Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to an emergency emergency episode of the
Crime Pace of Botany Doesn't Permaculture Podcast. Today we're talking
about like permaculture and like like food for us and stuff.
And I have my friend Lily is here too. We're
going to talk about part Neither one of us is
an expert on permaculture. I just I don't need to
fucking talk. I don't know why I talk like that.
I think I just I've been traumatized, but I uh,
I anyway, this is a this is an emergency episode.
It'll be a short one, but I'm just curious. I
keep encountering and encountering invasion biology deniers in the field
of permaculture, and it is a it's a trend as
as ready as like you know, no one like somebody's racist,
the Caucasian uncle is going to be a climate denier.
It's like the same thing which which we don't need
to get into it. You can agree to disagree, but
you know, it's just a trade. It's just a commonality
that you keep keep encountering. It's it's a very predictable stereotype.
So I and maybe you, Lily, maybe this is just me,
But I've been. I've been just so desperate to understand
where this comes from and understand what permaculture is. And
so I looked into it a little bit. And neither
one of us is an expert in this at all.
I should mention this is just a conversation to get
you think and so you.
Speaker 2: But I do have I have a lot of knowledge
in growing food and farming, and I mean that was
one of my core interests before I got into data plants.
Speaker 3: So I have a lot of.
Speaker 1: A lot of But now but now you like, you're
like working against the food forest and you work for Monsanto?
Is that? What is that? What's going on? Are you
working for me?
Speaker 2: The thing is that it doesn't have to be for
or against. It's just the way that permaculture is being
enacted currently. The trends in permaculture are not sustainable.
Speaker 1: That's okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, But okay,
I'm not for against it. I just am noticing a
correlation between yes, you know, uh, mostly dudes. It's mostly
men that pop up in a comments section talking shit.
When I mentioned invasion biology and then I had one, Yeah,
mostly Anglo man, mostly Caucasian. Mostly they're kind of pink.
They're kind of pink. But but I but they I
don't know why they get so salty about this though,
And that's what And then today tell me I'm working
I had someone tell me I was working for Bear,
and I had someone else tell me that I'm just indoctrinated,
like they think like native plant ecology and and understanding
native plant functionality is just some like puritanical, like elitist,
you know, occult, which I guess I kind of did.
I thought that two fifteen years ago. I mean, in
some cases, yeah, there's I mean there's a lot of
like pasty vanilla fucking you know. A lot of them
also hate this podcast, which I'm proud of. But there's
a lot of people on that side who are you know,
who who do is? Who are always talking about well,
it's got to be native you know, I get where
it comes from. But but they're not looking at the
meat of the issue that I think they just kind
of get triggered by. And then there's all you really
get stupid when you start comparing you know, xenophobia and
all this other shit to it. But I'm just trying
to understand where this comes from. So so what you know,
when I looking into permaculture, what I could understand is
that first off, it's always like the same I hate
to say, but the same like cliche of person. It's
like some kind of you know, some dudes you might
see in like a crystal shop in Mount Shasta or
something explaining you know, like whole integrative system. Like they're
using all the same words like holistic, integrative. Basically, what
they're doing, what they seem to be doing, is like
describing how on ecosystem functions.
Speaker 2: Like they yes, they're trying to recreate ecosystems essentially.
Speaker 1: And which which seems like a cool idea if you're
gonna grow food, it's much better than a monoculture, sure, right.
Speaker 2: But their ecosystems functioning all around them, which they're ignoring,
is a big issue.
Speaker 1: Well that's the thing is they function on they they
they focus on functionality, uh, without really any clear understanding
of ecology. It's like it's like none of them ever
bothered the crack open a fucking Elder Leopold book, you know,
or or anything else. And and but.
Speaker 2: They also like there's a severe lack of ecological education
throughout the Western world, right right.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and it's the symptom of I mean, the
anthropocentric society we live in, which is like the living
world's expendable. Just get it out of the way, you know,
you just got to clear it so you can put
some shit that really matters there, which is something that
that's you know, like a fucking big lots or a
whether it's agriculture or whatever. It's just like, there's no purpose.
It's this beautiful living machine that took millions of years
of co evolution. Let's just get rid of it so
we can put our own shit up. But an example
of like how the permaculturalists do this, from what I
can understand, is like again, they just focus on function.
