Speaker 1: I us, I just wanted to see if this thing
was on.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: If this is on, I gotta always do it over there.
It's ash Wed's day. It's as schweinsteak tomorrow?
Speaker 2: Is it tomorrow?
Speaker 3: What day is?
Speaker 1: I don't even know what day is today? You know
what day is today?
Speaker 2: The right man.
Speaker 4: They didn't even have to pay attention today. The day
is thy yp They that's sugar oats.
Speaker 3: Do you like sugary ootas. Oh, that's nice, that is nice.
That's some nice stuff right there. And that's sugary ootas
a sweet thing from the album Freedom Fight, Freedom Flight.
They just messed it. I didn't even know. I've always
thought it was eat him fight. No, it's flight the
fuck whatever. You know what I mean? Fight flight? You
know you didn't hear the consonant that there. He's not
he's he's got a d D. He's not paying attention.
He's already hearing. He's on a spectrum. Anyway, welcome to Uh,
the crime pays, the body doesn't podcasts. I say, Oh,
I stuttered, like I forgot what fucking.
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: It's takes all kinds.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I got back from Chicago. Last night, me and
my kid, me and my daughter, and uh, we had
to take we where we stay. We stayed over in Austin.
We just found a little diner to hang out and
we had a four hour layover. I was somebody wasn't
paying attention when they booked a flight. That was me.
I feel bad. She was so good though, you know,
you sedate the kid would have would have with the
tablet or something. No, she was. She was really good.
And uh she's getting very good at drawing too, which
is very exciting because she's only four. She could already
write her name, and uh, she's really into into making art.
But then she gets pissed off too if she draws
something and doesn't like it, which I used to do too.
I still well, I don't get pissed off anymore. I
just ignore it and go to draw something else. I
might rip the page out of the sketch book so
I don't have to look at anymore. But uh, anyway,
Chicago was wonderful. I spoke at the Wild Things conference.
It was fun. The room was packed. There were probably
five hundred people in there, maybe not that, maybe it
was only three. I don't know. It was a lot
of people. Definitely, definitely some transmission of viral particles occurring
in that room, and there were not as many Caucasian
people in masks as I thought it would be. I'm
just kidding. I'm just kidding. Loosen up. Sorry, But yeah,
it was a great it was a great fucking event
that was super fun and it is. At the same time,
there's the Illinois Golf Convention in the same building. A
beautiful Rosemont. I forgot to get a picture of the
city of Rosemont logo. Now Rosemont, I think was a
mafia built town by the Ohare Airport. They got a
convention center, they've got you know, it's it's generally a
car slum. It's hideous. I'm not gonna lie that. The
Splains River does go through it, and that's a beautiful
corridor of forest preserves that are infested with invasive buckthorn
h but still there's a lot. It's like a it's
a I remember being a place where if you have
to be on the ground as the pedestrian, it feels
terrible and you're just getting just you're just sucking on
fumes the whole time, just getting car exhaust belched in
your face. But I tried to sneak into the golf convention.
It didn't work. I was hoping I could get a
free visor. I could steal something, maybe a club, a
golf club. I don't know what I could of shoes?
What were they doing? What do they do with the
golf convention in February in Chicago they have tables with golfers.
Some of the guys that were there looked like they
wouldn't have been too bad at people. They looked like
working class guys. If you just could get them off
of golf. You have to get him off golf. You
can't let them do that stuff heroin golf. It's just
as bad. Get them off golf. Right, how many friends
you lost the dope? I've lost a lot of friends
to Heroin, especially after the Fennil came out. I never
liked it myself. I always was pretty repulsed by it.
I found heroin that helpless glee, that feeling of helpless euphoria.
I felt that somewhat nauseating. I was repulsed by it
at an early age. First time I ever saw somebody
shoot up with I was like fifteen. That said, many
of my friends seemed who I've made throughout the years.
Seemed to be enthusiasts for it, which was the press
for me, and so a lot of them are dead
now because that happens when you do opiates.
Speaker 2: You die.
Speaker 3: You know. This is let's let's let's redo it. This
is the getting off to a negative. We're starting off
real negative here. Let's let's put on a new face
and let's make it. Uh, let's make it a bit
more up ofty, shall we see. I'm playing with this,
that's fucking I'm playing with the controls here on a machine. Ah,
yes that guy, Yes, yes, yeah. I did have rechtol
surgery last year and it went great. I got turned
on during my colonoscopy and showed visual evidence of it,
and the doctor got really upset with me, and now
I might be going to court. Okay, that's enough of it.
I'm sorry that was inappropriate, and let's start off on
a whole new thing. Anyway. The point is, if you
have friends that are into golf, there's a hotline that
you can call. It's a one eight hundred number. Let
me find it. Where was it? I saw it next
to I saw it on a bridge next to one
of those suicide. And the point is golf is a
wax sport. But but you know, I still would have
gone on the convention. I would have seen if I
could get some free stuff, maybe a lanyard. What do
they sell? What do they have at a golf convention?
You get the free shit. Maybe they'll have a complimentary
coffee thing. No, probably not, because a lot of people
who do golf are cheap. I would assume they don't
give anything for free. They did have a free coffee
table at the Wild Things conference, which I only found
out after the fact, but regardless, it was nice. They
had a bird table, They had a bunch of interesting
shit there. They had people selling some seedlings, they had
a bunch of books. Jerry Willhelm was there, the guy
who sets his suburban yard on fire every fall, every
fall under the under the bright moonlight, you know, on
a certain when when a light casts a certain pallor
he's out there setting the yard on fire in his suburb,
which I think more people should do. But uh, just
you know, you got a time it right anyway, Speaking
of fires, it's eighty five degrees here in South Texas.
It's going to be ninety in a couple of days
it's windy as shit, the kind of weather that when
I lived in California reminded me of wildfire weather. So
let's hope that doesn't happen. Who knows. It is very dry,
unseasonably dry. All of Texas is in a drought so
far as I can tell, well, except for Houston, but
Houston's Houston's kind of in a swamp still, so that
that don't really count. I did enjoy Midway Airport, which
is the airport we flew into in south A Southwest
Airlines in a in a you know, through the conduit,
there was the aerial conduit that we flew into in
beautiful Chicago. I did enjoy the voice over the intercom
that says violators are subject to a fane violetter is
a subject to a fine, Violators are subject to a
fine crime prime slime. You get the point. The vowels
in the Midwest accent, how they get accentuated. There's no
other There's no other accent that I know of that
does it, except maybe the Canadian or the Minneapolis accent
where it's got Oh, but you know, it's Midway is
always wonderful. I do. I do enjoy the smell of
diesel exhaust, the brisk, icy smell of diesel exhaust. It's
like that when the air is so cold it burns
your face, but you could still smell the diesel. And
I'm not being sarcastic. That does bring back nostalgia for me.
It brings back nostalgic. It makes me sentimental for growing
up right, going up, you know, Cicero Avenue in the snow,
seeing the brown and gray slush in the gutters warms
my heart. But they didn't. You know, they don't really
get winters in Chicago anymore. It's weird. It's like the
last the last five years. Every single year for the
last five years has been a mild winter. They'll get
and they get it starts snowing much later, and it
warms up much earlier, which is exactly what the climate
change forecasts we're supposed to be. Of course, that's you know,
the higher latitudes warming is a lot more noticeable than
at the lower latitudes, and so it's they're gonna warm.
The equator is probably not gonna warm as much, but
the higher latitude certainly will. It's gonna get weird. And
then of course we've got the whole uh, you know,
clusterfuck of what's going on here in the United States.
You know Trump is now what is he was? He
he's selling the forests. What did he do? He passed
some law. He's gonna clean the forest. He's gonna he's
gonna log like two hundred million acres of forest. But
he's going to tell you he's cleaning them and so,
and you'll be dumb enough to go along with it,
probably because that's uh, that's what happens here after forty
years of defunding education. It's good for the good. It's
good for the economy, and you got a consumer economy.
It's good to have a bunch of dummies. No offense
to any of them. Bless their hearts, Bless all of
their hearts. What does he doing? Oh yeah, there was.
This is a great one. I hope you like shitwater.
I hope you like fecal coliform because that was that's
that's the thing now too, it's coming back. Now. See
this wasn't Trump. This was the Supreme Court who Trump
helped install. But the Supreme Court just weakened the Clean
Water Acts limitations on raw sewage discharge into our water
in a five to four ruling. So so you know,
they weakened the Clean Water Act. That's great, that's wonderful.
That's what we need to be doing now. And then
there was that pig faced guy who looks like a
hot dog on a liquor store ro t hisstory, you know,
like one of the bodega's where they got the hot
dogs that have been in there for two days. But
who cares because if only people going in there are
drunks anyway, so they're not gonna mind. They'll eat that
shit right. That thing is not it's got the texture
of dried putty. But anyway, this guy, he's all shaved
in pink, he's got a shaved chest. I saw him.
He looked good, looks like he's working out. He's in
at p ninety X. He's dating Marjorie Taylor Green, who
herself looks like another version of Miss Piggy, and he
he's you know, I hate to think of the sex
they have. But this guy was out asking the Ukrainian president,
who's been you know, through a shit ton of war
and seeing probably horrible things over the last two years,
asking him why didn't he wear a suit to meet
with the President. They're all sitting there laughing at this guy.
It was just it was so disgusting. I'm not getting
into world poitics, obviously, I don't want to. I mean,
I just love making fun of these pigs. But it
was so disgusting and just just like, oh God. And
then the guy. You know, I don't care if someone
looks like a hot dog on a liquor store rode history,
but if you're an asshole and you look like that,
I'm gonna use it against you. He's got a pig
face too. He's got like this really specific but he
looks like Porky Pig, but with a like a haircut,
like a nicer haircut than Porky Pig. Does Porky Pig
have hair?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: I should? Can I look this up right in a hole?
Lind God, Thank God for AI. Here's here's here's the AI.
Here's the AI response on Google gem and I No,
Porky Pig does not have hair. Porky is an anthropomorphic pig,
unlike his wife Petunia. He's bald and has no hair
on his skin whatsoever. Petunia, I didn't know that. That's
that's you know, who's knocking AI sure, it's going to
be used to eliminate jobs and dream up horrific schemes
to make money and enslave people as consumers so they
can be farmed. But you can also ask it about
the gender identities and body hair status of cartoon pigs.
So you know, I'm not sold on AI being entirely
bad yet. So anyway, yeah, so going to Chicago was
a wonderful time despite all the we knew all this
dark stuff was coming. We knew they wanted to. You know,
the right's been wanting to cut, uh cut the Feds
for a long time. So firing two hundred thousand federal
employees that was really we you know that was coming.
That was in Project twenty twenty five too. But uh, anyway,
back to Chicago. We'll just we'll just annoy we just
you know, we've gotten off to kind of a negative
start here. I don't like this. It's not an up
Left podcast episode. So anyway, Chicago was fucking great. I
had a wonderful time. I My daughter made me take
her to the Field Museum. She was pissed. She every
day she has Are we going to the Dinostaur Museum?
Are we going to the dinerstare museum. Are we going
to the dinstore? And she would scowl at me if
I said no, not today, So certainly on Sunday I
took her to the Dinosaur Museum. I got I gotta
pass from a museum down here. You get reciprocal admissions.
