Speaker 1: Come to another episode of the Crime pas but Botany
doesn't podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Possibility
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I'm sorry, I got a little funny today. I didn't
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it the wrong way. This almost happened to my ma.
She got stuck in to John. Honest to God, she
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to that dog couldn't help her. What's he gonna do?
He can't, you know, his little paws. He can't even
reach the knob and so, and her phone wasn't with her.
So she was, honest to God, stuck in to John
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Nursery located in beautiful Money, Illinois. Get your ass down there.
It's worth the drive. And make sure you get a
lot of space in your car so you can load
up a bunch of shit and drive back. Okay, restore
the native plant habitat at the Chicago Tri state region
and piss off your Karen neighbors at the same time.
I kind of actually piss them off, but then be
really nice to them and indoctrinate them into a plant thing.
Some native plants too. Anyway, welcome to the crime pays,
but Bodny doesn't. Podcast. I'm leaving for the Philippine tomorrow
and I couldn't help. But you know, I couldn't help.
But think about something happened to me today, and it's honest.
I got one of my worst fears. I was going on.
I went on a run. My little running shorts are
just my camel shorts. They are like camel cargo shorts.
And I just had a white T shirt on and
some running shoes and I ran, you know, near the
golf course, because the golf course it's like a public
golf course. But that's the closest thing we can get
where I live, to open space. It's how the paper
it in any kind of native plant. The weariness South
Texas is, but it's changing. Anyway. I went on a
run there and then I stopped to pee behind a tree.
And the tree happened to be next to a fence
where there's a walking trail where you know, the uh
much of like well to dose you might call them
Karens they're probably not. Some of them are probably wonderful people.
I don't know. But I was pissed behind a tree
and then out of nowhere, this lady walked on the
other side of the fence. Uh that was me. I
was scared, you know, and I was on the phone
while I was too. I just it spooked me. And
now I'm then I got worried. Oh my god, I
hope this lady didn't see my wiener. Is she gonna
call the cops on me for indecent exposure? Because a
lot of these you know, you're like a board housewife
or something. You got a lot of time on your hands.
Maybe not all, not all hashtag not all, but you know,
you live in this world of paranoia, especially if they're
watching Fox or something. They think everyone's out to get them,
you know, to gu Guatemalan migrant trains coming up and
bringing COVID with them. This is like some circa twenty
twenty one stuff. But still just stick with me, you know,
so you never know what stories people are telling themselves
in their minds. And anyway, it scared me, and that
that actually happened to me once in two thousand and
nine at Chicago Botanic Garden. And there your Chicago Botanic
Gardens doing great stuff now, right, they're doing great stuff.
They have a native plant garden. They've still got a
lot of the horticultural atrocity garden that the wealthy. Because
it is in the north shore of Chicago, they've got
a lot of the horticultural atrocity stuff that the wealthy
want or think they want. They don't really know what
they want. But uh, but you know, they got a
bunch of great natives now. And they have a wonderful
library full of botanical monographs. If you can go, if
you can go lurk in that library at Chicago Botanic
Garden up there. And what is that god awful suburbs
in I forget Anyway, if you can go up there,
it's worth it. But uh but regardless, I was peeing
in the bushes and and you know, next thing, I know,
security rolls up fifteen minutes later, and you know, this
is this guy who kind of looks like remember Pat,
like the old Saray Live character. He didn't look like
a healthy man. He was like he looked like a
chubby or Pat. No offense to anyone over, I'm just
saying his complexion. He looked like a vampire too, Like
the guy doesn't get out much. He's a security guard.
He's driving around a golf court, golf course court cart
excuse me, Jesus Christ, and you know he's probably not
having the best lot in life. I'd be amazed if
he's still alive, to be honest. Anyway, he comes up
to me and he's just looking at me like I'm
a degenerate already. I can tell where he's going with this.
And he says, sir, you are going to be arrested.
We have just called the police. And I said, fucking
for what? And he goes, you exposed yourself to all
those old ladies in that shed over there. And I
guess at the time, the main building was under construction,
so there was a shed. I've told this story on
the podcast before. There was a shed with some heavily
tinted windows you couldn't see in, but I guess they
could see out clear as day. And I was, I
mean I was, I was in the bushes. There's no
way these old ladies saw my wiener. But regardless, they
called the cops on me, and next thing I know,
you know, I'm having to flee the scene with my
son and his mother at the you know, we got
on our little beaterter car and drove the wrong way
out that we had. We had to make a break
for it, right, And I've long since forgiven Chicago Botanic
Garden for this, But this did happen anyway. In other news,
somewhat weak news, I've spent the last few days and
the last week really going on and off driving out
to Star County down here in South Texas and the
borderlands of South Texas, the underappreciated borderlands of Texas where
the dominant culture so thoroughly hates the native plant, the
native plant cover. You know, it's a result of survival mentality.
Culturally speaking, it is Texas, and it is mostly a
Chicano population, Hispanic as they call it, anyway, And it's
a result of classism, which is of because New Mexico
is thoroughly rife with classism. Of course, you go to
the cities, there's this strong, strong hatred of the poor
in many places. And so it's a result of many factors,
and the fact that plants are spiny, and the fact
that it's so hot, you know, and it's car cultures,
a lot of people stay inside, and the fact there's
not much native habitat left for people to actually have
exposures to, so not a lot of people know what
quote unquote nature is. And they think when you say plants,
that you should be referring to nicely manicured turf grasses.
And I will lead a home destot garden center plants.
You know, horrendous shit, shit that makes me feel like
dying on the inside. The the dollar store version of nature,
et cetera. We don't even give into it. I've done
this before, but anyway, went out to what should have
been a parcel of property that should have been a
federal preserve, right, get the fiket into the Fed's hands
because Texas can't take care of its land and uh
and or at least maybe Texas State Parks and wildlife.
So I don't know, it's whatever, just shouldn't be in
private hands because there was a critically endangered species there.
There was. It was just this incredible habitat, These goliad gravels,
these rounded pebbles that were brought by an ancestral river
in the last few million years deposited here. They're all
they've all been rounded and uh, and then they were
cemented in this caliche like matrix and this is the
substrate there. So good luck for the track houses they're building.
They're trying to have Saint Augustine lawns with irrigation. I
don't think that's gonna work out too nice for him,
but it will be fun watching them try. This whole area,
you know, these these South Texas plains, these hills. Amazing plants.
They are Guayacan, guyacum and Gustafolium zygopalesi, the Creoso family.
My favorite amargosa as it's as it's colloquially known, amargosa
just means bitter and Spanish castilla erect the incredible plant. Beautiful,
wonderful food for birds with the little red berries. You know,
red flowers, red, four petaled flowers, axillary. They come directly
out of the stems. The stems taper and sharp points.
It's got very narrow leaves without a petiole, where if
there is a petiole, it's very small. Pubestance on the stem,
pubestants on the other side of the leaf. Wonderful fucking
shrub and it's got it. They does root compassing like
many thorn scrub plants too, just like the same way
you can compass a tree. Many of these roots are
coppassed roots. It looks like a candelabra where you look
at extra vision under the ground, it would look like
a condolabra, you know, or a menora or something, and uh,
just really cool. And of course that's an adaptation to
frequent browsing and herbivy in dry climates, so that these
plants can dive back to these massive underground roots that
they form, these roots that have massive you know, lateral
extensions of shoots and end up forming little colonies. Cobralinea
does this, Guyacon does this. Castilla erected does this. Cideroxalon
cell astrinum, which is edible Sapa tasi, the coma as
it's collectively known, uh, that does this as well. And
if you I was looking up papers on root coppice
saying in thorn scrub plants, and actually a lot of
what I came up with was from thorn scrub habitats
in India, you know, seasonally dry areas in India with
similar vegetation completely unrelated for the most part, I'm sure,
but the similar strategies, you know, And that's that's just
something you see all over the globe, unrelated plants doing
the same things in similar climates, evolving the same strategies.