They're like, well, acacia trees fixed nitrogen, So let's plant
some acacias. It doesn't matter that they've you know, they're
all native and spent the last fifty million years evolving
on the Australian continent or thereabouts. Let's plant them in California.
What could go wrong when, Yeah, the tragedy is that, well,
there's native California plants that also do that, and you
could just go and that.
Speaker 2: They could probably collect seed from for free rather than
purchasing a bunch of you know, expensive trees from somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Where do you think this? Where where do
you think that comes from? And why are they so RESIVERI?
Speaker 2: I think it comes from our cultural indoctrination, which tells
us that, you know, when we are looking for an
answer to or a solution of some kind, right, which is,
we don't trust our food systems, and commercial foodsystems are
incredibly harmful, unsustainable and dangerous to us as well to
ingest like that's a reality. And so they're trying to
figure out a way to create sustainable food systems in
their own on their own land, which is also a
great seems like a great thing, it is great, But
then the way in which they go about it about
it is through that same system that created these sick
food systems, right, which is, they google edible plants and
then they pick five plants from whatever thing they read
online or they read some book, and then they go
out and purchase these things from wherever. And they're completely
ignoring the functioning ecoisms around them and the cultural history
and knowledge of the ethnobotany of their region, like how
humans used already the plants that existed around them for
you know, hundreds of thousands of years, and and in
doing so, they're creating cascading harming to last for many, many,
many hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: It is not thousands, right, because they're planting. They're basically,
in some cases directly planting.
Speaker 2: Invasion is a form of colonialism and anthropocentrism, just like
and it's it's so self centered, you know, it's like, oh, well,
I want to eat this, so I'm going to take this,
ignore the function of the land around me and the
function of the plants around me and animals and everything,
and I'm going to plant this in my yard during
all of those things because I want to eat it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, colonialism or not, you know, I this time,
I get what you mean. But it's you know, the
terminology makes it sound like a college case, like you know,
like that. Okay, that is side. I'm sure I'm probably
just pissed some people off and saying that, but I
just you know that I lived on the West Coast
too long. I heard people using that word for fucking
everything ship that had no connection to.
Speaker 3: It, to it.
Speaker 1: It was just with these lecturing rich kids. But I
get what you mean. But the point is. I think
it's just anthrop it's just anthropostentrist. It's just I don't
understand when you tell them, like, look, there's fucking native
plants that do this too. There's native plants that are medicinal,
like fuck mullen. There's native plant like Urba Santa Aero Dictiana, California.
There's a wealth of ethno botanical knowledge from Native American
communities that many plants that do these same things that
have but they evolved there, and they co evolved there
with a wealth of other organisms, and they're not harmful
to the ecology. When you tell these permaculture people this ship,
they get mad and they just ignore it. I mean,
that's what I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't had that experience, but it does seem
to be the crux of the problem is like that
information is not quite readily available, like and has been
systematically suppressed and destroyed.
Speaker 1: In Yeah, I just destroyed by the death cult, by
the same death cult they created this fucking mentality in
the first place. But yeah, but it's funny though.
Speaker 3: I Mean, I also think it's laziness in a way.
Speaker 2: It's just easier to like go out in the store
and buy you know, it's a cheap, easy way to
go about things, you know, which is you know what
our culture is pushes us to do.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I think I fucked up my algorithm.
Now I'm going to get like permaculture recommendations for you know,
because it's like youtubing this, I'm like, I want to
hear what some of these goofballs have to say. And
this little like frail frail ball guy that looks like
he's sexually overcharged and putting crystals in his rectum, you know,
I want to hear what he's got to say. And
so But anyway, but the thing that I've I've noticed
that they keep repeating is they're talking about like, oh,
they use all these words. It's it's holistic, it's integrative,
it's blah blah. But to me, it's like there's someone
who travels around the world looking at plant ecosystems. It's like, man,
that's just ecology. You're just describing the way a natural
ecosystem functions, and you're that's good, that's good, you got everything.
But you're missing the functionality of native plants and that
you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and trying to recreate ecosystems. One, you're like trying
to recreate the wheel and you're never going to do
it the way millions of years of evolution did it, right.
It's like finger painting versus Michelangelo.
Speaker 1: Well, no, they don't understand, but they don't understand how
that works. So that's the thing. They don't understand natural selection.