That's why it's not a bad idea to sign up
with a botanic garden or a museum. Just pick the
cheapest one you gotta. You know, even if it's like
five states away. You could probably sign up online. I
have to mail you a pass and they do reciprocal admissions.
Then you can get in anywhere. Like I signed up
with Boyce Thompson Arboretum a while ago, and they still
mail me a card. Now I can get into any
botanic garden.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then uh, you know, because you can't be sneaking.
And now it's a high profile, especially about I get
cars sneaking into a botanic garden. You know, it's not
I'm they know me there now and I get in
trouble and it's not nice and it's awkward. But uh,
and then the museum you could do you find a
museum it's in a reciprocal admissions program. With them and
the same things. So that's what we do. So we
went to the Field Museum and it was excellent, as
it always is the Hall of Botany. I love it there,
but at the same time, I'm so sad because I
know at some point some administrator asshole is going to
come for it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but
at some point they will. It's in the corner. It's old.
It's glass cases that are like six feet by six
feet that highlight so many different plant families, probably thirty
or forty different plant families. Has got a nice plastic
model of a flower, and you know, plastic models at
some of the reproductive structures and leaves and maps of
their distribution. It's great. It's like it's it's if you
could walk inside the Plant Systematics textbook. They got a
fake peyote, they got you know, all the cool Central
American is zing Gibberele's the Ginger Order members. They've got
a giant milkweed flour, plastic milkweed flour. It's amazing, it's wonderful, shit,
really cool. You got to go there and spend some time,
you know, smoke some pot if you have to, if
you get if you're like me where you can't sit still.
I don't smoke pot because it makes I just don't
like it. It's too weird and it just makes me
really obnoxious, admits an Ax. But if you need that,
you know, go there, do something. But you got to
go in there. Go to the Field Museum and just lurk.
You can maybe get into their barium too, if you
ask nicely, you know, so you're doing research on something,
and actually maybe do some research. It wouldn't hurt. And
then you can go in and look at plant collections
from the last two hundred years. Okay, But the Hall
of Botany they got the wel Witchia diorama. They have
a wel Witchia like a dried well witchia. You can
see well WITCHI had. Diorama is one of the most
fantastic dioramas I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: This is on the same level as the major dinosaur
exhibit that also catalogs Earth's five major mass extinctions, which
I certainly suggested you you do. They've got a fossilized lepidodendron.
It's a fossilized you know, the fucking nah the relatives
of Isoetes, which is still alive today. But these lepidodendrons
were massive, uh scale trees from the carboniferous. They were
doing a lot important stuff back then. They were doing
a lot of they were they were creating oxygen. They
were laying down a coal beds, right. They got a
fake giant millipede in the diorama. They got the Tully Monster,
which was a Precambrian creature that still is very poorly understood.
A lot of wonderful stuff, lots of cool fossils. They
got a giant ketchel quadlus fiberglass thing flying. It's one
of the best museums. The Field Museum. It's it's I was,
you know, I cherished my memories there. They got the
narwhal diorama, which used to terrify me, but I I
couldn't look away. I loved it as a child too.
That's in the basement. It's fucking great. So go to
the Field Museum and go to the Hall of Botany
and check out the Wowitchia diorama and the Hall of Plants.
Got the Hall of man It's crazy. I forgot how
cool the fucking Hall of Plants is. It's it's uh
the stuff they let me hold on. Let me get
some of this. Yeah, there we go. Okay, I was
taking photo you they got a giant cannon ball tree,
life sized mock up at a cannonball tree Korupeda gianensis
from the uh what order is this? I this is
something I don't think I've ever seen this. You get it?
It is you get it in southeastern Mexico as well.
I think it's in Vera Cruz. Yeah, native to Central America,
but you know it's been planted throughout uh Asia, throughout
South Southeast Asia. I think it's it's been planted in
Sri Lanka, India. The family is Lecitha dacy, which is
order Eric Hayley's. It's in the Blueberry order, which is
weird as shit. This is a family I don't think
I have any familiarity with. Let's see, let's sit the
dacy go to my observation. You know, I really love
make a tax deductible donation to in it. If you can't,
I'm just I don't know. Just if you if you
got you know, an extra you know, a couple grand
up your rations. Nobody does these days, because you know
we're all going broke and uh, no one can afford
to buy a house anymore. No, I haven't seen uh
Lesiiti dacy anywhere. God, the amount of friends I have that. Oh, debt,
like college debt especially, it's fucking brutal, man, horrible, horrible, Oh,
Rob the man. You know those companies, those loan companies.
Somebody needs to really, you know, you know what someone's need, right, Yes,
you know you know what you know what someone's gotta
go out there, dough and Okay, family, listen to Jesus.
There's a lot of genera in here. There's twenty five
genera Bertholdia, Bearringtonia Bedington. It's a hockey name, Carria, Carriniana,
Kida Nanthis Corithophora, Coratari, Corpeda, crater Anthis is Schweiler. There's
a genus called feed To. Oh god, this is a
very This is a very species. Rich family. LICI the day. See,
I think I've see I've certainly read about it, but
I have not. I don't think I've encountered any of
a really weird flowers. Yeah, and Eric Cayley's it is
in the blueberry order. That is fucking wild man. Okay, okay,
we got Mark grant them on the phone. He said,
he doesn't know a lot about it. But I remember
we're talking about you glossian bees now, because they're one
of the primary pollinators of the cannon, not the cannibal tree,
the brazil nut tree. Excuse me, though, there's many genera
that are involved in the pollination, but you.
Speaker 2: Already didn't know about that. I only thought that they
were involved in the pollination of orchids.
Speaker 3: I guess that, well, they see the brazil nut tree
offers nectar, but the U glossing Tell me about the
YOUU glossing piece, because you were interested because they were collected.
They're pollinators of stan Hopia, correct, that weird orchid from
just south of where I live.
Speaker 2: I like stan Hoopea is and I collected stan Hopeia
tigrina because it's probably the most cold party. Although people
are saying there's more of them that can be grown
out doors and in the central California. You know, I've
had that plant since the early nineties and and have
multiplied it, so I have a lot of them.
Speaker 3: And it flowers from the bottom, It flowers from beneath
the leaves. These things are epiphytic orchids with suitables. I
saw one that had blown out of a tree when
I was in LCLA down and to Alypus, beautiful tom
Aleapus with its hot cartel activity.
Speaker 2: And well, the only time I saw them in habitat
they actually weren't on a tree. They were on a
limestone pinnacle in LCLO. And at the top of the
pinnacle there were these mature orchid plants that obviously flowered
time and time again and release seeds right on the
pinnacle and all down the pinnacle was like a river
of seedlings and that's where I got my plant. It
was one of those seedlings.
Speaker 6: And you know that it's fascinating that when they flower,
which is very brief the flower they last a couple
three days, but on inflorescence with four or five flowers,
can you know they'll be flowering sequentially, so the time
they're offering their scent is extended.
Speaker 2: Some people don't like the scent of that particular species,
and it does have a little musky overtone, but it's
very sweet. And to learn that the glossing bees would
gather this scent which seems to be fat soluble, because
if you handle the flower, you know it'll be you'll
get it on your hands and and I don't know
this for sure, but if you try to wash your hands,
it's still there as if they had gone into your hand.
But the by being fat soluble. But the the Glossian
bees gather that and use it as they're mating, attraction
for the females and maybe in some way establishing territory.
Speaker 3: So they're collecting fragrance. They're collecting they're not collecting nector,
they're collecting fragrance of these orchids. This is this very
specialized pollination system. It's fucking weird. It's very cool right
as well? And what color are the bees? Tell me
about these bees? What do they look like?
Speaker 2: Well, there's they're so showy, they're so beautiful. They have
metallic blue, green, iridescent colors. They're they're fantastic looking, especially
if you, you know, get a close up for a
magnified Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: They had a turquoise, green and blue. This is this
is what I wish.
Speaker 2: I knew more about them. I mean, I know, I've
seen a lot of photographs of them, you know, just
covering these inflorescences, and I think you know, there's related
genera they go to to besides stan Hope yet in
that clade, and and of course they have to feed too,
so there they I don't think they get food from
the orchid or because they're known for being tricksters and
you know, attracting things to them and offering them nothing,
you know, imitating something that does offer a reward and
then and then looking like it and getting you know,
their services got free. But uh so, uh that brings
up the cannonball tree that you were talking about. That
that uh is that where they get the nectar.
Speaker 3: Was brazil nut, but then there's can I was just
reading about the the family, which is fucking huge. I
didn't know that it's order Eric, it's in Eric Hayley's.
I thought I knew all that Eric Cayley's members.
Speaker 2: You know, the Eric Haley's is kind of is really diverse.
It is a kind of a mess. And I don't
have a good you know, I don't have to handle
at the higher level of things, right. I mean, it's
changed so much since my education. You know, I'll be
seventy one in a couple of days. And I had
taxonomy from doctor Tucker at a time when all these
all these trees that make catkins were put into something
called the amentiffery. So that there is a clarify.
Speaker 3: It was before PCR, it was before they were sequencing stuff.
It was before Carrie Mollis took acid on the highway.
Speaker 2: Way before it was way before it was you know
times of the GRIMINII and the composite Eie and Tiffer.
I guess just because they had catkins. So yeah, I mean,
you know, you only had morphology, I suppose, right, uh
to guide you. But so that family is tropical and
so of course I haven't had a lot of experience,
but I've seen pictures. I've seen the cannonball plant. I
have not seen Brazilian.
Speaker 3: They looked like they got really bizarre flower morphology. Man,
there's some really weird shit on with these. I thought
I would have seen what maybe mobots got one like
get a. I don't know, I need the CDs there.
I should have been on the lookout.
Speaker 2: Skairchild has them for sure. Yeah, and I think down
in LA that there's probably at the Huntington.
Speaker 3: Every flower is like a puzzle though with this, and
that's the you know, it's a way to exclude pollinators.
I guess there was a at least on on Bertholetia
excelsa on the brazil nut tree. But I found a
paper that was documenting pollinators, and we had a whole
grab bag, a more literal smorgusborg of genera Euphresia, zila copa.
Centrists the genus that pollinates cremeria. You know about the
centris bees, right, they're also oil collectors.
Speaker 2: I know about the ones that do diassia. What's it
which also offers h something like that?
Speaker 3: No, it's Diossia.
Speaker 2: Well, they have a special spur on their flower and
it has these waxy substances that bees collect. And then
on thorium does that as well, right.
Speaker 3: It may yeah, I just uh, what is what? What
is what? Family's Diossian?
Speaker 2: Well you got me there, hold on, we can we
could look it up.
Speaker 3: What's the what's the how do you spell that?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna do that for you anyway.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you. I'll keep telling you about centrist
bees because they're hitting malpiggy ac too. You look at
malpiggy of flowers, you know the family malpiggy acy, malpigy
with that it's tropical for me showing well, there's a
lot of good ship because there's crazy ship that there's
why they're they're the centrispeedes are hitting calceolarias, uh, which
is why because the calcolarias the flowers on they get
those two little stamens ase little in the.
Speaker 2: Body, you know, there's still in the scruff. Oh they
are South Africa.
