live
in Portland, a gave gentry Eye is like a gave Montana,
except to produce his offsets so you can cut them
off and give them to your friends. Absolutely massive agave
known from higher elevations into Wavo leone like Sarah Poto
c at ten thousand feet in the pinus Hertweggi force.
What the fuck is that thing. What is that white flowered,
massive tropical tree. God damn, there's some cool shit here.
I'm glad they're looting it for destroying it to make agriculture.
They I just mean my fellow humans. But uh, fucking hey,
what are we doing here? Man? Is there not a
way you can have both keep remnants of the forest
because you appreciate it, and still grow five undred thousand
shitty tomatoes. I shouldn't call them shitty. Maybe they're wonderful. Yeah,
this is that central sema, the Cuitttoria vine. Maybe I'm
gonna take this back and bring it to Jason because
I think it's invasive here anyway, unless it's pantropical. But
these pandemics look like a gave atro Virreans can get
this fucking thing old. I got to chew it. God damn,
a gave atro virance. Just these massive rosette leaved monocots
with spiny margins, and except the pandanas have proper roots
of course, just growing in the understory of these tropical
force I don't think I've seen any growing out in
full sun, like when we were on the Knife Sedge
Ridge yesterday with rhododendron subsessile and the simplocos interesting genus.
Why does our gang or the king organic materials smell
like dog balls or like dog breath or something. It's
like you need a slobbery dog. You ever meet those,
Like when you ever met a redneck that fetis dog beer.
That's terrible, But I've met it. I've met that before
and it smelled like this. But anyway, so these pandanas
Pandanas and fray Sanetia are the two genera in the
pandines we're encountering. Fray Sinetia has really cool looking flowers too,
purple anthers that look like large purple cotton swabs. I
think they're monecious or dioecious. I'm not sure, but it's
an impressive family. And then, of course, the order Pandinales
is the order of the New World velozi Ac, which
go fucking apeshit in Brazil. Probably one of my most
favorite plant families, the Velosias, I mean, they just look
fucking nuts. I think there might be an old world
genus too, called zero something x er. So these are
drought talent, heavily drought tolerant genera. The Velosia is not
the pandanus and uh. I just remember being on these
rocky quartzitic outcrops in Mina Cheries, Brazil, and there is
just I mean, some of these velosias there. They can
dry out almost fully and turn crispy and then come
back to life. So they're poiquilo hydric or desiccation tolerant,
and they just look fucking wild. Their flowers are super
We're showy, which is cool, but that's like the least
of the interesting thing about them is that they got
pretty flowers. Who gives a fuck? What am I like?
Mark the Stewart, I look like a fucking Hallmark. I
look like one of the rich ladies that volunteers their
time at Missouri Botanical Garden. Oh, expect more jabs at
that institution. Not very pleased with them right now. They
kind of pissed me off. It's their HR department, to
be honest, fucking with some friends of mine. Anyway, they
got to get with the program over there. Man. They're
in this old school, wealthy, elite view of botanic gardens,
and that's not the way things are moving, at least
in the botanical sciences. There's a lot more people with
a lot more class consciousness getting into this stuff, and
Mobot seems a little stuck in the past, you know,
like they're just they're gonna alienate the poor in a
working class so that they can please the wealthy. Don'tor Okay,
that's enough. I think I'm already banned from that spot,
which is honestly not that much of a bummer. From
the herbariums a little bit of a bumb but like sure,
sure I could just put like a mustache and glasses
on and go in there, you know, be fine, mustache,
glasses and uh uh, you know, some sort of fucking hat,
some goofy fucking hat. I going to Yeah, he's fine.
He's got a goofy head and a mustache, a glue
on mustache and some glasses on. He looks totally different
night and day. I'll grow with beards, so I can
still visit the Mobot herbarium. Some squirrely kid in the
chair that's like super quiet, like glaring at you. Does
that happen? I think that's happened before. Is that cramp
PAGs and ye? Yeah he's problematic. So uh anyway, so
the velosias that I saw in Brazil were just fucking incredible.
This is a distraction from pandanas, but they're both in
the same order. Pandinalies. Uh so velosias are incredible. And
then of course you've got also in Pandinales that the
Panama hat family, the cyclant they see, which are also
pretty credible and bizarre. And when you look at the
flowers and you know, of course they're both all monocass.
When you look at the flowers, you could you could
see a lot more similarities as well. So seeing fray
Sinetia flowering was incredible. And I guess they do mass
flowering sometimes, so they've got these bright red bracts. And
then the purple anthe the purple pollen, purple pollen and
purple anthers is fucking wild. They're just there's They're really cool.
It's a it's a cool family. I think Pandanas is
all old world, so you're not gonna see any in
the Americas unless it's in a botanic garden or something. Anyway,
we're getting back, we're getting back to the little domicile
and want to talk to Johnny a little bit more
about this organization. He started and talk to Jason as well,
who's a fucking excellent botanist. Okay, we're back. We're back
with Johnny and Jason. So okay, so you guys start this,
this Phillip pp I Philippine Taxonomic Initiative, And what made
you guys start this? It's an ng O is that?
What is NGOMAN? It's like a nonprofit basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a nonprofit. So again, like, well, we were
probably one of the earlier members, me and Jason, and
now we're both in the on the board of the
of the nonprofit. So like we're both directors along with
Rob who is the founder.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean it was such a super collaborative, grassroots program.
Just everyone's a volunteer.
Speaker 1: Just a little bit. Yeah, like that's good, that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah right here, yeah, right there we go. Yeah yeah,
I mean it's just all volunteer based, right.
Speaker 1: But the purpose of it was what there was no
organization dedicated to exploding the botany of the Philippines. And
there's a lot of work.
Speaker 2: Yeah here, it's an understanding area, super under studied. And
we found out, i mean, we realized that there were
so many things that were undescribed or novel or new.
There weren't a lot of botanist or taxonomists really working
on several families, right, and so yeah, I mean the
whole point of the nonprofit was to kind of just
really go out to these under described, under explored areas,
kind of take a look at what's out there described.
And I mean a lot of it is I mean,
the showy part of it is describing new species, but
a lot of it also just kind of figure out
what's there in the first place.
Speaker 1: But I mean it definitely seems pressing. It definitely seems
pressing when you look at the satellite map and you
can see the beige cleared areas creeping up. I mean,
you guys said, in the last five years alone, you've
seen like that down there used.
Speaker 3: To be Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean every year it gets a little bit worse,
which is kind of, yeah, you know, kind of depressing.
Speaker 1: I guess it's like everywhere though we're in the sixth
mass extinction, this is like.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, no exactly, And I mean this
is supposed to be this is already supposed to be
like one of the most protected areas. I mean, we're
trying to get it to be even more protected through legislation,
but Yeah, it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't
matter how beautiful the environment is, how remote environment is,
and everything eventually starts slowly getting cleared. You see traces
of it everywhere, even in all these really hard to
reach areas. Like one of the sad things about this
place specifically, it's a watershed right the forest we're in
right now. So, I mean there's a hydro dam that
was built. You know, it's supposed to be for the people,
burn power, you know, economic development, all the kind of stuff.
But one one thing it really led to was because
if you want to build a hydro dam, you build
roads to the hydro dam, and that makes it a
lot easier to poach and the lug or to just
even just get up here.
