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Speaker 1: Oh you could keep playing a smooth shit. It's down

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the low anyway. Welcome to another episode a crime page,

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a botany doesn't. I'm coming to you from San Luis Poto.

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See where the fuck he wasn't even a time we

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stayed in last night. Wonderful little pound. Oh it's cordy

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about the are wonderful? Oh this is all that so

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many South Texas plants here. We're only at twenty nine

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hundred feet at three thousand feet so times three and

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then move a decimal point over that's what like nine

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hundred meters so anyway, Oh, beautiful Steino, Sirius Wes the

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Korum just massive, massive fucking plants to a tree columnar

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cact ie too, I don't know, five meters fifteen feet tall. Anyway,

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it's been a wonderful time. We only been here two days,

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and with my buddy Gabrielle, and we're looking at hillsides

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that don't have any billboards or shopping plazas on them,

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or cul de sacs or fucking McMansions or anything, you know.

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I was just I was just pondering why, or realizing,

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I guess why so much of Mexico has not been

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trashed like the US. God, there are so many fucking

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wonderful plants on these limestone cliffs. Jesus Christ, they these

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bad right now, you know, And then I realize, of course,

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you know, we got the central plaza like every little,

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every little rural town you go to in Mexico, even

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I mean big towns too, have a central plaza, like

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a little socolo area, and you know where people just

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loiter and congregate and hang out, and they got trees

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planted and shit like a public park, and then everything

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around that is generally laid out in a grid that's walkable,

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you know. And that's like a huge difference to what

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exists in so much of the southern United States. Some

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of the you know, northern like Midwest towns, Northeast towns

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have that kind of general vibe. But most of what

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America's done in the last fifty years is of course suburbs.

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And it's, you know, part of the reason we're all

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isolated from each other and hateful, anxious, depressed, and generally

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in poor shape, you know, because human beings evolved to walk,

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and we we haven't we haven't been doing too much

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of that lately, so it was Fuck, it's just you know,

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everything about it. There's like there's so much open land left.

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That's the thing too, you know, not everywhere people don't

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drive every day. It'll spend three hours a day in

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the car. That's crazy. It's a crazy idea, but that's

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what is the case in much of this in the

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United States. I'm just gonna keep hammering this home every

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episode because it really does. You know, you start to

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realize that you're unhappy living this way, and then maybe

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you start to look for something else, and maybe eventually,

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you know, it starts to be and I become an

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idea that spreads among people, and you know, the people

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that just don't like hearing me say negative things and

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go fuck themselves. So I don't know why you're listening

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to this. Well, look at these cacked I holy shit,

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shit god, Oh it's pack a serious marginatum Like they

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get photos of that in habitat at some point. So anyway,

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we've been doing some really nice things. It's been barely

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four to eight hours. We started off on gypsum habitats,

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looking at gypsum endemic plants in San Luis Poto c.

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Of course, there there's a band of gypsum that basically

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runs from northern New Mexico through West Texas, UH through

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an Awavo Leone, through San Luis poto Cea, through parts

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of Hidalgo UH into Kolima and then south into Wahaka.

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And wherever you see the gypsum, of course you see

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plants that have evolved to only grow on gypsum. Ooh,

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isolato serious, I think Mrpillo cactus, giant mapillo cactus the

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size of a shack. Look at these fucking cactus for us,

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God damn it, you know we might have to fuck.

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We can't pull over, I guess God dam or whatever.

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We're trying to you know, keep time, but uh keep

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his schedule, but I don't. I try to avoid at

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tenerary as best I can because I don't know if

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I'm gonna feel like doing it the next day. So uh. Anyway,

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but these gyps and habitats. We were looking for Pinguicula

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gypsy cola, which is uh, and there was also Pingwicula

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tataki I. But of course when you go looking for

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one plant and it's a rare plant, and then especially

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in a daphic endemic meansing meaning it only grows on

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a certain soil type, you end up encountering a number

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of extremely other unique and interesting plants like pileaa ribe, palaya,

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ribbi ri i b ae. I guess that's what. I

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guess that's how you pronounce it rebuy and uh that

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that's a That was a fuck the gypsum coffee fern.

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You know the genus Poleaia. You know you got polea

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andromettap i. Thing is it andro metafolia? You got Plaatropapuia

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in the Midwest and the east. He got the whole

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post of pelaya species. They're in the family there at

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ac in the Kylanthoid fern subfamily, the xeric fern subfamily,

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which which also has astro Lipus and Mariopterus and Kylanthes

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in it, et cetera. A whole fucking cool group of ferns.

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But this pilaya was not. I mean, whenever you see pelaias,

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they're generally smooth and glabrous, and you know, nice blue

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glaucus colored to them. This thing was wooly as hell,

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Like I thought it was an astro lepus at fir.

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It was so god damn booley. It had huge tufts

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of wool on the undersides of the leaves. Especially Uh,

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it was just the one of the weirdest looking plants

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I've seen in a while. And of course, you know,

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when I when I got closer to it and it's

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sooka a closer look, I realized, holy shit, this is

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a pilaya, unlike any other member of that genus that

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I've ever seen, and I kind of lost my shit.

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And then I looked it up and I realized it's

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on gypsum. This wool probably has to do with the

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harsh substrate it's growing, and you know, it's a coping

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strategy for the harsh gypsum. The more open exposed environment

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exposed to the sun. Gypsum has the texture it's not sand,

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it's got the texture of concrete of like bad concrete.

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The way it dries, it's very soluble in water, becomes

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mushy when it's wet, and when it dries it's like

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really poorly mixed concrete, very abrasive. And oh two Cara

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cars hanging out on a pack of serious marginitis. Whatn't

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idylic scene? Fuck me got like, there's no build I

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haven't seen any shit eating grins for ambulance chasers or

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botox clinics or any of this stupid shit. What the

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fuck was that? This is so hard to drive through

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this stuff without stop at Gabriy we might have to stop.

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We might we might have to stop at some point. Yeah,

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we might have seemed like a nice spot, you know,

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God damn it, Oh my god. Elevation three thousand feet. Yeah,

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you go to like three thousand and thirty five hundred

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feet in central Mexico and it's gonna be large. Cactuy there. Oh,

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there's a it might be cool. It might be a

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nice spot. Look at them Maritillo cacause it's the size

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of a small house. What the fuck? So anyway, where

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was I this pilea uh was just blow my mind?

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I look it up. It was only described in two

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thousand and one. I think George Yesktevich, I've always princes

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pronounced his name, the nice kind gentleman that runs the

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UT Austin Orbarium described it. He wrote the paper on

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it in two thousand and one. Oh Jesus, there's just

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you know, there's never enough time done here, right, And

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my biggest fear is that because it's it's really I

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worry that, you know that the shiny shit lifestyle of

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of of the car slums and everything the United States has,

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it's such a tempt it's such a temptation, you know,

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I wonder. I worry that eventually Mexico is gonna do

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the same thing to its land, just absolutely fucking into

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a coma, make it as ugly as possible, but highly convenient.

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It'll be very very convenient, uh, you know. And of

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course the setup too for much of Mexico, the HETO system,

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it's all tied to the Mexican Revolution, which I am

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not knowledgeable enough about but I should definitely, uh definitely

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learn more about. And you know, all this ship, all

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this shit, all this stuff has a context, you know,

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I think with the AHTO system too. Of course, developers

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can't so easily and so readily purchase up land because

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it's community owned, much of its community owned, and it's

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you know, reserved for agriculture, et cetera. So it's not

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but it's led to much more preserved land that's not

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as destroyed like you have in the US, where every

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last little bit, especially in Texas and Florida, every last

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little bit of development that's gabbled up and it's it's crazy, man.

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I remember, you know you see these uh this looks

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really interesting, that looks like a hyptus or something on

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the side of the road. You see this mentality, you know,

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especially in Texas and Florida. I don't know where it

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comes from. I think it's this this dumbass Southern mentality

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and nofense. You know, this this we don't lack app

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sid or Southern mentality where they instead of blaming the

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developers and crooked politicians who are houring their land out

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and selling them out, they blame you know, people that

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move there, like just other you know, middle class or

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working class schmucks who are getting fucked by the same system,

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you know, and then end up moving to these places

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trying to you know, find whatever, find cheaper housing or

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find a better life whatever. So fucking stupid. You know,

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you really got to snap those people as that come

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from that duped mentality, you know, blame the little guy

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and just you know, avoid blaming the uh it's really

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ugly qualities and human beings, you know, instead of blaming

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the people in power that are fucking you blaming anyway

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they don't want to get distracted. But that's gonna happen

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a lot more in this podcast. But the gypsum was

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just fucking. This pinguicula, by the way, which was growing

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sympatrically growing next to this pilea, was absolutely insane. It's

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one of the most insane looking plants and certainly the

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most insane pinguacula that I've ever seen, and I've seen

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Pinguicula castabitoana and Dominican Republic that'say epiphytic one that's highly poached.

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I only found one or two plants, and I had

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to climb a tree to get to them. But uh,

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you know, really wet cool habitat cool and wet habitat

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everything draped in moss that was in the dr uh

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and and that was a wild one. But this thing

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just looks absolutely insane. It's growing in gypsum. This These

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stressful soils make plants look fucking insane, whether you're talking

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about the quartzite sandstone in Brazil or serpentine in California,

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or elateritic soils like in h i own California, or

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even sand dunes to a lesser excent. I guess on

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sand dunes you just get a lot of hairy plants,

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and you know, long tapering root systems that resemble the

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hold fasts of kelp. But you know, but whatever, the

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quartzite and the gypsum especially make plants look fucking insane.

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They they cause plants to evolve that just look absolutely nuts.

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And this pinguicula is probably the best example of it.

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And I didn't catch a flowering. Gabrielle was here two

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or three weeks ago, caught it flowering. I did not

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catch a flowering. He's doing tours, by the way, you

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want to go on a tour with this guy, you

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hit him up. He's what is it, cactus under the sun. Yeah,

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he's doing these tours and stuff. He'll take you out there.

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He'll show you where all the nice bathrooms are. He'll

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he'll show you, you know, the good spots to you

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don't drink coffee, but they'll show you the good spots.

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To hit him up, you know, I'll try and get

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my friends some business. Here, give me a fucking break. Okay,

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come out here. Hit him up. He'll think you're right.

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He got a nice Nissan too, But uh, anyway, Jesus Christ,

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ay fag anyway. Yeah, So pinglicular gips. It's got like

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many of the Mexican pings, as we refer to them

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in the in the trade, they're uh, you know, they're

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they're generally prefer more shadier sights. And most oh, yeah,

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there we go, We're now we're in correct. Throw how nice.

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It feels good to be back in care thora. And

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so they got you know, they got winter leaves and

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summer leaves. That's because Mexico has a dry winter season.

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And what the fuck is that beautiful composite Jesus Christ.

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And then it's got a summer Oh it looks is

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it a montana or a small anthus? I don't know.

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It's it's a ruteral plant. It's thriving on the side

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of the road and it's about twelve feet fifteen feet tall. So,

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because the summer season is wet, they they they've got

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different leaves. And then the winter, during the drier winters,

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they get these tightly compact, more compact, tightly wound rosettes,

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spiral rosettes of leaves. But their summer leaves look insane.

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They look like octopus or squid leaves. They're very long

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enthicles for trapping those tiny flies and shit that end up.

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And again I'm so curious what pollinates this thing? When

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what does it mostly eat? Right? And of course we

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know why it evolved. I mean, most carnivorous plants you know,

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growing in water logged wet areas that that are you know,

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have inaccessible nitrogen, are very nutrient poor, you know, like

231
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bogs and stuff. But gypsum also has is very nutrient poor.

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It's got inaccessible nutrients in it and presumably a very

233
00:12:37,120 --> 00:12:41,399
very high pH and so that is what's selected for

234
00:12:41,559 --> 00:12:45,240
the evolution of a gypsum endemic pinguicular. There was a

235
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pinguicula growing nearby, and at some point in the last

236
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every many millions of years, and seeds got into the

237
00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:53,240
gypsum and most died and couldn't survive, but then some could,

238
00:12:53,320 --> 00:12:58,200
and then you end up eventually, after so many generations

239
00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:02,720
and natural selection, you end up with a gypsum endemic pinguicula,

240
00:13:03,840 --> 00:13:06,320
and boy does it look nuts. And then Pinwicula tatakia

241
00:13:06,519 --> 00:13:09,759
is another gypsum endemic ping and it was growing in

242
00:13:09,799 --> 00:13:12,039
the same fucking habitat like six feet away from a

243
00:13:12,840 --> 00:13:16,799
cactus from Trebnocarpus lowie i, which is that's another gypsum endemic,

244
00:13:16,879 --> 00:13:19,559
I think, right, which is sunk into the ground, suck

245
00:13:19,720 --> 00:13:23,320
sunk into this crust, I mean, and it looks the

246
00:13:23,360 --> 00:13:27,120
gypsum looks like sand castles too, like the crust does.