Speaker 3: That's wow, that's I've seen those before. Yeah. No, but
melpiggy ace. You look at malpiggy of flowers. First off,
they all look the same. It's the same flower structure.
It's really unique. It's like those five paddle shaped petals
with the little you know, in between every petal there's
like a pair of glossy little bumps, like wardy bumps.
Those are oil glands. They're they're they're producing oil and
so and then of course KRAMERI is those fucking weirdos,
you know, the hemiparasites throughout the deserts. You get them
in Chile there's uh, there's a population that grows on
sand in Florida. We get like two or three species
here in Texas, one of which astrophytem the the sand
dollar cactus likes to height under Uh. Those are pollinated,
I believe, exclusively by centrists, by the genus centrist bees
and the genus centrist, which is fucking wild. Now get that,
See I hear about that. That gets me into that
gets me into one to be a you know, hymenopterist
or whatever. Hymenopterologies they're very attractive.
Speaker 2: Now. I had I had entomology from a bee specialist,
a really nice guy. I can't remember his name. He
lived a long time. I think he must be done now.
But he studied bees. And I see here for diacia,
that they have this special spur on the flower, and
that it contains a special oil which is collected by
the wild bees of the genus red Aviva, and like
red Aviva, longemanis that appear to have co evolved with
the plants as they happen, usually long fore legs for
collecting the oil.
Speaker 3: How do you spell diassia? How do you spell that?
Speaker 2: D I A S C I A. They they are
in they are in horticulture.
Speaker 3: I saw a bunch of the Oh yeah, there's a
little spur. Yeah, I saw these when I was down
in South Africa. Yeah, really unique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's another one for the for the this
kind of pollination where some kind of oils the bees
are using. Now what they're using it for exactly, I
I've I don't know. I mean it seems like, you know,
bees put up twenty bees uh put a lot of
stuff into their properlists and when they're building the nest
and uh, but that that's that's all I know.
Speaker 3: But but Dios is putting out oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the bees, the bees have been collecting it
for long enough time for them to modify their legs
so that they collected easier from the plant and the
plant has uh you know, made a spur longer. So
they're working together here too.
Speaker 3: Would go okay, really quick before I let you, First off,
thank you for being down to pick up the phone
on a random phone call by me on a fucking
weekday night. Thank you. But first off, how did you what?
Because I remember you were really jazzed about Stantopia and
I understand why what got you so excited about that habitat?
When were you were there? Were you there with John Ferry?
Speaker 2: I was in in nineteen ninety I believe, and we
were the graduate student whose name I can't remember. And
also Carl Schoenfeld, and we went to Lclo bias A Reserve.
I really wanted to see some of the plans I've
been working with at Berkeley Botanical Garden in habitat, and
I wanted to see the magnolia d All bought up,
but we were told that that was run by Cartel
and I couldn't get to that habitat. But at that
time now Clo was open and it was beautiful. And
to see this pine oak would land, and to see
the trees that come down the east coast, you know,
and continue down this Sierra Madre Oriental and there had
been a big frost that year, so you know, to
see all that frost damage on these plants, it was
interesting that I didn't expect to and to see liquid
ambers eighty feet tall covered with vermeliads. And then I
collected a lot of material for the Potago Garden, although
they didn't want me to, so they I had to.
I had to say John Ferry had collected it about
fifty things.
Speaker 3: Why didn't they want you to collect it?
Speaker 2: You know, there's all this thing about permits and colonialism
and and that kind of stuff. And somehow John worked
it out. Now he worked it out in a way
that the Potago Garden could have worked it out, but
that just the people in charge of that just didn't
want to do it. And so the way I worked
it out is I collected the things because you know,
he had his interest, which was may woody plants at
that time. But I turned him on to firm and
then turned him onto Besheran area and turned him onto
these other things that we saw on that trip. And
I know on the second trip I went with him,
he was very focused on a goby and so I
had to be. I got so good at spotting a
Govey's Whenever I saw a plant I wanted, I could say, Hey, John,
they're having a goby over there, and then then I'd
run in the other direction and the thing I'd seen.
But but of course he is he was the major
collector and also with his garden and everything, you know,
could introduce them. And you know I just helped out
by you know, getting more things into the botanical garden.
Speaker 3: Yeah good, but yeah alongs to the museum. That's I
thank god that you guys were doing that too, because
I mean it's you know, the habitat so many of
these places too, the habitat is fucking torched or it's
gone or whatever, and those you know, it's a way
to expand, expand popular the plant for conservation, you know,
and these these things, these things have lasted epically longer
than human civilization itself has, so that all that thing
about colonialism, when you're taking it for for conservation, you're not.
You're not doing it to profit off it or sell
to some startup or some ship so whatever.
Speaker 2: You don't make money on plants. But unless you're really
it has to. It takes a lot of uh a
framework around which that to work. I mean, I tried
to do that. I try to have a new plants program,
but you know, it needed uh a bigger investment of
time than the Potanical Garden was uh willing to make.
But it could have worked. There were all kinds of
new things when you bring all these plants from habitat
into one garden, all kinds of hybridization occurs, and all
the seedlings come up, and then of course if you're creative,
then then on your break you do some pollinations. You
cut like those seeds, and a lot of plants were
entering horticulture from the Botanica garden, and the Bottle garden
really wasn't getting credit, but the horticulturalists would it would
arise in their section, and then they would take it
to a nursery, and then they got some kind of
prestige and they got the plant named for them. And
nothing was happened for the Botanica garden. So I thought,
I thought they would be open to be having a
new past program. And actually, you know, we had a
good we had a good kind of contracts for them
to make some money if there was any kind of volume.
And in fact, the first thing, the first hybrid I made,
did become a big crop over North America.
Speaker 3: Then, but even then it seems so short lived. I mean,
the the purpose should always be education and conservation. That's
the most important thing, you know, preserving these elements.
Speaker 2: Of ever in the world, and our Battaca gardens don't
have the means to do it. And of the many
different kind of directors we had, a lot of us
said well this is you know, one of them been said, well,
if there's only one of these left, we might as
well let it go exchange. That's I mean. This was
this was a botanist director of a botanic garden saying,
you know, this is just a burden and it's never
going to get never, it's never going to have any
habitat anymore. The habitat has been destroyed.
Speaker 3: So are we Jesus, why are.
Speaker 2: We keeping it? But one wish is that there was
more of a worldwide conservation concept in botanical gardens. But
what they tend to do is that, you know, people
who seek control and and uh, you know that's too
much for them, so they want to focus on their
own native flora. And certainly the California flora is worthy
of lots of work. But this country had the money
and the resources. I don't know if that will be
in the future to actually help other countries that had
more biodiversity than us to conserve it. And we didn't.
We didn't make any I'd say, in my experience, you know,
we had we started out, you know, I went to
Costa Rica and collected plants for the Potnical garden officially,
and it was kind of a work exchange. Were working
with a Botta garden there, but we didn't really do
much to support them at all in their efforts, and
we didn't allocate enough resources on our end to keep
these plants going.
Speaker 3: It should be it should be a global effort. But instead,
you know, like like monkeys with sports teams, each one
waving a different banner. We're all fighting, We're all fight.
This is our national blah blah blah. It's so, you know,
it's it's these things are you know, exponentially older and longer.
They've been around much longer than human civilization and all
our dumb shit. I mean, there's a context you want
to hook that. You want to make sure the countries
are stable where these things are you know, living today
as well, you don't, you know, And and certainly if
anybody's profiting, you want the countries to be profiting more
than anybody else. But but still the conservation, I just
see so many impediments to.
Speaker 2: Conservative people have money and power or are not into it.
They want to plant a flag on a sterile Mars, right,
and then they're going to think they buy something, right.
I mean that the earth is like the first stage
of their rocket to the to the universes. They think
of it, and that the first stage, you know, is
not recycled, that it falls off and burns, and that's there.
That's the kind of attitude they have about the Earth
is it's a launching pad for the human species that's
going to do like Star Trek. I mean, they're living
in a dream world and they're influencing policy and taking
resources and it's tragic.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, just crazy, crazy fucking apes. Yeah. The I mean,
I see, I worry about more. I was in the
Hall of Botany in the Field Museum two days ago,
which is it's amazing, and I was just thinking, I'm like, God,
they're gonna they're gonna get rid of.
Speaker 2: This whole a greater barrier.
Speaker 3: They're gonna get a greater But I kept worrying. I'm like,
you know, you get the wrong person in charge here,
some business asshole, some fucking turd out of business school,
who's you know, destined to make money the whold his
whole ideas. He's gonna make it fifthically, it's self sustaining.
He's gonna make it. You know, he's gonna find a
way to hore it out even more. They already have
corporate events there every week and they kick you out
like twenty minutes early. They're setting They got people in tuxedos,
the caters setting out tuxedos. You know, they're dressed up
like the caters, setting up the tables with the tablecloths
and the chandeliers and.
Speaker 2: Shit, the classist agender.
Speaker 3: Right right right and so, but and I can just
I just imagine it. One day, I'm gonna walk into
the Field Museum in the Hall of Botany's gonna be
gone already. I went to Garfield Park Conservatory when I
was in Chicago too. They're already charging ten bucks ahead
now to get in there. It used to be free.
It used to be supported.
Speaker 2: And compared to San Francisco, the San Francis, the California,
it's just how much.
Speaker 3: How much is San Francisco now? That used to be free.
You could always sneak in those two.
Speaker 2: Ten years ago it was twenty five bucks. The only
reason I got in was because of Frank Almeida to
use that or burial.
Speaker 3: I remember, I used it all used to be free.
The San Francisco Botenant Garden used to be free, and
you get paid. You get derelic kids in there who
were just going in there to smoke pot. But then
maybe one or two of them would be would look
at where they were, you know, and realize how cool
it was and gain a little bit more of an
appreciation for the floor.
Speaker 2: Of the world.
Speaker 3: But that's now, that's not going to happen because they're
going to see that fucking high price tag and say no,
let's just go you know, smoke pot behind a fieldhouse,
journals or something. You know, so, uh, everybody suffers. Museums
used to be free too. I mean, that's all this
stuff should be paid for. But that's part of the agenda.
I guess that Reagan really said in in in Action
right where everything's got to be.
Speaker 2: It's been you know, it's it's been forever. The country
was founded by rich people, really, and and they put
in the constitution many checks against democracy, and and uh,
you know, various times they've made it better and then
torn it back down. And the last one was fdr
who you know, really put an end to the business cycle,
the kind of reforms they did for the financial reforms
he put in place. Because of the major depression, and
he was forced by mass strikes and masks unrest, he
had to do something, even though the riche people fought him,
and so he he set something up where there weren't
depressions again. There weren't that. They weren't these side Now
we've got the rules. It was and it was fucking
Clinton who took the keystone out of the prevention of
these cycles of giant you know, collapses, and I think
we're headed for another one. Oh yeah, well many ways.
At this just happened twice. Now they say that two
thousand and eight was actually as bad as the Big Depression,
except that Obama propped up all the banks and gave
them all our money.
Speaker 3: Yeah that was well, that's just the story of modern capitalism.