Convergent evolution. It's wonderful to see. It's really really cool.
Now you see how the landscape directly breeds plants depending
on where it is, right, if you're in the prairies
of the Midwest, or the chaparral and Mediterranean climate of California,
or the Autakamma Desert, the fog deserts, fog deserts of
the Atakamma fog deserts of Baja California, serve fog deserts
of Namibia, et cetera. You see the same things evolving
and unrelated plants if the same lineages are not there,
because there's no cac die in the old world, right,
but you'll see cacti in the Atacamma Desert fog depending cacta. Anyway,
I'm I'm getting ahead of myself here, So spent the
last few days there salvaging plants, digging plants like astrophyte
and mysterious and a kind of serious fitch yea. The
cactie are really easy obviously, because he can rip the
roots up, which you're always going to do anytime you
dig plants unless you have a tree spade, and and
so you're gonna you're gonna rip the roots up. But
the cacti, because they have all that stored energy, you
could just form new roots. And so we were mostly
going for a lot of these critically endangered cactie like
astrophytem and a kindo serious pitchyi, and thelocactus bicolor and
horse crippler's homolocephalath Tex census. Then I went for some
you know, little orbaceous things too. There's an iso coma
out there, which is astacy, which should be a shrub
that's in all the shopping centers of McAllen. It would
go great, you know, in these parking lots. Wonderful shrub
with yellow flowers that would thrive there all the thorn
scrubs stuff. When you see where it's growing, and it's
growing in places where it doesn't get any water, and
it's so it's so extreme, and then you bring it
into the cultivation, you you know, you water it, it
fucking thrives, right, And you gotta spend like a smidgeon
a fraction of the water they that they water these
parking lots and these bleak strip malls with. You spend
a fraction of that and this stuff would look great.
You know, every time I go to these shopping centers
down here, these bleak shopping I don't know why there's
not Palo Verde. There's all the Palo Verde, which is
like a weed tree here. You see it just sprouting
up in these empty, empty lots, these vacant lots that
got cleared and then will soon be you know, they
weren't developed right away, they said, vacant for a few years.
Like palo Verde Parkinsonia aculiata springs up in a SODA's
misky and they all look fucking great, despite the fact
we're in a brutal drought right now. All the Palo
Verde is flowering right now, five hundred thousand yellow flowers
right next to a sign that says lot for sale
coming soon, you know, duplexes. And then it's got a
picture of some fucking frace that with lip injections and
you know, more makeup than a drag queen. It just
just fucking crazy. It's I mean, it's like living in
a death called. It really is. And I have to
code switch when I'm trying to convince members of the
Death Cult to come to the side, you know, or
just you know, you gotta just like be really nice
and just explain to them that, you know, they've been
indoctrinated to be afraid of nature. They don't know what
nature is. They've been indoctrinated to love the English Victorian
European garden style, and they've been brainwashed, basically, and that
it doesn't make sense to have the English Victorian European
garden style here in South Texas where it's summer for
eleven months out of the year and maybe we'll get
twenty inches of rainy year, maybe not, but it's due
to the heat. It doesn't even matter. It's still dry
tropical scrub, right, And so it doesn't make sense to
try and have a lawn or this English Victorian And
why do you think that stuff is pretty to begin with?
Because I see it. I think it looks horrific. I
think it's it looks goofy. It's like it's like a
lady with too much makeup on it. It's like, you know,
some dude that that just goes to the gym and
just does the same chest exercises every day. It looks
fucking goofy. That doesn't look like it doesn't look like
an actual fit human being. He looks like someone who's
worried more about his appearance. Right, there's an explain that
to him, be nice. Why do you want this? Why
do you Why do you think leaves on the ground
are messy? Because that's what you hear sometimes when you
convincing people to plant trees so they can shade the
ground and you know, mitigate the effects of the urban
heat island, all that concrete and asphalt heating up and
then you know, containing heat and then radiating it at night,
making the whole area hotter. You want shade, but people
don't want shade because they think the trees are messy.
How do you reverse this brainwashing? How do you do it?
How do you convince these people that that it's it
makes more sense to you know, because I think anybody
you show him a good native plant garden or fucking
a piece of habitat after a rain, because everything kind
of looks like shit right now due to the drought.
You show them a piece of habitat after the rain.
I think anybody is gonna say that that's beautiful. You
just got to keep getting them, getting them out there, right.
The fact the problem is they've never they've never been
out there, they've never been exposed to it, and they're
afraid of it. They've been in doctrine. They've been brainwashed.
How do you reverse the brainwashing. That's what you need
to do. You need to change the culture. Then you
can worry about fucking with the laws and rewarding people
for having native plant gardens and incentivizing it whatever. But
you got to change the culture. How do you do it? Right?
Don't go like the twenty three year old septum piercing round.
No offense to anybody who's twenty three or has a
septim piercing, but don't just shit all over it. Right.
You want to reach out to people, you want to
think like a criminal, right, don't be loud and boisterous
and stupid, think like a criminal. Be strategic. I just
use the criminal analogy because it's what you know. It
just what makes sense to me. I mean, it's the
society's a scam. People have been indoctrinated. Think strategically like
a criminal. Many white collar people are criminals too. You
could think like, if it makes you feel anybody who
don't like the criminal analogy, you think like that, Well,
you know there's a lot of white collar criminals, all
these bankers and shit think like them. Be strategic. You
have an end goal. How do you get there? How
do you convince these goofy focks, but don't call them
goofy focks, you know, to treat them with respect. How
do you convince them that they've been indoctrinated to be
afraid of it? How do you do that? Because that's
what we need to do anyway, salvaging all these plants.
I was just I just numbed myself to it. I
try not to think about it. It feels fucking terrible.
While I'm in the act of doing it. A nice
Xylo copa bumblebee, by the way, just flew by me,
and so it really hit me the next day when
I got home. When I was home, and I was
just like, fuck man, I was potting up with these
cact i. My goal is to just kind of hold
on to them till I can figure out what to
do with them and farm sea off them. But when
I was out there, it was an excellent opportunity to
look at the root systems of a lot of these plants.
And it was the same thing I was doing in
Brownsville two weeks prior at the housing subdivision where that
Texas caper quadrilla and cana a relative of true capers,
a shrub to about ten feet tall. Another you know,
criminal that this thing is. It's criminal that this thing
is not in cultivation. It's such a fucking dope beautiful
tree and it's got all the adaptations that growing in
this climate, requiring minimal care and water, right like silvery
leaves with with pubescents on them, really cool flowers. I
know the genus quadrilla, it used to be a true
in the genus caper. Was in the related to capers,
but it used to be in the genus Caparis. But
that's an old World genus and this is a New
World genus. I guess the two lineages have been separated
long enough by that Atlantic Ocean that they've they were
warrants different genus designation. And I've seen quadrilla in Costa Rica.
There's two other seen a quadrilla species in Costa Rica
in dry tropical forests and another quadrilla species in dry
tropical forest and Dominican republics. So these are dry. These
are drought adapted trees the dry tropical forests. They get
high rainfall, but then it doesn't rain for six months
and it's still hot as ball. So it's kind of
like a desert. It's similar conditions to a desert, but
technically not a desert. And so we were at the
site in Brownsville, and it turns out the Brownsville Forester
wonderful man hunter followed me, saw me posting about this
rare plant that grows at this you know, bleak McMansion
subdivision that's going up. So much development going up all
over the world, at least in the Americas, in Canada
and Mexico and the United States. Just saw someone else
wrote me an email about some shit that's going on
in Ontario where the government removed the endangered species designation
at the behest of developers. The developers own, the politicians,
the developers. I mean, this is still you know, there
was a halt for development around the mid two thousands,
I feel like, and then it really picked back up
the last decade, and this has become our economic model.
We don't sell anything, we can't make anything. We're defunding science.