Speaker 3: And you know, build places.
Speaker 1: Like poaching can include hunting or poaching orchids.
Speaker 2: Yeah we have we have both, right, so with people
who are poaching, yeah, plants orchids. And I mean even
our guy yesterday was when we were at the end
of things, he saw that hoya remember, and yeah, he's
talking about how everybody kind of wants hoyas.
Speaker 1: Now, fuck.
Speaker 4: Even a military, even the military, they are interested in
the flora because it's very ornamental and a lot of
things happened during the pandemic wherein everyone wants to sell,
everyone wants to grow. So that's the things just and
a problematic in our plate in our angio. And the
other thing is this is a protected area supposed to be,
but there's no comprehensive listing in any case in our
protected areas, there's no comprehensive listing, so you don't know
what you get and you don't know what you lost.
A listing of plans, a listing of plants.
Speaker 1: This makes work like this so important.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this thing is so important, and we kind of
empower the locouse, the forest rangers, the legislators by just
doing our thing. So it's a win win situation for us. Yeah, PTI.
Speaker 1: So that's like what you guys were doing yesterday collecting specimens.
You guys don't I found it interesting. You guys use
dnature alcohol for everything, even paper specimens. So you were
collectings in a bag so that they stay in a
good shape and with humidity and everything, and then bring
them back to the photo box, take pictures of it,
and then someone would be working the computer taking down
data and you'd be dick adding a description, a verbal
description of the plant, you know, pubesting, sound, undersides, whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all of the things are important for record keeping
because some characteristics tend to feed when you preserve it
in alcohol. So we try to capture everything. So we
take photo so that we know the flower, we know
the scent, we know the color, we know everything about it.
And also we take note for on the location and
the coordinates. But it's internal on us and also the
general ecology and it might be helpful in the future.
Imagine one hundred years from now and everything's kind of
converted into farms. We don't know what's going to be
the baseline data for this if we don't know it today. Yeah,
but it's going to happen right away.
Speaker 1: Right, But that happens because people don't value the forest.
And it's the same all over the world. Yeah, most
people just don't value it if it's not immediately used
as a sellable good, a medicine, a drug, or or edible.
People just don't give a shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of problematic because it's they the indigenous
people that doesn't care on the environment.
Speaker 1: So it's the indigenous people. Yes, sounds kind of counteracts
the whole like Western identitarian narrative that it's just about
it's just about rather than being about the ideas, the
cultural ideas, like whether a culture values the plants. It's
just like this, and I feel it's important to point
out because it's really fucking annoying, Like this is a
big thing in the US. It's just this kind of
oversimplified thinking of like anything indigenous, they automatically value the
flora and protect it and their goods and they know
how to do conservation. Yeah, it's like this really fucking weird,
like racialist thing, and of course people misinterpret it as
that too, like you know, you they just break it
down to bare bones without talking and then why that
aggravates me. It's like, no, it's about the fucking does
the culture respect the plants?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And it doesn't. I don't care what their fucking phenotype is.
Do they respect the plants? And that's where I come at,
trying to, you know, inspire that in different cultures or
different people or whatever, get people excited about the plants,
like it's cool, not just because you can put it
in your ass and make a drug out of it
or eat it or whatever. But because it's this part
of this incredible living machine that we're barely on the
cusp of understanding, and we kind of.
Speaker 4: Torn or feel the about it because on the other hand,
these guys are poor.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So poverty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's poverty that driving them to do these things.
So if they have just enough opportunity, they might not
do this. But because our our government is kind of
mess up.
Speaker 1: Well people still do the United States. I mean, there's
more poverty, but all the developers in the United States
are pretty wealthy, and they're still just destroying everything. Like
it's this human it's like this, if it's there, they'll
take it. It's just the human. When you don't have
a human culture that respects the native plants and sees
or protects them with laws, then people take it, rich, poor, whatever,
they just start going for it. It's just kind of
our our nature unless we protect against it with culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that.
Speaker 2: I mean, and to your point on sort of indigenous
knowledge sometimes of being destructive, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's a bat peep of mind.
Speaker 2: When conservationists, especially here in the Philippines too, when we
talk about sort of like a new plant or like
a new plant. Whenever we describe a new species, that
actually always happens, right, any species, What it is one
of the first questions people ask us. Also, it's like,
you know, what benefit does it have? You know, how
how do people use it?
Speaker 3: What can I do in life?
Speaker 1: Drives me?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Why can't things just exist? Like?
Speaker 1: Oh, you you get to decide whether this has a
right to exist? Yeah, exists on how it serves you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if it doesn't have any use, does it mean
it can go extinct? I mean, we can clear it absolutely.
Speaker 1: Do you know how many aspects of culture I, in
my opinion, are just frivolous and have no fucking use whatsoever? Billboards,
car dealerships, you know, strip malls paid a loan places.
Those places should be wiped out of existence. Not things
that took millions of years to evolve, Yeah, a loan place,
especially predatory insurance companies, all these insurance offices.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we have kind of pivot away
from sort of that idea of conservation where if something
is worth conserving, it means it has some sort of
economical value. To some people, like no, I think that's
insane and I think that's not that's a completely wrong message.
Speaker 1: That's like from the like twenty years ago. Oh do
you know how many potential cancer remedies there might be
in the rainforest. Yeah, that's the only reason for it's
going to cure cancer. Like, why don't you fucking stop
pumping poison into the environment. That might be a place
to start. Start regulating your corporation, start regulating your politicians
through the corporation's.
Speaker 3: Own Yeah, exactly. So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that's what part of conservation, especially are in Philippines.
That's such a big thing now. I mean we're kind
of behind that. People are just righting the wave of
you know, ecosystem services, you know what about all the car.
Speaker 1: But people who care about biodiversity. Yeah, people bring that
up all the Yeah, it kind of missus the whole point, right,
I mean, my god, the universe is so beautiful and
it's just a reflection of ourselves to me, right, Yeah.
I always talk about this this sagan esque dystopia, like
the Carl Sagan's version of dystopia, where everyone benefits from technology,
but everyone's just a fucking ignorantus and there's no clue
how it works, doesn't care too. Yeah, it's it's you know,
it doesn't like see the beauty in science, like it's
just but that's you know, the result of cultural conditioning
as well. I mean we see that that's going on
really bad in the US right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, I mean even here, there's just a
complete lack of like, yeah.
Speaker 3: Sorry, that truth that's slowly driving by.
Speaker 1: Hey, that's an outfit thought. That's nice. You know, that's
like a like the Philippine version of a hippie band.
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually that's pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Shoot, I have totally lost my train of thought there.
That found was so loud, just.
Speaker 1: Completely But we were just talking about about just getting
people to care about conservation and science and this this
dystopia that, at least in the United States we're headed
to where it's like every year society is getting dumber,
and there's there's people inadvertently fighting against it just by
you know, citizen science or community science or fucking getting
people excited about the biosphere they live in. But it's
it's not enough because there's just such a defunding of
science in the US in general. But there's funding for
science here.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a reason, like I mean Our org
is entirely volunteer base, and we only come out on
these expeditions when we've raised money for it, or whether
it's through a graph or whether it's through crowd fundraising.
And I mean, I guess that's one of the success
stories that if the Beans too, is that a lot
of it is citizens science. A lot of like especially
for botany man, like, most of it is citizens science.