But they're the people that do this shit are people
that don't know They lead fucking the popper lives. They
don't know anything else besides money and status and all
this thoroughly boring shit. I mean, I try to imagine
the world they live in, Like what what do they
care about? Like the shiny shit they like? Fake? The
Trump Ship's on a gold toilet, like they what the what.
Speaker 2: Do you like a.
Speaker 3: Fucking nine year old? I mean, they're gold and people
think it's cool. The fucking peons, a lot of the
peons that in the voting for him think it's cool.
It blows my mind, you know, I try to not
make it political too much on a podcast, but I
can't help it lately, the dumb shit. I mean, it's
just everyone's just gonna get it's everyone's just gonna get
stupider and and brokers, like there's the middle.
Speaker 2: That's here, that's here, but that's not in China.
Speaker 3: Hey. But before I let you go, I saw one
of your another one of your favorite genara, the brachyotum.
I saw it and sit to with the in the
Paramo up in Ecuador, and I thought of you, I said,
my friend Martin, I've seen this in his yard and
Humboldt before.
Speaker 2: Where did you see it?
Speaker 3: And you're sketchy home with the where the guy had
the camera that you all you got on clearance. You
got your house on clearance because the guy off himselves
in it.
Speaker 2: This home has an artistic theme.
Speaker 3: No, it does, it does, and it's it's got your
and it's got the ghost of a guy who killed
himself there. I'm sure he's you know, he's happy with
what you guys have done with a place to reseriously
because you do have a wonderful year. Everywhere you go,
it's like a fucking botanic garden. Wherever you move you
turn your yarn botanic garden. I saw Brachiotum. I forget
which ones it wasn't how many how many species of
brachiotom are that with those pendent flowers, those pendant beautiful flowers.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of them, and they're all they're all
like micro endemics, and many of them are rare and endangered.
Speaker 3: Okay, you had Brachiotom companiolaire, and then I.
Speaker 2: Don't have that one. And in this in this situation,
it got it's it's almost nine feet.
Speaker 3: Tall, it got eight feet Christ Jesus.
Speaker 2: And then I then I have one that I don't
have a name on. And when I sent pictures to
Frank Almeida, he sent them to a graduate student, this
was about a few years ago, who was working on them.
And the graduate student said it was it hadn't been
that kind, hadn't been reported from the area where I
collected it. And I have to say it was a
very infrequent plant. I really only saw it on one
place and only a couple of plants, and there was
this other species that was all over and so I
don't think it has a name. I don't know whether
it's been treated or not. But it's this very small
stature of one it gets about three feet.
Speaker 3: And Metifolium is the other one. I saw Bracciotum letifolium with.
Speaker 2: The white, the kind of flowered one. Then there's there's
jamesny I, which has tiny, tiny ninety leaves. But when
you get into proved there's just all kinds of species
of them. I did see a wonderful species that was
at a lower elevation that was almost tree like and
which is covered with flowers that didn't have any seed
on it. And in Potocarpus National Park, now it's a
very interesting group. It has flaws like the corollas drop
right away, so if they held onto them they'd be better.
But then the you know, then the I guess there's
a hypantheum then that turns red and that's pretty The
hybrid I made is pretty good. I think it would
be horticulturally acceptable.
Speaker 3: And they're all fuzzy. They're all all the pair. I mean,
all the paramot stuff is fuzzy. Even though it's not
a dry climate. That's just I guess installation against sun
and cold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, UV protection and cold protection. They did get frost
damage out of a surprise, because I got some of
them at Kajas, which is all above. It's all above
four thousand meters.
Speaker 3: Did you you know really quickly? Sorry to change it
really quick, but the eighty anthem Toilentz variety sulfurium, that
golden dry zer beautiful, that Xeric Maidenhair. I sent you
some spores at that. Did you get them?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I got them. I don't know that they're
at the right stage. I think maybe they they were
a little bit young, because there was there were no
real scores and they had all they hissed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they might.
Speaker 2: I shared some with Archie and he has sewed his.
And also I shared you sent me some of those
tristeric seeds and the ones that were already mature had
germinated and failed in the in the thing. But one
of them was green and that one is still looking good.
And I put it against you know, one of the
two of those track series I have and and uh,
it's it may work? Is it?
Speaker 3: Interpecting it? God? I hope so please it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not doing that. But it's still green and it's
plump and it's been a month. And the other one,
the other one's got a lot of mold, and actually
Archie dissected them and he sent me a picture and
it showed that the you know, the radical had already
emerged and had separated from the kadalidens. So so, but
but it's a it's a good lesson because I'm sure
you collected mixed stages. So there were some that were
all ripe, and then there were some that were This
one was green, and I'd say I would go for
early harvest next time to get ones that are you know,
not quite right.
Speaker 3: But they were covered in in. Uh, they were covered
and the plants were covered in in. I think if
it's some sort of something was was sucking to juice
on them, I think it looked like but I mean
they were still doing great. They were huge cactie, very
really interesting.
Speaker 7: But that ada did you run across any did you
run across any that had died and that you could
see inside the the the parasite I have I had
photos of those because.
Speaker 3: But Jim Marseth did studies on those and dissected you know,
He's got a whole paper on.
Speaker 2: There's a tremendous mass that that those parasites have a
tremendous mass in those cacti from my oppression because I
saw big sections that had died and had rotted away,
but the parasite in them it looked like intestines and
it was it was like it was like a little
fine ones, a little like worms or whatever.
Speaker 3: And color was it white or red?
Speaker 2: Well, at that time it was dead and these had
been sun bleached. Now, the way the cact died.
Speaker 3: I guess it would just be white. Yeah, but you'd
be able to tell.
Speaker 2: What I saw was the asylum of the parasite in
the Yeah, and the flesh had melted away, But there
was it, and it was I'd say i'd estimate that
it was half in some cases it was half the volume.
Speaker 3: It's crazy because the cacti don't seem to struggle. They
don't seem like it's they're being set back. They seemed
totally fine. And it's only in trich Issus and you
lick me. I've seen it hit Michaelo punch you, which
is a little opunthioid. But it it didn't seem like
it was really having a much luck. Tristrix didn't seem
like it was thriving. It was really only on the
Tricho series and Eulicknia. A lot of these parasitisms. I
think they're maybe a little bit more complicated than we
assume as humans, you know, I don't think it's as
simple as even a parasitic relationship, especially in the case
some of the micoheterotrophs, Like when I saw rach nitis,
that weird spider plant looking, you know, micoheterotroph Oh, I.
Speaker 2: Did see that once in Chile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that that parasitizes glomarro my sea. It's the
you know, our buscular micro rise a and the I
don't know if I don't coomas glomus. Yeah, but anyway,
it's but there's eighty anthem that I think I sent
you a photo of it. Fucking why. I can't believe
nobody's growing that thing. It's like a drought time.
Speaker 2: I didn't see a photo. But I think the problem
with it is that it's one of these ferns that
has mass release at one time of year, and if
you're not there that time of year, you're not gonna
get any So when I was there, it was they were,
and that would have been in December. They were emerging,
new fresh and a whole slope. It was a sparse forest,
so they got a lot of light, and I mean
it was just solid them. But they were all just
new fronds, so they had nothing, but they were covered
with that beautiful farina.
Speaker 3: See this was at the base of a boulder, next
to like a garbage dump just south of Santiago. It's
just like it's just like a sunny area, fucking blazing
baccarus everywhere. I mean, it was really hot. It was
like a dry It felt like someplace in the Central
Valley of California or maybe, uh, but it's a fucking
maidenhair fern growing there.
Speaker 2: It was I wonderfully, I wonder if we could trace
that area. I saw it was a property. It was
a private property from uh, I'm sure they're both. He
was a doctor in Concepcion and he had a nursery
which he called Vivo Peninsula. And he took us to
his nursery, which wasn't where he lived. And he had
secondary growth forests. So there was lappage area and there
were all these things, and then there was this slope
that was all that fern in New Frands. Jesus, it
was dazzling. Now that I did collect undersides I have.
I have the regular poretti I and that that one
which you know they fight. Is it an anthem Salensi
variety sulfuria or is it or is it poretti I
variety sulfuria. But the Parretti I have has that parina,
but only in the inside, the the pseudosaurus.
Speaker 3: The fit the false indusium or what is it?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, that's right, I'm sorry. Yeah. So yeah, well
we'll see. You know, Archie is very meticulous and we'll
see if he gets anything from it.
Speaker 3: Let me, let me, let me, let me let this pipee.
I want to keep telling you, but let me get
let me, let me drop the podcast from everybody. I'll
get back to you in a second. One wait, hold
hold on them. Actually I want to because I want
to tell you about phylesia. You introduced me to Phyleijia magillanica.
That incredible place. It's fucking so. It's dominant in those
alerse forests. It's everywhere, and you can grow all this stuff.
You grow all this stuff in Humboldt, in your little
yard in Eureka.
Speaker 2: It very much likes humbleth This is very similar to
the climate. If it lives in It's aid. I mean
it lives actually in a wetter area. I mean there's
a lot of Sphagnum moss and there's the alys forest
and it did just very very wet, and it does
things there. I'm not sure it's capable of doing here.
But and uh, I mean, you know, I have them,
and I have them big enough to fill twenty gallon
containers now.
Speaker 3: M Jesus. And because they're everywhere, they're and they're growing up,
they're like vining up these alers trees. They're they're just
so dominant.
Speaker 5: Me.
Speaker 2: I didn't, I didn't see, but I've seen pictures where
and it makes sense. I think they're they there's a
there's a bunch of plants that do exactly that. There's
there's my Traia and as a gesneria, it puts its
the stems go up and uh and they get into
furrowed bark and then they put out very short, strong
adherent roots.
Speaker 3: Just a few yea. Yet that was another. Yeah, all
these things hummering bird pollinated the fight. Do the hummers
hit the Phyleisia that you got?
Speaker 2: They probably do, I mean I haven't since I moved them.
They're kind of adjusting still. I mean I used to
get a big flowering and fall at San Francisco, and
I haven't had that yet here, And maybe it's because
it favors their vegetative growth, just growing like crazy.
Speaker 3: How's Eureka been. Have you been enjoying Eureka?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's been very rainy, and I did
get away to Thailand for three for two weeks, and
I'm going to South Africa in a few days first
for almost a.
Speaker 3: Month, which is doing botany stuff for what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm I'm you know, I've been. I've been focusing
on some obscure groups of protea and I was making
a connection by which I could possibly get some of
the more unusual species of my meetes. But my the
person doing that died tragically. He was going to send
me seeds of all these You just can't get them,
and many of them are are critically in danger. And
you had them all in his front yard right across
from the Harold Porter Botanical Garden. And his wife was
a well known is a well known botanical illustrator. But
he you know, I met him, very nice guy, maybe
in the sixties and just a couple of months after
I returned. He he just died one day.
Speaker 3: So Jesus. Those wait, those proteas, though, wouldn't you you'd
have trouble growing at in in Eureka, wouldn't you. It's
still wet up there.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm I'm very successful with a whole
bunch of them. There's some like I had trouble with sulfuria,
which is a beautiful one. It's more of an inland
one where you get you know, you get hotter, you
also get colder. But you know, the ones I like
are are the prostrate ones. And there's there's a few
sections of them that rodent pollinated and h you know,
like a collos which grows almost the shoots can go underground.