We've got a population full of dummies that's only growing
exponentially dumber by the day. And so now our economy
is built around developing what little undeveloped land remains for
shit that nobody needs. Under a manufactured housing crisis, investors
bought up a lot of the housing. That's why there's
none of it. That's why you can't buy a home,
one of the reasons. And so anyway, and so now
it's you know, oh, we need more housing. We need
more housing. So let's we were coming for your fucking
wild lands. That's what's going on. They're robbing the commons,
these shit bag developers, they're terrorists, right, these fucking sleazy businessmen.
Listen to George Carlin's rant on Businessman. That'll make you
feel better. It's a nice one. Wish the guy was
still alive, not for his sake, for ours, right, he
would be very upset, but he did some wonderful links
to say. Anyway, but at that sight in Brownsville, so
they that this guy followed me Hunter who I'm now
friends with He turns out he's the forester for the
city of Brownsville. He got the city to actually remove
these quadrilla trees, these caper trees to the Brownsville Public Library.
And actually knew the developer too, and so and got
along with the developer. The developer was actually, you know,
because we were nice to him, well he was. I
didn't really interact with the guy and so developer was
all for it. And because there's no stopping this development
after it's already it's already been started, they've already cleared
most of the land, and so we moved it. But
while I was there, I was digging up quadrilla. No,
I was digging up guyacon because there were these guyacon
There was an area where they had cleared, they had
bulldozed guyacon, but it was re sprouting like little clumps
of green leaves. And I would dig up that massive
root and it would be like a you know, two
inch diameter, chunky root with barely any root hairs. I
would dig that up and then put it in. I
took those in a pot. I realized there's enough stored
energy in this massive root. Cut off some of the leaves,
not all of them and then put it in a
pot and uh, and they're they're doing well. Now, almost
all of them survived, right, And so but I realized
this is a very peculiar rooting structure, these roots, Like
that's how Guyacon forms these massive colonies. It'll get browsed,
you know, mowed down by herbivores, but it's got these
It puts a lot of energy into building these thick
roots so that it can re sprout in response to
both drought and herbivores, not fire so much because there's
not a lot of fire here because there's not a
lot of rain. There's not a lot of rain. It's
not like Florida, where there's you got these fire dependent
habitats because they get sixty inches of any year. They
just have a long dry season. But you've still got
a lot of lightning. There wasn't really enough lightning. I
don't think fire had really had a place in the
thorn scrub castilla right that did the same thing the
root coppicing. So it's a really cool I mean, it's
not a lot of people think about that, think about
the roots on these things because you don't ever see them.
But for me, it was just It was fucking really revealing,
really cool. Just again adaptations to environment, plants being bred
by the landscape that they've spent millions of years evolving in.
And so you'll see the same thing with even the
fucking cacti down here, the kind of serious post selgerai,
the pencil cactus, which blends in with its environment. It
blends in with the white you know, it gets like
the like half inch diameter, ever more than that, but
it'll be four feet tall. Just this tall spindley cactus
that grows up amongst the shrubs, perfect camouflage. The fines
make it white. A lot of the the bark of
these shrubs is white. Of these stems, most of the
stems are about the same diameter as the cactus. You
get like multiple branching shrubs, and so it blends right
in and then you see it. It just fucking dope plant,
just pink, giant pink flowers. Right. Most of the plants
that Thorn Scrub's Sanctuary, our conservation property look like shit
right now because of the drought. But it kind of
series post sugar i was blooming because it's got that
massive tuber, it's got these peanut like tubers in the ground,
like five of these, like thick tubers it forms. It's
not like a single tuber. It's like five thumb sized,
peanut like tubers that just store a lot of energy
so that this thing can re sprout one of its
spindly stems. Should that spindly stem get broken off, who's
a Texas spiny lizard hanging out? Thank god, it's nice.
I thought those guys were all gone. The feral cats
got them. Feral cats got my Inca though. I was
so bummed. Inca dove was nesting right outside my door.
She was never gone for more than five minutes, and
I came out when one morning and she was gone.
She wasn't there. There's no hawks, there's no owls that
I saw. Maybe an owl got her. It was probably
a feral cat. Though. She's got to turn them. You
gotta turn the feral cats to a fertilizer, just like
you got. It's only only answer, right. You can't take
them to the shelters anymore because the shelters won't put
them down. They won't take them, or they won't put
them down because the crazy cat ladies have infested all
the shelters and convinced them that TNR works trapped near
to return save every life except the lives of the
endangered birds and other native wildlife, to save the cats.
Thank you, yes, toxa pleasantmosis. I've been huffing litterboxes for
the last twenty years, but a kind of serious posegray.
We found one of those yesterday and I dug it up,
and I realized, I don't think I've ever made a
video on the tuberous roots of that species because I
don't ever want to dig one up. But this land
was about to get fucked, this land in Stark County.
We've moved on from the Brownsville rescue. Now we're back
in star Krrie. I've been doing plant rescues the last
two weeks. It's fucking brutal. That's how bad the development
is done here. It's probably just as bad where you are.
And so I did a short video on the roots
of this pencil cact, the species as it's called, and
got some good photos. It's such a fucking dope plant too,
and it's so easy to propagate. You can graph them.
I'll take an inch long section, like an inch long
section of pencil, split it right down the middle of
the razor blade. Both of those onto a stock like
Tricho serious. Trico serious section the probably the best graphic
stock because it grows so fast and then you can
get it ends up looking like an upside on squid.
Then you can take little sections of that, like six
foot sections, root those and you know, cut it, root those,
and then the graph just keeps sending up more shoots.
Your root those and then give them away to people,
get them to plant them. And the site selection is
very important. Though. You got a plant that around a
shrub but not too shady. You wanted to get good light.
So an sistro cactus shirai is another cactus with tuberous roots,
big thick potato like roots. That's which made us so
desirable by the feral pigs, which I just went and
shot the fourth one in the last two weeks, got
another one to go. They're headless, so we'll be doing
this forever, but you know it's worth it prevents them
from destroying plants. This thing must have weigh two hundred pounds.
It was a mean motherfucker. I brought my Air fifteen
out there, the Air fifteen clod, because I hadn't oiled
it like a dummy, and so instead I got I
had a twenty two handgun in my truck. I went
and got that shot in the head nine times with that.
It finally went down, but it died behind the door
of the trap. So I had to get in the
trap with this thing with massive tusks. Thing could have.
This thing would fuck you up. You know. I can't
imagine what you would do if you encountered one of
these things and it was coming for you, and you
didn't have a gun or like a tree to climb anyway.
So I got in and I was I had to
drag its head on the other side of the door.
This thing weigh two hundred pounds easy. And then I
had to drag it out of the trap because you
don't want it to die in there, because then you
can't use the trap. The trap will smell like dead pigs.
So I dragged it to a fucking field so the
caracaras and vultures can go to town on it. Maybe
some coyotes too. They certainly enjoyed the last one, judging
from the tracks and the coyotes scat I found nearby,
and and then I fed the ecosystem with this thing.
But I picked up fleas while I was dragging this
thing out too. I got bit by like two fleas,
and I'm hoping I don't get typhus or barton nolla
or whatever. The fuck. There's so much nasty shit these
things carry. God, I hate farro pigs, but uh, but
anceistro cactus another cactus with a big tuberous root. It
gets about six inches tall and it's got massive fingerlike,
fat finger like roots that go down eight inches into
the soil from which it can re spread out from.
Should drought and sun get too extreme, or should it
get kicked off and nibbled on, et cetera. Really cool adaptations,
And then you just think, again, what why does it
do this? Why does it produce these roots? What are
the conditions that selected via natural selection for these traits? Ah,
the sound of leaf blowers. I'm in I'm in the
suburbs of Austin, now state, Atjavier's house last night, flying
out today at six pm, and it's just, you know,
just the sound of leaf blowers, the sound of pointless
busy work in the background, the u Nandina domestica everywhere
invading beautiful Edwards Plateau vegetation. God, you get some fucking
amazing native plants here. It's incredible. But no, this isn't
good enough, you know, it's you gotta improve it somehow.