247
00:13:27,200 --> 00:13:29,600
And it can be hollow on the inside because water

248
00:13:29,759 --> 00:13:33,039
dissolves of Gypsum's very soluble in water, much more so

249
00:13:33,159 --> 00:13:36,600
than limestone, and so uh, you know that's why you

250
00:13:36,679 --> 00:13:40,639
never find it really in high, higher rainfall environments. Right,

251
00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:42,879
that's part of the reason gypsum. And you see that

252
00:13:42,960 --> 00:13:45,159
horse at a giant cock and I can't then see it? God,

253
00:13:45,240 --> 00:13:48,200
damn it, fuck, why did I look? What's wrong with me?

254
00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:49,960
I'm like a twelve year old boy with a sense

255
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:53,159
of toilet humor. The thing was two feet long anyway,

256
00:13:54,440 --> 00:13:58,720
So so anyway, so the you know, does all this

257
00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:02,480
dictates how And gypsum, of course is basically sheet. Rocket's

258
00:14:02,519 --> 00:14:06,080
just basically dry wall, so you know, And there's parts

259
00:14:06,120 --> 00:14:08,559
of these gypsum hillsides where you can knock on it

260
00:14:08,600 --> 00:14:10,720
and you can hear that it's it's hollow. It's like,

261
00:14:10,840 --> 00:14:15,039
you know, fifteen inches hollow inside because it's all been

262
00:14:15,360 --> 00:14:20,720
you know, water watered out, weathered out, dissolved out, but

263
00:14:20,759 --> 00:14:25,159
the crust is left wild stuff. Man. But yeah, so

264
00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:28,360
there was a cactus growing six feet away from this

265
00:14:29,080 --> 00:14:33,120
Pinguicula tatakii, which is as much smaller. Pinguicula doesn't look

266
00:14:33,159 --> 00:14:36,399
that wild. It looks like any normal ping but and

267
00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:39,039
not as big with the gypsum. Philo was just insane.

268
00:14:39,080 --> 00:14:42,360
Some of these rosettes with the summer leaves, with the

269
00:14:42,399 --> 00:14:46,320
tentacles where god damn, they had to be I don't know,

270
00:14:46,559 --> 00:14:49,080
eight to ten inches across, I mean, very large. And

271
00:14:49,080 --> 00:14:51,279
then the rosettes are much more you know, in preparation

272
00:14:51,360 --> 00:14:53,919
for the dry season, are much more compact. And then,

273
00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:56,039
of course I wonder what the roots look like, because

274
00:14:56,039 --> 00:14:58,759
the roots on most pinguiculous, don't you know, if you

275
00:14:58,840 --> 00:15:02,080
grow them cultivation, like you know, people have given me

276
00:15:02,120 --> 00:15:05,519
pinwiculos over the years. I keep them alive. They produce offsets.

277
00:15:05,559 --> 00:15:07,559
I give them to other people. I think I've got

278
00:15:07,559 --> 00:15:10,320
Gigantia and a few others, some hybrids that drew from

279
00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:14,600
carnivoro made and I got mine under lights relatively seventeen

280
00:15:14,639 --> 00:15:17,879
thousand locks under these let these spider farmer lights. Pinwiculas

281
00:15:17,960 --> 00:15:21,600
like shade. But you know, gigantia does really well in cultivation,

282
00:15:21,679 --> 00:15:23,759
and so you just keep it in a little a

283
00:15:23,799 --> 00:15:25,679
little tray full of water. You keep it in a

284
00:15:25,679 --> 00:15:27,440
pot that's then in a tray full of water, and

285
00:15:27,440 --> 00:15:29,840
I dump all the mosquitoes I catching them a mosquito

286
00:15:29,919 --> 00:15:32,200
trap on it, and feed them. And because I feed

287
00:15:32,200 --> 00:15:35,399
it a lot, it produces numerous offsets, which I then

288
00:15:35,480 --> 00:15:38,080
root and give to other people. Everybody should have a pinwicular.

289
00:15:38,120 --> 00:15:40,840
They do probably do fine in a kitchen window. You know,

290
00:15:40,879 --> 00:15:43,320
there's probably enough light there, even though it's so much

291
00:15:43,399 --> 00:15:46,480
darker inside than outside, there's probably enough light there to

292
00:15:46,559 --> 00:15:50,600
grow up pink and so just don't let it dry out.

293
00:15:51,320 --> 00:15:55,480
They don't like that. But these were growing on dry soil, too,

294
00:15:55,519 --> 00:15:57,720
which is not so I mean, I guess once they're established,

295
00:15:57,759 --> 00:16:00,200
they probably established during the wet season. The sea is

296
00:16:00,279 --> 00:16:03,200
absolutely fucking tiny. But once they established during the wet

297
00:16:03,200 --> 00:16:07,960
feet and then they're they're they're good to go, and

298
00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:10,919
they could just hold in through the summers. But god damn,

299
00:16:10,919 --> 00:16:13,519
there was so much other wild ship on the slope

300
00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:16,559
above this, and they're going all up and down this

301
00:16:16,600 --> 00:16:19,399
little like cut in the in this gypsum rock wall.

302
00:16:19,960 --> 00:16:22,240
You know, twenty thirty feet high. They're all the way

303
00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:27,879
up with that pialaa and Selaginella gypsophila. The quote resurrection fern,

304
00:16:27,879 --> 00:16:29,519
which is not a it's not a fern at all.

305
00:16:29,559 --> 00:16:35,240
It's a lyco fight. But another beautiful rosette. Oh wow,

306
00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:37,960
what the fuck? Oh that's that cool anta cardiac member.

307
00:16:38,039 --> 00:16:39,639
That would be a cool thing, because yeah, if you

308
00:16:39,679 --> 00:16:41,679
find a place to stop, let's stop here. I love

309
00:16:41,759 --> 00:16:45,279
my you rush you all containing ana cards. It's like

310
00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:47,840
a giant tree ana card. What the fuck is that?

311
00:16:47,919 --> 00:16:51,240
Supo smodingium? I think, yeah, we should stuck you stop here?

312
00:16:51,360 --> 00:16:53,159
Is it possible? Is there enough for real? Oh? Yeah,

313
00:16:53,159 --> 00:16:55,799
it's good. That's a little shrine. They're gonna make one

314
00:16:55,799 --> 00:16:59,919
for us when we drive off the road. Oh it was,

315
00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:03,039
it's nice. Now we're even lower. Now we're sixteen hundred

316
00:17:03,799 --> 00:17:07,559
feet elevation. Very pleasant temperatures, but got to be hot

317
00:17:07,559 --> 00:17:10,240
as balls in the summer. I just we stopped to

318
00:17:10,240 --> 00:17:14,359
look at these monster pseudosmodingium, which are a rush you

319
00:17:14,400 --> 00:17:19,359
all containing member of the poison oak and mango family, anacardiac.

320
00:17:20,400 --> 00:17:23,400
And this one was like eighteen feet tall, six meters tall,

321
00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:25,720
you know, and then you stop to look at one

322
00:17:25,759 --> 00:17:27,119
thing and you look at other things. That was only

323
00:17:27,200 --> 00:17:29,279
the only took me like fifteen minutes, which isn't bad

324
00:17:29,279 --> 00:17:31,880
for me because normally I take a lot longer. But

325
00:17:32,440 --> 00:17:37,359
I saw this really cool back arris relative coyote bush

326
00:17:37,400 --> 00:17:40,759
relative with you know, golf ball sized flowers on it,

327
00:17:40,799 --> 00:17:44,000
maybe a little bit smaller, but they almost look that,

328
00:17:44,039 --> 00:17:47,680
you know, multi serial fatories, almost looked like like thistle flowers.

329
00:17:47,680 --> 00:17:49,839
It was like a thistle meta coyote bush, but it

330
00:17:49,920 --> 00:17:53,240
wasn't spiny, just talking about the flowerhead. And then there

331
00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:57,039
was night of skulls there too, the malamuhir, the stinging

332
00:17:57,200 --> 00:18:00,480
member of U four bac and uh and a bunch

333
00:18:00,519 --> 00:18:03,720
of Cordia bossierra of course as well, and then some

334
00:18:03,759 --> 00:18:07,240
little mammalarias on the side of the rocks. And then

335
00:18:07,279 --> 00:18:11,279
I saw not all grass Melinus rappents, which is a

336
00:18:11,319 --> 00:18:16,240
horrible invasive on the rocks too, getting established. So maybe

337
00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:17,920
in a decade or two it'll be all over the

338
00:18:17,920 --> 00:18:21,559
fucking roadsides here, who knows. I was talking to my

339
00:18:21,680 --> 00:18:24,519
friend Lily, who lives in Florida, where that species is

340
00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:28,799
especially bad, really bad invasive, and I guess some dude

341
00:18:28,799 --> 00:18:30,279
from where it's native. I think it was in the

342
00:18:30,359 --> 00:18:33,200
media message there and said it was wild to see

343
00:18:33,240 --> 00:18:36,680
it everywhere because where he lives, where it's native, it's

344
00:18:36,759 --> 00:18:39,759
like a small component of the flora which is wild,

345
00:18:39,759 --> 00:18:42,440
which is the same thing kutsu does. Where it's native.

346
00:18:42,519 --> 00:18:46,400
Kudzu's like a small it's it's not super dominant where

347
00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:49,680
it's native, where it evolved, you know, something like the

348
00:18:49,759 --> 00:18:55,880
perma culture. No offense permaculture, you know, invasive species denialists.

349
00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:58,359
Not all ashtag, not all perma culture. It's just the

350
00:18:58,359 --> 00:18:59,759
ones I like to make fun of because they don't

351
00:18:59,759 --> 00:19:03,759
believe an ecology. This is where they kind of don't

352
00:19:03,759 --> 00:19:06,000
get it, you know, they just they don't realize how

353
00:19:06,079 --> 00:19:09,799
small their lens on the world is and how narrow

354
00:19:09,799 --> 00:19:13,720
and myopic you know it is. And uh, anyway, but

355
00:19:13,759 --> 00:19:16,359
maybe you know, everybody comes around. Eventually, people can come around,

356
00:19:16,400 --> 00:19:20,720
they can figure it out. So yeah, anyway, Uh, but

357
00:19:20,759 --> 00:19:23,559
where we were talking about gypsum habitats in the way

358
00:19:23,599 --> 00:19:25,680
be they owned. So what was really cool was above

359
00:19:25,759 --> 00:19:28,680
the slopes of this gypsum was a whole bunch of

360
00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:32,720
plants that I know from South Texas now Wattlia hype Luca,

361
00:19:32,759 --> 00:19:36,279
the artist formerly known as guok Nadia hype Luca sunflower

362
00:19:36,359 --> 00:19:39,599
family Asta seed. It's like a small tree. These were large.