It makes a big mat on the ground because it
can have you know, different ones you find will have
better flowers than others.
Speaker 3: Because as a protea are my meat.
Speaker 2: Now there's a protella. Yeah, I'm sorry, not my meates.
They're they're all kind of shrubby plants and they're but
the problem there is their rarity there and so and
also they have they grow them there mostly grafted because
of their sensitivity to soil fungi because the soils are
so clean there, and you get the burning that cleans
up the soils. They meet, you know, they they meet
the fungi here and and they're gone. I have I
have three species of my meates that are doing well
up here.
Speaker 3: They're not the proteas are not Micae rhizel. I don't
think they've got those proteoid roots which which are able
to what do they secrete? They secrete some sort of
uh acidic compound. You know, I should have I used
to know this, I forgot, But.
Speaker 2: Well, all I know is that they're very finely branched,
and they make these cushions of very and they increase
the surface area tremendously, so they're they're actually you know,
like the fungus which has the massoleum is so fine.
It's surface area is incredible in which to draw off,
the draw into the the the the nutrients and so
these yeah, they're an annual root, the proteoid root that
they produce in their growth cycle, and masses of really
fine roots. There's there are different ways plants do that.
There was a study a few years back about these
roots structures which merc are probably understudied, but in you know,
I grew a lot of rescuos first, long time ago,
and they have what they call capilliform roots and there's
it's a bunch of root hairs and and there they
look they're very similar. It's it's convergence between them and
the proteoid roots.
Speaker 3: And but all adapted to dealing with these nutrient poor
soils of South Africa. Like all these are adaptations to
nutrient poor soils of South Africa. The quartzite it's too
lean maybe to support the fungi that would work with
them on that. Yeah. Yeah, so they've evolved without it,
and so as a result, they're super prone to uh
to rot. But that that bank you had banks, the
Integra Fullia outside your house in Emoryville.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that could that could be a national champion. That
thing is getting so big and I'm afraid it's gonna.
Speaker 3: In the neighbor house. It's not so bad. Silasi by
and silassa b uh, which is not surprising because silasovy
cyan essence which eats the cones is Australian in origin too,
it seems I guess.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, that's that's new knowledge, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the research came out. They're all subrugenosa. Yeah,
your friend mister Rockefeller, right right, and uh and the
Australian guy too, I forget his name.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 3: Really wild. Yeah, it just showed up here. Well, okay,
well I guess I'll let you go. I didn't mean
for this to be a forty minute conversation with Martin Granthamia.
Speaker 2: But you know, people are calling it an epiphyte. A
couple people that were down in Chile, and but it
makes a big root mass in in soil and uh,
and it's it's not Mike Riizel because it doesn't have
root hairs. I mean it, it is Michael Zelt because
it doesn't have root hairs. So I don't know what's
with it, but somebody could stay it and figure.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen the roots of those God, they were
just they were fucking everywhere. You know. What I saw too,
which I thought was cool, was when I was an
Ecuador a ton of epiphytic Erica's all the Kevin dishes
and the god there's like nine different fucking genera. There's
probably fifteen different genera I saw. But I saw a
couple epiphytes in the paramo that they were. They were epiphytes,
but they huge caudices. They had a like woody cautix,
like a woody knob.
Speaker 2: Even though yeah, there's an inter Andean dry forest around Pasachoa,
and when you look up into that forest you see
these massive coutices that if they fell on you, they'd
kill you. I mean they're three feet across.
Speaker 3: And they're just blueberries. They're just neotropical blueberries.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow, yeah, and then they fall on the ground.
But yeah, that's a that's a very interesting group that uh,
what was it. A Lutine at New York Botanical Garden
was the first guy to bring a lot in and
then they guarded those plants. But now they're coming in
and and there's just tremendous diversity, and they are promiscuous.
They may be overnaming things because they like within to
sarah to the stemma. Those are all seemed so far.
I found one case where they weren't of the ones
I've got that they weren't interfertile, but a lot of
them are interfertile, and they yield a lot of intergrading.
And I noticed, you know, like the one from Equahander
I was recently named, and it looks just like a
hybrid I made between RAWII and and another one that
looks totally different.
Speaker 3: But I saw Serato Stemma elatum there twelve thousand feet
on the equator, and that that was fucking incredible, the
one with the recurved pedals, and it was everywhere bright
red flowers. All these things are you know COVID, I know,
you know the old prison wall it only had room,
the old prison wall, it only had room for so much.
We're saying this on a live podcast. Through I can't
be telling the customs like twenty seas in my ass.
Speaker 2: I'm not editing ship.
Speaker 3: Now we're joking around. None of this is real. We're
all just playing games. It's all gigs and no one's
trans But I did bring her barrum specimens, but I
declared those uh as well, So that is you could
you could take her berrum specimens as long as they're
dry and there's no fruit, seeds or soil on them. Okay.
But lastly, Martin, have the tweakers in Eureka? Has there
been any altercations with that or they they just out
they're dancing in the medians or has it. I remember
there being a lot of tweakers in the Eureka Arcada area.
Have you had any issues? No issues? Right, they're they're
generally friendly or what.
Speaker 2: Well, you know there was that series on TV, what
was it, Murder Fountain or something.
Speaker 3: Oh and that's fun.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, that's pretty that's a few miles from me.
But you know, and you know on this this thing,
this that they're called the what neighborhood, you know, and
it's like a it's a you get these it's a
group of people that email each other about the neighborhood next.
Speaker 3: Door And is it like that the next door exactly
where people fight it with each other and stitch on
each other and like.
Speaker 2: People complaining, campaigning about theft, breaking into cars.
Speaker 3: Now, oh yeah, that's tweaker stuff. That's tweaker ship there.
Speaker 2: You got to Yeah, our our property is is off
the main road down an easement, a narrow easement, and
then you know we put a lot of lights.
Speaker 3: Right. You gotta you gotta take the construction glue and
glue broken glass to the tops of the fences, nail
down everything. Don't leave ship in your car because they'll
take everything you know. I mean, oh, yeah, it was, Yeah,
it was Yeah, the Oakland they'd steal everything the Bay
Area that.
Speaker 2: My tenant says, it's happening again.
Speaker 3: Because it's I'm bipping Central.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That's one thing I don't have to worry about the tweakers.
Here in Texas. Everyone's on a different drug. It's called GAD.
So it's you know, it's kind of what it's called GAD.
Everyone's so very very religious area, but it's but it's
you know, it's a trade off. It's you gotta deal
with some shit and then you don't have to deal
with with some other shit. So anyway, Martin, I didn't
mean this to be a forty minute conversation, but I
certainly appreciate you, and I want to say thank you.
You know you that's how you know who your friends are.
You call them out. You just cold call them at
fucking nine pm on a weekday night and they pick
up at Martin grant them everybody. Okay, I didn't. I
didn't mean for that to go on as long as
it did, but I'm glad it did because Martin's a
wonderful man. And uh, that was a fun conversation. You
never know where it's gonna go. We covered all different
kinds of stuff over there. Next thing, you know, we're
talking about the family penny Ac in South Africa. Order
them Mertle's. That's a fucking weird one. Look that one up.
Jesus Christ. P E N A E A C E
A E Jesus Christ. How many vows you got to
put in there? I wonder about you know, I'm so
glad I never learned Latin as an actual language. That
is like epic nerd status. Shit, didn't they do that?
And did Post decided it? Did they make the genteels
do that? Back in when I went to private school
on hundre years ago, you still had to learn Latin?
Was that a thing? I don't know. I would have
been kicked out anyway, Moving along on its most recent
trip to Chicago, before we went to the Field Museum.
Before we hit the Field Museum, we hit Garfield Park
Conservatory and I went and checked out. God, I forget
how nice that conservatory is. It really is. It's a jewel.
It's a jewel in the crown, as they say, the
jewel in the crown. It's a it's a charm, it's
a fucking it's like a the it's the canned tomatoes
on top of the slice of deep dish Garfield Park Conservatories.
I went and we went and had deep dish. Afterwards,
by the way, we went to Rico Benez which is
under the Freeway viaduct near Chinatown two fifty two West
twenty sixth Street and Beautiful Chicago, and they're twenty sixth
in the Dan right now. What is it? It's not
the Dan Ryan. What is that freeway? I don't know.
It's worth fifty five and ninety meat right by one
of the train yards. He used to one of the
train yards there, but we went there because well, we
didn't hit. We used to go to the spot on
California and Archer, I forget what it was. We used
to go to Falco's Pizza, and now we started going
to Rico Benz because you don't have to order a
whole slice. You don't have to order a whole pizza.
You can just order an individual slice, which we did.
I had three or four. I hated myself when I left.
I felt bad about myself. I had a lower self
esteem when I came out of that place, and when
I went in I said, I didn't need to do
all that, but it was fucking delicious and again better
at than Heroin. I don't know whether there's been so
many Heroin references to can forget anyway, moving on, so
we went to Rico Benes. We first went there last
year because it turns out one of Al's he went
to school with this girl whose dad owned Rico Bene's.
But you know now it's just he forgets he's he
has since forgotten her name. But we went to We
went through Co Benes that first time last year was amazing.
I said, this is really nice. There was a milkshake too,
which I got, which no grown man needs to be doing.
You don't need to be drinking a milkshake. It's fucking whore.
You're gonna get diabetes. But it was delicious and it's
wonderful after you know, a long day of walking around.
We went there after we did the South Side pot
video and we botanized that Miriam Burnham Prairie. That was
the first Rico Benny's excursion. But I wonder has anyone
ever closed Rico Benes? And if you have, go ahead
and give me a just email me let me know
if you've if you've stayed till closing time in Rico
Benny's restaurant at twelve thirty in the morning, that's when
they closed. They got free parking. It's under the viaduct.
It's a beautiful brick facade. They got a nice sign.
I saw a Chevy Caprice from the late eighties parked
up front. Looked like one of the old school mafia vehicles,
like something my dad's cousin used to drive. He was
a bookie for the Chicago outfit. Who was on the
books is a Hershey candy bar salesman anyway, making you
a few hundred grand a year, supposedly. I don't know
what he did with that money. You gotta launder that.
What can you do with that because you can't take
it with you. The feds are gonna take it, especially
after you croak, which he did, alright, Pete Lenny. Anyway,
So we went to Rico Benny's, and I realized too,
when I every time I go back and have Chicago
like good Chicago pizza, I realized what a fucking travesty
it is these other places. There's a couple deep dish
places down here in South Texas, and there was a
spot in Oakland too that said it was Chicago deep dish.
None of them are Chicago deep dish. They skip on
tomato sauce. They don't put actual tomato. There should be
canned tomatoes on the slice. It should be heavy, should
be weighted, the crust should be intoxicating. It's like a
corn meal mix. Okay, now I'm no foodie, I'm just
a slob, but still this is it's it's the it's
the food equivalent of opiates. You should walk out of
there feeling like you're comatose, like you're like you're like
you just got out of an opioid den and you
hate yourself. That's the pre If you're not walking out
of a deep dish place, a deep dish joint hating yourself,
you're not doing it the way that it's supposed to
be done. And don't ever don't ever go to Lumel
noddies either. That's not a good idea and it's not
real deep dish. Okay, we got that out of the
way anyway. So we went to Garfield Park Conservatory, which
they did finally start charging admission for ten bucks. A
person I saw that coming. They used to go. You
could just go in there and tell your ZIP code
and I would always say six or six O wait,
which was the one of the last Chicago addresses I
lived at. Uh the zip code there on the Southwest
Side and uh uh. And I knew that because they
would always ask when you went in for the zip
for the what zip code you from? And so I
knew they're doing this because you know, some fucking administrative
asshole is keeping tabs on this and they're going to
see who's coming from where. Probably if people are coming
from the suburbs, that means they're going to start charging.