We're gonna put some fucking privets, and we're gonna put
some Nandina domestica. We'll leave a couple the juniperse the
satyrs as they call, oh God, horrible privet. I'm just
it's at what point am I just gonna start advocating
as vitex that's another horticultural atrocity. At what point am
I just gonna start advocating for teenagers board teenagers? Because teenagers,
I mean, that's the age you can really get away
with some van delicious shit, you know, and you've got
the compulsion anyway, you really do when you're that age.
And I can't blame them, especially if you grow up
in a place like this, in any suburban setting in
North America. At what point am I gonna just start
advocating that they go out and they just start sawing down.
Learn plant identification, learn the three bed and basives from
your area, and just go out and start just sawing
those down whenever you see them in private landscaping, right,
it's a you know, the homeowner doesn't get a choice anymore.
You're gonna you're gonna plant this shit that invades the
surrounding area, or you're gonna hire something shit landscaper. And
most of them are dipshits in my experience, not all landscapers,
but most of them. What the fuck is this guy
doing all? He's hedging shit with a And it's not
the worker's fault, of course, they're just employed. But imagine
if the workers were employed planting and maintaining shit that
actually spent millions of years evolving there and benefited all
the life and led to you know, an abundance of life,
of native life, cool insects, all the little fucking Xylocopa
bumblebees I've seen buzzing around my yard, shit like that,
you know, the cool native birds. Imagine it got just
these fucking sounds. Man, it's every three houses, holy shit,
but they have an aneurysm. This fucking smells like two stroke,
two stroke engine fuel. And then just these buzzing sounds,
just just fucking mindless busy work. He go stand on
a corner, go go go buzz this thing around the bunch.
Well there's Vitex volunteering. Can you hear this? I want
you to hear it too. Just stupid shit. You get
the leaf blower out, just moving shit around. This is
what the twentieth century is gonna be remembered for. In
the early twenty first century, shit like this. So I
gotta turn this off for a second. It's too fucking loud.
This is amazing. I almost got hit by somebody who
had the complexion of a vampire driving a Mercedes SUV.
That was nice, you know. And the rich cunts that
order this shit done, they don't have any They never
do they these fucks ever set foot on their like
in their yards. Certainly not in the front yard. Maybe
in a back you have a barbecue or something. But
and Austin's not even that bad. I mean, there's people,
there's a couple people got a gaves and some fucking lucophylums,
and there's a lot of hainey shit do. I'm not
gonna lie, but uh, but you know, you gotta get
the teams out here, just start vandalizing. Just hey, you
want Nina in your yard. One of the landscapers put in, ooh,
there's roos v that's a nice native right next to
a giant privet. Invasive. You want Naandina in your yard
and you don't get to have it. I'm sorry. The
community's vetoed that, you know. Or Neesto who's only fourteen
just started listening to some profanity laden hip hop and
has a grudge against the world at least for the
next two years. He's gonna go out and he's gonna
veto your decision to plant Nandina in your yard. Or
Jonathan who's thirteen and quite angry. He's gonna go out
and he's gonna in the middle of the night saw
down your crave myrtle. You don't get to have these things.
The community has vetoed it. I'm sorry. But there's checks
and bounces all throughout life, just like in an ecosystem,
there's checks and bounces, and don't you don't get this anymore,
And don't forget little Andrew, Okay, just turn fifteen. He's
got a real fucking chip on his shoulder. He doesn't
know what it's, what it's at, but uh, but he's
gonna come and he's gonna he's gonna remove some of
your Bradford pears for you right there at about three am,
you know, right late in the night. He's got an
electric chainsaw. It's battery operated. It's very quiet, very very quiet,
especially in a windy night. You can't even hear it.
You're just gonna come out and the thing's gonna be.
It's gonna be laying on the ground in front of
your shitty house, your shitty expensive house, your shitty Nuevo
riche gaudy ass beautiful brickwork house with a nice lawn
in front. At what point der Matto file him? But
it was a it was kind of cool. I was
walking on his neighborhood and and uh, there's a couple
little lots. I think it's like, where's you know, the
homeowner adjacent to it probably bought that house a long
time ago. It came with a lot and there's nothing
on it yet. It's just the it's still undeveloped, you know,
the adjacent lot is, and there's remnant vegetation. There's some
nice remnant vegetation. So you can get caught the fuck
every fucking three houses there's there's just fucking buzzing busy work.
What do you do if you're you're home sick. You're
gonna go neurotic, right, You're homesick from worker so you
got a bad case of the flu. You're pissing out
your ass, you're trying to sleep. You're just being lulled
to sleep, you know, long long nap during the day
so you can recover, get your electrolytes back, and you're
just being lulled to sleep by the And then you
realize there's a whole industry that's employed with this kind
of pointless ship. I mean, we're we're burning captured sunlight
from two hundred and fifty million years ago to do
this shit, and you can't you know, it's it's just
fun can blows. I put up a post of the
guy mowing, mowing. We'll get back to that. That lafful
and native Edwards plateto vegetation it meant. But I put
up a post of this guy mowing. I think it
was in Colorado. Somebody said it to me. It was
a listener's submission, driving a riding mower over a dirt lot,
just clicking, kicking up clouds of dust like there goes
your top soil. Just it looks like fucking iwa in
September when all the farmers are tilling the soil and
there's just clouds of dirt and dust going everywhere. Really amazing.
Every every September October in the Midwest, the dust ball
gets recreated. There goes all your top soil cloud. I mean,
it's so thick, it looks like wildfire. Looks like someone's
doing a control burn. I'm walking up hill now, it's
really nice. There's he's at a limestone crevasses still and
I'm surprised they were even able to build houses here.
It's very uneven terrain must have been in credible habit
that here, I mean it still is in little places
like where you know, someone hasn't decided to you know,
mode on the native vegetation and they're lot that's built
for two houses but only has one, you know, and
and make money by putting in a second home and
selling it right because some people are doing it. A
lot of these people are rich enough they can they
can keep they can keep the native vegetation in and
so you can get a hint of what was here before.
And it's fucking awesome. Dermatophylum Yucca upacola. You know this
you could see this vegetation that represents so well the
transition from the music, higher rainfall east of North America
to the drier, more arid, more rocky west of North
America right here in the hundredth meridian. Anyway, I put
this post up, but it's there's some fact I know
offence that I love. Fetti's some fact I driving around
Don and he's just working there. He didn't make the call.
He's just got a job. He's just working. It's not
his fault. He's just doing ship work. You think when
I was working for the fucking railroad and some guy
just waved to me, that was nice. Oh shit, I've
been spotted. Oh we're stopping in the street. Okay, what
do you want to say? What do I want to
say something?
Speaker 2: I want to say, you're the greatest.
Speaker 1: No, no, what everybody should be like? You got some
nice native parcels of habitat here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is all habitat. They build them one
at a time. Thank god. It's not like rough.
Speaker 1: And some people are keeping like the Gary righty eye
and the dermatified.
Speaker 2: I wish, I wish I knew all the name, but you.
Speaker 1: Know, the plants though, that's enough. You don't even know
the names.
Speaker 2: I just let him go. I let him grow. Unfortunately
most of mine standina.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone need help removing it? Yeah, help you.
I'm here at my buddy Hobby's house all the time.
So yeah, okay, yeah, good to meet you, Johnny. Give
me the real stuff, man, Cara, Yeah, Cam, I have
a go nice guy, really nice guy. What the fuck
was I talking about? Oh yeah, the pointless mowing. Yeah,
that's fucking awesome. That shit would never happen where I live. Well, actually,
it does happen. It does happen. I'm just trying to
be cynical. You know, there's a it wouldn't happen as frequently.
But that's nice. There really is. There is, really is
some lovely remnant veggier. Holy shit. I gotta go help
that guy remove Nandina when I get back from the Philippines. Now, Oh,
there's a Celtis anyway. Uh, shout out to Johnny who
lives on bermuda Av? Was it bermuda Av? I don't
know what fucking Oh wow, Berberus is in fruit anyway?