363
00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:43,200
We've actually got some at thorn scrub on our you know,

364
00:19:43,559 --> 00:19:47,519
our our conservation property, but they top out it like

365
00:19:47,599 --> 00:19:50,200
five feet taller. And then there was Karwinsky a hum

366
00:19:50,240 --> 00:19:54,039
both Yana as well and Senegalia BERLANDI rise so many

367
00:19:54,079 --> 00:19:56,640
plants I know from South Texas, but there they all

368
00:19:56,640 --> 00:20:00,720
look much healthier, you know, at forty six hundred feet

369
00:20:01,200 --> 00:20:04,160
in San Luis Poto c And even though they were

370
00:20:04,160 --> 00:20:09,319
growing on gypsum and growing right above gypsum. You know,

371
00:20:09,519 --> 00:20:12,839
it's I think it's a good indicator for me for

372
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:16,440
what South Texas may have been like during the Pleistiscene,

373
00:20:16,440 --> 00:20:18,720
when it was no doubt still hottest balls in the summer,

374
00:20:18,720 --> 00:20:22,119
but generally much milder. And so I think the general

375
00:20:22,200 --> 00:20:25,200
trend that it the idea that it gives me is that,

376
00:20:25,720 --> 00:20:28,799
you know, South Texas, despite its proximity to the coast,

377
00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:32,400
is going to be becoming a lot hotter with climate change,

378
00:20:32,640 --> 00:20:38,759
and probably more you know, for a while more volatile

379
00:20:38,839 --> 00:20:43,680
temperature dips and drops in the winter because the jet

380
00:20:43,720 --> 00:20:45,960
streams all fucked up, and the jet stream you know,

381
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:52,640
circumnavigating the going around the higher latitudes is what helps

382
00:20:52,680 --> 00:20:54,559
keep all that cold air up top, so you can

383
00:20:54,599 --> 00:20:58,440
have hotter summers and then cooler winters for a while

384
00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:01,359
as well, until finally it just gets so hot and

385
00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:05,759
so dry. I think, you know, were there no humans

386
00:21:05,799 --> 00:21:07,599
around in climate change was doing what it was with

387
00:21:07,799 --> 00:21:11,000
South Texas, which some of those plants, eventually it would

388
00:21:11,039 --> 00:21:14,519
just get too hot for them, you know, because they

389
00:21:14,640 --> 00:21:17,400
look the ones in South Texas just looks so much

390
00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:21,599
more rough and stressed than the ones that you see

391
00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:25,200
at higher elevations further south in Mexico, you know, like

392
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:30,119
the Nahualia and the Karwinskia, et cetera. And there was

393
00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:32,119
even I mean there's black brush here of a chili

394
00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:37,640
or rigidula, and uh oh, yeah, there was that lipia.

395
00:21:37,799 --> 00:21:40,319
I forget. It's not oregonoides. It's the other one, the

396
00:21:40,319 --> 00:21:43,839
one that smells like a reggano verbonac that I'd like.

397
00:21:43,920 --> 00:21:46,440
Usually it native landscaping in South Texas because it can

398
00:21:46,440 --> 00:21:50,000
take full sun and it actually prefers not to be watered.

399
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:54,279
Once it's established that rots really easily and it smells delightful.

400
00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:57,200
There was also turnera the fusa. Where did I see?

401
00:21:57,200 --> 00:21:59,960
I think I saw that at the gypsum area too,

402
00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:04,119
Damiana passive flora pass the floor ac he doesn't look

403
00:22:04,160 --> 00:22:07,559
anything like a passion flower by though it's a small

404
00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:13,519
woody subshrub. Oh yeah, no, I saw that yesterday when

405
00:22:13,519 --> 00:22:15,559
we were looking at some of the cool kac by

406
00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:20,200
the aerocarpus and other stuff. So anyway, so that night

407
00:22:20,279 --> 00:22:25,039
then we stayed in this this beautiful Taxodium ucranadum grove.

408
00:22:26,759 --> 00:22:30,000
You know, I was still just kind of wonderfully shell

409
00:22:30,039 --> 00:22:34,119
shocked from experiencing all the gyps and endemics. And you know,

410
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:36,640
it's always fun. You photograph this shit and then you

411
00:22:36,759 --> 00:22:38,559
I take, you know, thousands of photos, and then I

412
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:41,640
go back and the photos are all I have unless

413
00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:44,000
I collect an urbarium specimen. All I have to reference

414
00:22:44,039 --> 00:22:47,720
that plant and uh, and then you find out what

415
00:22:47,799 --> 00:22:49,960
it is and you're just you know, blown away, You're

416
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:52,240
like holy fuck, because you you know, especially you've got

417
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,000
some context for other plant families, if you've got an

418
00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:00,640
awareness of taxonomy and different plant communities from this continent,

419
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:04,920
but maybe at higher latitudes or higher elevations, whatever, and

420
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:06,880
you just kind of get blown away. You start realizing

421
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:10,880
all these different variations that evolution has produced on a theme.

422
00:23:11,759 --> 00:23:13,839
And so like when I saw that poleaia, I was like,

423
00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:18,039
this is fucking insane. I've never seen a such a

424
00:23:18,079 --> 00:23:23,480
wooly palaya, like they're normally really smooth and glaborous. And yeah,

425
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:28,480
it's just not just natural selection over many generations and thousands,

426
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:31,839
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.

427
00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:36,920
So uh, that's part of that. I mean, that's most

428
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:39,160
of the fun in this. That's where the little shots

429
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:41,720
that dopamine come from. And then of course just realizing

430
00:23:41,759 --> 00:23:45,200
the close ties between geology and plant life as well.

431
00:23:46,079 --> 00:23:48,480
But that day, the night, we stayed in this this

432
00:23:48,640 --> 00:23:53,400
monazum of Cyprus grove and it was in like this

433
00:23:53,559 --> 00:23:57,000
kind of basin. It's very salty soil, but there was

434
00:23:57,039 --> 00:23:59,079
a spring nearby that kind of looked like the San

435
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:04,119
Marcos River watershed. The you know, the water that was

436
00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:07,079
coming out of it was blue, indicating it probably had

437
00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:11,440
bicarb dissolved by carbonate in it, coming from the surrounding limestone,

438
00:24:11,839 --> 00:24:14,559
which is the same thing you get in the charstick

439
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:19,480
watersheds of the San Marcos River up there, Buffland Marcus,

440
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:24,119
Texas and uh, obey, I don't know, it's a fake.

441
00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,359
Holy shit, we've had some rough run ins with topees. Man,

442
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:31,799
just fucking woom boom, just fucking you know, you're gonna

443
00:24:31,839 --> 00:24:37,519
need new shocks at some point here soon. But uh,

444
00:24:38,519 --> 00:24:42,640
but yeah, the uh, the water was like this beautiful blue,

445
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:46,920
and then there was a really dominant grass species that

446
00:24:47,039 --> 00:24:54,160
was everywhere, and then these just huge beautiful redwood relatives

447
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:57,599
Mana zuma, Cyprus texadium of grenadum, the same species that

448
00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:02,240
grows up in Uvalde, Texas and Austin, Texas, which you know,

449
00:25:02,319 --> 00:25:06,160
Texas botanists have been mistakenly referring to is just a

450
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,839
different kind of Taxodium distant him. It's just different. It's

451
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:15,599
just a little bit different because it's a different species,

452
00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:18,519
because it's the northern extent of the ring. Texas just

453
00:25:19,079 --> 00:25:23,240
refuses to accept that it's basically Mexico, that it's basically Mexican.

454
00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:25,000
And it's like they're with so many plants, like they

455
00:25:25,039 --> 00:25:28,960
called the Texas madrone when ninety five ninety six percent

456
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:33,680
of the populations in Mexico so funny, man, it really is.

457
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:36,599
It's a you know, well, we were our own country.

458
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:39,559
You were your own country for nine years, buddy, after

459
00:25:39,599 --> 00:25:41,720
you stole it from Mexico and then you were going broke.

460
00:25:41,799 --> 00:25:46,759
So you find you realize you that joined the union. Anyway, Oh,

461
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,079
fucking Texas pri It's just like sports team pride. Texas

462
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:53,519
pride like Chicago. I don't have Chicago. Probably love Chicago.

463
00:25:53,559 --> 00:25:56,160
It's a shithole in many ways. It's also a wonderful

464
00:25:56,160 --> 00:25:58,839
city in many ways that Texas couldn't hold a fucking

465
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:02,480
candle to. But I don't have Chicago pride. It's just

466
00:26:02,599 --> 00:26:04,319
where I'm frog of a fuck. We could have been

467
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:06,279
born there, I could have been born in Iowa. I'm

468
00:26:06,279 --> 00:26:09,160
glad I was born in Chicago. But you know, this

469
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:13,119
is Texas pride. It's just ego compensating for insecurity and

470
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:17,440
lack of self exploration and lack of self depth. Anyway,

471
00:26:19,319 --> 00:26:22,440
So this taxodium u crenadum grove was amazing, and then

472
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:24,880
we saw it later in the day from this really

473
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:29,440
dry limestone hill covered in ocatillo's and uh, some really

474
00:26:29,519 --> 00:26:33,680
cool plants. I saw Neo Pringlia integrifolio, which is a

475
00:26:33,799 --> 00:26:38,039
very common UH dry shrub that's in the willow family

476
00:26:38,079 --> 00:26:42,960
Sela Casey and UH. There was also Nerdsta used to

477
00:26:43,039 --> 00:26:49,799
be Siguria Sigaria mexicana and now it's Nernstia mexicana. But

478
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:53,480
it's it's a monotypic genus, and it's the only member

479
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:57,559
of UH of its genus, and it's the only member

480
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:00,680
that I know of that's a like a small tree

481
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:05,359
to shrub in ruby Ace the coffee family. It's crazy, man,

482
00:27:05,519 --> 00:27:08,079
it's fucking what. It's got the opposite leaves and their

483
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:11,000
petiole or stipules. At first, I thought it was some

484
00:27:11,039 --> 00:27:14,400
sort of you know, mandavilla or something, because there was

485
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:17,960
a flower not open, and then I saw the ovary

486
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:20,480
the fruit, and I realized, that's not a fucking a

487
00:27:20,559 --> 00:27:25,000
postinacious flower. That doesn't look like a postaace uh at all.

488
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:28,039
This is Rubyac. And then I had to figure out

489
00:27:28,079 --> 00:27:30,839
what it is and I went to sign it. Southwest

490
00:27:30,839 --> 00:27:35,000
Biodiversity dot orgon did a collection search for Rubyac and

491
00:27:35,039 --> 00:27:36,640
San Luis Poto c and that was one of the

492
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:38,400
things that came up, and I was like, what the

493
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:42,640
fuck is this? Oh Jesus, Okay, I took a little

494
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:44,680
break just now. And now we're in the Sierra Gorda

495
00:27:44,759 --> 00:27:48,440
where I don't know, roughly thirty seven hundred feet which it.

496
00:27:48,599 --> 00:27:51,480
But we're in this mountain range, and so it's not

497
00:27:52,279 --> 00:27:56,279
you know, even though we're relatively low, it's not cactus habitat.

498
00:27:56,359 --> 00:27:59,200
This is like we're going through an arroyo filled with

499
00:27:59,279 --> 00:28:03,279
these giant sycamore right now, these giant Platinus species with

500
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:06,759
beautiful white trunks. There was apparently a fire in some

501
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:11,279
of it. But uh, but the ones, I mean, the fuck.

502
00:28:11,319 --> 00:28:15,440
They they're huge trees. They're like eighty feet tall. It's

503
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:19,799
it's relatively music. It's a really fucking cool habitat here,

504
00:28:19,799 --> 00:28:23,240
and it's again it's craziest. It's I think it's just

505
00:28:23,759 --> 00:28:26,960
more wet because we're in the Sierra Gorda mountain range.

506
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:30,759
Only Sierra Gorda. Fucking balls, man, Oh is that a

507
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:35,440
just scale. There's a bamboo. Oh my god. We might

508
00:28:35,519 --> 00:28:37,440
have to stop and get some photos of us at

509
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:40,319
some point. I don't know. God, damn it, it's so

510
00:28:40,359 --> 00:28:45,759
hard to make it anywhere. Juniper is flaccida, the flaccid juniper,

511
00:28:45,799 --> 00:28:49,480
the weeping juniper, which you know, you can grow that

512
00:28:49,559 --> 00:28:52,119
in West Texas, fine, but no one's no one's doing it.

513
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,359
No one's growing all the rare stuff. It only occurs

514
00:28:55,359 --> 00:28:58,599
in the United States in Big Bend National Park, which

515
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:02,119
I guess has been fucking swamp lately. God, you couldn't

516
00:29:02,119 --> 00:29:07,319
pay me to go there right now. But h just

517
00:29:07,559 --> 00:29:12,000
mobbed with people like a zoo. But god damn, there's

518
00:29:12,039 --> 00:29:16,480
some incredible habitat. So anyway, what was I talking about?

519
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:20,000
Oh there's a cropia. Yeah, man, this is really when

520
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:22,759
this is all just it's just so rocky. There's all

521
00:29:22,799 --> 00:29:26,440
these little nooks and crannies that it's and lots of

522
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:29,880
moisture that it's it's even though we're not very high up,

523
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:35,160
it's still pretty pretty loaded with, you know, a wetter habitat.

524
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:38,000
But I think up on the ridges, definitely, it looks

525
00:29:38,039 --> 00:29:41,119
a little bit drier, looking like, you know, seven hundred

526
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:45,839
feet up with Steve Cliff. Holy fuck, what's this? That's

527
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:50,079
just wow? Fuck? Okay, you know I might have to

528
00:29:50,119 --> 00:29:52,079
stop and take a piss break here and look at

529
00:29:52,079 --> 00:29:55,119
some cool stuff. You gotta stop, okay, give me a second.