They don't understand population genetics. They don't understand how a landscape,
whether it's you know, a lowland coastal you know, dry
deciduous forest, or whether it's an alpine mountain zone, how
those you know, have shaped. They've literally the fucking landscape
itself is literally bred the species or the ecotype that
you're encountering there just the same way a human would select.
Speaker 2: And people have bred them as well, like they've been
selected for over thousands of years as well.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but that's a much shorter time span than
a lot of species. I mean, but either way, but yeah,
oh yeah, or like you know, ground sloths inadvertently bred them,
are hummingbirds inadvertently bread you know, plants with red tubular flowers.
They don't understand that. And that's okay to I understand.
I get that. It's the fucking it's how like rabid.
Some of them turn yeah, and then they accuse you
of working for Bear and just start saying dumb shit.
And at that level, I'm like Jesus christ Man, like
come on, like this is this is over? Like you're
not you don't think I've heard this before, Like you're
just parroting stuff now, you know. Yeah, but I want
to I guess I want to understand it more. And
I want to understand because it seems like, with a
few tweaks, this could be something that's not even worth
making fun of anymore, Like it could be a cool.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely, And I think there are people out
there doing it in a in a much more sustainable way.
They're just uncommon and it's a bit more of a
focus on foraging rather than trying to create an entire
new ecosystem in your own yard or on your own land,
like learning how to work with the seasons and work
with the species that occur already in your region. You know,
we have native bay trees, you can use those for herbs.
We have native xanthoxylon, you can use those for schuan peppers.
We have so many different native existing sumac berries, so
many different native existing foods that are abundantly available. You
don't even have to try planting. You just have to
figure out areas that you can sustainably harvest them.
Speaker 1: And I think people this is another reason. Like with
kill your lawn, it's like you can turn your your
yard into an experimental ground for you know the usefulness
of native plants by growing them, and then they're right
outside your door and now you can see, Okay, maybe
I'll use this for this. Or maybe that lukena that's
growing outside the native one, not the one I can
you know, it grows really fast, it produces straight timber.
Maybe I can use those as like in place of
bamboo poles. Yeah, maybe the xanthoslam I got that my
friend yard too. Maybe I can use that. It's got
a peppery taste. Maybe I can use that instead. I
guess that's I don't know, man. I just I hope
this stops being a thing it's as common in a
decade or two, because I get tired of fucking arguing
with these people, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the big issue is just the consumerist,
you know, capitalist consumerist mindset, and that's how we understand
and interact with the world. And until you kind of
change that, you're going to be key. You're going to
continue to fall victim to the same issues. And that's
what really has irked me with when I see a
lot of permaculturalist is there's this constant trend. There are
trends and like hot new plants because it's all based
still on capitalism, right, and so they have to somebody
who is you know, selling, someone has to sell your product,
and they because they need to survive, and so they're
going to go out and find a new spinach substitute
plant from Southeast Asia. And it's it's always like new, new, new,
some new thing, and everybody has to go out and
buy it and then it and then they're onto the
next thing. Meanwhile that plant is creeping out into their neighborhood.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, but it's okay because it's like medicinal.
But that that's the the thing that I guess it's
what I'm hoping that that maybe, like you know, native
plant gardening inspires people to do, is like every instead
of making this you know, homogenous, homogeneous, homogenized plant list,
you know, experiment with what's what evolved in your area
and what actually has millions of years of ties of evolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and research poganical uses of native plants. Pretty much
every single native plant out there has been used in
some way by humans.
Speaker 1: And embrace the difference. To embrace, embrace what's different. Well,
this region has a different plant list than this one,
and that's fucking cool. Let's try this instead of trying
to just homogenize everything, like yeah, all this plant, well,
plant dot Comfrey European Comfrey cause you know it's good
for blah blah blah. Or you know, we'll plant Asian
bamboo because it's good as a timber for biodynamic whatever
the fuck and they put all these words on there.
Just yeah, man, I just again just going.
Speaker 3: A little bit deeper too.
Speaker 2: If you know you need nitrogen fixing, then look up
native nitrogen fixing plants in your area, how to identify
them and how to collect seeds from them.
Speaker 1: Right, what collades are nitrogen fixing, Like some of.
Speaker 2: The specific alkaloid in this comfory that is the you know,
the active ingredient that you're using it for. Than google
and figure out which native plants also contain that active ingredient.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in doing so you're also preserving pieces of
the living world specific to that place, which you know,
up until then may have been unappreciated and unused, and
also getting cleared the makeway for a fucking raw stress
for less or some other depressing shit AutoZone dollars or whatever.