What was I talking? Oh? Yeah, do you think when
I worked for the railroad, I mean, I knew I
was working for a shitty company, right, I just loved
the work. I didn't I didn't feel a connection to
making sure that a frozen box car full of chickens
got the fucking whatever company it was going to. You know,
I didn't feel I didn't feel like I took pride
in that. I didn't feel like I took pride and
making sure that a gondola car full of scrap metal, Oh,
nice piece o lithas fungus, dead man's foot fungus. Michael
Reisel's poking up from the side of the road certainly
tied into one of the oaks of the Lantana, Right.
But I didn't I didn't feel, you know, proud of
the fact that I was helping a gondola car full
of scrap metal make its way to a grind pile
at Schnitzer Steel in Oakland, California, can get ground up
and ship to China. Right. I just liked working working
out there, being outdoors, shooting the shit with the rough
necks and meatheads I was working with. I liked a
lot of them and uh, and it was fun. But
I didn't feel any pride. If someone would have attacked,
you know, verbally attacked the idea of shipping fucking back
in you know, crude shale crewde back and crude oil
to the port of Oakland. I wouldn't have felt personally attacked.
So do you think the guy because a lot of
people made these stupid, fucking comments when I was attacking
the idea of the guy, the idea of you know,
mowing a mowing a dirt lot, not a dirt lot,
but a patch of effectively dead grass in the arid west,
you know, the Colorado. Where was it somewhere around Boulders
and Denver, I don't know, suburbs of Denver. Attacking the
idea of driving a riding mower around a patch of
dead grass in a park and just kicking off clouds
of dust and just I mean very evidently not doing anything,
just long care, busy work. You know, we all know
this was a long care company that got hired. It's
very evident. It's not his property, right, it's a fucking
it's a park, but it's just it's just a big
patch of dead grass with a lot of space, and
that the fucking the dust clouds getting kicked up, you know,
go up to like ten feet. It's the same thing
I see around where I live all the time, except
they're mowing it. And then a couple of people commented, Oh,
he's not mowing, he's he's de thatching, de thatching. Look up,
de thatching. What is de thatching? De thatching is pointless,
busy work invented by the long care industry, so they
have a needless service to sell people, especially during the
down season. It's like ripping up the dead shit so
that I guess, so that the stuff beneath it can
come up right, something that's like completely unnecessary in any
kind of native ecosystem. Removing the thatch. He's de thatching,
what a technical term, de thatching. He's de thatching it.
But the point is the guy you know who's doing it,
he's probably a lovely gentleman, right, he's probably a great guy,
just some working class schlep like myself, like I was
for fifteen years, and he's got probably no personal attachment.
He probably knows what he's doing is fucking ridiculous, as
I often did when I was working for the railroad.
But he's still doing He's not doing it out of
a sense of duty and pride, he's doing it because
it's his fucking job and he needs a paycheck. Everybody
understands that. But of course when I put that up,
and it's always the token rich kid, generally Caucasian, who's
now got progressive politics that they want to shove it
you to, you know, to a confident effect. They grew
up basically spoiled and wealthy. You never had to worry
about anything. Uh, And that's good. I mean, it's better them,
better than being that than like a young Republican or
some shit, right right, that's good. But the compensation factor
gets a little too strong and they end up being
obnoxious as fuck, just like the vegan who's got to,
you know, repeatedly tell you about how they're vegan and
how you're a piece of shit for eating meat. I
don't really eat meat. I eat a little bit of
chicken and some fish, you know, but it's mainly a
cholesterol thing for me because all you know, all the
wops that in my family and they all get the
ass cancer to colon issues. You know, you want to
keep that red meat unless you're running marathions. You don't
really need to be eating that much red meat. It's
fucking disgusting anyway. So the token Caucasian progressives, and they've
always got you know, maybe the Palestine flag and their
bio and their pronouns, all this stupid shit, no offense,
not that the Palestine flag stupid right, not at all,
not just saying you know, it's just these are just
like social signals. They're just signaling. It's a self curated identity,
and these are social signals that you can wave to
other people the right does it to everybody? Does it?
That's that's humans, That's what we are. We socially signal
to each other, right to show what fucking group we're anyway.
But they've always got to put it well, you know,
it was a couple people who just immediately allow you
just you're attacking this guy. They just made this, They
made this own straw They made their own straw man
argument that you know, something I wasn't saying. And then
they had a conversation with themselves about it, and then
I made fun of them, and then you put them on
restrict and then you watch him just keep having a
conversation with themselves, getting angry. It's pretty funny. But either way,
you know, it was that that shure of just the
fucking riding mower. He got the clouds of dust. You've
got the turf grass that's brown and very obviously dead. No,
it doesn't come back, It doesn't just green up, right.
The roots might still be alive, but they'll send up,
they'll send up, you know, new shoots in the winter.
So the shit that's dead doesn't doesn't come back right.
And he wasn't removing that stuff. He's dethetching. So it
goes and it just it's just fucking and he's you know,
he's spitting half the fucking top soil away too. There
goes all the dust and all the shit they pour
on it, the fucking herbicides, everything you need to keep
along looking healthy and in a climate it doesn't want
to be in like the front range of Colorado where
it's super dry. All that shit's going on, all the
cars and everything was fucking hilarious, just a beautiful It's
just a perfect metaphor for just the fucking futility and
mindlessness of our race to nowhere. There's a better way
to do things, but we've been doing it this way
for so long. We're not even ready to start thinking
about that yet. But all in all, we love the
mindless busy work, don't we it. It just makes you
feel like something's getting done. Nothing's really getting done, but
it makes you feel like it. It's the illusion of
things getting done. It's the illusion of duty and obligation,
and that feels good. That makes us feel good. It
feels the void temporarily. It's very important, especially for you know,
for these for these suburban men to be out there
mowing the law in themselves. But you know, the neighborhood
I'm in, nobody obviously does that. They hire landscapers to
do it, but uh keeps a lot of them employed.
Won How many people here have actually voted for Trump
and now are out of a landscaping crew, you know
due to the ice rays? Does that happen? Who are
they gonna find? Who are the beauty full? Diasporos text aena?
How do you tell if you got a male or
a female diaspors taxt aying? If they haven't flower, you can't.
You have to wait for the flowers, So you better
just plant the bunch of them. That's the best way
to just ensure that you're gonna get both. So you
can get some of that edible fruit. Does it really
make you shit? Though? Has anyone? We should have a
diasporos text aena eating and shitting contest. You eat as
many texas per simmons as you can, and then and
then you try to hold it in and you see
if it does if it is indeed a laxative, because
many fruits are laxatives, that's you know, you make sure
that the dispersal agent in this case of human or
or maybe at the quachet apossum or something. You know,
you make sure that they evacuate their bowels before their
stomach acids start digesting the seed coat and they end
up dispersing the seeds for you. Works great, It works
for yellow dragon fruit perfectly. Did you ever see that? Really?
Dating myself here, but do you ever see an episode
of Jackass where they try to take a shit running?
Wasn't that impressive? Just the most ridiculous shit? Those were
healthy pastimes by the way, too, you know those you know,
young men need something to do, right, vandalizing crape myrtles,
seeing if it's possible to take a shit while running?
Better that than you know, sports cars in cell videos.
You know, Political extremism of any kind you know that
kind of thing. Better that then you know, watching Andrew
tape videos or something. Right, see if you could take
a shit while running. Those are healthy pastimes for a
young man anyway. All right, So moving on from the
the mowing the dirt lot and kicking up clouds of
dust issue. I don't know if I talked about this
in the last podcast. I don't think I did. But
I found another or I visited another someone else found
that I don't know found it. They found it in
twenty twenty two, or maybe it was twenty twenty four,
but they put it on I Naturalist an observation of
Quadprella in Cana the Texas Caper, the Borderlands Caper more appropriately,
right near the border wall. And so my friend Lily
was visiting. We went out there to go check it out.