530
00:29:55,559 --> 00:29:58,279
Oh boy, that was nice fucking see here and Gordon

531
00:29:58,359 --> 00:30:00,160
I'm gonna have to come back here and spend the

532
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:03,759
couple weeks sometime. So now we're at six thousand feet.

533
00:30:03,799 --> 00:30:06,839
We've hit the pines, the oaks, the alders, the cypresses.

534
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:09,640
We just stopped to look at a rock wall covered

535
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:12,559
in a gave mitas, and like everything else, he stopped

536
00:30:12,559 --> 00:30:15,240
to see one thing, and you see ten more things.

537
00:30:15,279 --> 00:30:19,079
I saw probably the largest flowered menzilia that I've ever

538
00:30:19,119 --> 00:30:23,759
seen outside of Menzia levaculis, which grows in northern California. Uh.

539
00:30:23,799 --> 00:30:26,200
And it was growing with like a salina serious and

540
00:30:26,279 --> 00:30:30,319
epiphitic cactus and at Cavaria species that had a stem

541
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:33,640
like a coalescent at cavaria, and then a gave mitas

542
00:30:33,759 --> 00:30:37,680
just all over the rock walls. It's probably a common menzilia,

543
00:30:37,759 --> 00:30:40,680
because it was certainly common in this habitat. The flowers

544
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:43,480
were like the size of baseballs orange. I thought it

545
00:30:43,519 --> 00:30:45,480
was some sort of composite, you know, a member of

546
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:48,799
Esta raci. But no, it was a fucking mint. What

547
00:30:48,839 --> 00:30:51,240
the fuck is this pine? No, God, we have to

548
00:30:51,279 --> 00:30:55,640
stop again. You see a nice piss spot with the pines. Yay, God,

549
00:30:55,759 --> 00:31:00,599
Danny's weeping pines. These beautiful weeping fucking pines. God is

550
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:04,079
just so gorgeous. And again, if this was the US,

551
00:31:04,799 --> 00:31:07,400
this would be so much more developed with dumb shit.

552
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:14,039
And I don't know, man anyway, but yeah, there's alders.

553
00:31:14,079 --> 00:31:18,200
And then I regret not getting not documenting the platinus.

554
00:31:18,599 --> 00:31:24,960
I just saw the platinus, the sycamore. But just epic, man,

555
00:31:25,119 --> 00:31:27,519
just epic. There was Decatropis by color, which is a

556
00:31:27,559 --> 00:31:32,359
really cool member of rutaesi, the citrus family, with panicles

557
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:38,000
of white flowers and rusty orange hairs on the undersides

558
00:31:38,039 --> 00:31:41,039
of the leaves. The leaves are smooth up top and

559
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,720
of course Harry and the undersides indicating a wet, dry

560
00:31:44,799 --> 00:31:49,160
season at tropical latitudes. And you know, it's just the

561
00:31:49,359 --> 00:31:52,559
fucking wonderful time appearance. But yeah, now we're at six

562
00:31:52,599 --> 00:31:55,119
thousand feet and it's starting to sixty five hundred feet

563
00:31:55,119 --> 00:31:58,839
excuse me, and it's starting to feel like some of

564
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:02,720
the cloud forests of of Wahaka or in any other

565
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:09,240
cloud for us wonderful Salvia species right there. Goddamn, it's

566
00:32:09,279 --> 00:32:11,440
gonna be hard to record a podcast, not because there's

567
00:32:11,519 --> 00:32:14,680
just there's there's there's too much good ship to see

568
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:18,240
and it's distracting, and it's just gonna be me calling

569
00:32:18,279 --> 00:32:22,480
out names, you know, botanical names like a ping pong ball,

570
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:26,279
just this and that and this and that and but

571
00:32:26,319 --> 00:32:28,880
these oaks are incredible too. Again, you could just come

572
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:31,200
down here and spend a few weeks, manutes. There's just

573
00:32:31,319 --> 00:32:35,200
document everything, you know, blow through a couple of SD cards,

574
00:32:35,319 --> 00:32:38,599
make some irbarium collections, go to there we go. Oh

575
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:43,039
Jesus Christ, that's a beautiful pile. Oh we got these steviacious,

576
00:32:43,559 --> 00:32:47,519
these upatoriacious bastards on the side, these purple flowers. They

577
00:32:47,519 --> 00:32:49,359
look like a kind of cleanium, but are not. Okay,

578
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:52,599
give me a second here, Oh, I said, wow, you know, okay,

579
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:56,240
So we just stopped to look at some weeping pines,

580
00:32:56,319 --> 00:32:58,039
which I, you know, wish I could tell you the

581
00:32:58,079 --> 00:33:01,160
species name. It's on the tip of my tongue because

582
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:06,880
it's quite famous, at least among pine nerds conifer enthusiasts,

583
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:08,960
but I can't tell you what it is. And there

584
00:33:09,079 --> 00:33:11,039
was something I thought was an oak that turned out

585
00:33:11,039 --> 00:33:14,400
to be Circocarpus macrophilus. So if I thought it was

586
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:15,920
an oak, that kind of gives you an idea of

587
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,720
this stature. Of how big it was, which is odd

588
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:21,559
for circle carpus, it still might have been an oak.

589
00:33:21,599 --> 00:33:24,519
The bark looked very oak like. It was not smooth

590
00:33:24,559 --> 00:33:27,759
like I generally think of circle carpas, but it had,

591
00:33:27,839 --> 00:33:30,720
you know, really distinct venation on the leaves and kind

592
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:36,039
of alder like leaves, like a serrate margin. But I

593
00:33:36,039 --> 00:33:38,400
couldn't find any flowers or fruits. But there were acorns

594
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,960
on the ground, and there was nothing else really that

595
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:44,079
it seemed like those acorns could come from. And then

596
00:33:44,119 --> 00:33:47,480
there was Juniperus flaccida again, the weeping juniper, and then

597
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:52,880
two different Stevias species, and it's a ton of cool shit.

598
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:54,920
Oh there was a Castellea to And now we're at

599
00:33:55,359 --> 00:33:59,079
eighty six hundred feet going past these hills just covered

600
00:33:59,119 --> 00:34:02,680
in pines. The slopes covered in pines. We got glaucus pines,

601
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:05,880
we got dur green pines, we got weeping pines, we

602
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:08,119
got all kind of pines you need. If we don't

603
00:34:08,159 --> 00:34:10,039
got the kind of pine you're looking for, you don't

604
00:34:10,039 --> 00:34:14,000
need it. Wild shit, man, that the fucking diversity here

605
00:34:14,079 --> 00:34:16,800
is in the Sierra Gorda. Who knew? I mean, I

606
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:20,679
guess many people knew. If they're familiar with Mexican plants.

607
00:34:20,679 --> 00:34:24,559
Oh there's a pinion. There's a fourth species of pine,

608
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:29,760
but you know there's it's man, it's really you can

609
00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:32,679
see why they made a giant biosphere reserve here because

610
00:34:32,679 --> 00:34:38,559
it's this huge, just dome of mountains with all kinds

611
00:34:38,559 --> 00:34:41,159
of little microclimates and nooks and crannies and tons of

612
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:46,039
endemism and diversity and just a really special, fantastic place.

613
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:50,559
So anyway, but yeah, you know, we got we were

614
00:34:50,639 --> 00:34:53,639
kind of like pressed for time, so we gotta we

615
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:55,920
gotta get down into the other side and then head

616
00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:00,480
up to Sira elductor. But uh, when was that time?

617
00:35:00,519 --> 00:35:02,400
Like what Fortes? We know, we don't even finish talking

618
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:06,599
about the Taxodium uk grenadum, the the fifteen hundred year

619
00:35:06,639 --> 00:35:11,320
old individual that actually had the boreholes to prove it

620
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:15,039
it had actually been cord and it was, you know,

621
00:35:15,119 --> 00:35:18,039
this massive, It had this they get this spiraling bark

622
00:35:18,039 --> 00:35:22,159
when they're older. It's really curious, beautiful spiraling bark. And

623
00:35:22,199 --> 00:35:24,519
it was growing in this you know, this grove of

624
00:35:24,559 --> 00:35:27,760
them that was only there because there was a spring

625
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:33,119
coming up through the karstick limestone substrate. And again the

626
00:35:33,159 --> 00:35:36,039
water was blue because of the dissolved by carbonate in it,

627
00:35:36,079 --> 00:35:40,400
which comes from the rock. Really special fucking place. Oh yeah,

628
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:43,280
And there was an endangered pupfish there, the checkered pupfish

629
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:46,840
of Saint Louis poto seed, the long lost checkered pupfish

630
00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:49,159
of Saint Louis poto seed. She I want to get

631
00:35:49,199 --> 00:35:51,960
like a like a painting done on my toilet seat

632
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:54,199
of the checkered puppish. It was a cute, little, fucking

633
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:56,960
cute little basroom. There were a bunch of them inside

634
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:02,119
the uh inside this crystal blue muhlenbergia. Everywhere. There was

635
00:36:02,159 --> 00:36:08,760
some weird polygola polygalasi that Gabrielle saw flowering last time

636
00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:10,400
that he was showing me pictures of it looked like

637
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:14,400
a succulent POLYGALACEI. What was the name of this species

638
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:22,639
name Turkeita t U r g I d A. But yeah,

639
00:36:22,679 --> 00:36:24,920
so that was that was a fucking wonderful. And then

640
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:28,559
there was a lyceum there too, very salty soil. The

641
00:36:28,639 --> 00:36:30,719
gentleman we spoke to who lived nearby city got bit

642
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:36,480
by a rattlesnake, presumably during the summer. It's rebably a

643
00:36:36,519 --> 00:36:38,760
mean aggressive snake. I wonder if it was a scoute latus.

644
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:41,920
You can get those done here, but I was hoping

645
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:45,960
to see a rattlesnake. But near that Monuzuma cypress grove,

646
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:49,119
I mean, not too far off, was some really cool

647
00:36:49,159 --> 00:36:52,559
cryptic cacti that grow and what looks like an otherwise boring,

648
00:36:54,559 --> 00:37:00,719
boring habitat, you know, just miscuaits prinkly pears, species of

649
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:04,679
sueta that sell tolerance, succulent member of the Amaranthesi, the

650
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:10,119
spinach family order carryophiles, of course, indicated about the betal

651
00:37:10,119 --> 00:37:16,800
aine pigments and the succulents. And there was Maytinis phil anthoides,

652
00:37:17,039 --> 00:37:19,440
which was a large shrub here. We get that in

653
00:37:19,519 --> 00:37:21,880
South Texas as well, but it's only tops out of

654
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:24,440
like two or three feet, and then it grows along

655
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:26,440
the coast, like kind of near Boca Chica, you know

656
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:30,840
where h fucking elon that, you know, the gym with

657
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:32,920
the laminated face, and you know who refused to go

658
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,719
to therapy under any circumstances and is desperately in need

659
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:39,159
of it. You know, just you got almost a trillion

660
00:37:39,199 --> 00:37:43,199
dollars and you're still so desperate for validation. Anyway, near

661
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:46,320
where he built this little spaceport that's where that Meetenis

662
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:49,360
phil Anthoides grows. But again it doesn't get that big.

663
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:51,000
This was a large I mean, I could tell it

664
00:37:51,039 --> 00:37:54,920
was a maintenis. It might be a different species of Meetinis.

665
00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:01,280
It's certainly matinis. It's certainly is cellustraci, glabrous ovate leaves,

666
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:07,320
very waxy, thicking, coryaceous, and and then tiny little flowers.

667
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:12,480
But yeah, and then there was turbino car turbenic karpus

668
00:38:12,559 --> 00:38:15,719
loaf of froides, supposedly because it looks like a lofaffra,

669
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:17,519
I did not happen to think so. But it was

670
00:38:17,639 --> 00:38:21,480
a beautiful cactus. Nonetheless, yeah, I guess it had, you know,

671
00:38:21,559 --> 00:38:27,039
this similar lobe structure. We did see Lafafa cosii later

672
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:30,039
this same day, and so after seeing it, I can

673
00:38:30,119 --> 00:38:32,920
confirm that, yes, indeed, it does look much different than

674
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,320
Lofafera william c I. And I haven't seen any clumping

675
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:42,639
individuals of Lafafera corecii named after cors some German bastard

676
00:38:43,159 --> 00:38:46,880
no offensive music in this podcast. Douty's listened to this podcast.