Speaker 3: A lot of it is just volunteer work.
Speaker 2: A lot of it's people contributing just random photos, getting
a little bit of excited posting it on Facebook, trying
to find an id's.
Speaker 1: But not a lot of people use our naturalists too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird because I mean, well, the Philippines is
also one of the most chronically online.
Speaker 3: Countries in the world.
Speaker 2: I think we're like literally the most social media We
have the most social media presence per capita or something
of the sort. So I mean one of the instead
of using like anat, we literally have a Facebook group.
People just post on the Facebook group.
Speaker 1: You got to get people on though, because just the records,
you know, and then you can link that to like
your own science. Yeah, Philippines specific science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what happens currently is on the group. We
have a couple of like people who manage the group,
so like doctor Pelser, doctor Julie for all the good
records where there's like clear idea, good pictures, they upload
everything onto a website called it's also called Coast Digital
Floor the Philippines Philippine Plants. Yeah, named after Leonard Cove,
who was like the godfather, like the patron saint of
Botany and the Philippines. Yeah, he was like a legend,
so it's named after him. Everything's online this sort of
repository there. But yeah, I mean eventually, I mean that's
something I'd like to work on eventually, is trying to
find a way to just link that whole repository to
like imat or to other.
Speaker 1: I think data bass people who use I naturally. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also it's super easy, so helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, emphasize the importance of obscuring location. YEA four attacks
that like the penthes or the orchids. They got the
fucking orchid diversity. We started saying, So let's talk about
more of the plants that we saw. We saw that
bulbo phylum. How many new species or undescribed species did
we see yesterday?
Speaker 4: Do you think about ten or twenty like that, because
I let us tame alone. It has about fifty and
underscribes p sees all over the Philippines a.
Speaker 1: Lot of cases. Yeah, the explosive standards.
Speaker 4: Yeah, those those things, those are pretty understudied here in
the Philippines. And it's about fifties. You have fifty to
fifty chinks of seeing and undescribed a lot of stema
in the Philippines. That's how understanded it is. We all
our our attention is all on beguns, but not on
other uncharismatic things that looks like weird and somehow do
you have this in the US, Like when you discover
some new species of plant, you tend to.
Speaker 3: What do you call that?
Speaker 4: You know, Madama, disregard the scientific value of that because
everything knows that it's already existing. Like that. Do you
have that in US?
Speaker 1: Well, people have known about the plant already, but it
hasn't been.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or even just I mean this is so this
is kind of annoying the Philippines there. Like this also
happens whenever you public new species. For example, we published
in Nepenthees new Spieces of Depentees.
Speaker 3: We described as critically endangered.
Speaker 2: It's only like a curse and it's really steep, vertical
limestone cliffs. There's only a couple of populations, you know,
they're endangered everything. And then you get all these comments
on Facebook or whatever saying like the Penthees new we
have that in our province, we have that in our village.
Oh yeah, people have no idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's just a jerk off online, there isn't
they all look the same.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So I mean that's that concept, the plant blindness. And
then you know plant blindness exacerbates conservation issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, that's a frustration. Man. That's
just welcome to the club. You know. That's like the
yeah I've got on by property. No, I'll do that
with like plants in South Texas and someone. But I
don't get mad at them to I understand. It's like
this motherfucker has no idea. It's okay. I just want
them to give a fuck about it and protect it,
you know. And also my hatred for horticultural ship, like
the Grandma plants, the fucking I mean, it's it's skyrock
right now. I hate it so much because I realized
I came to realize how in the way of appreciation
of natives and of ecology that stuff is. When it's
like it's like, you know, and people do the same
shit with things. It's like the way people view women,
like you, when you view women with lip injections and
fucking tons of makeup and all this shit on, like
this fucked up shit that women are taught to do
to their faces because of low self esteem or whatever.
I might get control for saying that's my opinion. Right,
when you view that, then you see someone who's got
like a woman's got like you know, isn't wearing makeup
or whatever. This is no one I associate with. This
is like the square community, you know. But when they
see a woman that doesn't have that, then they're like, oh,
that's like she's ugly. All you wear makeup. It's like, well,
your mind's all fucked up because you think marl Lago
faces is pretty Like that's deranged and you don't even
realize how you've been in doctrine. It's the same thing
with plants, I think, right, or like r vice versa,
like the women version of how women look at men
and how society tells men that they're supposed to work.
Speaker 3: It's fucked up.
Speaker 1: So that's why I've gotten this really like raging fucking
hatred for the grandma, you know, Martha Rich Lady, Martha Stewart,
Ye garden Center stuff.
Speaker 2: Like that horticultural obsession with you know, really showy flowers
or yeah, always dead zones.
Speaker 1: There's never any insects there. There's never any birds there.
They're just showguard. They're useless, sugar. This is the distraction
from Philip stuff. Sorry, I went on my own tangent
carry Wait, but but the bubble pilum we saw yesterday,
the one that stank. There was the one that stankd
that was in the lepto spermum tree, which was incredible.
I got a photo of you in it, like this
bondz eyed lepto spermum tree on a fucking sketchy knife
sedge bridge, you know, one hundred and fifty feet above
the ground. That was crazy. And then there was the
other bubble phylum with the spike on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that one's yeah, the potentially new one.
Speaker 1: Tiny flowers on that fleshy spike that looks like a
meat rod, like.
Speaker 2: Pro looking love with these tiny flowers that like inverted.
Speaker 1: Really remark in rhododendrons everywhere, and what is that jug lands?
Speaker 4: That walnut weld those are in Gilhartia.
Speaker 1: Speacause it looks like a jug lands. It looks jugland
ASTI like carry out or walnut.
Speaker 4: You have a couple of neo asiatic temperate plants, but
we're lucky because those are rare and those can only
be found in higher elevations. So much which ones though,
the juglands, the little harpos, you can only find it
in the high elevation. The Plethraci, the plethronescence, yeah, clet Yeah,
those are nice. And Helicia. Have you seen that?
Speaker 1: That was the prote Yeah?
Speaker 4: Pretty as Yeah I didn't, we didn't.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen flowers though. But I love Jason really.
I mean, you're probably one of the best bondis I've
met in a while. No, I mean not just trying
to glaze you and being honest, because you you look
at all these you're really well studied. Your what twenty eight?
Speaker 4: Yeah I'm twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're really well right well studied. You know what
characters to look for, especially for tropical botany. A lot
of times you don't have flowers, So you know what
other traits to look at, like step mules, resin ducts
and the absision scars and like you saw on that melo,
that mahogany.
Speaker 4: Family, the resin ducts. Yeah, the presence of resin ducts,
the type of indmentum, and probably I think it's the
thing that I want to I part with my teaching
in taxonomy class. I'm currently teaching undergraduate student biology in
upidili mind. I want them to look at not only
the floral parts, not only the reproductive parts, because most
of the time you're going to see plants but on
their stereo conditions. So you need to find other way
to identify. And there's a lot of options. Yeah, yeah,
non flowering, non fruiting, and you need to see, you
need to feel, you need to taste. Yeah, if it's safe,
you need to taste. Yeah, that's why you see me,
I used to taste a lot because those gives me
hint on what family is to look at, what family
is avoid Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well we looked at I mean we saw you saw
those resin ducts, those little dots in the excision scar,
and then that narrows it down. What families could it be? Okay,
it could be an a cardiac burst racing. Oh wait,
but it's got these other traits that make that not plausible.
