Speaker 1: Okay, welcome to the crime page, but botany doesn't podcast.
Today on a podcast we have doctor Lynn Clark, who
studies the neotropical bamboos, which I was absolutely blown away by.
I mean I'm repeatedly blown away by whenever I encounter
them in South America. They're major components. The genus Chiskeay
is a major component of many of the habitats in
southern Chile. I mean, I was in these ricaria forests
where Chiscale was just forming, just forming, this almost monoculture
mixed in with Alstromeria and the understory of these giant
Ericarria trees colloquially known as monkey pozles, I can't stand
a name, but anyway, And then I've seen them in
Brazil as well in the Atlantic Forest and they're everywhere.
And then more recently, I saw the genus Guadua, Guadua
and Gustafoglia in the upper Amazon of Ecuador at about
four thousand foot elevation and they were like ninety feet tall.
So these are really impressive plants. This is a really
impressive clade evolutionary group of plants. So doctor Lynn Clark,
thank you for making time today.
Speaker 2: You're very welcome.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's I don't know where to start. I mean,
let's talk about I guess just for anybody listening, what
is a bamboo, their grass is. But it's a specific
subfamily of the grass family.
Speaker 2: Right, that is correct. They are one of the largest
actually about the third largest subfamily, so they were a
pretty major lineage. And they are the only group of
like major group of grasses to really evolve in association
with forest habitats. And so that's one thing that makes
them very different. So they many of them actually are
competing with trees, and some of them, like the herbaceous bamboos,
have adapted to that understory kind of habitat. And what
the most unique character besides the molecular data that we
have that shows that they are a claye, they have
this very unusual cell type in their leads. It's you know,
the cells in the middle of the leafs that do
the photosynthesis. They have something that we call arm cells,
and they're kind of like it's almost like a big tooth,
you know, because there's lobes on these on these cells.
Very very specific pattern. So that's another clue that yeah,
they all they all had a common ancestor and they're
all related to each other.
Speaker 1: So these arm cells, what are they? Is there like
an adaptive benefit? What does it do? As like a
lay person might say, what is what's their the why
they evolve?
Speaker 2: Very good question. That's another project I'm doing is we're
looking at these cells across the whole grass family, and
it turns out these are not the only kind that
are lobed. We think it's the way to increase surface
area and so that would maybe make make it more
efficient or more you know, enable photosynthesis to be to
make more stuff and so you know maybe in the
in a forest habitat where a lot of the time
they're shaded, maybe that you know, extra surface area really
helps them do that competition with trees that we were
talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, So
so arm cells, these are specialized cells in the in
the leaf mesaville, which is the tissue between the upper
and lower epidermis, and they've got these you said, lobe
like it looks like a tooth or what.
Speaker 2: Is it the Yeah, it's like mostly so they can
be lobed from the lower surface towards the top, or
from the upper surface towards the bottom or both. And
when you if you take a razor blade and you
were to cut one of these leaves in cross section,
they show up. You can see those lobes and it's like,
that's it. That's a bamboo.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I'm seeing it. The cross section almost looks
like a four leaf clover or something.
Speaker 2: It can yeah, yeah, okay, all.
Speaker 1: Right, but either way, these are these are probably one
of the theories is they're potentially helping the plant cook
up more sugars from photosynthesis, making them more photosynthetically.
Speaker 3: What's the efficient efficient?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, anyway, okay, So so that's
the bamboos, And what's the they or the subfamily originated
in where Southeast Asia?
Speaker 3: It's thought that's what we.
Speaker 2: Think right now. That seems to be the most likely
based on all the evidence that we have.
Speaker 1: All right, and so what's the what is molecular clock?
What do we got like an estimation of origin time
here or.
Speaker 2: Yes, mostly like thirty five ish to forty million years
ago something in that ballpark?
Speaker 1: So like what is that like lady has seen Alega
seine or something.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's the least scene I'm remember incorrectly or late,
no early.
Speaker 1: To double check it was a long time ago, it was.
It was after the comet. Yeah, it was after the
comet took out the dinosaurs, but it was still pretty
far back. So yeah, okay, so in these so because
I mean, most people think of bamboo, they think of Asia,
they think of Panda's what I'm talking about, like non bodanists,
you know, it's just like normal labor. But I mean,
I was surprised to find them. I remember where I
was too. I was on a on a nero granitic
knob near one of those. I God, the name escapes me.
It's like a Dutch word for uh, those giant granite
knobs in Brazil. I don't know. Anyway, it's.
Speaker 2: Like a sugarloaf mountain things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, God, it's such a granite. I can't remember
the name. Anyway. The point, I was on one of
these and I saw there there's a bunch of really
cool plants there, lithophytic orchids, bromeliads, and this this what
I could tell, was obviously a bamboo, but it had
a much different flavor to it, a much different gestalt
than you know, the invasive Asian ones that get planted
in North American gardens, and I thought, this is really unique.