677
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:50,760
I say, bastard, you know, lovingly, warm warmly, you know,

678
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:53,239
I don't know, I just I hate eponyms though you can't.

679
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:55,679
You can't get mad at me for Oh see, now

680
00:38:55,679 --> 00:38:57,519
we're going down here. Now we're going down on the

681
00:38:57,519 --> 00:39:02,119
other side of a Sierra Gorda and this is kind

682
00:39:02,119 --> 00:39:06,199
of like open rocky grass. It definitely dryer. Oh my god,

683
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:08,280
don't even get me looking at the fucking clips. We

684
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:12,719
have this job again. Fuck, I'm gonna do this whole

685
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:15,559
thing on foot sometime, you know, with a donkey, and

686
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:17,559
could get a donkey if you ever wanted to have

687
00:39:17,599 --> 00:39:20,719
a donkey before. They're fucking cool man, right, they're kind

688
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:23,079
of like dogs. I'd put a little hat on it

689
00:39:23,119 --> 00:39:26,360
and ship and weight and that's what I would do. Man.

690
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:28,960
That's the way to travel is you know, after everything

691
00:39:29,079 --> 00:39:31,280
crashes and you know it goes to ship and you

692
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:34,440
just get yourself a donkey and just travel the country

693
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:38,159
on foot. You know. Yeah, that's the way to do it.

694
00:39:39,119 --> 00:39:41,519
You know. You know you're American. You want to lose

695
00:39:41,519 --> 00:39:43,760
some weight, get yourself a donkey, and go hike the

696
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:47,360
you know, some of those long distance hiking trails before

697
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:51,000
Trump sells them to a mining companies and developers, you know.

698
00:39:53,519 --> 00:39:56,880
But yeah, this, uh, this, this, it was remarkable how

699
00:39:56,960 --> 00:39:59,840
much this area where this turbino carpas grows felt like

700
00:40:00,039 --> 00:40:03,559
some of the salty you know they smell. You can

701
00:40:03,599 --> 00:40:08,320
smell the air. It smells briny and somewhat acrid and

702
00:40:08,519 --> 00:40:13,239
biological but not revolting, but it definitely smells. It reminds

703
00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:16,800
me of parts of South Texas, Like there's this spot,

704
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:20,320
holy shit, blind kerb Okay, all right, a holly fuck

705
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:24,000
who We're gonna become one of those little crosses on

706
00:40:24,039 --> 00:40:29,280
the side of the road. You know. It's, oh yeah,

707
00:40:29,119 --> 00:40:32,119
the Mexican driving thing is really stressed to me. We'll say, okay,

708
00:40:32,159 --> 00:40:35,400
I gotta just get used to you know. I like

709
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:37,320
it when there's like it's a two lane road, but

710
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:39,400
they're wide lanes and you got you can fit three

711
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:41,880
cars on them. That's fucking you want to get the

712
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:45,360
adrenaline pumpin'. It's like that scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles,

713
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:47,800
you know, when when Steve Martin looks over and John

714
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:51,280
Candy's wearing a giant Spandex devil suit, you know, and

715
00:40:51,559 --> 00:40:54,440
their whole life flashes before their rise. It's pretty marvelous.

716
00:40:56,119 --> 00:40:59,599
It's a marvelous scene. It's fucking hilarious. He said, to

717
00:40:59,639 --> 00:41:02,239
cut a white John Canty movie at some point. You know,

718
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:05,400
wife should rewatch that. It'll really loosen the mood from

719
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,480
the distopic. Man, I flew out of fucking Austin because

720
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:11,400
it was cheaper than flying from near my house. And

721
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:14,400
I could just leave the dog with Hovey air and

722
00:41:14,519 --> 00:41:18,800
you know, and go see some friends, you know, kick

723
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:22,519
it with the kick it with Hovey the night before

724
00:41:22,559 --> 00:41:24,440
and then whatever. And I flew out of Austin. Was

725
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:28,800
such a fucking nightmare, just just packed, asked to nose

726
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:33,400
six in the morning, Just miserable flying experience, and everyone's

727
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:35,360
in a bad mood and hates each other. Well, partially

728
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:37,679
because it's the United States and that's just the general

729
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:40,079
vibe there, and also because everyone's packed, ask to nose

730
00:41:40,119 --> 00:41:42,920
in the airport and traveling for the holidays. It's a

731
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:45,719
horrible time to fly. You look how dry it is here.

732
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,320
Now you can see we're really in that rain shadow

733
00:41:48,639 --> 00:41:52,519
on the west side of a beautiful sea of Gorda. God,

734
00:41:52,639 --> 00:41:55,639
what the fuck, man, there's so much cool shit. Oh

735
00:41:55,719 --> 00:42:00,320
my god, I can't Yeah, man, it's crazy, there's and

736
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:02,000
there's not a lot of like you look at I

737
00:42:02,159 --> 00:42:05,239
Naturalist for Carethro and San Louis Potosi, and there's not

738
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:09,559
a lot of uh of observation. So we really need

739
00:42:09,559 --> 00:42:14,039
to convince all our Mexican listeners and friends to start

740
00:42:14,119 --> 00:42:16,800
using the shit out of I Naturalists. Please God, I

741
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:19,960
need to just learn fluent Spanish, you know, I really

742
00:42:20,039 --> 00:42:23,440
need the It's pathetic that I don't because I could, really,

743
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,360
you know, I do a Spanish language version of a

744
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:31,039
crime Pace podcast and get what the fuck? Ah? Fuck? No,

745
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:34,920
oh we have to stay. What's this? Is that a Blia?

746
00:42:35,079 --> 00:42:39,800
Oh no, that's a Chilians Garcia in ah gove a

747
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:44,119
Garcia and those there's nowhere to park? Huh yeahs fuck

748
00:42:47,559 --> 00:42:50,159
so oh there. Now we're already hitting Martillo cactus. What

749
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:53,519
elevation we are now seventy three hundred feet and there's

750
00:42:53,599 --> 00:42:57,360
Martillo cactus And that tells you what we're trying out.

751
00:42:57,800 --> 00:42:59,679
All right, we're drawing it. We're still pretty high up,

752
00:42:59,679 --> 00:43:03,079
but we're it's drying out. There's no thread of frost,

753
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:10,800
I guess, despite being so high up. But it reads

754
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:14,360
the rain shadow effect. It's elevation and the rain shadow

755
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:20,360
effect and proximity to a warm body of water that's

756
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:24,320
evaporating moisture, and if it depending if there's a mountain

757
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:26,519
range between you and that warm body of water that's

758
00:43:26,559 --> 00:43:31,280
evaporating moisture, that like, in this case, the ocean. So

759
00:43:33,639 --> 00:43:36,400
god damn. Yeah, it is just naked not naked gealgae,

760
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:40,559
but it's shrubling. It feels like parts of Chile or California.

761
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:44,559
What is that? Oh? This is that a sola? Yeah?

762
00:43:44,599 --> 00:43:51,280
God damn. But anyway, yeah, so it's it's really whoo

763
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:57,360
oh fuck me, what's that? Thank god? That looked incredible. Fuck. Oh,

764
00:43:57,400 --> 00:43:59,679
there's so much amazing stuff. Okay, I'm coming back to

765
00:43:59,679 --> 00:44:03,679
see your gorda. That's what's happening at some point here,

766
00:44:04,480 --> 00:44:06,039
you know. But it seems like a lot of stuff

767
00:44:06,079 --> 00:44:09,679
actually flowers during the winter dry season, which would make

768
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:13,000
sense because it's a good time to really capitalize on

769
00:44:15,519 --> 00:44:20,159
pollinators because it's still warm out, but it's the dry season.

770
00:44:20,159 --> 00:44:21,840
There's not a lot of other stuff going off, so

771
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:30,679
there's presumably a benefit to that. Yeah, wild. I wonder

772
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:34,639
how many plants have their phonology set to the flower

773
00:44:34,679 --> 00:44:39,559
during the dry season. Anyway. So yeah, so we were

774
00:44:39,559 --> 00:44:43,199
at this taxodium spot and then I think that we were.

775
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:46,400
Elevation here was roughly thirty six hundred feet and it

776
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:49,039
was this beautiful spring fed pool filled with cool fish

777
00:44:49,159 --> 00:44:53,639
and a really unique Nymphaea species water lily species, and

778
00:44:53,679 --> 00:44:56,320
it was so so I guess it must be so

779
00:44:56,400 --> 00:44:58,280
gorgeous when at flowers that there was even a sign

780
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:01,440
ups telling the locals, not the not to take it.

781
00:45:02,039 --> 00:45:04,800
You know, so don't drink too much alcohol, you know,

782
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:08,880
no tiar basura, don't dump your trash, and also don't

783
00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,480
take these fucking water lilies, even though you might feel

784
00:45:11,519 --> 00:45:16,119
inclined to because because they're they're so gorgeous, you know,

785
00:45:17,599 --> 00:45:19,760
which is if there's if you're if you have to

786
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:21,880
tell non plant people not to collect the plant, that

787
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:24,440
must be pretty cool. But and it did. It had

788
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:28,719
these like aquatic basal leaves and then the stalks you

789
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,039
know that come up from below, uh, and then have

790
00:45:32,159 --> 00:45:35,679
the actual floating leaves on that too, So it had

791
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,440
two different kinds of leaves. It was really cool. None

792
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:42,119
were flowering, one was about the flower but yeah, and

793
00:45:42,119 --> 00:45:44,000
then just the hop skip and a jump away was

794
00:45:44,039 --> 00:45:47,400
the Turberinocarpus LoVa for roidies. And again just this habitat

795
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:51,639
looks like some of the salty the salty soiled misky

796
00:45:52,199 --> 00:45:57,480
quote wastelands of South Texas. But it's filled with corafanta

797
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:05,719
maista blenzes and and the turbinicarpus Lofa feroides cryptically hiding

798
00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:09,719
in the soil, like eighty percent of the stem underground

799
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:11,679
and then just just a you know, because cact there

800
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:15,000
just stems, right, even if it's like a globe shaped cactus,

801
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:19,239
and then the top ten or twenty percent poking out

802
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:24,800
at the soil surface. And so yeah, really fucking cool

803
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:28,559
to see. And this sueda, this this succulent amarant thesy

804
00:46:28,639 --> 00:46:32,000
that loves salty soil was dominant there, and again very

805
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:35,599
salty because it's this basin surrounded by these mountains. Instead

806
00:46:35,639 --> 00:46:38,480
of grain, water chemically weathers the limestone, dissolves some of

807
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:41,400
the minerals, washes it into the basin, and then evaporates,

808
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:43,800
you know, because it's hot as balls for three quarters

809
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:48,480
of the year and evaporates in the dry climate, it

810
00:46:48,559 --> 00:46:50,920
leaves all the salt behind, so it end up you know.

811
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:53,519
That's why most cacti in my experience, seemed to be

812
00:46:53,639 --> 00:46:57,920
very tolerant of falty soil, right like if you got

813
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:01,159
some hard water coming out of your half. You know,

814
00:47:02,280 --> 00:47:04,360
at least once they reach a certain size, it seems

815
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:06,840
like they can tolerat it because the ship coming out

816
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:09,280
of the sky. The rain obviously does not have minerals

817
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:12,440
as at, but a lot of tap water does. What

818
00:47:12,679 --> 00:47:15,840
the fuck is that blue thing down there? A blue

819
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:18,920
plant on Green Hills? Wow? Oh, it's one of these

820
00:47:19,039 --> 00:47:23,000
What is is that a leuco violent? What the fuck is? Like? Fuck? Okay,

821
00:47:23,119 --> 00:47:25,000
if we see if you find a spot where one

822
00:47:25,079 --> 00:47:28,840
could presumably urinate and and also take a photo of

823
00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:31,360
that plant. Oh shit, okay, I'm just gonna do. It's

824
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:33,840
gonna be real quick. All right. I don't know where

825
00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:36,440
I left you just now, but we're starting again. It's

826
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:40,960
a beautiful morning here in Visa n and uh oh wow.

827
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:43,840
All the dahlia is going off, Dahlia by colors. These

828
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:48,440
these two foot tall pink shrubs we just passed the marble.

829
00:47:49,199 --> 00:47:51,159
I don't know what they were doing or some with marble.

830
00:47:51,199 --> 00:47:54,000
They were pulverizing it. They're cutting it somehow, And there's

831
00:47:54,599 --> 00:47:58,800
it's just it looks like wildfire smoke. There's like white

832
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:04,280
dust over all the shrubs and all over all the

833
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:06,079
cars and shit, and you have to drive through it.