Speaker 2: And most importantly, you're continuing to support all of the
insects and wildlife that depend upon those native species instead
of bringing in this non native version of it and
which they have not evolved with and are not capable
of using.
Speaker 1: So so permaculture is kind of from what I gather,
it's just it's about functionality, and it's about kind of, yeah,
mimicking an ecosystem with an emphasis on functioning functionality, but
all of the all of the emphasis is on humans
and how it benefits us, with little to no regard
for how an actual native ecosystem functions, what checks and
bet bolences in an ecosystem are, why invasive plants are invasive,
et cetera. If they could just instead of like kicking
and screaming and doing mental gymnastics to ignore all of that,
if they could just try to embrace it a little
bit and study it and understand it native plant functionality
and why native is you know, how it differs from
invasive and et cetera. And why plants like kudzho are
invasive here but not in Asia, and why plants like
prickly pair are invasive in Australia but not here. If
they could just get that down, it might be it
might be a pretty cool system. But they're resistant to
change right now, and that's what kind of blows my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're defensive, which is normal and you know,
but also also you know, prevents you from actually learning
and growing. When you're just defensive, you got to like
try try to open up and listen and consider maybe
maybe what I am doing is causing harm because the
problem is that people have good intentions, right, They always
have good intentions, and then they get defensive when someone
says what you're doing is actually causing harm, when.
Speaker 3: In reality it's like it's oh, you know there.
Speaker 2: It is inevitable that you will do things with good
intentions and an accidentally cause harm. That happens, and it
doesn't mean you're a bad person.
Speaker 3: Pay to do that.
Speaker 2: We've all done shit like that, We've all made made mistakes.
You can just accept that you know new knowledge and say, oh, well,
now that I know, I can do differently. But when
you just drag your put your heels in and you know,
refuse to listen or gain new information, it's a real
it's a it's a real toxic situation.
Speaker 1: I just for me and I guess we could wrap
this up in like ten minutes or so. I want
to talk about that Dowall Ryan book because that's some
of the silliest shit I've encountered. And I know you
actually read read pretty far, like.
Speaker 2: The first couple chapters because a friend of mine who
I care about in respect and he was in joke permaculture,
gave it to me and wanted me to read it.
And so you know, I'm like, I know this is
gonna be bullshits really quick.
Speaker 1: It's the book is called Beyond the War on Invasive
Species and it's about by dow O'Ryan, which is was
a unit. Someone asked me like, oh, is that an
Asian lady? And I was like, no, it's like a
white woman from Portland. No, no offense. I'm just saying
it fits again. All this ship fits the bill. It's
like se predictable. It's like you just stereotypes anyway, So
so you read the book, so what what what.
Speaker 3: Are I did read the whole book. I read the
first couple.
Speaker 1: Of Yeah, that's a tall order, and immediately.
Speaker 2: The first example that she used was like this anecdote.
You know, again, this is not based on science. You know,
these are based on kind of anecdotes. And she was
antidote is like a spiritual antidote, like would make me
not want to puke. She she was talking about Spartana alternifolio,
which is a coastal marsh grass that you know, had
invaded this area I can't remember, in the coastal northeast,
and how it eventually ended up kind of you know,
balancing itself out and stopped being invasive. But what she
didn't say is that Spartana alternifolia is native to the
US and native just you know, a couple few hundred
miles south of where it was introduced. So this is
just nearly a range expansion. It's still interacting with all
of the same checks and balances. And so when I read,
as soon as I saw her using Spartina plerofolio as
an example, I was like, this is a native plant,
this is not an invasive plant. This would be considered
like an you know as range expansion or an introduction.
But it misses the whole concept of what a native
ecosystem is.
Speaker 1: And it was it was probably and when you zoom out,
you know enough, you see, Okay, this thing was probably native.
It's probably occurred there five hundred thousand years ago before
climate change and the you know drying of the plesisine,
the cooling and drying on the placing whatever. But that's
another thing that people say, like, well, how far back
do you have to go a tie until tough native.