She was visiting from Florida. And God, we're going to
talk about a dystopic development scene, right, and just super
dirty politics too. All the developers are basically on the
boards of these Holy shit, here's a chip in Hobby's backyard.
What the fuck? Here's a shirt the piece of shirt
that has obviously been worked at some point in the
last few hundred years by someone attempting to make a
cutting blade out of it. That's pretty cool. Oh, I
would have loved to be here five hundred years ago
just to see it. You ever think about that? Doesn't
it just break in half? What's been like? Okay, let's
let's not get the rest there. Okay, Remember there's a
native prophecy that all this ship's gonna collapse, and uh,
you know, this stupid, arrogant civilization is gonna be forced
to change its ways if it survives, right, which that's uh,
there's hope on the horizon. Keep that, keep that in,
keep it in your prayers. But I've visited this. I
heard there was a population of this plant there, uh,
in these remnant Sable forests. Sable Mexican I basically, you know,
the only palm native to the Rio Grande Valley of
South Texas. Right there on the border. You know, you
can hear border patrol has this atensi atension on the loudspeaker,
basically saying in Spanish, don't come here, you know we'll
we'll turn you away. This area is heavily patrolled, et cetera.
Atension and uh yeah, I mean it's that's going off
in the background, and you walk down. You walk past
the border wall. There's a little break in the border
wall and there is always border patrol there. So I
go and talk to him. I tell them what we're doing.
They don't really care because it technically it's wildlife refuse
track land. You walk past the giant dystopian arrays of
concertina wire that they've got out there, and you walk
down this little hill and there's a massive quadrilla in
cana which is in Caparecei, the Caper family, which is
in the Brassica Order of brassic Keyle's the order of Mustards,
and a lot of cool members Order of Coberlinius Spinosa,
all fourn whatever the common name is. You know, it's
just got the photosynthetic stems, no leaves, coberliniar. We all
love cober Linea, don't you. If you don't, you're an asshole.
And so you walk past it, the concertina wire. You
walk up to this tree and it's just you know,
I you tell it was at one point maybe fourteen
feet tall, and there's been some dieback, but it's re
sprouting from the base and the reesproutse look healthy and
it's flowering it's got the four white petaled flower. I've
seen quadrilla in in uh, Dominican Republic and then in
Costa Rica and the dry force there. You know that
that's speaking of which that's the beauty of Ininat is
that I didn't know. I didn't know what. I wasn't
familiar with the genus quadrilla, right, because it was used
to be in the genus caper or caparis. I wasn't
familiar with the genus quadrilla. Uh, you know, up until
a few a few months ago. And because it was
you know, someone told me about it and I was like, oh,
it's a plant I haven't seen in the Rio Grand Valley.
That's the you know, it's like a significantly sized shrub.
So I looked it up right into it. And then
I went to my Ininat typed in quadrilla, and I'd
seen two other quadrilla species, one in Costa Rica, one
of the Dominican Republic. And then you know, you can
go to the taxon charts charts, the taxonomy charts on
Ininat and see how many other species are in there,
and uh, and so now I had a context for it.
Oh it's this lineage that we get in South Texas too,
and that I've seen already in the dry forests of
Costa Rica and northwest part of Costa Rica, and in
the Dominican Republic and the southwest you know, corner of
the Dominican Republic where it's drier. Oh cool, Holy shit.
I had no idea. But when I was when I
was photographing these things, both in Costa Rica and Dominican Republic,
I didn't know what they were. I was just documenting
the plant life there, right, And then I put it
on iin ad identified it later or somebody else did whatever,
and then didn't think much of it. It's just a name.
I have no context for the genus quadrilla until I,
you know, have a reason to look at the one
that grows near me. And then of course I asked
what family it's in. I'm not familiar with the family
CAPARECEI the caper. What are capers? Oh there's some spice
or some shit. I'm not really I'm not really familiar
with those either. So then I look into what order
is it in? It's in the mustards. Okay, well, what
I know about the muzzards? You know four petaled flowers
generally speaking, just like cobralinea and mustards, and uh, you
know the glucoscinilate phito chemistry which often has a peculiar
smell to it. Right with sabby, he's an example of
glucosinolate the chemistry or kale you know ko farts that
sulfury smell. And so then I start learning more about it,
and then I realized how this this genus has of
multiple different species that are adapted to tropical dry areas.
How cool. Anyway, so we rolled up to this spot
at the border wall there were We ended up finding
three or four plants. Most were only two or three
feet tall. It looks like they probably died back in
the freeze of twenty one. It might have been something
else too, I don't know. They might there might have
been another reason they died back. But either way, Uh,
you know, they were right at the eco tone of
like the lowland sable forest where it's very dark, dense
sable palm forest, really cool, the water bottles all over
the place from migrants crossing in the past. Uh. And
then you go further as you start. If you go,
if you were a few yards north, you get into
you know, more of the upland stuff, right, like corset
Da axilaris, which is in Fabasi great native native garden
native plant garden plant already Anaqua another great native tree
smells great when it blooms. It's the Borge family brands
and ac tons of guayacon there of course, and so
it's slowly, you know, but you definitely only get the
sables where it's more music, where it's wetter. And surely
there were massive Monosuma cypress there at one point too,
but they all got leveled or most of them, ninety
nine percent got leveled as the area got developed, because
that's you know, they're members of the redwood family. They're
related to redwoods, and it's good wood, it's good lumber.
So but either way, it was a really cool, uh
really cool forest. Had Plumbagos Alantica there too. There was
a whole bunch of cool shit follow feminist Spinosa's Texas
snake eyes. The fruits are the are the snake eyes.
That's why it's they've got like these like jail like
bird dispersed seeds. I guess it's technically an aerrol but yeah,
it was a really fucking wonderful thing to see this
little remnant patch of vegetation. And everything around there is
agriculture for the most part, agriculture and then border wall
and then of course the concertina wire, except for this
one little spot. And I talked to my friend Josh
and San Antonio, who you know, is a big ininet
guy does tons of identifications. I don't bother with identifications
ever really, and he he was like, yeah, visited the site.
You know, it is it's real. It is a species,
you know, because he had an interest in it too.
This is such a rare plant. So I got cuttings.
I'm trying to grow them on this aeroponic bubbler, you know,
the one that the weed growers use, and hopefully that
will work. I think I have to get some rooting
solution though, because you can't for those aeroponic bubblers. You know,
it's just like a little it's like a bath with
water that circulates. You put like a gallon or two
gallons of water in there, and then there's a trade
that goes on top which keeps the humidity inside, prevents
it from evaporating, and also holds the cuttings. You know,
we grow as use these things. And for some plants
you don't even need rooting hormone. But for all the
stuff I'm growing, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna need rooting hormone.
So I think I gotta get the hormex stuff. It's
a solution. It's not like the stuff you dip the
gel or the the uh powder because it'll just get
washed off. You got to actually get put a solution
in the tray in the aeroponic cloner. So I'm trying
to root Mandavilla lenugenosa, all these cool natives that because
I don't have time to wait for seed, I just
want to get these things out there. I'm gonna do
seed too, but I'm trying to get clones out as well.
Mandavilla leugenosia needs to be grown, Helieta par of a
Folia needs to be grown Barretta they call it. You
also get barretals, you know, which is like a biretta
forest fucking dope. Plant leaves smell very pleasant. You know
what I just saw? I just saw a xanthoxalm in
this little remnant patch of juniper.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I guess I was trespassing. I don't know. It was
like a little remnant to patch in this neighborhood, in
Hobby's neighborhood, and there was xenhox limb in there, which
is rutasi. It's got thorns on it. It looks like
it's some sort of fucked up rows. And then you
and glabrous leaves, very smooth shiny leaves, and then you
break up a leaf and it smells very pungent and
strong like xanthoxlim does. Because most of this almost everything
in the citrus family has punching smelling leaves. Everything I've
had contact with. It's like a synapomorphy for the rutasi,
the pellucid oil glands. You know, you got to look
at Mike Simpson's book It Plants Systematics. If you haven't yet,
I get it even if it flies over your head.