834
00:48:06,159 --> 00:48:08,599
You kind of roll up your windows and hold your breath.

835
00:48:08,679 --> 00:48:11,280
It's kind of wild. But we had a really nice

836
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:16,280
day yesterday up to up to ten thousand, five hundred

837
00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:20,360
feet elevation, it's like thirty one hundred meters. Got to

838
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:24,800
see the winter leaves on the Bigwcula mornensis that grows

839
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:28,199
up there, and it grows with a bunch of cool

840
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:32,880
kylanthoid ferns. Goddamn, this day is beautiful bunch of cool

841
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:37,599
caylanthoid ferns beneath this canopy of oak cover next to

842
00:48:37,679 --> 00:48:43,400
a Gave montana in tetra chiron webstery, which is a

843
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:48,280
little labouru sleeved composite with opposite leaves. And right now

844
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:52,360
we're going to check out the Pinus pinciana Venus pinciana,

845
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:57,880
the weeping Mexican pinion pine. Miss I'm stoked to see

846
00:48:57,880 --> 00:49:02,559
if it's actually this. It's it's beautiful, it's beauty. It's

847
00:49:02,559 --> 00:49:07,519
a beautiful fucking pine. And I think it's cold hearty

848
00:49:07,679 --> 00:49:10,840
to like like negative six celsius whatever that is, what

849
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:16,440
it is, that like eighteen degrees fahrenheit twenty anyway. But yeah,

850
00:49:16,519 --> 00:49:18,559
really really good day yesterday. And I got to see

851
00:49:18,599 --> 00:49:23,800
that astro Lipus that that doesn't even have a name

852
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:27,239
yet because it hasn't been described. Who is that luca

853
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:31,480
phylum ambiguoum over there, one of the another Siniso species?

854
00:49:32,119 --> 00:49:35,480
Oh holy shit, a bunch of pack is serious, margin

855
00:49:35,519 --> 00:49:37,400
adi is Goddamn. There's so much good stuff to see

856
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:39,039
in a side of a row that's just really bringing

857
00:49:39,079 --> 00:49:39,719
out the ad D.

858
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get a following his damn Jane, because

859
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:02,400
it's the jay that disperses the pinion pine seeds. But

860
00:50:02,519 --> 00:50:04,679
it's not letting me get close through it. It's driving

861
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:08,840
me fucking nuts. Okay, So now you know that was

862
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:11,440
kind of frustrating. I was trying to I mean, it

863
00:50:11,559 --> 00:50:13,840
was wonderful to see, though I was about to dip out.

864
00:50:14,119 --> 00:50:16,639
I was in the pinion pine grove, these beautiful weeping

865
00:50:16,760 --> 00:50:20,599
pinions on this hillside growing with the croton species with

866
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:25,159
silvery leaves to about three feet tall. A Porophylum marigold

867
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:31,079
tribe of astac This Porophleum smelled absolutely delicious. It smelled

868
00:50:31,199 --> 00:50:31,800
so fantastic.

869
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,320
Speaker 1: I got one on the car right now, and it's

870
00:50:34,360 --> 00:50:38,760
got these like deep purple waxy and volacars on the

871
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:42,119
flower heads, no rays, I mean the flowers I'll put on.

872
00:50:43,039 --> 00:50:44,559
We want to check out my I ned if you

873
00:50:44,559 --> 00:50:46,239
want to see what it looks like. It'll be, you know,

874
00:50:46,360 --> 00:50:50,679
under the genus porophylum po ro o, but really unique

875
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:53,199
flower heads on it. And there was a whole bunch

876
00:50:53,199 --> 00:50:55,039
of other stuff. There was a shrub that seemed like

877
00:50:55,119 --> 00:50:59,880
it was in polygonac but it it looked like a

878
00:51:00,559 --> 00:51:03,519
like a woody buckwheat to like seven feet tall. Slightly

879
00:51:03,559 --> 00:51:06,559
different flower structures, so it's probably a different genus, but

880
00:51:06,719 --> 00:51:10,159
definitely looked polygonaceous, but I also could be totally wrong.

881
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:13,320
And then and then I was about to dip out

882
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:16,000
go down. There was a castella's you know, a bunch

883
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:18,760
of stuff's going dormant, going dry. There was a gaves

884
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:23,480
alone a cant there with the those wavy ass spines

885
00:51:23,519 --> 00:51:26,440
on the margins of the leaves. It's a really rich site.

886
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:29,519
Oh and junipers flatted of course too. And then you

887
00:51:29,599 --> 00:51:34,000
know I was leaving, this mob of blue jays, rather

888
00:51:34,239 --> 00:51:38,119
large jays, I think it was Mexican jays came through

889
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:40,280
and that was the sounds you heard, and of course

890
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:43,760
those are what dispersed the seeds of this pinion pine,

891
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:47,920
you knows. And that's a that's a symbiotic relationship that

892
00:51:49,119 --> 00:51:52,800
goes on with many pines actually, whether it's Clark's nut

893
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:57,159
cracker and the white bark pines in northern California, or

894
00:51:57,519 --> 00:51:59,960
you know, scrub jays used to do that in Oakley

895
00:52:00,079 --> 00:52:03,199
and with the coast life oaks that you know, they

896
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:06,159
plant these things, These these cute little bastards plant these

897
00:52:06,199 --> 00:52:09,320
things and they only recover about half of what they plant,

898
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:12,400
and the rest then germinate and turn into new trees.

899
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:15,360
But I did not find a lot of cones. Oh

900
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:20,639
my god, fuck me, is that all isolato serious? It

901
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:23,079
almost looks like pack is serious what we're having that really?

902
00:52:23,159 --> 00:52:27,599
Maybe it's serious. We're going back up and we just

903
00:52:27,679 --> 00:52:32,519
saw this massive flank of this massive slope covered in

904
00:52:32,599 --> 00:52:37,360
these tall, you know, multi stem columnar cacti. But uh, anyway,

905
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:41,119
you know, so this, uh, these jays dispersed the seed.

906
00:52:41,199 --> 00:52:44,199
They basically plant new forests of this this tree. But

907
00:52:44,599 --> 00:52:47,599
I couldn't find many cones. There were some old cones,

908
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:51,519
it looked like they maybe these trees were stressed a

909
00:52:51,519 --> 00:52:54,119
little bit. Most of them looked somewhat healthy, but a

910
00:52:54,199 --> 00:52:58,360
couple were dying. I don't know if it's you know,

911
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:01,320
a drought year or what, but HiT's man, it was

912
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:05,199
a fucking beautiful It's a beautiful sight, you know, an

913
00:53:05,199 --> 00:53:10,800
idyllic sight that only the Mexican countryside can offer. Gabriel

914
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,519
has been very tolerant of my ranting. I have to say,

915
00:53:13,599 --> 00:53:17,320
it's been thank you by the way, you know. But uh,

916
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:20,079
now we're going up again. We I had to stop

917
00:53:20,159 --> 00:53:23,679
and look at this forest of isolato series discreto femness.

918
00:53:24,199 --> 00:53:27,880
This succulent composite is covering these shale hills. You could

919
00:53:27,920 --> 00:53:30,480
see these it's not shale hills, they're fucking shale rock

920
00:53:30,559 --> 00:53:34,079
walls on this sketchy winding road. You know, it's nice

921
00:53:34,079 --> 00:53:36,239
when you pass the trucks at you know, forty miles

922
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:39,280
per hour and these sketchy winding roads. Here. It is

923
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:42,239
mid December, it's it's warm, it's hot as balls and

924
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:46,119
cools off at night. Best time to visit Grethro at

925
00:53:46,199 --> 00:53:48,400
least the dry slopes. And so we're going up to

926
00:53:48,480 --> 00:53:50,559
go check out some of the wetter forests in this

927
00:53:50,719 --> 00:53:55,519
yere at Gorda, but there was I just saw pseudo Smodingium.

928
00:53:55,519 --> 00:53:58,199
If you can spit that fucking genus name out. God.

929
00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:02,079
These fucking dahlias man the daily yeah, bicolor, it's just

930
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:06,800
fucking gorgeous. But Pseudosmodingium, as you rush you all in it,

931
00:54:06,880 --> 00:54:09,400
it's so you know, the allergenic compound. That's some poison ivy.

932
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:12,159
It's a relative of poison ivy. It's an antacardiac. It's

933
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:17,960
really cool genus. I saw one monstrous species of Pseudosmodingium

934
00:54:18,039 --> 00:54:26,639
yesterday in the hills, growing with Cordia bossierra and some

935
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:29,920
other really cool shit. But you know it's it's got

936
00:54:30,079 --> 00:54:35,239
more rounded leaf margins. And then I saw Pseudosmodingium andrew

937
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:42,519
si uh just now and yesterday at a site that

938
00:54:42,559 --> 00:54:45,280
we stopped at that had strombocact the sun it and

939
00:54:45,599 --> 00:54:48,519
you know this it like rooss, like the sycamore with

940
00:54:48,599 --> 00:54:51,519
which it's related. It turns this beautiful red color when

941
00:54:51,559 --> 00:54:53,920
it's about to drop its leaves as it reabsorbs the

942
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:57,519
chlorophyll and the the anthosygn and pigments are left behind,

943
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:00,920
and you know, same thing rous does you know roosts

944
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:03,440
in the temperate latitudes. Is doing it because of it's

945
00:55:03,639 --> 00:55:06,880
you know, anticipation of the cold winter here. It's doing

946
00:55:06,920 --> 00:55:10,079
it just because of the drought season, the winter dry season.

947
00:55:10,719 --> 00:55:13,480
Still hot as balls. Oh yeah, look there's that Lucophylum

948
00:55:13,679 --> 00:55:18,039
ambigue them all up in those goddamn hills. So uh. Anyway,

949
00:55:18,119 --> 00:55:20,920
we just stopped to look for la for the fusa

950
00:55:21,679 --> 00:55:24,199
at a spot that a friend had given us. But

951
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:26,239
it had been such a good rain year that the

952
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:31,880
grasses had kind of created this, you know, this totally

953
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:37,840
dense understory beneath the vicelia and the mimosa shrubs, the

954
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:40,559
thorny shrubs. There was no catillo all over there too,

955
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:44,400
and a cool parthenium parthenium. But that's where this the

956
00:55:45,079 --> 00:55:48,480
fusa grows, which is the false paoti. It looks like

957
00:55:48,559 --> 00:55:51,360
a like a mint green doughnut that someone sat on.

958
00:55:52,199 --> 00:55:54,280
It's got like a little dimple in the inside. But

959
00:55:54,639 --> 00:55:56,320
you know, I'm sure it's probably there. We didn't see

960
00:55:56,320 --> 00:55:58,239
any because there was there was so much grass, and

961
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:03,039
it was a native grass too. I saw this guy, man,

962
00:56:03,079 --> 00:56:07,440
I've seen so many cool Mullenbergia species and there was boutlua.

963
00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:10,320
I believe it was just Kurt of pendula. But some

964
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:13,039
of these fucking grasses are gorgeous, you know. But then

965
00:56:13,079 --> 00:56:15,559
you go to like the what's the would I've been

966
00:56:15,599 --> 00:56:20,119
calling the Sokolo the fucking Plaza Hard Dean Principal. Yeah,

967
00:56:20,159 --> 00:56:22,519
you go to hard Dean Principal. You know, Mexico needs

968
00:56:22,559 --> 00:56:24,079
a native plant movement too, because you go to the

969
00:56:24,119 --> 00:56:27,000
hard Dean Principal and it's all these fucking avolita no

970
00:56:27,039 --> 00:56:30,440
offense to the Appolitas. It's all these appolita shrubs, you know,

971
00:56:30,599 --> 00:56:33,760
corny ship clones of stuff with the variegated leaves, no

972
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:38,119
no bearing on place or or pride and where you

973
00:56:38,239 --> 00:56:40,480
live or anything, just this corny ship, you know. And

974
00:56:40,559 --> 00:56:42,760
they I do like how they paint the bottoms of

975
00:56:42,800 --> 00:56:44,199
the trees white. Do you know why they do that?