It can't because burst racing only has this. So it's
not that it's not burst racing. And and so, you
you know, just being able to Yeah, it was. It's
really cool. I mean, it's and it goes off just
really it's like detective work, like trying to really figure
out what the hell you always start, of course I
tell people this all the time, what family, Yeah, start,
you know, you've got to figure out what family first,
and then you move towards other traits and other characteristics
and maybe consult the list and what's been observed here,
et cetera. But but yeah, man, it's a I don't know.
It was really, it was really wonderful being in those forests.
I still can't get over the cicadas that sound like
burglar alarm, like a squeaking cicada. It's the most bizarre
thing to me. So, but how did you get into
plants to begin with? And how did you get into
bodany as a science?
Speaker 4: Are you talking? I was born with this affinity to
plants already. I used to identify plants, but only using
common names. Then somehow, jurning elementary days, I learned that
every plant has scientific name. Then I just want to
elementary school. I'm obsessed also with dinosaurs, so my father
bought me a dinosaur book, so I tend to memorize
them all. Then later I just realized there's no dinosaur
in the Philippines. What things can be studied? That's so many.
So you have plants, and I tend to guarden. Then
up until high school, I was obsessed with native trees
because of Sir Leonard Leonard Core who was killed by
the way.
Speaker 1: Then later on yeah rebel. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Then I got inspired by that situation because he did
not graduate under on his bachelor's degree, but he's so
good that even the phdsc consulted him.
Speaker 1: Oh he never graduated from college.
Speaker 4: He almost he did graduate, but it was thirty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was thirty years. It's so late.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Then he was killed. Yeah, so that's it. I kind
of like that situation that you're kind of uh, low profile,
but at the same time you're so good at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I say all the time. Schooling can get
them away. Yeah, things for some people, especially like in
the US because it's so defunded and it's so associated
with a very high cost, because it's been seen I
think is like by the ruling classes this way, like, oh,
people need to go to school, so they did a
good job, so we need to charge We could charge
a lot for this, and you know, it undemocratizes the knowledge.
So I kind of look to me, I realized school
was maybe a scam. Early on, I dropped out and
then just did a trade. I worked for the railroad
and then just got into this. I didn't had no plan.
I just liked it. It was very interesting, so, you know,
learning about taxonomy and this. But but I think like making
the shift from just being into plants to appreciating taxonomy, biogeography,
ecological roles, like seeing that whole context is a huge
step for people. How did you get there? Like, how
did you actually realize all that?
Speaker 4: So I graduated as a teacher. Then later on I
met RAB, I met the PTI, then I got invited.
I get to write a couple of papers, new new species.
Then I just decided that I don't like to be
a teacher. There's a lot of teachers that could be me.
You could be thousands of teachers who are dreaming to
be a teachers, but there are only few, probably one
hundred that wants to be a taxonomist. So you have
a lot of teachers, but no botanists here in the Philippines.
So I decided to be a botanist to be unique.
And there's so many things to study. There are ten
thousand species of plants here, so we we need more,
we need more.
Speaker 1: I think there was maybe one plant you saw out
of you know, the whole day Australia. You didn't know
what it was, maybe not even.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no one, yeah, only one, the only one. Yeah
that Eric is the one that looks like plots, but
it's not in blocust not Also you're yeah not also.
Speaker 1: You thought it might have been pantophied as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the safe bed for that is eric less. So
let's when you are and the Wi FI zone.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: Johnny kind of joked us that, wow, Jason and your
you man, the first time.
Speaker 2: That was the first time I haven't seen him. I've
seen him that's stunted, like just only to.
Speaker 3: The order level.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, that's when we saw that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sixty years that's the first time I've seen him anything.
Speaker 1: You know, the thing that smelled very fragrant, right, Yeah, yeah,
that's it. Yeah, probably and that sketchy ridge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that sketchy ridge when you.
Speaker 1: Guys said knife said ridge. Though I thought it was
going to be like just a rocky no vegetation to
catch you. It wasn't that bad. It was. I mean,
it was sketchy, but it wasn't that sketchy. Yeah, beautiful
views of the RhoD of dendro.
Speaker 4: Now if you go further, that's kind of worst. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Johnny, how about you? How did you get
into all this? And what was your background? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think I'm sort of the opposite of I mean,
funnily enough, I'm hearing Jason's story. We're super similar. Turns
out I was a dinosaur not when I was a
kid too, Like I.
Speaker 1: Also was a dinosaur.
Speaker 2: I guess there's a common path there, man actually bring
dinosaurs back.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I wanted to be a paleontologist all my life
growing up, and then watching a lot of like I
don't know, like Steve r and Captain Planet and all
that kind of stuff. Yeah, maybe want to get into like,
you know, more ecology, environmental science, so I mean I
finished under God as an environmental scientist, I wanted to
focus on.
Speaker 3: Marine ecology, so that to it for a while.
Speaker 2: My first job out, I worked for an environmental consultancy
and it was I found it was super corrupt. One like,
there's one big presentation I had with my boss and
we were doing an environmental impact study for a coal plant.
Speaker 3: You know, did this whole study.
Speaker 2: We had all these different impacts and I was like,
all right, we're doing God's work here.
Speaker 3: You know, we're gonna list all these impacts.
Speaker 2: I'm going to realize, you know, Cole's pretty fucking horrible
for everybody, and we're not going.
Speaker 3: To build it.
Speaker 2: So it presented it to the developer and to my
boss and they're both like, okay, you can't say that.
Speaker 3: You got to change this and change it.
Speaker 1: I'm like what And I quit on the spot.
Speaker 3: So, you know, made a.
Speaker 1: Whole was the point of even doing it then?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, just to say they could do it exactly.
Speaker 3: So I mean, that's that's how we did.
Speaker 1: It's fine, it's a classic Philippine thing.
Speaker 2: We have honestly, really good policies and regulations in place.
It's just way easier to bypass them. Yeah, so it
makes it harder for everybody else.
Speaker 1: It's better than places like the US and Mexico where
there's not even regulations. In a lot of places there
used to be regulations. California has a lot of regulations. Yeah, Texas,
you can. You can fuck the land into a coma.
You can destroy it whatever, It doesn't matter. If you
own it, it's yours if you want it. If there's
endangered species there and you want to nuke everything with
a flamethrower, you can do it. It's totally Yeah, it's crazy.
There's no one stopping you. It's it's absolutely insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean yeah, because it adequate. You know, went
completely different routes to entrepreneurship around COVID. I started gardening.
You know, my dad was a lifelong gardener. I always
really envied him, so I really started gardening. From gardening,
it turned into taxonomy. Reached out to RAB or somebody
introduced me to rab and funnily enough, when I first
had a conversation with Drop, He's like, yeah, you know,
what can you bring it to PTI?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, when I was looking, I had to
chat with him.
Speaker 2: I was like, honestly, and I love Rob God bless
his soul, but he's not great at managing things or
organizing things.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yo, I'll.
Speaker 2: Help you run the I'll help you run the organization,
make it more efficient and make it better and everything.
And that's how I joined mostly, but I want to
just really fell in love. But like everything we did,
I joined him here just my first field work was
here and the forest were in now and it was.
Speaker 3: Just so awesome.