It's a nice textbook, you know. Put it on your shelf,
crack it open for ten minutes while you're drinking your coffee.
Every morning you see words you don't know, look them
up all right where you can really just you could
open that book anywhere. You don't have to read it
start to finish. You could open that book anywhere and
and just start reading. Because it's everything's listed by order,
like every different chapter is a different order of angiosperms,
well all plants. These got the ferns in there too.
Very nice diagrams, very nice pictures, lists of the snapomorphies
for every order and family. It's a great book. Anyway,
wonder what zendoxlam That was probably Clava hercules. I have
to put it up on in later. But uh, anyway,
so you know, just seeing this, this this forest right
on the Rio Grande, right on right on the river
right there, it's all fish and wildlife. But you know
that doesn't protect nothing's protected in Texas. Yeah, It's happened
so many times where I discover something or I see
it for the first time, not discover what, you know,
what I fucking mean, right, You see it for the
first time, and then you come back six months later
and it's gone. It's just cleared. We need to get
rid of those plants. They were soon Assi. Let me
put the phone down, okay. Anyway, now we're tailgating on
the back of the truck. I'm making some tea right
here with this little stove. It's like a twenty dollars attachment,
maybe it was fifteen. That just goes right on those
little butte taint things. There you go. It's gonna make
some green thief. But I think I may have finally
done it. I may have finally gotten banned from Missouri
Botanical Garden. I don't think. I don't think the stiffs
at HR really appreciated my Orchid Show video in which
I was making fun of the show gardens, the show
gardens that they put on for the rich donors. M yes,
and the Linnaean Greenhouse where we can show, we can
highlight the We've got a ten thousand dollars replica of
the actual schooner that was sailed across the ocean on
some of the early botanical travels from seventeenth century Europe.
It's a lovely and then we've got a point steadier
garden in there as well. And the donors, we had
a banquet for them, a Cotillian dinner, if you will,
and many of the wonderful donors, the wealthy donors came
by and they absolutely loved it. They thought it was fantastic,
and they said, you know what, I'm going to donate
an extra three hundred thousand dollars to fund the Weeping Mums.
Garden is the weeping mums. You're familiar with the weeping mums, right.
They we spend six months training the mums so that
they actually have the weeping formation and they can drape
over the right. Anyway, I think I finally got banned.
Word on the grape viners that I finally got banned.
I know they don't want to take any more of
my specimen, any more of the specimens at the at
the herbarium. Maybe this is all just word of mouth,
you know. I think the young people appreciate the young
people enjoy crime Pace, but I think some of the
older people may not have the same level of appreciation.
There's very I just you know, we don't really we
don't need that. You know, we don't need the association.
I think the association with crime pace about and he doesn't.
Maybe what's bumming out some of the stiffs, you know what.
I feel bad for these people. You know, most of
them have probably never been to therapy. Most of them
have probably never dropped acid. Most of them have probably
never had a gay old time lighting their farts on
fire and lapping their asses off around a campfire. I've
mentioned that twice in this podcast. I think I'm overdue.
It's been years since I've done that. You never tried
to light your ass on fire? It's very funny. I
mean the first time I ever did it, I was
in military school. My friend Dan Rapp lit his ass
on fire and then got really nervous that he had
burned his sphincter muscle, and he started flipping out about it,
getting on neurotic. And shit, you know, leave it to
a Chicago Italian you get fucking neurotic about something inconsequential
and ridiculous. Anyway, Dan rap wasn't Italian? Was he? What
the fuck was he? I don't know.
Speaker 2: His dad was.
Speaker 1: Fucking hilarious, though, God, his dad was like this this
thick accent, you know, trucker, Dan cut you here? You
look like a fag. Little did he know? Anyway? I mean,
and yeah, sure that's toxic. I understand that. Okay, I'm
just you know, it was a thing. It's funny. That
alone is funny, right, some old guy that thinks a
haircut can make someone homosexual, that's not That's not what
makes you homosexual. You know, mutual masturbation in it? Nevermind? Okay, uh, anyway,
but I think it may have finally gotten banned from
Missouri Botanica Garden. I think it happened. I knew it
was coming right. They do have a wonderful center for research.
They've also they really have that hoity toity, all that
shit I make fun of with the cotillion dinners. Does
the best impression of a cotillion dinner? We're having a
kotillion banquet? Yes, they they. When they redid the building
the US it was a former railroad depot. When they
redid the building, they were uh, they did embrace the
the rough urban history of the previous thirty years, and
they left some of the graffitos. They left some of
the graffitos behind, some of the vintage salvaged wood that
they later put up on the interior of the the
entrance to the cafe, for instance. It was I do.
I did appreciate that. I thought that was very clever. Anyway,
you know, you know what I'm talking about. But I
think I don't know. We'll see how quick can I
get banned if I go back, I won't through any videos.
Even because they've got some nice stuff from Miseruribo Tanna Garden.
They've also got a lot of the hideous show garden
shit that I make fun of. And I think some
of the uh, some of the well deduce may have
been offended by that. I think, so, I think it happened,
and and I think the Orchid Show video pointing out
how there's no scientific information about pollination syndromes or ey
the cool things orchids do. So it's not really an
exhibit celebrating the orchid ac the largest plant family in
North America. It's more just you know, like jerk off
optics for a jerk off optics for the wealthy, without
providing any context. He's a very you know, anthropocentric based Hey,
the garden show shit, you know. And speaking of garden shows,
I went to the South Texas Garden Show over thereon
McCowan and I thought it was gonna be a lot
of horticultural atrocity stuff, but it wasn't. They actually had
like quite a few native They had like two native
plant tables. My buddy Eric was at one of them.
Eric is a wonderful man. He's very kind, but he's
scary looking in a way. He looks he's very he's
built like a fridge. He looks like a Vato that
just got out of prison. He doesn't he doesn't have
any tattoos. Okay, but but he's just you know, if
you were gonna and holds someone right. And he's doing
great work for the for natives down here. I like
I like him a lot. But he was funny. He
was with these two older women who looked a little
Martha Stewart homemakers. No offense, I'm not talking shit at all,
and not at all, but it was just funny because
he got excited he saw me, He's like, oh, let's
take a selfie. And then he included these two ladies
and they looked at me like with the highest level
of revulsion that they could must They were probably being
nice and trying to hide it, but they just looked
over at me. Yeah, they didn't know who I was,
which was great, but it was still fucking hilarious. Shit,
I'm boiling the tea, and that'sposed to boil the tea.
It's gonna be higher caffe and I've already hit too much.
God damn it. Fuck all right, put that down. But uh,
but it was it was very funny. How the fuck
it's like five hours later from when I first started
recording this thing, and there's still leaf blowers. Like, there's
just this fucking mind numbing background noise of leaf blowers
in two stroke engines doing pointless shit. It's we haven't
had any rain up here lately in the Austin area. Wee,
I don't live up here, but you know what I mean,
It's just fucking kills me, man, Just the futility of
you know, I do people ever wake up and find
themselves trapped in this and just have mental breakdowns? I
imagine it's got to happen a bunch. You're trapped in
this lifestyle of fucking leaf flowers, the lawns, the fucking
mort kids. You could barely afford all this stupid shit.
Everything's collapsing around you. You know, we're in this pointless
war with Iran now. The Trump's dumbass got us sent
to everyone around yousing confident and just fronting, trying to
save face. You know, uh, do people have that breakdown?
Is there ever like the panic attack moment of realization
where reality just becomes a bad asset trip and you
wonder how you got trapped in it? Does that happen?
I think it does. I think there's actually quite a
bit of literature written about that. Anyway, So I got
banned from MOBOT. I haven't got the official word yet.
I'm actually going to write someone I know they're in
the upper echelons and see that. I would like the
Uh if I am banned, I would like to know,
and I would like to have it in writing too,
so I can put it on my resume or put
the you know, the email on my wall or something.
I'm cute scared. I want to know what it's for.