It's well, it's not about time, it's about functionality, and
it's not just about a certain species. It's about the
whole lineage, like the clade. And of course there's exceptions
to it, but you know, like in the in concrete body,
that's what I talk about. It's talking about the ecosystems
for the most part. And there are exceptions like coast
to coast, uh, you know, invasion like something on the
west coast might behave invasive on the east like some
loop and species or vice versa for rabiniusu to Acasia.
But for the most part, these ecosystems it's it's isolation,
and that's like a key understanding of how speciation works, isolation.
But there's none of that, like none of the perma
culture people seem to have any of that, Like what
causes news.
Speaker 2: Nobody's taught that, which is a huge issue, you know,
And so they're taught like a very kind of dumbed
down version of how ecosystems function, and you don't get
the full understanding of how these things work. And to
compare spartana to like an invasive to you know, Emperada,
Cylindrica coh and grass, you know, like which is also
which is invasive, And I would never see I would
never call spartana altern fully invasive, although it might have
invaded that area in this range expansion, right, or it
might have been introduced or whatever, but it's still functionally
within the same host of species. It has still many
of the same relationships that keep it in check, whereas Emperada,
which is introduced from a tire entirely different continent, has
none of those existing relationships, and so spreads completely unchecked.
Speaker 1: Right, rather than being separated by when was the last
time sportina occurred there? What fifty thousand years ago hundred
who knows, but it's recent, it's not the lineage is
on the continent and not that far away versus you know,
ten to forty million years of separation, you know, I mean,
why do you think there's you know, why do you
think Australia is so bad with invasive species because it's
been separated from the rest of the world for fifty
million fucking years. It's it's it's a direct correlation between
time and distance. There's multiple factors, and not every non
native is an invasive, but every invasive is a non native.
It's crazy to me. I mean, go ahead.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing is that each invasive speces has
to be dealt with on a case by case basis,
because each invasive species or even non native species introduced
and spreading in wild areas is not going to become
an issue in the same way that something like cog
and grass becomes. Right, So there's so much complexity to
it and it gets simplified on both sides of the spectrum.
Right there are native plant purists that are like, no
non native plant. You know, you can't plant Spartana alternifolia
over here because it's native.
Speaker 3: Fifty miles south of here.
Speaker 1: You know, it's only want local ecotype.
Speaker 2: And then there are people on the other side of
the spectrum which is like, no, no, plant is invasive.
You know, all plants have this right to exist. No, no,
and when in reality it's this in between right, and
it's a case by case basis, you know, it's I mean,
I work with Terrea texafolia, and there have been all
of these restoration conservation projects which are moving this plant
further north because they think it will do better further north,
when in reality, the reason that it's declined down here
in its native habitat is because of an introduced fungal pathogen.
And when they're moving that tree to try to save it,
they're spreading this introduced fungal pathogen too other grin or
a further north. And so it's like even trying to
save one species of plant. You know, every time you
move a plant, you're moving other things with it.
Speaker 3: It's it's so complex.
Speaker 2: It's just so much more complex than we can even
begin to comprehend, like our understanding.
Speaker 1: The other thing that you hear people say though, the
other thing. And I when I was and this all
came up because I was in Nuevo Leone, and these
beautiful oak forests at like six thousand feet and there's
s photolists everywhere, as photous fistulosis, which is a Mediterranean
member of the alo family. And I was down in
twenty nineteen. My friend Carlos mentioned it. He's like, this
is a fucking horrible invasive plant for us, but I
didn't see that much. And then just where I was now,
it was fucking everywhere. Like it wasn't just hitting pasture
land or like abandoned pasture lands. It was hitting like
fucking pinion forest, you know, or like it wasn't as
dominant because there wasn't as much sunlight, but it was
still there. It was clearly everywhere. It's you know, and
so they you meet these invasion biology deniers, you're like, wow,
at all lay attacks disturbed areas well, every ecosystem has,
Disturbance is a part of every fucking ecosystem. And not
only that, but you know what also hits disturbed areas
is native pioneer species. And you know what also tends
to be a lot more diverse and beneficial to the
life around it. Disturbed areas that have been hit or
been you know, colonized by native pioneer species. So to
say that it's just disturbance, it's well, duh, it's a
part of any ecosystem you clear, you clear land away
for something, it's a blank canvas. New shit's gonna move in.