And so sure enough they did. I guess it's still
free for Chicago residents if you got an ID, and
if you don't, you're screwed. And it's probably not gonna
last for long either. I don't know. I don't know.
But again, if you're really into it, it's where and
you can afford it. We're just getting a membership because
all these places are going to start charging. That's the
way of America. You can't have nice things for free.
Everything's got to be a business. Everything's got to be
privatized or make money somehow. I'm not the accountant for
Chicago for Garfield Park Conservatory. Okay, maybe something happened. I
don't know, but you know, maybe they got a good reason.
But it's disappointing either way. It really is, because this all,
all this stuff should these educational institutions should be free
because people are a lot more inclined to go. That said,
it was still mobbed. It was great to see. I
remember back in the day because I used to volunteer there.
Back in the day. I used to go to Garfield
Park Conservatory fifteen years ago. I go to the parking lot.
There was nobody there. You know, it's right off the
green line too. You could take public transit if you
wanted to and there would be nobody there. And I
got into it with this guy who used to work there,
who was a schmuck. Maybe he's not now, if he's still,
if he happens to be listening to this, I don't know.
He was the son of an alderman, so he was.
He grew up in a nepotistic situation. But he was
a prick back then. You know, he may he just
had unaddressed issues. They just give him the benefit of that.
He just had unaddressed issues, like it was like some
male rivalry. Shit was really weird. I just wanted to
go there so I could grow plants and cool down
and not feel like killing people. And you know, he
was actually in the upper echelons that of the uh,
the staff there, and he didn't like me, and so
we got into it a lot. We butted heads, but
he couldn't he couldn't ban me because I was you know,
I came in through a different venue than than from him.
But regardless, it's they got the palm house, they got
the fern room, one of the uh. They've got a
glip to strobus pencils, which is a super rare member
of the redwood family, critically endangered from China and Vietnam,
where it grows in swamps. It looks like tax sodium disticum.
They've actually got it mislabeled this tax sodium thisticum, which
doesn't surprise me either. And it's it's growing in a
little it's going in a pot in the middle of
our pond room. You can't get up close to it
and check out the leaves or the cones. The cones
on it look really fucking cool. But this is a.
It's glip of strobus pencils, which is the namesake genus
of Medasuquoia glip distraboides, which is the dawn redwood tree,
which is a fucking redwood that you can grow out
doors in Chicago. Grows fast as hell. Not native, but
it's not invasive. Uh, you know, habitat value. If you're
you know, going for like a killer long effect, you
want to be like ecologically creating, you know, a living
space for some of the stuff around you. It's not
it's not native, it's not perfect. It's gonna provide it's
not gonna provide much habitat value, but it'll be an
instant screen. And it's a beautiful tree and it's not invasive,
and it creates a really beautiful wood too. Metas Sequoia
that Thestraboides used to be native to North America up
until about a million and a half two million years ago,
when the last populations, I think those are the oldest
fossil and last populations died out. It just got too
dry in the American West for this, uh, for this
tree to hang on. But but it's in the same
clade as Sequoia dendron and uh Coast redwood sequoia. So anyway,
but they got I don't know who was doing they
had wild shit. I forgot they had. They had some
pretty wild shit at Garfield Park. They have wel Witchia.
They have a large male well Witchia plant. They have
Stenosirius bineki eye, which is that really cool one with
the the glabrous white wax all over it, like the
most the waxiest Steno sirius. It's a cactus that's looked
like it's so fucking waxy. It looks almost frosty like
rivals some of the Chilean kopiapoa because it's in how
waxy it is. It's a really cool fucking plant. They've
got a Fukiria columnaris, a bujumri bujum tree from Baja California.
They've got they've got a whole bunch of really cool
uh desert plants in their desert room. And then they've
got Criscientia kuhete, which I talked about in that Ethno
Botany of Ecuador video that I just did last month.
The calabash tree, which is in the Catalpa family, big
noniac and the fruits are used to make bowls, like
you cut this wooden the wooden what I think it's
the epicarp, the wooden epic The epicarp is like this
woody material that you can cut in half and it
makes a perfect bowl. It's pretty incredible. The fruits of
this tree. That's why they call it the the calabash tree.
The uh. And they again they use it for bowls
everywhere in in Ecuador. But I guess it's I guess
it's kind of a drought tolerant plant. Too. Really cool
to see that though. They got it in the aeroid room,
they got giant monsteros and they had needum uh Nieman,
which is a relative of well Witchia. It's the other
genus in the the Ntopsida, which is a class you know,
the the I guess they're most closely related to pines.
It's debatable though, but they're they're a gymnosperm. So you
got Wellwitchia. You have E. Fedra, which we get in
the deserts of of North America, uh and South America,
and I believe there's some of the deserts of of
China as well. UH. You know, if fedrin, the chemical
compound comes from ephedra.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then you have well witchia, which is that. You know,
if you've heard me talk about what witch you before,
probably I fucking run in my mouth about all the time.
Fog deserts of Namibia used to grow in Brazil what
is now Brazil before Brazil and Africa separated. And then
you've got the genus need them, so three genera. And
I really wanted to see up close the floor the well,
it's not flowers, they're conifers. Technically they're they're gymnosperms. More appropriately,
maybe one other conifers. I think they're pretty closely related
to the pies. Anyway, the I wanted to see the
reproductive structures, the male strobil i male cones and the
female strobell ee female cones. Uh. And it did not disappoint.
It was it's a fucking weird you know, it's a
weird structure, these things. It's like this, it's got nine
the one the structure. I was going to have ad
eight or nine series of male cones topped by female cones. Okay,
so these are monacious. This one was at least and
it was producing uh fertile well, it looked like berries
or droops. But there again, it's technically a female cone.
It's like a red coffee bean sized, not a fruit
because it's not an angiosperm. It's a conifer. But the
leaves look like angiosperm leaves. It it's got broad leaves.
It looks like a tropical just a you know, quote
unquote tropical plant. And it was in the tropical greenhouse,
you know, and there was I was still I was
disappointed to see that there was still some beds where
they were planting fifty of the same thing, like calissia,
because that's what I grew up seeing botanic gardens do,
and it sucked. There was little scientific context there. You know,
it's just planting for depth and color and you know, anyway,
So but to see this fucking thing, I don't know
who collected is, I don't know who grew it. I know,
you see, Davis has had trouble growing this genus before.
But it's a really weird branch on the phylogenetic tree,
the evolutionary tree of terrestrial plant life. And I was
most excited to be able to see it up close,
to get some nice money shots. I'm glad I brought
my decent camera my fucking nicons that have to take,
you know, cell phone photos of it, because I'll use
these in a presentation or if I teach a class. Again.
Really good to have those on hand, you know. It's
reference photos for this other weird branch off. Not a
flowering plant, but the leaves make it look like one.
And it's got a very very interesting reproductive structure. The
male the megastrobeley, the female strobele excuse me, not male,
the female strobe eye, the ovules. The seeds had a
pollination droplet on him, just like on well Witchia and
the cones of well Witchi. They get this little hair
that comes out, there's a little droplet on it. I
remember seeing that when I was in the Mibia too,
really really cool to see. All Garfield Park has to
do now is get an Amberella. So if anybody can
send an Amberella seedling to Garfield Park Conservatory and your cargo, okay,
and make sure you you contact someone who knows how
to grow it, because I don't know who the staff
is there now. Some probably know what they're doing, some
are not maybe his experienced, I don't know, I'm not.
They all seem like lovely people, but I don't know
what people's different skill sets are. An amberella can be
finicky and tricky, but they need a fucking amberella, okay,
because it's the base of the angiosperm family treads. Very interesting.
The educational the educational potential of having an amborella in
your in your glasshouse is unparalleled. You know you got that,
you could you could educate, get educate everybody. It's a
living museum, I know.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: You see Davis has an amberella. What is it? Was
it Atlanta Botanical Garden. They were growing amberellas. They got
a male and a female plant that they're probably doing
cross pollination, getting good fruits, getting good seeds. I grew
one once then may or may not have come from
New Caledonian seed. Uh that I acquired and I donated somewhere.
And uh, I think I think it's still doing well
despite a student trying to kill it. Not really, but
they might as well have been trying to kill it
because they didn't. I don't know if they fucking overwatered
it or didn't water it or what, but uh, I
think it's still alive, thank god. Okay, anyway, we're gonna
take a little break here. We're gonna We're gonna go
back into the crime Pace vault and pull out a
little bit of an l Scorch bit from two years ago.
This the full video can be seen in The Orchid
Dungeon Part two.
Speaker 5: And it's when I told me that I could never
come back to the Blockbuster video in McCook, Illinois. And
I said, listen, you got another take coming, buddy. If
you think that I'm not gonna walk out of here
right now with this cafe, a Carrot Tops chairman and
a poort on VHS, okay, So I took it. I
put it under my arm, but by had time, they
already called the cats.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 5: So I was on the fucking lad and out of nowhere,
this guy tackles me, and apparently I was in such
a state they feared for the safety. So he took
out the tatherer with no hesitation. And I'm laying there
on the ground and I'm jiggling around, and he says, hey, buddy,
no Carrot Top movie has worked this kind of hits.
Speaker 2: I said, you don't know how.
Speaker 5: Much my little kid likes this freaking movie.
Speaker 3: And it's all I got.
Speaker 5: I got it right now.
Speaker 3: Being a good dad.
Speaker 2: He's bringing his fia.
Speaker 5: Just home because I fucked up everything else. Okay, Okay,
he didn't know what was riding on it. He didn't
know it was riding on it. And I took that
and I stuffed it in my pants. I said, you
want the goddamn v just type of chairman in the park,
you get hit the cook, touch my junk fart.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're freaking freak.
Speaker 3: Okay. Anyway, that was again. It's an Orchi Dungeon, Part two.