Speaker 1: But again, how did you make that switch from being
into gardening and plants to being into native plants, which
are plants that were literally bred by the region that
they evolved. Yeah, well, to tie into evolution and biogeography
and millions of years of selection by the environment. How
did you arrive there? Because that's really remarkable. That's what
I want more people to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah for me, And I think this is something I
like now, even moving through workshops or when we try
to teach, I think it's super important that.
Speaker 3: You can't really teach in school or maybe we should.
Speaker 2: We figure out a whin to teach us. Honestly, just
a lot of whimsy and curiosity. It's really curiosity, just
wanting to explore how why why does this thing look
like this? How did it evolve from this other thing
that looks exactly like this, How does the soil affect it?
How does pollination syndromes change its distribution?
Speaker 3: How does this interact with this or that? And I
mean everywhere you look.
Speaker 2: You could sit in a ten x ten square foot
plot of forests and study it for a year and
find out new things every single day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just think about what's in front of you and
ask questions. And that's what I think I rate my
merit of people on is if they're curious about the
world around them, yeah and there, or if they're not,
like when you meet when you meet kids, or if
there's you know, the generation coming up that lacks curiosity.
I'm not saying that they do, but if I see
elements of that, you know, where they just take it
as if for granted, they don't think. There's no critical thinking,
there's no curiosity. That's when it's like, well, what the
fuck are we even doing here as human beings anymore?
You know, what are you doing? You're just it's just
this race to know where to accumulate stuff. I'm sorry
it turns with my own personal rant. You can tell
I'm working through some shit here philosophically, but it's just
it's disconcerting to me because that's the whole trajectory of society,
is their curiosity, is their critical thinking or not, because
if there's not, then you're just getting farmed.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: But we have like chat cheapt and everybody's just asking
chat cheapd everything, right, I mean, curiosity is really probably
going to drop.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, I mean, fucking AI can be used.
Speaker 3: He's super useful.
Speaker 1: But when you're just doing it to pass the test,
and that's what's taught in America is just memorizes you
can pass the test. Do you understand it? No, who
gives a fuck as long as you can answer the
questions and get a good grade. Like why why would
any intelligent person want to be a part of a
system like that. When they realize that's what's going on,
it's like, this is just a fucking joke. This is
just grooming people to be good workers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, you know, I mean I don't want to
understand the world, you know, I.
Speaker 2: Mean that's my grandpa also, but like, yeah, I mean
a lot of classes are universities here, it's just memorize
X y Z and use it to pass an exam,
and it doesn't really translate to anything, right. I mean, yeah,
if there's not enough curiosity, and I think that's something
we really need to cultivate.
Speaker 1: We really need to try to pi. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean, have you seen Jason in
the field. Every time he walks into something cool and
he's just like a little yeah, oh my god, everything everything.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I thought that literally the first my first field work
here to that point, I found I still think botanists
are crazy. But the first field where we did here,
we went we took a wrong turn somewhere, and it's
the first time we went through that trail. And now
that trail we call it suicide trail just because it's
pretty horrible. It's one of those moments where we're kind
of clutching on like a stray root and your thing.
You know, if this rude iss dat falls up, you're
gonna yeah yeah, and it's like a like a.
Speaker 3: Cliff face and like this breaks, you're straight up just
and gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What was cool about that area yesterday though, is
when you look on the map, you're like, yeah, we
went to right where the clearance stops. Yeah, and I'm
sure it's just like a tumor, it's gonna keep spreading.
But then you look and there's and you see the
crazy shit we saw, and you look deeper in and
you're like, holy fuck man, there's got to be so
much more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't stop, It goes on, yeah, exactly, and
it just keeps getting it just keeps getting like better,
Like every every time we i mean we've been coming
here how many times. It's at eleventh field work in
this forest, and every time we've come here, there's always
something new. We've been to the same site how many
times and there's always something new to shit, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: Just I mean there's so and we've.
Speaker 2: Covered what zero point one percent of this protected area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's just so much more out there.
Speaker 1: There were ton just to not to get distracted on.
But that shit's hilarious. Like that palm, this short palm,
do that even get really big? Yeah?
Speaker 3: They got huge.
Speaker 1: Get the hypodermic needle palm and it's it's got these
but those those trailing ends that taper off, you know,
you've got the leaf that comes out. What is the
is that what's what's the proper name for a palm
leaf that comes up. It's just leave whips. Yeah, the
front and then it's got the whips that come down
and have those curved spines. Then is the point of that.
Speaker 4: It's the leaf apex of the pandane. It's used for
climbing because the Yeah, they're a time because climbing, for climbing,
because they are.
Speaker 1: Gross do in Australia, they use their tendrils for.
Speaker 4: Climb yeah like that like that, so they use that
and also for defense because animals tend to avoid spiny
things here we don't have a lot of. Yeah. So
Johnny is the example. So he got caught up in
his head with reap off their at time.
Speaker 1: They kept taking my hand out.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, ratons have evolved over millennia to
get to this point specifically to fuck with me.
Speaker 3: I hate them.
Speaker 1: You guys when you I mean, I have spiny plants
where I live, so I'm used to them. So when
you guys talked about this hate for ratans yesterday, I
was like, man, it just spiny plants whatever. But then
when you see those whips, you realize like they really
are they're like himalay and blackberries that we haven't invasive
hybrid BlackBerry we have in the US that like hook
onto you. They're just these really mean kind of like
the bush lawyers, the raspberry species in the New Zealand
they call them bush lawyers. They've got that same thing,
these long whips with those. I guess it's for climbing too,
but fucking hey, man, it's mean. Why can't they just
use tendrils like, you know, like other plants too. I
don't know, it's it's bizarre, but that's a big genus though.
There's a lot of species.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of species here in the Philippines.
And if you're understudied, yeah, there are only a few
old people that study the rattans.
Speaker 1: What is their main pollination?
Speaker 4: I think they are issues. So the males and female
flowers are separate, so it could be wind or it
could be insects. Right, Because ratans and many other palms,
they have a reliable reproduction year around. They can flower. Yeah,
it's a relied no, not even in dry season. They
can flower. That's why so many pollinetors and many fruit
eaters depend on palms. The palmd diversity and rattime. If
you're not careful cleaning the trail, some might even fall
onto you.
Speaker 1: So that's calamus. Yeah, and then you've got Penanga.
Speaker 4: We got Pinanga, We got karyota in Palawan, and in
the Lowlands you have the oran. Yeah, you also have
a giant one that and live in Stonia, Saribus. We
have a lot.
Speaker 1: Actually, I had very little interest in palms, so I
started going to more tropical regions. I think it's because
they're so heavily abused in horticulture, because of this corny
association with you.
Speaker 4: Know, tropics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we've got a really interesting stable where I live.
They get they're huge. They're very important habitat trees for
owls and bats and stuff because they create these skirts
of dead leaves that house a lot of things. But
what are some other really high density species diversity genera here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, those are crazy. We have about one hundred
and twenty species and many are and then actually you
can find them as a banyan so it's just a
strong strangler fig. So it's a very big tree with
a lot of Aia roots. So we've seen that last
time the first day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the large one that's over there, the large one.
Speaker 4: And we have another one that the cruise, the size
of a dipterocarp. It looks like a dipterocarp with a
large sweeping buttress. It's another type of Ficus, so it's
from the Arriagata group. It has this street bowl just
like the just like the terra car but still bears
the same fig And another one we have the vining fig.