That doesn't mean anything, like you'd rather you prefer to
have native plant species there rather than ones that have
cheat codes, because there's no insect or fung in this
ecosystem that takes them down, you know, whereas like they
might behave over there. And of course, you know, then
they say the xenophobia thing. They're like, oh, it's xenophobia,
it's eugenics. Shit, got it's just the fucking arguments, just
the dumb shit. That's That's like a maddeningly stupid take.
You're like, well, that's not xenophobia because some of our
some of my favorite native plants are invasive as hell
in Europe, you know, Like I've been to blue gum
eucalyptus forests in Tasmania. They're fucking incredible, But when I
see it forming monocultures in California, they're boring and depressing
and there's nothing there. Like I saw a redwood forest
in New Zealand, and it was so bizarre because it
was it wasn't a redwood forest. It was there was
nothing else growing there. There wasn't like all the cool
shit you see in a redwood forest in California. None
of that was there. It was just a monoculture and
it was dead. It's like, you know, it wasn't the
cool potocarp temperate rainforest you see in New Zealand. So
but yeah, I mean I had this, go go ahead,
go ahead, I'll.
Speaker 2: One of the things I really just want to impress
is that a lot of people defend invasive plants because
they see some type of animal or something using it,
and they think, well, see, look at this. This is
being used and this or it's doing the same thing
that some other native plant does, and so it is
performing the same functions and we can just let it
be and it will fill that role.
Speaker 3: And maybe in some cases that does happen, but not
most of the time, And because.
Speaker 2: We don't unders fully understand the complexity of these interacting organisms.
And one of the cases in Florida is hydrilla, which
is an emerg submerged aquatic plant that occurs in many
of our waterways now, and it grows excessively fast, like
unbelievably fast. And yet when our you know, when the
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission treats this plant, you know,
with herbicides in our waterways, the best fishermen and the
doug hunters get all up in arms because the ducks
and the bas use that plant, and they think, well,
see the not the native submerged aquatic plants are gone now,
and so why don't we let this hydrilla occur here
and play the role that it plays for providing protection
and food for fish and for ducks. But what they
don't understand is that it doesn't stop growing, and it
keeps growing until it grows so densely that it becomes
an anaerobic matte rotting mass and kills everything. And so
if you don't treat it, it literally becomes like a
death site, like a dead lake. Can't it's myopia, Yeah,
it's short sightedness and lack of ecological understanding, and.
Speaker 1: That's and that's excusable. But again the ignorant that the
arrogance though, like when you tell someone and they're like, no,
like I just like this guy I got into an
argument with the fucking common seconds, stay out of it.
But anyway, and you know, he's like, cite a paper
for me on on how s photalist fistulosis is invasive.
So okay, fucking it was easy. I went on Google scholar,
I found one and this was in South Africa. There's
members of the AlOH family in South Africa. That means
there's probably checks and balances for s photalists too, or
there should be. But guess what. It's listed as a
like horribly invasive weed down there too. So I mean
that's just test it's just testament to how bad this is.
And certainly I haven't seen an invasion like this, like
a species behaving like this, an invasive species behaving like
this in a while. I mean, it is, it's comparable
to kudzu. It's fucking horrible the way it is in
northern you know, mid elevation Mexico. It's fucking insane. And
so I sent them the pay. I posted the paper
and then I you know, took direct quotes from it
and like, yes, we recommend this species for you know,
list one a of like top invasive plant species in
South Africa. And then he's like, well that just says
it's invasive. That doesn't say how it's detrimental to the ecosystem.
And I It's like, what the fuck. What the fuck
do you think invasive means?
Speaker 2: Man, Like, it's yeah, to be invasive, it has to
be categorized as causing harm in in natural areas.
Speaker 1: It's well, it says that in the description. I mean,
but he wanted like, well, what exactly does it do?
It's like Jesus Christ, man like, don't you're just being
fucking You're just being a dick. Now, you're just being
like it's it out compete, Like what what about limited resource?
Speaker 2: Mind?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I just well, well, yeah, an ego probably too
competing for limited resources in a closed ecosystem, Like what
the fuck? What don't you get like out competing, you know,
there's only like so much food, you know, light, whatever,
nutrients available, you know, root space available, Like what doesn't
every every spot you see an invasive like mullin or
s photolist, this is a place where there could be
something else, but there's not because they outcompete. There's the
roots overtake. They don't know, there's no insects that keep
these things in check. There's no fundy to keep these
things in check, and all that logic checks out. When
you think about it, you're like, oh, that makes sense.