Wonderful exquisite expose, an eloquent expose, exquisite and eloquent expose
of you know, some Chicago nostalgia. I mean, you know,
when me and Al first met Blockbuster Video is actually
still open. Used to have to go there to rent DVDs,
which we would do while we were getting hammered occasionally,
you know, after a long day of driving around returning
stuff to home depot or you know, uh, running different
the gimmicks and gigs. So uh, anyway, see, I go
back to Chicago, and there's something I'm gonna end up
moving back there one day, I bet probably if I
have to stay in the United States. It's nice and
the winters aren't gonna be much anymore because it doesn't
really get that cold anymore, especially not compared to how
it used to be, when it'd be so frigid, you know,
negative ten fahrenheit, and the snow is blowing around. It's
got the consistency of sand. It's biting your face, it's
it's making a very distinct sound when you step on
it outside it sounds it sounds like sand when you
step on it. It's so cold and so hard. It's
a terrible feeling. And you're waiting for the fucking Western
Avenue bus at two in the morning on a frigid night,
bundled up, but you're still cold on the inside of
your soul and your heart, and you're filled with a
rabid contempt for everything around you. And it's only then,
in those dark moments of your your psyche, where you
can really find yourself and understand who you are is
a person, and pull yourself up out of this wretched, depraved,
contemptuous feeling that you've been bathing in for days, if
not weeks, it seems. And and then, if true to that,
learned to love your fellow man, but from from a
from a very long distance you don't want to be
close to anybody, you know what I mean. But it
was great to be in a city where you can
do things like go to a conservatory, to a nice glasshouse,
to the museum. If I would have stayed longer, I
would have gone and looked at Harold Washington Library. I mean,
in a city like Chicago or New York, any big city,
you can find shit to do every day. If you can't,
there's something wrong with you. Okay, you lack imagination, you
lack creativity, or you just lack motive motivation. Let's go
out there, just go fucking walk around to find something
to do. You'll find something to do. And this isn't
like a winter day too, like like a shitty cold.
I mean it was like twenty five. It wasn't that bad.
Twenty five for what is that like negative six celsius,
negative five, negative four celsia. It wasn't that bad. And
maybe it was negative four and that's what I used
to do. I love living. There's why I'm so skeptical
of people who say I hate cities. You've never been
to a good city, then you've just been to these
you know, sun belt shitholes where you're trapped in a
car the whole time. I had a wonderful time. There
was so much good shit to see and do and learn.
I met some guy. I spoke with some guy. You know,
Urban Rivers, the their group that's building floating habitat piers
on the Chicago River, the filthy dirty Chicago River, which
is not so filthy dirty anymore. I guess the silt
at the bottom of the river is, but the water
is actually not that nasty. They got beaver's back there.
They got this big, fat ass beaver on the south
side living down there, big beaver river rotters. And then
you got chalk. And I talked to this guy who's
seen chalk chonk of source, the giant snapping turtle on
the Division Street pylons every I think, I don't know
if I don't think she's out yet, but he was
seeing her like last summer. She's out there all the time,
you know, big, like sixty pounds snapper. I don't know.
It's a great city. It's nice. It's it's being able
to get food early in the morning. I like the
fact that's kind of a shithole it is. It's kind
of a shithole. Every city's kind of a shittle. It's nice,
it's nice. You gotta then you can get away as
long as you can get away. You know. I'm fucking
traveling so much doing botany stuff. I don't know. It's good.
It's good to be centrally located. But I got work.
I got a due down here. We're setting up thorn scrub,
we're setting up setting up this nonprofit, this conservation property.
And uh, and then I got family stuff going on
on here too, so but uh, yeah, man, it's wonderful.
And those fucking museums especially, uh. And then I guess
I was under the impression that at Chicago Botanic Garden,
which I did get, the cops called on me there
for peeing I was taking. I was outdoor urinating in
a bush, but I guess the bush did that many
leaves on it. And there was a trailer fifty feet
beyond the bush full of old ladies. And I didn't
know that they were looking out the tinted windows at me,
which is on them, the perverts. This is like two
thousand and nine, this is statute of limitations. And they
called the cops on me. I was peeing and I
was with my and his mom, and you know, everybody
was present, and this the security guard showed up, very
odd man, very pale, looked like he spent a lot
of time, and so I didn't get out that much.
Could have just been the winter too, it was like
early spring. He showed up and he said to we've
killed the police that you had glegged to be aristed.
They're going to come and arist you. And I said,
for what this is, like after I was peeing like
fifteen minutes prior, like this guy was late to the scene,
and he said, because you were urinating in front of
that trailer, which is full of old ladies. I don't
think he said old ladies. Maybe said volunteers, stewards. I
don't know. It was a mobile it was a mobile office.
I didn't know there was anybody in there. I couldn't
see anybody. I wasn't exposing myself to old ladies, if
that's what you're wondering. Not that I wouldn't do it
given the right circumstances, you know, if like if they
were paying me, if I was being paid by a
bunch of old ladies to drop my drawers, you know,
and show him my junk. I'd do it. I'm not
saying I wouldn't, but in this case, I wasn't. I
wasn't doing that. And this man was so presumptuous and
he was offensive and he was hurtful, and he looked
like a human squash. And we had the drive we had,
you know, we had to throw the kid in the car.
We had to get out of there as soon as possible,
and I think especially because we had come in there
without paying to begin with, and so it was like
a double whammy. If we would have gotten call, you
gotta get in gate crashing. And anyway, we drove out,
we left, And that was my first negative experience with
Chicago Botanic Garden. Maybe there was more too throughout throughout
my later years. I can't remember, But anyway, I was
there when we were filming kay R Lawn. It was wonderful.
They got a wonderful native plant garden. So what a
really wonderful institution. But they had the Regenstein Library. Now
who was Regenstein? I don't know. It sounds like a
character from the nut Cracker, Nutcrack, you know, to ballet.
Did you ever go see that Donner at the Opera
House with the school did your school make did your
school take you to see The Nutcracker when you were
a kid, if you grew up in a Chicago area,
you know, But you're getting into the Russian Ballet anyway.
The Reagan Stein Library they got, you know, they got
all the fucking great books, the nine hundred dollars Leggings
of the World book, all all the nice stuff. You
can go. That's a nice library to go into. And
even if you just got time to kill, you know,
go and lurk in the Reagan style library. You have
to go to the suburbs to do it. I think,
where is it? Glen Coke Highland Park? Where is it?
It's one of those North short suburbs. It doesn't feel
like a good town to be in. But the Botanic
Garden is a nice place to visit. It's certainly worth
it if you can get out there. So that was
wonderful to see as well. But anyway, you know, I
get back, I get back anyway. The point is I
had a wonderful time in Chicago, and uh and got
to reminded of all these wonderful things about a city
that I don't get where I live now, you know,
Cultural amenities you right, mentally stimulating conversations, mentally stimulate, mental
stimulating cultural venues and learning experiences. And then I come
back here in a fucking sink in my kitchen, fell
off the cheap countertop because I live in a cheap house,
and a contractor, whoever the fucking plumber was, who set
up this place. I don't know what he was doing.
I think he was blunted. No, he wasn't blunt that.
He was probably a drunk because nobody smokes pot do
on here, not well, not that many people do. I
don't know what he was doing. Maybe he ate paint
chips as a kid, but I had a lot of
plumbing issues in his house, right, And so anyway, I'm
going out, So I have to go to the fucking
hardware store and get a thing of you know, construction
cement JB. Weld And I'm gluing. I got boards lodged
under the sink, you know, And I'm just a slob.
So I'm getting this this cacking gun. I'm getting the
shit everywhere, spraying this you know construction cementa all over
all over to sink, and I don't care. My kitchen
already looks like, shit, it's fine, you know, it's not.
That's not where the magic happens. The magic don't happen
in the kitchen. The magic happens though, you know, when
I'm we're in the fucking backyard, the front yard, wherever
I'm drawing whatever. That's that's what's important. It's my workspace.
But the point is I destroyed Ah, I don't know,
maybe I didn't destroy it. It just doesn't look very
nice right now. It just doesn't look very nice right now.
But hopefully the sink won't fall, you know, the sink,
it's a drop in sink, and it was. I came
back and the glue had not it not been cemented
in perfectly, so there's like a two inch gap. I
had the prop the thing up with boards. I'm getting
the shit smell coming out because the the u trap,
the horseshoe trap under the sink was kind of bent.
Just a nightmare, just a plumbing disaster, you know. The
dogs and then I'm cursing and ship. The dogs are nervous,
you know, they just nervous dogs. Anyway, it was just
a frustrating scene. And then and then I looked at
the fridge and I'm getting. I opened a freezer to
make a smoothie and there's ice crystals all over the
freezer and it's because the gasket was left. The door
wasn't shutting all the way. It was shutting all the way,
but the gasket was messed up. So then I called
the freezer company. I said, this shit, I just got
this thing two years ago. Why is there ice crystals?
It's from the condensation in the warm air. Once it cools,
it forms ice crystals. So what's up with the gasket?
Why is this busted?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And then they wanted to charge me eighty bucks to
get a new gasket. I said, fuck this on that pain,
this is ridiculous. And I looked again at the freezer
and seeing that there was a box that Amy's pizza puff,
something I got my daughter that she didn't want, and
the pizza puffs were back there. You couldn't shut the
door the whole way, so the gaskets open. So that's
what it was. The pizza puffs were a reason why
there was ice crystals everywhere. And it's whole thing has
just been a fucking mess. And we were talking about
let's sit the dacy and the order. Eric Hayley's all right,
and a cannon ball tree and a brazil nut tree.
And that's how all this, this whole fucking mess started.
So I apologize for that. But anyway, let's talk about
what else were we talking about. We were talking about
brazil nut tree pollination, you Glossian bees, the genus centrist,
the oil collecting bees, and then the cannon ball tree,
which we originally started talking about. All it is because
of the uh, the Field Museum Hall of Botany, which
again marked my words, if any administrator comes for it
and wants to get rid of it, I'm gonna be
I'm coming for them anyway. Okay, So, uh, you know,
the carnivoro the carnivorous plant in their tree opened up
a store front somewhere in Austin. I guess they've been
doing really good. To check them out if you can.
I don't know. I think they're only opening on a weekends.
I don't know. You gotta look this up. I'm not
gonna look it up for you. Got to look this up.
If you're in the carnivorous plants, he said, you should.
And I'm in the carnivorous plants only because somebody gave
me a who was it? Bryce?
Speaker 5: Was it?
Speaker 3: My friend Bryce in Utah. He lives over there. You know,
he's a good Mormon Land he was raised Mormon. I
think he's an agnostic or atheist. Now I don't know.
He's nuts like me. He's a botanist, but uh uh,
he is a fuck what God damn it? Hold on, Blake,
Jesus Christ. I hadn't seen him in two years. Blake. Anyway,
he's a he's a wonderful man. And he's he lives
in Salt Lake City and he grows pink. He's he
was growing pinkwaiculous. He's a native plant guy. He's a
native plant botanist. And he grows uh pinueculus just for
ships and giggles in his basement under lights. And he
he gave me this one. I think it was like
four years ago. But I got this some pink some
massive pinkwacular hybrid Kelsey at Suherros University. He was taking
care of it for a while when I was out,
and then I got a back and then now it's
like it's like the size of a It's like the
size of a fruit of a calabash tree. Like one
of those mini basketballs that you might steal from Chuck
E Cheese when you go to take your child there
and then you realize it's overpriced and the ski ball
machines are broken, and you get pissed off and all
the it's a fucking scam.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: It's like when you were a kid when they had
the animatronics there, you know, and then you remember that
time that you threw up in the ballpit. But they
don't even have ball pits anymore because it's all games.
It's all a freaking scam. But anyway, but you know,
it's like a size of one of those mini basketballs.
The point is, I feed it though these dead mosquitoes
now from the Biogents, which is which is not a
gay cruising site for biologists, though it might should be,
it might as well should be. That's a great I
think that's a great name. I think I've talked about
this before. Bio Gents, you know it's a it took
a meetup site, online dating site for gay biology. Biogens USA.