What is it for? I've given them good coverage? Is
it for the orchid show thing? I was just it
was just the point that criticism, miss All. I wasn't
I appreciate what they do, right. I think some of
the rich, you know, schmucks up in the upper echelons
maybe just got scared of the association with me.
Speaker 3: We don't need that kind of association. It's not good
for the brand the botanical garden at the Kotillion Dinners,
the Kotillian Dinners. We don't want his name brought up
at the Kotillion dinners. It's very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Hey, by the way, if you're in Austin, go to
Green sleeves nursery. Go to my buddy Willie's nursery. The
city of Fluggerville Fluggers. Did you know the Fluggers. They
were a wonderful They were a wonderful family. The Fluggers were,
and they did a lot of good stuff for They
had a Bible camp over there in Flugerville. The Flugers,
Mark and Donnie Fluger and Marcia Fluger, Sam and anyway,
go to Flugerville and go to a green sleeves nursery
and buy some stuff from Willy. Because the city's fucking
with them over water restrictions. I guess they didn't realize
there was a huge leak in one of their aqueducts,
and so by the time their reservoir was drying out
because it hadn't been filling up for the previous nine months,
it was already too late. So now they're cracking down
anything that uses water and a nursery, a native plant nursery,
even though all those plants are adapted and have adaptations
like hairs on the leaves or heavy layers of wax,
or drought deciduous nature. Even though it's native plants right
which should receive an incentive. You know, I think the
city managers just see the word nursery in a business
name and fuck with them. And so they're on water restrictions.
So Willy's been having to go pick up like thousands
of gallons in these those carts with the metal frame
you know that you load on a pickup trail. He's
been having to transport water to his nursery that way,
basically fill it very very time intensive and financially intensive too.
So if you could buy something from him, because I've
given quite I've given him quite a few seeds of
rare stuff. He's got a lot of good shit over there.
He's selling a lot of sodal's. Go buy a sodall
the fuck you can go buy a sodall. That's a
plant that needs to get planted out. More, Go buy
a sodall from Willie and plant it in your yard
and full sun and uh and kill an andina. So
go go help him out. But anyway, yeah, no word
on it's a developing story. No word on the actual
band from Missouri Botanical Garden. But uh, where am I
going to deposit specimens at? Maybe a deposit in New
York Botanical Garden now because they don't they like me
over there. I did a couple of videos there. They're
they like me, don't They don't they have the same
I think any of these botanic institutions, and I've worked
with a lot of them, and they've all been very hell.
This is the first time I've ever had a negative
experience with one. Uh. But there's New York Botanical Garden
that they got the you know, they've all got the stiffs.
They've all got the stiffs in the upper echelons that
aren't gonna want to touch me with a ten foot pole.
I understand that I don't want to touch them with
a ten foot pole either, at least the administrators the
HR right. We live in different worlds. We have no
business interacting except when you know you're a don't know
what I do and you just see me at first
glance and think I'm a degenerate criminal or fucking or
some bum. Who's this guy? Oh?
Speaker 2: What is he?
Speaker 1: He isn't doing? He just curses and looks at plants.
What does he do? That's not he's He doesn't even
have a degree, he's never been to the Cotillion dinner.
I studied hard for this I just completed my thesis.
What is he doing? This is my world. He doesn't
belong here, can sir, can you please have this man removed?
But you know, but the people on the ground, people
actually doing research, always generally tend to be cool. Is
there ever a case where someone's hired to be in
an administrative position at a botanic garden or in you know,
the position of human resources who actually has botanical experience
and has worked on the ground. I don't think so.
Like the HRT Missouri Botanical Garden, they don't know anything
about plants. They don't even know what genus and species are.
I don't think think they know the word. I don't
even think they know. Uh, you know, ask gone of
these hr people to tell you what monophyletic means. Could
they do it? I don't think so. The business end, anyway,
it's a shame. You know, why is there a run
like this. There's got to be a few gardens out
there where it's actually you actually got people who know
shit about plants in charge, you know, all up and
down the system, throughout, you know, throughout the the administrative
bowels of the system just doesn't happen to be in Missouri,
but Tannia Garden and maybe I'm banned. Maybe I'm not banned,
but I probably am. I don't know. We'll see, we'll
see what the actual word is. Anyway, I'm at it
to the Philippines in two hours. It should be very interesting.
Lots of old world lineages of plants. Might see a
rephlegia or two. I'm helping out with some university botany
fora where they're going into some mountain range and doing
a bunch of collecting, collecting a bunch of barbarium specimens
and documenting the flora. I think there's already a checklist,
a preliminary checklist for the area as well, so that
should make it a little easier getting into it. But
lots of old world plant lineages, man, you know, I
haven't been on that side. I haven't been in the
Eastern Hemisphere in a long time, so this will be
exciting to get familiarized again with many of these lineages
I haven't seen since Australia, News Zealand or New Caledonia. Okay,
I got the checklist that my buddy Johnny, who lives
in Manila sent me. Uh ooh Anna cardiac Buchanania, Buchanania arborescence.
This is a tree mangiffra. It's a tree. Seema Carpus
cuneiformis Sema Carpus longe folius. It's a tree. I think
Sema carpas one of those. I think those got the
Russia all in them. The allergenic oil Ana naci, which
is a pop off family Mitrophora, reflects a tree h
ooh actinidiaci. There's a Sarawia there. I thought that was
mostly North American. That's the Kiwi family. Sarawi is a
tree you see in a lot of areas that a u.
Central America, Mexico has a bunch. Costa Rica's got a few,
uh Dashitia Hoya taberne montana, uh Aquafolia ac ilex boer
Gerray buger Ray, whoever named after buger uh arac Or.
There's an Arisima aureliac Osmoxilon polkaraimum. And that's a tree.
Eric Carreace. There's an agathist philippinensis. There's a Philippines agathist.
No shit, that's nice. How about that? Uh? Let's see
Eric Casey bunch of cool palms Arica. Eric casey, aristoloche Is,
Aristolochia philippine ensis, s Photolace, Dianella. Those are used in landscaping.
A lot of Dianella's aspleniums Asteraci, Cyanthelium, Bloomia sinuata, mechania, Oh, balanoparaci.
But ballinafa papuana, it's a nice one. Bogonias. They got
a bunch of bogonias, of course, Bignoni ac rat or.
You don't even need to hear me. You don't even
need to hear me, just rant about these. They got
Cascarhina just equasy the folio. That's probably we just naturalized
chrysl bles. Oh there's a Clethracclusias comlin ac anyway, Oh,
Diptero carpesi. I'm excited about those, man, the Diptero carps.
The Old World lineage of trees and the order mel
Valley's very important keystone species and ecologically ecologically important in
many areas of the Old World tropics. Anyway, I'll wrap
it up there. I might be doing a book signing
at Green Sleeves Nursery in mid April or late April.
I think I'm going to Nuevo Leone to speak at
a university down in Nuevo Lanmo, Mexico, in around the
end of the month in April, and then I'm going
I'm going to the fucking Carnivorous Plant Society conference in
North Carolina. It's in some goofy sound in town in
like northwest North Carolina, and I'll be there in May,
in mid May, and then uh, I'll be at Kulowe
in July again in North Carolina. June. Hopefully I didn't
sign up for anything in June, did I? Oh, we'll
be on tour. We're going to Tucson, La San Diego
in the first week of June, and then in uh,
what else am I doing? August? I'll be mid August.
I'm going to Denver. September, I'll beat the Arroid conference
in Miami, and then a bunch of other shit. Then
I probably won't commit to anything for a few months
after that because I need my fucking life back. Anyway,
Hopefully you got a get someone of that. And please,
if you're in Austin, visit Green Sleeves Nursery in Flugerville.
Help Willy. I'll buy some stuff from him. He's got
a bunch of cool salve he's got a bunch of
cool Salvia DARCYI and other good shit, and I gave
him some Nolina nelsonia I seed as well. So all right,
but that's ITD have you have a good restaur after
known all right, sir go. Fuck you. Said by