976
00:56:44,920 --> 00:56:48,639
It's like this because of the dance they put like life,

977
00:56:49,119 --> 00:56:51,239
does it really do? Does it really work? Yeah? They

978
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:54,400
put They looked like, uh, what's it? I forgot the

979
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:58,280
name of the powder. Oh yeah, yeah yeah yeah, well

980
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:00,800
well you know, it's it's a it's ath. I like

981
00:57:00,920 --> 00:57:04,480
it because it's comforting to me in a way. This

982
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:08,760
reminds me of places. Oh wow, is that gog Nadia fock. Oh,

983
00:57:08,840 --> 00:57:13,639
there's so much nice stuff. I don't know. Maybe we

984
00:57:13,679 --> 00:57:15,519
should stop up here and look at it. See if

985
00:57:15,559 --> 00:57:18,239
that's just a monster guck Nadia or a different coc

986
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:22,400
Nadia species or what. I can't tell. Just stopped for

987
00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:24,800
a second up aeria. Well that was nice. We just

988
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:28,639
stopped and yeah it was Nihualia hype luca again, goog Nadia,

989
00:57:28,719 --> 00:57:32,519
which we have at thorn Scrub and uh and Croton

990
00:57:32,599 --> 00:57:36,800
and Signus and all these South Texas plants in tons

991
00:57:36,800 --> 00:57:39,920
of Kowinskia as well, you know, worth five thousand feet

992
00:57:40,039 --> 00:57:43,079
fifty four hundred feet in correctro The one thing we

993
00:57:43,199 --> 00:57:45,280
don't get in South Texas which you know might be

994
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:50,199
worth growing there is Neopremia integrafolia, which is in the

995
00:57:50,239 --> 00:57:54,519
willow family of salea casey. It's got these little winged fruits. Oh,

996
00:57:54,599 --> 00:57:56,679
Gabriel's pissed in front of the truck right now. Okay,

997
00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:00,159
my line of vision is cut off right where by

998
00:58:00,239 --> 00:58:03,480
right up right above his done. It's good not trying,

999
00:58:03,559 --> 00:58:05,440
not trying to give anybody a free show here, you know.

1000
00:58:06,320 --> 00:58:09,360
Uh got these mountains, man, they look like a like

1001
00:58:09,440 --> 00:58:11,760
a birthday cake that's been carved out with like a

1002
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:17,519
stream of water. It's wild, all this cool limestone. So anyway,

1003
00:58:17,519 --> 00:58:21,159
we're gonna head up now to higher elevations. Uh. I

1004
00:58:21,239 --> 00:58:25,719
think there's like a disjunk stand of Douglas fir up

1005
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:29,480
in these mountains, and then we're gonna fuck around and

1006
00:58:29,480 --> 00:58:31,480
see what we can find. Look for some I think

1007
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:33,239
there's plotting us up there too. I want to I

1008
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:37,320
definitely want to get get some footage of the sycamores

1009
00:58:37,800 --> 00:58:40,679
document them. I don't know if it's just playing Platinus

1010
00:58:40,719 --> 00:58:42,920
oxident tellus or whatever the ship they're calling it, but

1011
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:46,199
it's definitely gonna be a different ecotype. I almost got

1012
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:50,840
cream by a truck that was taking a wide berth

1013
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:54,400
on this sketchy two lane road. These fucking trucks, some

1014
00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:57,000
of them more huge. Anyway, we don't even talk about

1015
00:58:57,719 --> 00:59:03,239
the Uh. The ephemeral lago and Co, which I was

1016
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:07,159
skeptical was an actual different species from lofal for A.

1017
00:59:07,199 --> 00:59:11,199
Williams the truepeoti, But after seeing habitat and seeing the

1018
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:14,840
different shape of the tubercules and the lobes, I'm convinced

1019
00:59:14,840 --> 00:59:19,920
that it is. And then Uh. Aerocarpus koshu bayanis named

1020
00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:28,599
after Princess Koshubile, the dumbest, dumbest fucking name. Slapdovski, slapped Ski,

1021
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:31,280
Russian guy. You like to get beat on and slapped around.

1022
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:36,400
You know, got these fucking every time, every eponym I

1023
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:38,719
have to make fun of. But that was a that

1024
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:41,920
was a really cool spot. And then oh yeah, on

1025
00:59:42,000 --> 00:59:45,760
a separate note, the the I saw a bamboo and

1026
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:50,599
a native bamboo that, unlike the Asian bamboos, was not hollow.

1027
00:59:50,760 --> 00:59:53,760
Of course, it's a good diagnostic factor for if it's

1028
00:59:53,840 --> 00:59:56,639
the if it's an old world bamboo or a New

1029
00:59:56,679 --> 00:59:59,400
World one, and this was It was O Tatiya kumen

1030
00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:02,000
nata in the Sierra Gorda. This is like like seven

1031
01:00:02,039 --> 01:00:06,199
thousand feet growing with Menzelia hispida and Decatropis by color,

1032
01:00:06,960 --> 01:00:11,119
and a ton of other cool shit on this including

1033
01:00:11,360 --> 01:00:15,559
orchids and an echiandia species on this very steep slope

1034
01:00:16,360 --> 01:00:20,199
Odaitia ot A t e a A cuminata I guess

1035
01:00:20,239 --> 01:00:24,199
it's called Mexican weeping bimboo. But anyway, but yeah, anyway,

1036
01:00:24,199 --> 01:00:26,639
so back to the ephemeral lagoon. So we drove out

1037
01:00:27,239 --> 01:00:31,599
to this area after the Taxodium uk grenadum grow. We're

1038
01:00:31,800 --> 01:00:34,239
I don't know, thirty five hundred feet four thousand feet,

1039
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:38,320
you know, lowland Mexico. I guess it's mid elevation, but

1040
01:00:38,480 --> 01:00:41,400
for most of the central Mexican plateau, that's a low elevation.

1041
01:00:41,559 --> 01:00:43,159
That's where the cool cat that are going to be.

1042
01:00:43,800 --> 01:00:45,480
And so we drove out to what looks like a

1043
01:00:45,559 --> 01:00:48,480
relatively barren area. It's you could tell it's a dry

1044
01:00:48,599 --> 01:00:51,400
lake bed that probably floods with a couple of inches

1045
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:55,400
of water and then turns exceptionally muddy during the wet season.

1046
01:00:56,480 --> 01:00:58,679
And and you know, I've knowne about this psychology for

1047
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:06,239
a while for Alberto Boiechi, another stupid eponym named after

1048
01:01:06,280 --> 01:01:10,199
a person it also grows. It's another species of lufafer

1049
01:01:10,239 --> 01:01:12,800
and other species of peyota that grows in this same

1050
01:01:12,920 --> 01:01:17,280
similar habitat. And they've occupied the psychology where they're underwater

1051
01:01:17,440 --> 01:01:19,920
for a couple of days during the rainy season. You know,

1052
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:22,760
they're under a few inches of water, and then the

1053
01:01:23,119 --> 01:01:26,360
you know, as the water slowly evaporates and the mud

1054
01:01:26,480 --> 01:01:30,119
dries out, then they're just stuck in this, you know, perfectly,

1055
01:01:30,960 --> 01:01:33,920
like someone took a cement blade over it and smoothed

1056
01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:37,800
it out like they were laying cement, and just you know,

1057
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:40,639
sunk it into the ground. And you wouldn't even I

1058
01:01:40,679 --> 01:01:42,480
mean you'd look out, you gud be five feet away

1059
01:01:42,519 --> 01:01:45,079
looking out over them, you wouldn't see them. Just really

1060
01:01:45,199 --> 01:01:48,639
cool habitat and ecology. So they've adapted to these ephemeral

1061
01:01:49,199 --> 01:01:52,400
lagoons that are in these basins of these mountain ranges,

1062
01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:55,119
surrounded by deserts. And the soil, of course, is no

1063
01:01:55,239 --> 01:01:58,719
doubt exceptionally salty, because you know that's what rain does.

1064
01:01:58,800 --> 01:02:03,159
It chemically weathers and then dissolves minerals off of them,

1065
01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:06,159
washes those minerals into the basin, and then evaporates, leaving

1066
01:02:06,159 --> 01:02:10,199
the minerals behind. But you know, the center of this lagoon,

1067
01:02:10,599 --> 01:02:14,119
this ephemeral lake bed, this dry lake bed, was open

1068
01:02:14,199 --> 01:02:16,519
and empty, and then it was surrounded on the margins

1069
01:02:16,559 --> 01:02:20,719
by these little islands, these soil mounds composed of spiny

1070
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:27,199
shrubs and soil crusts. And you know, Cobralineus spinosa, another

1071
01:02:27,400 --> 01:02:29,639
Texas plant to the planet we get in Texas, was

1072
01:02:29,679 --> 01:02:32,000
one of the most dominant ones that and then nel

1073
01:02:32,079 --> 01:02:36,480
Tuma leve gatta, a species of miska formerly Prosopis leva gatta.

1074
01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:41,719
There was Condoliopsis up to Sifolius there formerly za Zyphis

1075
01:02:42,159 --> 01:02:47,559
you know, Buckthorne family ramnassy and then Condalia spatiolata as well.

1076
01:02:47,719 --> 01:02:50,039
And then you know on these little islands, you know,

1077
01:02:50,119 --> 01:02:54,320
each the size of you know, medium to large sized

1078
01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:57,880
kitchen table under these shrubs. You know, the roots would

1079
01:02:57,920 --> 01:03:00,840
hold the soil together and forming these mounds, and then

1080
01:03:01,639 --> 01:03:03,920
and then there would be uh, the soil crust. You know,

1081
01:03:04,800 --> 01:03:07,960
there were mosses there, dry mosses obviously because it was

1082
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:13,280
the dry season, cyanobacteria and lichens and on these little mounds,

1083
01:03:13,320 --> 01:03:15,360
and you'd see, you know, all these cool cacti and

1084
01:03:15,440 --> 01:03:18,000
a kind of serious species. I forget what species it was.

1085
01:03:18,119 --> 01:03:25,280
There was Lafafra correzzii, Aerocarpus uh koshiubayanas, Cora panta uh

1086
01:03:25,480 --> 01:03:29,519
Mais tablensis, named after a town called Maise, and then

1087
01:03:30,079 --> 01:03:33,880
another town called Les Tablas that was the same one

1088
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:36,400
we saw at the other salty soil area growing with

1089
01:03:36,519 --> 01:03:39,639
Turbiniccarpas LoVa varieties that I told you about maybe forty

1090
01:03:39,679 --> 01:03:42,159
minutes ago. But I I mean it's one of those

1091
01:03:42,199 --> 01:03:43,480
places where you know, You don't just go and to

1092
01:03:43,519 --> 01:03:45,199
take photos you leave. You got to you gotta like

1093
01:03:45,280 --> 01:03:47,480
sit there, take it all in and think about it

1094
01:03:47,559 --> 01:03:50,159
and really grasp that you're looking at a cactus that

1095
01:03:50,320 --> 01:03:53,159
grows submerged for two or three days in a few

1096
01:03:53,199 --> 01:03:59,280
inches of what is probably exceptionally briny water, and then

1097
01:04:00,079 --> 01:04:01,639
you know, it just hangs out the rest of the year,

1098
01:04:03,480 --> 01:04:06,800
the top of its stem just completely flush with the

1099
01:04:06,920 --> 01:04:12,119
soil surface. And again it's this silty, calcareous material because

1100
01:04:12,119 --> 01:04:15,400
this is a limestone substrate. It's fucking wild. It's such

1101
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:18,440
a cool habitat and ecology and I mean literally you

1102
01:04:18,559 --> 01:04:21,719
walk out into this basin, oh yeah, and as the

1103
01:04:21,840 --> 01:04:24,239
water dries, it leaves behind. I don't know if this

1104
01:04:24,400 --> 01:04:27,280
is all soil crust that's a verifying drug. Holy shit,

1105
01:04:27,800 --> 01:04:29,679
I don't know if it's all this. You know, it's

1106
01:04:29,719 --> 01:04:32,599
this black soil crust. And and they got a beautiful

1107
01:04:32,679 --> 01:04:35,400
look at it. They got a beautiful Guadalupe painted onto

1108
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:38,159
the side of the mountain. So you never forget that

1109
01:04:38,320 --> 01:04:41,800
you're in a Catholic area. Oh yeah, they really beat

1110
01:04:41,800 --> 01:04:44,599
you over there with a religion here, don't they. That's

1111
01:04:44,639 --> 01:04:50,880
what you know. Dominance dominator societies do you know, But

1112
01:04:51,519 --> 01:04:54,960
but yeah, so it's it's it's just such a fucking

1113
01:04:55,079 --> 01:04:59,039
cool habit. It's such a cool ecology. And to think

1114
01:04:59,119 --> 01:05:01,960
that these, I mean, you out onto this, you know,

1115
01:05:02,159 --> 01:05:04,480
you almost feel bad stepping on some of the soil crust,

1116
01:05:04,519 --> 01:05:06,320
but then you realize, well, during the wet season, it's

1117
01:05:06,320 --> 01:05:09,480
all gonna get inundated again and probably moved around. It

1118
01:05:09,599 --> 01:05:11,760
looks like it might be some sort of dried organic

1119
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:15,239
material that was maybe in the water and then pools up,

1120
01:05:15,519 --> 01:05:17,800
or it could just be yeah, the soil crust that

1121
01:05:18,000 --> 01:05:20,840
stays alive for a while during the time it takes

1122
01:05:20,920 --> 01:05:25,960
for this still decalcarious mud to completely dry out. And

1123
01:05:26,079 --> 01:05:28,719
then you know, in these in all of that or

1124
01:05:29,280 --> 01:05:31,679
you know, three or four of these cactus species, the

1125
01:05:31,760 --> 01:05:36,199
Cora phanta my east tub lenses. You know, these species

1126
01:05:36,400 --> 01:05:39,039
grow both on the islands of spiny shrubs, the kitchen

1127
01:05:39,119 --> 01:05:42,159
table sized islands of spiny shrubs and out in the

1128
01:05:42,239 --> 01:05:46,920
open in the middle of the ephemeral of goon. But

1129
01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:49,679
the Cora pantha my east toup lenses actually pops up

1130
01:05:49,679 --> 01:05:52,440
a little bit more. Aerocarpus coach you byanus of course,

1131
01:05:53,039 --> 01:05:55,159
you know in places it looks like a spider web,

1132
01:05:55,800 --> 01:05:58,159
like like a spider web tattoo. Is it better way?