They sell a mosquito trap. I think you should get it.
I don't know how much it is. It's one hundred bucks,
two hundred bucks. It might be a lot. I don't know,
but they said they were gonna give me some discount code.
They gave me this mosquito trap. Anyway, I've been trapping
a bunch of mosquitos in the genus culex and also eighties,
the malarial mosquitos, the invasive ones. The quelex are native,
the eighties are non native. They're invasive, and they're certain
they have basically been co evolving with humans for the
last like twenty thousand years or something. But they're attracted
by scent and it's just this little packet you put
in this machine. Go to Biogents maybe next podcast, because
I'm gonna keep reping m because I love this fucking
mosquito trap because I hate mosquitos in every day. I mean,
it's so hot where I live. Already it's March fourth
and it's already ninety degrees and I trap like twenty
mosquitoes every day. I put them in a freezer. I
take the little the part of the trap out that
contains the mosquitoes, I put it in the freezer. I
freeze them and takes some twenty minutes to die. Then
I take the little mesh bag off empty amount a
piece of paper and then feed them to the pinguicula
and it loves it. I also had a drocera capensus
that Carnivoro gave me, So I have pinwicula, you know,
all the sticky stuff. And then what else did I have?
I had a couple other pinwiculas. I think they died though.
This hybrid is fucking amazing though. Anyway, The point is
I supplement it's nitrogen with dead mosquitos and it feels great.
And that's all because it is mosquito trap. Biogen's mosquito
trap online.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: Two hundred bucks Jesus Christ, three hundred dollars. I don't
know about that. You don't need the COEO two. Just
get mine. Don't respond to co two at all? Do you?
Just get a packet of their sweet scent, which mimics
It's like if you put a four hundred pounds man
on a treadmill, head him sweating to the oldies for
thirty minutes, and then took a big, a big towel
and just wiped them down. And that's what this sweet
scent packet smells like. It's like the size of a
large silica packet, and you put it in there, and
the mosquitoes are literally just attracted to the scent. Some
are reportedly attracted to Coeo too. I haven't used the
Coeo too. I've just used this sweet scent and I copy.
I end up trapping a ton of them, and then
again I feed them to the pinkuiicula. I thought this
thing was like two hundred bucks. I don't really, I'm sorry,
I'm not yet. There you go, outdoor Mosquito Trap Bottle
one ninety nine. Just get that. You'll be fine. It
says against tiger mosquitoes, it works for all of them.
It gets Qlex two. You don't gotta go get a
Coeo two tank from the welding supply store, but if
you do, then it's kind of cool because you can
they got another mosquito trap. What is this? But if
you do get the Seal two, then it's night because
you could recharge your soda stream. You know this this
podcast has barely been about botany. I'm sorry, you know,
but you got to have something like that. You gotta
have somewhere. It's just venting. What is this? The mosquito
trap BG home is an indoor trap that the indoor
trap who the fuck needs an indoor trap? Now, you
don't need that one. Get the outdoor one. It's two
hundred bucks, but it's fine, and then you'll be trapping. Oh,
I get they got all kinds of traps here. I
don't know what this is. Just get the two hundred
dollars one if you can afford it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I understand, times are shit and we're all getting robbed
by the billionaires and the upper class, the upper classes,
and no one's getting paid what they should. But if
you got two hundred bucks, if you're running like a
side hustle or something, it's worth getting this mosquito trap.
And then you got food every day for you should
start breeding pinkwiculous indoors. The hybrid ones. The hybrids do better.
They're probably polyploid or something. You know. Whereas the species are,
you know, they've they've they're adapted for a specific setting
and environment a mostly these day and nice. The hybrids
are are more robust and take kinder to being inside
a human domicile. You know, the dry air that you
sometimes get in a in a human house, or the
weird lighting or whatever. So I've got one under a
under a spider farmer light and where because I'm growing
a whole bunch of other ceilings for restoration, and uh,
you know, and I just feed at the dead mosquitoes
every day. There's already already filled up, already filled it
up again. I just emptied it like eight hours ago,
and those are all quex And it's cool because then
I I log the species on in it because I
want to know what fucking species is biting me and
making my life miserable. But uh, it's been making my
life a lot less miserable since this trap is out,
because I just don't see as many biogents uh biogens usa,
I don't know. There you go. They a two hundred
dollars trap and then just get the sweet scent. Oh
Jesus Christ, that's sixty bucks too, you know. I'm sorry.
I'm telling you guys to bite is shit like you're
millionaires or something. This is two hundred and sixty bucks
for this thing. They gotta make. They gotta make a
more economic trap. I mean, this thing's just plastic. I'm
not saying it's not nice, but it's a lot of money.
Who's got money to spend the sweet scent? I can
get the sweet scent packs. Three of these packets for
sixty bucks. That's twenty bucks. He's it's not bad. They
last for like three or four months, but this plastic thing,
they shouldn't be two hundred dollars. You guys gotta call you,
gotta gotta work with me. You give me a I
wrote the lady today on an email. I got this
thing like five months ago. I wrote her today. I said, yeah,
I got an I need a discount code. Give me
a discount coach so I could give these people. Otherwise
I look like an asshole. I'm telling them the bye.
Everyone's got two hundred bucks to throw around. It's expensive stuff.
You can't do that. Christ. So anyway, going out to
thorn scrub Friday, the black brush is blooming. It smells
fucking incredible. Everything's blooming here. It smells nice. It's gonna
be really hot, really brutal, really dry, and very drowdy.
If we don't get rain, it's probably gonna be another
brutal summer. I forgot. I've almost forgotten what it's like
to not be able to go outside because it's one
hundred and five degrees. That's not fun. Uh, And it's
coming soon. I think we have like another month of DC.
It's gonna be fucking ninety this weekend. You get like
another month of tempts in the nineties, in the lone nineties,
and then it's probably just gonna be brutal and miserable.
And then we're still gonna be in this dystopia where
like the news every day is just like getting punched
in the groin as hard as he can, just like,
good morning, God, good morning. Yeah, oh God, it's fucking
oh yeah, you're like that, oh God every morning. It's
just terrible. Into this, this this late stage capitalist hellscape
that we're living in. You know, more selling up. He's
coming for the public lands next. Get ready for that.
Speaker 2: Huh huh.
Speaker 3: You like that the public land is socialist? We got
to turn it into a theme park or an amusement park.
It's gotta have a it's gotta have a quickie mart
on it, a seven to eleven, and a relax the backstore.
What happened to the relaxed the backstore. I don't think
they made it through. That was a fucking chain. I
think I don't think they made it through the two
thousand and eight recession. Talk about a frivolous business. How
much dumb shit can you Bidy're gonna they're gonna put in.
It's only gonna get more downhill. It's it's just gonna
get idiocracy, just depraved. That's where America's going. We did this,
not you and I, but you know what I mean.
This is where we are. Now. You've heard me rant
about this before, how we got here. You don't need
to hear it again anyway. I'll wrap it up right now. Sorry,
this was not as educational as I intended it to be.
This was just a lie.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I just got back from a trip. I'm on there,
a lot of stress over here, right, I got a
lot of stuff to do. But uh yeah, we're going
to Thorn Scrub. We're gonna we get this guy coming
out with a thermal drone. He's gonna be hunting shooting
pigs where we fenced off some of the some of
the parts of Thorn Scrub where there's more dense cactus populations.
I'm very excited about that. I'm taking a couple of
the comanches out there next month, Gonna show them the spot,
see if they want to use it as a prayer ground.
Due to the massive amounts of peyote that are out there.
We're working on restoring some of the Mammalaria spherica populations
because that species got especially hard hit by the pigs.
I just I'm so excited to see I want to
hopefully the pigs didn't get any of the tortoises. They
will eat tortoises. The pigs will eat Texas tortoises, and
there's a lot of Texas tortoises on our land. We
got intogo snakes, we got foxes, raccoons, little bastards. I
don't know where they came from. They're not native to
the thorn scrub so far as I know, and they've
been causing some problems too. We got Harris hawks out there. Oh,
we got little bunnies. You like bunnies. We got little bunnies.
A lot of wonderful soil crusts. The cicadas would be
out too. We get annual cicadas. I forget what species.
I'll have to check my ininant. But the cicadas the
first time I ever went to thorn scrub were so loud,
the misky cicadas. It was the most beautiful and it
was so verdant in green, not like it looks now,
which is just bone dry, which is how much of
Texas is. But the cicadas were out. It was very
loud and boisterous and lovely. Just a psychedelic experience, you know.
I remember hearing some really cool cicadas in the t
techareas down there in eastern Wahaka, the neo bucks Bummy
a cactus force. It's like walking through a dense clusterfuck
of green, unbranched totem poles, really cool habitat, and really
loud cicadas. I would have loved to see what species,
But it was cool to hear Megastylus gigas. I'm sorry,
Casada gigas, the giant cicada mega stylist, Mega stylist giga.
See this is I don't know what's happened until my
brain now. I think I've been up to I didn't.
I've been up too uh too long. I didn't. I'm
not sleeping enough. I don't know. But I've been doing
silly shit like this all day, right, And you should
have seen me having a throwing a tantrum about the
fucking sink. It was throwing ship I wasn't throwing shit,
but I was. I didn't get quite there anyway. Casada
gigas the giant cicada. I saw that in Equador, will
hurt it. I didn't see anybody. The call is a mistakable.
They were everywhere. That was cool to see. And of
course we're at the northern end of the range here
in South Texas. A lot of plants down here in
South Texas and even all the way up in San
Antonio have range, have distributions that go way down into
Central America. Karwinskia, the Buckthorne family ram nassy, very toxic plant,
but beautiful leaves, which we is all over, you know,
the thorn scrub is goes all the way down into
the Puebla Wajaka. It's I mean these Jatropha dioheka leather
stem as they call it. That's another you know, far
ranging plant that's got a distribution that extends down into
the the seasonally dry areas of the Mexican tropics, which
look like deserts but then kind of our deserts but
also kind of aren't because they get more they get
a little bit of rain in the summer anyway. But yeah,
it was wonderful to see those cicadas down there, to
hear them. I mean that unmistakable call. It sounds like
a hand buzzard. It's hilarious. So anyway, anyway, I'll cut
it off here, got a couple of interesting podcasts coming up,
finishing books for the next fucking three months. It feels
like that's been a process. It's been ongoing. And then
we'll have Thorn Scrub Sanctuary shirts for sale, doing a
fundraiser forty bucks each, comfort colors, a five screen print,
multiple colors with the a drawing I did of the
Grandfather Peote says Thorn Scrubs Sanctuary. We'll be selling those,
and uh, what else am I doing? Why was I
talking somewhere at the end of this month? I can't forget.
I got talks planned for like the next three months,
and I'm trying to go to Europe for I'm going
to Georgia at the end of April. I'm trying to
go to Europe first week at April to see drossa file,
but that may not happen anyway. Hopefully, hopefully you had
a good time. Hopefully you got something out of that,
you learned something out of that. Let's sit the dacy.
What a fucking cool family. Other than that, the educational
content in this episode was kind of nol but hopefully
you still had a good time. Okay, that's all. Like,
itta have a grocery to go, fus Bay