This is obviously a native what is that? And that
was my first experience with the genus Chiskea. And then
I started seeing them a lot more and paying attention
to them and read up on them and realized, Wow,
this is a huge, a huge clade. When did so
when did the when was there this diverse this dispersal
from Asia where the where the subfamily originated to the
New World.
Speaker 2: That's a we would all love to know the answer
to that. And right now, all everything is pointing to
something around twenty twenty two million years ago somewhere, you know,
it's a little bit after the bamboos of Ault in Asia,
So we don't know for sure, and we don't know
exactly how that would have happened because there was still,
you know, significant separation among the continents that there would
have been not exactly what we see today, but you know,
still pretty pretty big distances. And somehow they got there
and started diversifying. And there's actually probably were two introductions,
because there's herbaceous bamboos in addition to the woody bamboos,
and one of the earliest lineages of herbaceous bamboos is
in New Guinea. There's one species in one genus there,
and then all the rest of the diversity in that
group is in the New World.
Speaker 1: Jesus, And you know from looking at DNA that these
are that's obviously part of this other clade. They're related
to the neotropical ones. Yep. Absolutely, that's that's a huge disjunction.
That's crazy.
Speaker 3: That's like it is nuts.
Speaker 2: That's yeah. The closest relative to the one in New
Guinea is are these three endemic genera in Cuba. And yeah,
that was just that blew us away when we first
got that result. It was just a few years ago
we were able to confirm that.
Speaker 1: What's the name of the New Guinea species.
Speaker 2: It's burgerzio kloa bambusois burgerzi.
Speaker 1: How do you spell that? B e r Let.
Speaker 2: Me think here, No, it's I have to write it out.
I won't spell it correctly.
Speaker 3: C U b u E R b U E r g.
Speaker 2: E R s I O c h l o A.
Speaker 1: Okay, is this a monotypic genus, yes, okay, so it
should come up. Okay, let me get that just in
case any one listening wants to look it up, which
I recommend people do if they're Yeah, okay bergerzy aklo
of bamboo. Soytis so many obscure plant names in my
Google search history? Yeah wow? Okay, cool? All right, Yeah
this is a And how tall does this thing get? Oh?
Speaker 2: I think typically a meter maybe?
Speaker 3: Oh wow, okay, about three feet?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's like that's like a generally yeah, like
three three feet or less, I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I've never seen it in the fields, much
as I would like to. But the herbaceous bamboos are
done generally speaking, much smaller, and they they look more
like I mean they they have some fairly tough stems,
but they're not very big. And most of them are yeah,
no more than a meter two meters tall at the most.
And there's actually the smallest bamboo is a herbaceous bamboo
and it's only about two to three centimeters tall.
Speaker 1: Oh wow? What is that?
Speaker 2: It's called radi ella vanessi.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, spelling again, okay, yep.
Speaker 2: R A D D D D E l e e
l l A rady ella and vanessi uh is v
a and like vanessa with an e on the end.
Speaker 1: VANESSI, oh Vanesse, okay, And where's where's this native to?
Speaker 2: This one is native to? I think, uh it's Brazil.
Speaker 1: God man, I had no idea there was. Yeah. I
looked up some of the bamboosdi like the native BAMBUSSORTI.
Oh god, this thing's tiny. Jesus. Yeah, I looked up
some of the native bambusori in South America and I
was blown away at the diversity. There's quite a bit.
I mean, I been there twenty million years at least,
so it makes sense they would have diversified. But I
didn't know there were so many different genera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is so use if I can give you
some numbers. So for the alyri e, we're up to,
oh is it twenty four genera total? And I think
and Bergerzio kloa and so minus stats. So you got
about twenty three genera and about one hundred and forty species.
And then for the woody bamboos we are at six.
We're in the twenties as well, twenty three or four
and about four hundred and sixty species.
Speaker 1: Jesus, so twenty four genera and four hundred and sixty species.
Speaker 3: Yes, So these are.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are these are huge components of the
ecosystems of South America. The I do want to bring
up too, We've mentioned like the herbasi species and woody
species monocots, since bamboos and monocot don't produce, don't produce
you know, secondary marastimes. They don't have lateral marastimes, so
they don't produce, they don't produce wood what, But they're
they're obviously very structurally sturdy and tough. And you know
what most people call bamboo wood? What what is that?
Speaker 2: Technically, so it's it is all produced by the primary growth,
so by the apelical mirros stem of any given shoot.