I get it. It's the same way you think about
like the way a machine functions. I get it. So
what what is so hard?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Why is why the staunching?
Speaker 2: Do you think One of the issues too, is that
people don't understand evolution and evolutionary interactions within ecosystems, and
so they think that, you know, one hundred two hundred years,
that things will balance out and that this plant will
now become essentially native, right, that's I think most people
really do think that. They're like, oh, well then the
bees and the and the plants will all adapt to
it in a few hundred years.
Speaker 1: Wish it only took that long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But they don't understand that that's like a
teeny tiny drop in the bucket of a pollutionary time,
and it means it's worthless.
Speaker 1: And I always like making the comparison to when they're like, well,
you're never going to get it all, so why try it.
It's like, Okay, well, let's take the cancer analogy, Like
there are leukemias that are completely manageable if you take
a pill once a day, but if you don't, they're
going to fucking kill you within a few years. Whereas
if you take a pill once a day, you can
live for thirty or forty years. Would you tell that
person you're never You're never gonna be able to get
it all out of your system. Would you tell that person,
fuck it, don't bother? Like, that's that's eradication is not
the point, genius. It's it's minimizing biodiversity loss and extinction.
And like, why why are you advocating for the homogenization
of nature? It's fucking one.
Speaker 2: Because at some point in you know, thousands, hundreds of
thousands of years, things will adapt to this, you know, eventually, right,
But in the meantime, what you end up with is extinctions,
is extinctions of plants, other plants and animals and butterflies
and bees and all sorts of things start to go extinctly.
Speaker 3: We are seeing that happening now, you know.
Speaker 2: Songbird populations are drastically declining, Insect populations are drastically declining,
and people don't realize that a lot of the that
the role of invasive plants has a major part to
play in those species to college.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, smothering an ecosystem and preventing a bird's food
source from growing, or an insects food source for growing,
and then that insect goes on the feed. How are
many bird species? I mean, I see you could see
that in South Texas with buffalograss. I've literally seen this
every fucking ecosystem I've gone to. I've seen invasive species
doing the same thing, different casts of species, some of
which I like, doing the same thing.
Speaker 2: And there are things happening that we aren't seen too.
Like a bird is eating the berries of some new
plant that you planted in your yard, and they might
like it, and they you know, generations of these birds.
Speaker 3: Might be eating it.
Speaker 2: But we don't know the effects of the chemicals of
those berries on this plant on this bird, and how
that could be harming the bird over periods of time.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't know what.
Speaker 2: Types of complex cascades happened because you introduce one new
plant to your yard. That's why I always say, like
it's always safest to just plant a native plant if
you care about plants and animals and ecosystems and your
own and own who you know, human survival and at
all all, Like planting native is really the safest bed
there are.
Speaker 1: In there for so long. It's so if there's something
wrong could have if something detrimental could have happen, it
would have happened already. And maybe it did years ago.
You know what, the water has settled now and now
it's like an equilibrium.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and there are and I'm not like a
native plant purist, like there are non native edible plants
that you know, have been planted and grown for a
long time here and they you know, originate from from
regions that have very different climates, and so they are
they don't spread as a great you know, aggressively or invasively,
Like citrus in Florida is a pretty safe plant to plant.
You can eat it and enjoy it. It's not going
to be useful really to most of our flora and fauna,
but you can eat it and know that most of
it is not going to spread invasively, although some of
them do spread it also.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not trying to make a fucking religion out
of it, Like any dogma is faulty. If you're one
hundred percent like extremist about anything, it's faulty I was
planting fucking sausage trees ka Gellia africana down here in
South Texas. They die back in a freeze, but you know,
and they're native to fucking equatorial Africa. But they're fucking
dope plants and they get a really cool inflorescence and
they're not invasive. If it was an invasive plant, I wouldn't,
you know, I'd say I love that. But yeah, I
can't really plant that here. It's going to fuck up
the ecosystem, you know. But it's not a religion. It's
not like that. It's not you know, I just there's again,
it's functionality and reason with all this, and I can
forgive people for not for not knowing this stuff. We're
all severed from the world, the living world, you know.
We all grow up in the same shitty circumstances of
fucking asphalt and consumerism and lack of identity and just
everyone being fucking miserable all the time and trapping their cars.