1133
01:05:58,159 --> 01:06:00,880
You know, some people get spider web tattoos. Kind dumb whatever,

1134
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:03,039
no offense if you if you happen to have one,

1135
01:06:03,320 --> 01:06:06,320
of course, not making fun of you, but it's definitely

1136
01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:08,920
better than a pirate ship or a coyfish. Fuck if

1137
01:06:08,920 --> 01:06:10,679
you have one of those doing most not making fun

1138
01:06:10,760 --> 01:06:12,440
of you. Well maybe a little bit, just throwing some

1139
01:06:12,559 --> 01:06:14,639
champs here. But it looks like one of those, you know,

1140
01:06:14,800 --> 01:06:19,320
flash spider web tattoos, just laying in the in the mud.

1141
01:06:19,360 --> 01:06:21,199
It doesn't get that tall at all. The same with

1142
01:06:21,280 --> 01:06:25,159
the lofafra, and the loafafa kind of retracts a little

1143
01:06:25,199 --> 01:06:27,960
bit as it loses to some loses some of its volume,

1144
01:06:28,519 --> 01:06:30,519
you know, as it spends up its energy and water

1145
01:06:30,599 --> 01:06:33,360
reserves during the dry season. But the cora phant that

1146
01:06:33,440 --> 01:06:36,199
stays pretty uh, you know, like an inch above the

1147
01:06:36,280 --> 01:06:39,239
soil surface at most. But again, these things, I mean,

1148
01:06:39,280 --> 01:06:43,559
you really have to be out there, you know, scouting form,

1149
01:06:43,679 --> 01:06:46,159
looking over the soil trying to you know, see if

1150
01:06:46,159 --> 01:06:49,159
they're there, because you can be right on top of

1151
01:06:49,239 --> 01:06:53,239
them and and not notice. I also saw an Ibervilia species,

1152
01:06:53,639 --> 01:06:55,960
which I only noticed, you know, a vining member of

1153
01:06:56,039 --> 01:07:01,360
the Kukurba tas uh ibervilla species, which I only noticed

1154
01:07:01,360 --> 01:07:03,679
because of the red red fruits. And it's it was

1155
01:07:03,760 --> 01:07:08,119
either I think Ibervillia tenuis secta and Ibervilia lindheimer ii

1156
01:07:08,159 --> 01:07:10,920
are the only ones that grow in the state of

1157
01:07:11,039 --> 01:07:15,800
San Luis Poto s because that's what this was. And

1158
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:18,000
so you know, you can't really tell them the part

1159
01:07:18,079 --> 01:07:20,000
unless you have leaves. And the leaves were gone. It

1160
01:07:20,119 --> 01:07:24,159
was just like the dried the dried stems of the vines.

1161
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:27,840
And then scary, Yeah, it's another scary truck. Holy shit. Yeah,

1162
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:29,960
why not move a back oh down a fucking two

1163
01:07:30,039 --> 01:07:33,239
lane road with that? Well, there's no shoulder there. You

1164
01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:35,239
couldn't pull over if you wanted to, you would just

1165
01:07:35,679 --> 01:07:39,320
take a tumble. Seen so many stevious species. Man, there's

1166
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:42,840
a Stevius species here too. But again, so a few

1167
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:44,960
parking lots. So if you billboards, so if you cull

1168
01:07:45,039 --> 01:07:48,519
the sacks and mc mansions, and it's a much different

1169
01:07:48,599 --> 01:07:51,920
way of life, you know, a much different infrastructure too.

1170
01:07:52,920 --> 01:07:55,159
You know, not everybody needs to have a car and

1171
01:07:55,519 --> 01:07:58,480
live in a fucking suburb. There's no, there's not really

1172
01:07:58,559 --> 01:08:03,039
suburbs in Mexico, are there not? Really? It's not like

1173
01:08:03,119 --> 01:08:06,199
in America. I mean, do you just ask me what

1174
01:08:06,280 --> 01:08:10,760
a suburb is? Yeah? No, big cities have suburbs kind of,

1175
01:08:10,880 --> 01:08:14,760
but they're more like outskirts. They're not like Culda sec. Shit. Well,

1176
01:08:14,760 --> 01:08:16,479
if you just ask me what a suburb is, that's

1177
01:08:16,479 --> 01:08:21,039
a good sign. That means you probably don't. Yeah, you know,

1178
01:08:21,199 --> 01:08:25,000
Oh my god. Yeah. And I'm still washing off the

1179
01:08:25,079 --> 01:08:27,560
PTSD from the US. You know, I don't mean to

1180
01:08:27,600 --> 01:08:29,479
knock it all the time. It's just they're just what

1181
01:08:29,560 --> 01:08:31,479
are we doing up there? Really? What are we doing?

1182
01:08:32,279 --> 01:08:35,680
You know, people are fucking miserable and pissed off and

1183
01:08:36,159 --> 01:08:39,800
everyone's getting fucked and you know it's this is of course,

1184
01:08:39,880 --> 01:08:41,720
I'm just doing this. I'm just talking about this to

1185
01:08:41,920 --> 01:08:43,960
just you know, flush away the squares. It's like, you know,

1186
01:08:44,039 --> 01:08:46,079
get them to turn off the podcast, try the way.

1187
01:08:46,079 --> 01:08:49,199
Oh look at that ipomea. That's that that native blue

1188
01:08:49,840 --> 01:08:55,000
ipomea species tri color. Yeah, God, that is a gorgeous

1189
01:08:55,079 --> 01:08:58,039
color on it. What what selects for blue colors? And

1190
01:08:58,119 --> 01:09:03,359
a flower that's wild? Wow? So yeah, the ephemeral Lagoon

1191
01:09:03,479 --> 01:09:06,680
was probably one of my favorite spots, just because it's

1192
01:09:06,760 --> 01:09:12,000
so unique and mystifying and just such a bizarre It's

1193
01:09:12,199 --> 01:09:14,920
just such a fucking bizarre college. And all again dictated

1194
01:09:14,960 --> 01:09:18,439
by the wet dry season, the alternating wet and dry season,

1195
01:09:18,479 --> 01:09:21,880
which is yeah, nice, nice stratigraphic layers there. Well, this

1196
01:09:21,960 --> 01:09:23,880
is all this is metamorphous limestone a little bit. It

1197
01:09:23,920 --> 01:09:28,159
looks like, so, you know, the wet and these ephemeral

1198
01:09:28,239 --> 01:09:30,560
lagoons all dictated by the wet and dry season as

1199
01:09:30,600 --> 01:09:33,720
well as the latitude. The latitude dictates the wet and

1200
01:09:33,800 --> 01:09:36,960
dry season as well as the rain shadow of the

1201
01:09:37,039 --> 01:09:41,039
Sierra Madre, which squeezes out like a sponge. That all

1202
01:09:41,079 --> 01:09:44,600
that moisture laden air that moves west from the Gulf

1203
01:09:44,800 --> 01:09:49,319
of Mexico hits those mountains, dries out, and then causes

1204
01:09:49,520 --> 01:09:52,640
you know, all this cool cactus diversity and other xeric

1205
01:09:53,600 --> 01:09:57,319
xerophytic diversity, xerophyte diversity to have evolved on the west

1206
01:09:57,319 --> 01:10:00,199
side of the Sera Mandre. And so right now during

1207
01:10:00,199 --> 01:10:03,159
in the winter, the ITCZ has shifted that low pressure

1208
01:10:03,239 --> 01:10:06,119
zone that causes the rain to the southern hemisphere. So

1209
01:10:06,279 --> 01:10:10,359
it's raining and Mina's your eyes Brazil right now. So

1210
01:10:10,600 --> 01:10:14,039
you know, those dry forests that I love so much

1211
01:10:14,119 --> 01:10:17,279
down there are probably very verdant and green while it's

1212
01:10:17,399 --> 01:10:20,680
up here things are really starting to dry out. And uh,

1213
01:10:21,359 --> 01:10:23,159
you know that's why we got the seat of cool

1214
01:10:24,439 --> 01:10:27,560
rosette leaves on the pinguicula at ten thousand feet yesterday

1215
01:10:28,159 --> 01:10:34,279
and Sierra Eld doctor, Eld doctor, the doctor was. It

1216
01:10:34,399 --> 01:10:36,359
took my pain away. And so I'll tell you what,

1217
01:10:36,520 --> 01:10:38,960
it was a fucking doctor for me more ways than one.

1218
01:10:40,399 --> 01:10:43,359
So everything again, that wet dry season dictates everything here,

1219
01:10:43,880 --> 01:10:46,119
from the fucking pinguiculus at ten thousand feet that have

1220
01:10:46,199 --> 01:10:49,840
two different leaf types, one corresponding each season, to the

1221
01:10:49,880 --> 01:10:52,800
ephemeral lagoons that false Payoti and area of Carpus coach

1222
01:10:52,840 --> 01:10:55,920
you bianus growing. Anyway, I'm gonna end it there for

1223
01:10:56,039 --> 01:10:58,000
now because there's gonna be so much shit I'm gonna

1224
01:10:58,000 --> 01:11:02,439
have to do another episode anyway. So wow, yeah, look

1225
01:11:02,439 --> 01:11:05,279
at all the agritinas and stevieas what God, look at this?

1226
01:11:05,399 --> 01:11:09,000
This has been cooked. But what cooks these these vertical

1227
01:11:09,079 --> 01:11:13,279
cliffs to our left? A molten body? Was there a

1228
01:11:13,359 --> 01:11:15,560
molten body in nearby? Look at this there's all these

1229
01:11:15,600 --> 01:11:18,479
cool conifers up there too. Now we're at sixty seven

1230
01:11:18,560 --> 01:11:21,640
hundred feet. Anyway, I did, I do. Hope you got

1231
01:11:21,720 --> 01:11:26,000
some out of that. You know, the white and dry seasons,

1232
01:11:26,399 --> 01:11:29,760
the differences in elevation, the rain shadow, and so many

1233
01:11:29,800 --> 01:11:34,319
cool and wonderful plants, and much of it much safer

1234
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:37,600
than a lot of the plants in the US. Into

1235
01:11:38,119 --> 01:11:43,399
much different land management than land uses. Not perfect, but

1236
01:11:44,479 --> 01:11:46,960
you know, there's very little sprawl. Maybe there will be

1237
01:11:47,039 --> 01:11:49,520
at some point. Anyway, we're gonna hope we don't drive

1238
01:11:49,600 --> 01:11:52,920
off the road there. Say goodbye, Gabrielle, goodbye. Anyway. That's

1239
01:11:52,960 --> 01:11:55,279
a good. Uh, it's a good. That's a wrap. Have Agrescia,

1240
01:11:55,319 --> 01:11:56,079
They go fuck you, some bake