Speaker 1: What is the one that was back here? Did you
show me the head the inflorescences that come off the
bottom of the tree.
Speaker 4: That's Ficus minnahassee minahasa. Yeah, you tasted that? How is
it enjoyable?
Speaker 1: It was a pleasant fruit. You don't like it?
Speaker 4: I like it. It's it looks like it tastes like
forest rations. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For the flower, what does the flower look it's a
strange flower structure on figs.
Speaker 4: As well, right, Yeah, the strange flower. So the flower
of the fig is actually on the inside, the inside
of the fig. So we call it that sincona. And
it depends on the the species depends on the genus.
But some figs bear only male figs. Some figus they
bear female. Some have hermaphrodite hermaphrodite figs.
Speaker 1: So it depends on these are flowers or it's the
same thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the fig is the sincuna.
Speaker 1: The flower. But and so there's no showy petals, No
inc has to go inside this cha.
Speaker 4: The fig was.
Speaker 1: Always a wasp, the same way that yuccas. It's always
a moth. For yuccas, it's a monocut genus. Massive in
the actually massive, it's a sparagacy. It's a massive genus
in western well in North America and arid regions like grasslands,
the deserts. There's some massive ones in deserts. It's a
great genus. But they're always only pollinated by moths.
Speaker 4: WHOA, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah that can be. Yeah, like Joshua tree is proroinated
by a specific moth species. Yeah, a lot of yolks
are I believe, but they're fucking they're really it's a
really cool plant giness. But the same way Figs. Ficus
is only pollinated by wasps.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, only wasps.
Speaker 1: What draws them in there is that they're laying eggs,
or it's they're going for nectar or what is it.
Speaker 4: So it's quite pretty life cycle. So the fig. The
female fig wasp will lay eggs inside the fig. Yeah,
and after that the nymph will grow, so there are
a mix of female and male. So the male comes
out first, still inside the fig, and it will fertilize
the female wasp, so when they go out, it's already
they are already pregnant, and the male fig wasp will
die inside.
Speaker 1: The fig, still eating the male wasp.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we probably ate some of it, but it's good.
Speaker 1: So it's it's fine, you know, you don't even know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but that's it. You see the paradox of
the forest. You have the biggest, weirdest figus and only
it depends on very small.
Speaker 1: Was beautiful as.
Speaker 4: I'm not really quite sure, but it's un understanded ecological God,
that's so fascinating.
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew that it was wasps and figs,
but I didn't know. I guess I didn't know the
specificity of it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think the theory is one species of fig can
host multiple species of fig wasp. That's another that's a hypothesis,
and the other one is co evolution. So you have
the fig wasp. One one fig was for one species of.
Speaker 1: Holy ship. That's a loaded. That's like a tricycle with
two people and a ton of shit on it. That's amazing.
Speaker 4: I think they are they're going to be selling fish
because it's a un luck sound. Everyone wants fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but so but that's but they
need each other. It's the symbiosa, the washings, the fig
and the big Yeah, spent.
Speaker 3: The whole life in the fig.
Speaker 4: Basically, I think what attracts them are the scent, but
it's still an understandied research the scent of the fig.
Speaker 1: They lay eggs in the fig and then the larvae
use it as food.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, this the ovary. It is nutritious for them,
and it's where the female was will lay their eggs
on the on the seed itself.
Speaker 1: There's some remarkable figs in the deserts of Mexico. Not deserts,
but seasonally dry tropical forests.
Speaker 4: Are they the seed us?
Speaker 1: No, we have ficus. I forget some of the fighters
I've seen in Baja, but it's they're going with giant
tacti and really insane eight mushrooms once and this incredible
fucking uh Somewhere in the right on the border of
Baja California and Baa, California, Sir. I remember there were
these figures that have been painted on the inside of
this cave with like whales and ship. The fingers had
six fingers on them, and I remember tripping my balls
off pretty hard. There was a wonderful time. I came
to some wonderful revelations at that spot. But there's blue
jump trees and massive fighters like growing on these rocks
with their roots coming down. I ever want to go
to Baja, we should go get that's we gotta go
to Vietnam first, So go check out the karst formations.
So there's a ristal loki. It was fucking wild too. Yeah,
aristo located we saw.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's Aristolochio philippineensis. That's an endemic one.
Speaker 1: A small shrub.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a small shrub.
Speaker 1: Or bush like that two three feet.
Speaker 4: The distinguishing characteristic for that plant is the absence of
indumentum on it's actual leaf surface.
Speaker 1: Put a thick white wax. Yeah it's yeah, bright white undersides.
Speaker 4: I still don't know the mechanism why did it evolved
that way. But there's another species with the pubis and
leaves and most.
Speaker 1: Of the time, another Aristolochia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, most of the time the aristo lochia here have
pubis and leaves except for that, So that's kind of
say shrub.
Speaker 1: It's weally mean, it's like one to two stems. It's
like shrub and name only it's just like a woody shrub.
It's not like a dense shrub shrub people might think
of when they hear of like a right, it doesn't
get dense.
Speaker 4: It doesn't get dense. Also, we have a difference between
in the vocabulary, because.
Speaker 1: Well, you're here a technical term of shrub, but I'm
using it like someone who's the way that I'm for
anyone that's not a botanist, when they hear shrub, it
might think of like a fucking box water or something
like a two stemmed with long eighth and nine inch long,
very couraceous, thick, leathery cardboardish leaves with and.
Speaker 4: We're lucky, by the way, because we found it flowering. Yeah,
most of the time it's just stereo.
Speaker 1: It's such a weird it was so cool to see.
I love that genus man. But still trapping flies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I observed that trapping fly, But right now no
one is really studying flies flight taxonomy and no one
is really studying the ecology between plant and insect interduction here.
There are only a few people.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: I don't understand why there's not many mosquitoes here. It's
really thrown me out. There's mosquitoes at the lower elevations.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, Oh so that's actually interesting.
Speaker 2: I was asking our guides about it yesterday and they
were saying, there used to be a ton of mosquitoes here.
Speaker 4: It happened.
Speaker 3: All the wild boar got hunted off, so the mosquitos
kind of went with them, apparently.
Speaker 1: Oh, because there's not as much yeah, I mean there's.
Speaker 2: Not much mammals there's I mean there's bury mammals here. Wow,
there's not many monkeys, there's not they got hunted too, Yeah,
and deer. The deer are gone as well. Cloud rats
are gone. So it's this dir yea of all the
mammals that have just gotten hunted, I mean the almost
locally extinct basically. Wow, And you know, I guess that
just also kind of decimates the mosquito.
Speaker 1: But the wild boar were native pigs though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so there were native pigs.
Speaker 2: And then I'd say maybe like only the last twenty
years have all the mammals and at least in this
forest have just been almost wiped out entirely.
Speaker 1: Just from hunting, just from hunting. Yeah, just so how
deep I mean, if you go deep into the forest here,
like another thirty miles north, like by air or something, Yeah,
what do you encounter? Are there indigenous communities?
Speaker 3: There?
Speaker 1: Is there people? Or is it pretty like raw?
Speaker 3: Yeah still or what it's mostly raw forest? Now?