But when you when you show people, when you show people,
you know, oh, this is the way you show them
the logic, and they still they can refuse to look
at it and cling to what they're goods that's when
I'm like, man, forget you. I don't have time for
this shit, you know, and a.
Speaker 2: Perma culture is coming in and like clear, I mean
they're fifteen acres of like hickory and oak, and you know,
all of these edible plants to plant what they call
a permaculture, edible landscape food for esteta.
Speaker 1: Oh that's the thing that's like, you know, I was
knocking you for making a colonialism markment for but it
reminds me of like some fucking yuppie moving to a
neighborhood that's exactly and being like, hey, data'd be cool.
It's like an avocado toast, like coffee beistro here that
no one in the neighborhood can afford. Fuck you guys,
I like this stuff. It's pretty cool. It's my neighborhood now.
And then just being like, whatever the fuck I want
is what's important. Fuck you guys. You know, oh, you
can't afford to live here anymore, like five ten years
down the line. Not my problem. Go fucking move the
you know, the bleak suburbs or whatever. I like this rustic,
you know, urban neighborhood. It's the same shit. It's the
same shit. I saw have in American cities fifteen to
twenty years ago. It's crazy.
Speaker 2: And as humans, you know, we evolved eating plants seasonally,
we evolved eating a lot of you know, native plants
that have that don't have that do do have a
lot of the chemicals that they're you know, cultivated hybridized
versions no longer have because they've been cultivated out of them.
So like we are likely missing a lot, you know,
in our diet that we could be getting from native
edible wild plants that would be beneficial to us. Like
a lot of those bitter compounds that might not make
them not as tasty, can actually be very.
Speaker 1: Bad, right well, but also some of them can be
bread out. I mean that's why, like you know, well.
Speaker 3: There definitely can be bred out. But I don't know,
I just it's like.
Speaker 2: I don't want to put oak trees all over Florida,
and if so few people recognize that those acorns are
edible and can make delish as flour and bread.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, you'll go to the Korean grocery store,
you'll see acorn flower in there.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they sell quirks Virginiana flower in Japan, and we
have it growing all over.
Speaker 3: The place, and we fucking don't you know, don't get.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a huge that's a huge opportunity too. That's
being missed out on with all this, with with the
way permaculture is now, is like developing and breeding local
native plants, you know. For again, it's like the same thing.
You grow a thousand ceilings phenotypic variation, A couple come
out differently, You pick those, you breed those few generations
of that. You could probably make some fucking I mean,
that's how all modern crops were invented to begin with.
You know, you do that with some native plants, you
could create some dope shit. But no one's doing it
because they're trying to grow ship that they bought in
a fucking you know, online from nine thousand miles away.
That's that evolved nine thousand miles away, but it's being
grown in like the whatever, the permaculture nursery, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, I just but it has shut
down when I hear it's sustainably sourced label and then
they feel good about themselves.
Speaker 1: I just shut down when I hear that, like when
I hear the words food force, because of all this
ship and I when I hear the words food forest,
I'm just like, oh God, it's like a funk.
Speaker 2: When I hear the word food forest, I think about
the forests that naturally are all around me.
Speaker 3: These are food forest.
Speaker 1: Being flaked.
Speaker 3: Ecosystems are permaculture.
Speaker 1: Someone sticks like a fucking sewing needle that's been held
over a flame into my urethra. And I'm listening to
like Michael Bolton blaring on the speakers, and there's like
a fucking some like clean cut like dude, like food forests,
Like that's what I fucking am. I go, I go deep.
You know, I really like, dude, a food forest, like integrative, holistic, biodynamic, dude, Like, God,
shut the f off.
Speaker 2: All of these things are what our native ecosystems are already.
Speaker 3: We don't have to recreate that exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: You're trying to fix thing this.
Speaker 3: Night, a permaculture food forest out in the national forest.
Speaker 1: So that's what the perma culture lists I do. Rather
than studying education, rather than studying, rather than studying the
living machine that's that occurs in their region and was
built there over eons, they're trying to fucking fix something
that's not broken to begin with, you know. So anyway,
all right, well thanks for dad. I hopefully you guys
got some monte. That's all forty minutes. It's not too bad,
but uh, you know, I'm gonna get a bunch of
angry letters like fuck, you know, like perma culture, dude,
my food forest. Anyway, all right, well thanks, I appreciate
that everyone else have a grocery day. Go fuck yourself
by