Speaker 2: I don't think there's many people that live like really
deep like no, no, no, yeah, most people are kind
of like living mostly like in areas like this where
it's been sort of either cleared or like there's been
a lot of land use change.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so I mean deep into the forest, pretty untouched.
So I mean that's honestly would be cool to go there.
Speaker 1: But you know, there used to be headhunters here back yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean the local diigenous people here, we're
head of their historically, which has been pretty good for
this forest.
Speaker 3: I mean that's a big reason why a lot of
it is still intact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's only getting cleared now instead of one hundred years. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now that the headhunters are gone, I mean, well they're
not gone, they're still here. They just stopped head hunt, they.
Speaker 1: Just stopped doing ahead hunting. Yeah. They switched vocations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because of the missionaries.
Speaker 1: Oh what was that There was Spanish colonization or no, No.
Speaker 2: It was American missionaries in the seventies or eighties, very recent.
Speaker 1: The history here was the because the Japanese occupied the
World War two and then Americans came in and then
they occupied. Yeah, and then you had they were just
getting all Christy here and what yeah, pushing pushing a
big JC or what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean the Philipin's already super Catholic as
it is. Yeah, So I mean the American missionaries kind
of went to like the like the indigenous peoples and everything.
Speaker 3: And I mean that's also I mean that's another tangent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious we get to do a little bit
because I don't know much about Philippine histories.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I mean just interesting the effect I guess religion
had on sort of the environment. So on the one hand,
the Spanish and Catholicism really made a very concerted effort
to demonize local animist religious beliefs. So I mean, to
the point about sort of the figs, the Strangler figs,
elsewhere in Southeast Asia are sacred, they're sacred trees. Here
we see them as haunted. And that was a very
concerted effort by the Spanish. Oh you see, yeah, you see,
uh you see a spirit or a day thing in
that treet that's actually, guess what, an evil spirit?
Speaker 3: And fuck you up.
Speaker 2: So now we see demons everywhere. Philippine mythology now demonized.
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of like Mexkin cultures like
that to very superstitious, yeah, crazy superstitious like and a lot.
Speaker 2: Of it was also to I mean, if you see
trees as housing spirits, if you see trees as other
than yourself where demons side, it's easy.
Speaker 3: For you to burn the place out, are clear it? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Something else also did the Spanish this.
Speaker 1: Again making space in the culture for quote unquote nature,
for the living world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's this.
Speaker 1: You've got these cultures that come in that are completely
antithetical to that, completely contrariant to that. It's like, oh
you like the life around you? Fuck that we have.
We have this invisible man who's gonna, you know, watch
over you and put you in exactly the lasting jail.
If you don't.
Speaker 3: Exactly like you know, come come to the Christian world.
It's modern.
Speaker 2: You can live in cities, you can be closer to God,
and you know, you also end up burning down the forest.
Speaker 1: But with Catholicism, it's weird though, because I feel like
there was this element, or there has been of this
like progressive element at times, but then other times that vanishes,
and a lot of the people that purport the follow
Jesus that completely un Jesus.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, so I mean like there's there's been
like historical Catholicism as a tool of oppression or like colonialism. Yeah,
and then you also have but I mean a lot
of our great bodyness were like Jesuits or monks, yeah,
you know, early and so a lot of that were great.
Speaker 1: So it was St. Francis, he was doing good stuff,
you know, animals.
Speaker 2: And whatnot, right, Yeah, but I mean even some of
our early botanists were just like yeah, fantastic scientists too, right, So.
Speaker 1: What what what year was this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, eighteen hundred, nineteenth century maybe to like early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: So like in this mountain range before you guys started
doing stuff with PTI, who what was who were the
last people to do major botanical work here.
Speaker 2: The local government, the local Department of Environment natural Resources,
you know, they they have like some regular surveys, yeah,
biodiversity monitoring, you know. Honestly, a lot of it was
done mostly ass uh that's a completion.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also because because they wanted to build a hydropower
that right or way back when, as a requirement you
have to do sort of a biodiversity survey, So that
was kind of like one of the early ones for it.
Speaker 3: But I mean it was very rough around the edgeress,
you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, in the past six years alone, like doing
all the work we've done, we've more than doubled the
amount of species. Yeah, so I mean, and that we're
still finding more.
Speaker 1: So it was in my mind that this isn't this
kind of thing isn't funded by governments all over the world,
Like you should be going out to figure what figure
out and survey what species. Yeah, given how important plants
are supporting the rest of the ecosystem and the biome,
you know, survey what you have, like what's there, and
then learn about it, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, honestly, it doesn't cost much to
do to these these trips either.
Speaker 1: Especially if you find people who fucking love doing.
Speaker 3: It, like we none of us Yeah shit, dude, none
of us get paid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it costs like maybe like one thousand dollars or
something to do like a five, six, seven day expedition.
Speaker 1: Yeah shit, yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: They'reabouts, yeah, thereabouts. I mean some of it just a
random fundraisers where we sell like prints or let.
Speaker 1: Be done and support something like that, Like just do
a donation based like crowdfund or something through crime pas.
It'd be fucking awesome, man, I guess it is a
long way. You guys have ultramafic areas too, Have those
been surveyed?
Speaker 2: There's a lot that haven't been and there's a lot
that are. I mean, I really want to do we
should probably do a lot more work on the ultramaffics
just because they're getting cleared. I mean, those are their discripes.
Speaker 1: No mining.
Speaker 3: You see, like whole islands just getting wiped off.
Speaker 1: The faces are mostly ultramafic islands or what I mean.
Speaker 2: There's some of the mainlanders, and that's some of bigger
islands and is on there's some smaller ultramafic like islands
that are getting like completely cleared.
Speaker 1: It's crazy how much ultramafic ship there is in this
whole chain down from New Caledonia up through the what
do you call these island chains that the Philippines and
so we see in Indonesia and all that. Is there
a name for this region? I mean it's is this
considered Southeast Asia or what? Yeah, Southeast Asia, Alsia, Malaysia, Alsia. Yeah,
but there's there's from Afix everywhere. Yeah, given all the
subduction zones. Subduction zone, Yeah, you're up and crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so tons of like weird and you have like
sometimes there's just cool spot in Pallowed where I think
you could probably see them from each other. But there's
like an ultramafic mountain and then there's a cars mountain,
and then there's a granite mountain and they're all.
Speaker 1: Like totally different species of Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, they're like literally just microandemics. These are all
like super near each other. It's a cool place to
explore to. Yeah, how do you spell it?
Speaker 3: P A L A W A N.
Speaker 1: How far is that from here?
Speaker 3: It's a flight? Oh really yeah, or I mean you
can take a boat.
Speaker 1: But there's but there's probably a ton of endemics in
the ultramatic area is then oh yeah, on that soil.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and you can't get anywhere else, right, I mean,
people things that adapt there are you know, very specifically.
Speaker 1: Tolerance for all from apex exactly grow anywhere else without
having to re evolve.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So there's a much of like naps there too.
Speaker 1: Many Yeah, undescribed species probably for sure, so many.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a bunch and but tomorrow yeah yeah,
yeah that's true.
Speaker 2: An automatic mountain Jesus. Yeah, that was pretty cool. So,
I mean there's just so much there's so much crazy
diversity here. It's just would be great to to really explore. Yeah,
I mean, we'd love to kind of go all over
all over the Philippines. I mean the real big reason
we come here so often is because the local government. Really,
i mean, we have a champion in Dasco.
Speaker 3: He's he's awesome, he's naughty assistant Protected Area superintendent.
Speaker 1: And he loves what you guys do, and so yeah,
he joinses a lot.
Speaker 2: Actually he's creative identifying now too, you know, and he's
super supportive. So I mean we keep coming back because
they have so much support.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about thearo carves really quick. Before we finish up.
This is so the pterot carves, the terot carpace. It's order.
Mount Valley is very ecologically important. Yeah, trees. You have
shoria and I guess rubro Shoria is some new genus.
They may or from yatual love. But tell me about them.
The wood is like this beautiful color, right, it's like
that mahogany color. Yeah, like a pinkish color. How would
you describe these so.
Speaker 4: Everything, So the wood of mahogany. They are actually full
of resins. And if we look at the habit of
of the pterocarps, they are street bull They have this
very straight trunk, easy fifty forty meters long lug, which
which tells you that it can produce a lot of wood.
Speaker 1: Right, So they're desirable as number. And that's most of
the cut like boards we were seeing yesterday.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and those are the pterot carbs.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And here in the Philippines we have a lot.
You are one of the centers of diversity for DiPT carps.
We have any subtera we have, we have vatica. We
have are the hardest ones and one of the most
endangered ones.
Speaker 1: So fast growing trees.
Speaker 4: The sad thing is most of them are slow growers.
That's why when we tend to cut the dept carp forest,
it's very hard for us to recover them. That's why
fire is our enemy, and those arsonists are our enemies.
And the one that goeses fire, they actually use fire
to clear land for hunting, for farming and many things,
but also to make the lugging easy.
Speaker 1: How do they do that because it's a high rainfall area.
They just wait for the dry season.
Speaker 4: Or yeah, they wait for dry season, or they will
pour gasoline, or they will set up some compartment that
will let that will create fire automatically. Yeah, that's a
sad thing.
Speaker 1: The car So they how do they emerge from the forest,
Like are they shade tolerant when young or do they
need to exploit openings in the forest.
Speaker 4: Or they are really street tolerant and they require shed
for growing. That's why it's really hard for reforestation, especially
for the open areas. We see a lot down there
right the open areas. It's hard to introduce in a
very hot climate. They need they need shed, they need
enough rainfall.
Speaker 1: But it's so they are not they're not they're not
early secessional species.
Speaker 4: No, they are not pioneer species. They are the climate species. Here,
the climate species. The pioneer species here are the u
forbs the manga yeah pu was making into a half. Yeah,
really large leaves and homal and thus and a lot
of they are the one that that are the pioneers.
Speaker 1: The lh create a microclimate that shorias and all the
the teocrafts need. What are the flowers that the teracrafts
like pantamrus.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pentamerous five merus, sepus five marus petals and the
petals are contorted. Yeah, oh really yeah, just like hibiscus. Yeah,
but it's smaller and also somewhat fragrant, the distinguishing characteristic
for the the pteretocarps or the anthers. So you have
the anterconnective. So something is sticking out on its statements,
So that's the anterconnective. The presence or the absence of
this anterconnective is diagnostic between species. Back then, it's.
Speaker 1: It's how many how many statements? Five?
Speaker 4: There's many many, ten twenty. We have this ruebrocho and
negro sensis, which have fifty statements. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: We're in the style is in the center.
Speaker 4: Is it perfect flowers or yeah? They are perfect you know,
sexual hermaphrodite. They are a hermark and it's fruit. That's
that's the unique thing about the pterographs. They are wind dispersed,
so the wings have the fruits have wings.
Speaker 1: How big the whole fruit has a wing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have a nut and you have the wings
like that.
Speaker 1: How big is the fruit about?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: About this six incheses. Some are three inches long.
Speaker 1: Wow, you're huge.
Speaker 4: And they have this tendency to mass probably free.
Speaker 1: So fruit will have how many seeds in it?
Speaker 4: One seed? One fruit, one fruit, one seeds.
Speaker 1: So is it a a or a king rather or
what again?
Speaker 4: It's a king, it's a not Yeah, it's a nut.
But it's an orthodox Yeah, not so it won't last
a day, it means, Yeah, it needs it's not tolerant.
There are only few species that can tolerate trout. But
it will die soon when you have that rampant fire
going in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't keep well. They need to germinate shortly
after them. Make sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it needs it also needs rain. It also needs
somehow protection because fire really fucked them up, and.
Speaker 1: They think likee meters.
Speaker 4: The largest that I've seen seventy meters sixty seventy meters.
Speaker 1: Undred and twenty feet. The wood is beautiful, man, I
didn't expect.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all the things here. These are the pterocarps really, yeah,
even those beams. The tar harps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are the carps you know their distribution throughout Malaysia
then or yeah, the.
Speaker 4: I think up until yeah, Vietnam, we have that in
Thailand also, and I think some few species in Africa
we have the pterocarps there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: In India there's so many the ptero carps also, yeah wow, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Is there a forest left in India, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of forest left the yeah, no, no, no,
but I mean some of the other edge fellows are
three of them from there, so, I mean it's pretty
cool stuff there. But I mean the also super important,
like a lot of the I mean, when we look
at the different forest types of the Philippines, right, we
have twelve different forest types for most of them, at
the at the very least structurally, the terra carps are
the most important thing. Like they're really destructed, like the
architecture of the forest. It's really just mostly the pterracarps.
Speaker 1: How so you mean just in being like such major
keystone species.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So these poles like telephone poles. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you look at if you fly like for example,
like a drown or fly over it, most of the
canopy is like the terracarp, right, what is.
Speaker 1: The shape from like a drone? What the what's the
shape look like?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, it's kind of just like a large brocoli.
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, I gotta go get photos of it. We
head back into the if we could just take a
walk around here before you guys dip out, before you
dip out? Yeah, Am I gonna see you again after
today or no?
Speaker 4: I don't know honestly.
Speaker 2: In the field, Jason's disappearing for like the next month.
Sh he's gone on off April I thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'll see you yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll see you. Yeah, you're back of it for sure.
Speaker 1: Cool. Well we need to email at yeah yeah yeah yeah,
and uh let's go to the ultramatic areas next year
or so. So thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate to check out if they want to learn
more about this PTI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're mostly on Instagram.
Speaker 1: You got plant Vision, the Plant Vision two.
Speaker 3: So we just e merged.
Speaker 2: We make cool things, a little posters. Yeah, we're going
on a little plant Vision hike next week. Yeah, so
that'll be pretty cool. Yeah yeah, so, I mean lots
of cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna be on that? You're not coming on that? Huh?
Speaker 2: You'll see another one of our guys genre, So he'll
he'll be with us, he'll be yeah, yeah, he'll he's
the firm guy.
Speaker 1: He's the guy like a Napis was the Mecca fight firm.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you can ask a lot, you
can ask him anything about.
Speaker 1: Friend as you still don't know what species got you
yesterday and I don't want to know that. But they
were biting. You think that's thing there?
Speaker 2: But yeah, because I'm not itching now, so they were biting.
I just have wounds all over. It's just horrible from pronounced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they got me good.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks Elepartus and uh yeah check them out plant
Vision and then Philippine Taxonomic Initiative pt I. So yeah,
all right, thank you guys for all you do. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Thanks