But it is actually chemically as these plants start to grow,
you know, the new shoot comes out of the ground,
it's still very soft because it has to elongate obviously,
and then they start pretty much from the base. Once
they've started that growth and they're reaching their full height,
they start lignifying. And so lignin is the chemical that
makes wood wood. When we're talking about a tree, the
cells that are in the middle of the stem become lignified,
and so it's kind of the same with the bamboos,
lignin is deposited in those cell walls, and so the chemically,
you know, it has kind of the same origin as
would it's just the way the marastims make the cells.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay different. So it's just it's it's the same compound.
I mean, it's it's lignin, but it's not produced by
it's not as produced by a secondary mariston, by a cambium.
So because I mean, yeah, all monocots, except for what
is dressina, and a handful of them just basically grow
up and down. They don't grow out. That's why palm
trees get so tall and skinny. For anybody listening, remember that.
So I've said it like nine thousand times, but I'll
keep saying it so anyway, But so, how many grass
species do this? How many members of the family Poesi
actually produce lignan besides the bamboos. Are they the only
subfamily that you know of?
Speaker 2: No, there's definitely some other members that make that have
lignified stems. So think about the reeds, you know, that's
the ones you know, like musical instrument reads actually come
They're not from bamboo. They come from members of the
reed subfamily and there's a few other grasses scattered around,
you know, especially some of the tropical ones, but they
can make lignified stems.
Speaker 3: What's the reed subfamily A run Denoi they.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, like a runding area.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, son Dons.
Speaker 1: Is the oh yeah, yeah, bad invasive, especially down here
on the Rio grand.
Speaker 2: That's that's frag Mighty's. Frag Mighty's is the bad one.
Speaker 1: A Rondo's pretty invasive though, too, right. That's not a
North American native, No.
Speaker 2: It's not, but it's really much more tropical. Frank nineties
is the one that gets further north.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm well, we get a rundo
down here, but I mean I'm basically it was like
one hundred and five the other day, so in mid March. Yeah,
I mean I think that, you know, that's an anomaly.
Normally it's in the nineties, but one oh five. Okay,
so but this would nonetheless, like when someone's getting caned,
that's it's probably with the bamboo species. Yeah, okay, like
when that kid got caught spray painting in Singapore twenty
five years ago. I remember that because I was yeah, yeah,
it was like a lesson is you know, I was
still a juvenile then and that was like a lesson.
I remember my mom being like, you know, so you
go pull this shit over there in Singapore cane you
but uh anyway, But but I mean these some of
the like when I was looking at Guadua, and I mean,
some of these things are like, god damn, they're huge. Man,
Like the cane, what would be the cane is like,
you know, some of them were like ten inches wide
like these stems. It was insane. Yeah, massive, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah over ninety feet tall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so crazy. What The thing that I'm curious about,
too is what I find odd about a lot of
the bamboos and also really cool and unique for grasses,
is that they've got these lateral buds that they can
form these lateral shoots out of their main stems. How
do you explain that physiologically? Because you look at like
big blue stem or some of our native peririe they
don't do that obviously. What's going on there with the
these like Guadua. You know, you'll get this ninety foot
tall shoot and then at the nodes you'll get these
secondary branches that come out that are covered in spines.
What is that exactly, So.
Speaker 2: When it goes back to thinking about how they're actually
growing and competing with trees, because that's what the woody
bamboos are doing. And so you know that new shoot
that comes out of the ground when it's ready to go,
it's you know, covered with those they are highly modified
leaves that sort of wrap around and help keep it
from falling over until it gets dignified. So they come
out of the ground and they go they grow all
the way up to their full height in a few months.
The rate varies depending on where they are and how
much water there is, but some of them have been
measured at growing like over three feet a day elongating,
so that's really the Chinese have a folk saying, don't
hang your hat on a bamboo shoot, because you won't
get it back. So they they will elongate all the
way up, and of course the energy for that is
mostly coming from the mother plant, you know, the stored
all this up and getting that plant all the way up.
But then they have to make leaves, and so that's
what those buds do. They make the branches that have
the foliage leaves so they can do the photosynthesis, and
once they start they can extend those out and then
they're on their own. Basically they can start photosynthesizing, and
even if they're still connected to the mother plant, they're
physiologically you know, supporting themselves.
Speaker 1: And when you say mother when you say mother plant,
I mean this is we should mention. These things form
massive colonies. I mean, how big can so they're spreading,
They've got rhizomes spreading underground, and then those rhizomes essentially
send up new massive shoots. I mean, these things. I
stood next to one. It was tall on me, it
was like six and a half feet tall. Looked like
a giant asparagus just shooting out of the ground that,
you know, And this is like a month ago. That
thing is probably thirty feet tall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. That's what they do. And yeah,
they they have these, you know, I mean it imagine
the life cycle of a bamboo. At some point it
starts with a seed and grows and that shoot is
very tiny, but each successive shoot that comes off of
that is a little bit larger. And they keep doing
that until they get to whatever their mature diameters is
supposed to be for that species. And then and it
can take like five years from the growth is you know,
the germination of that seed for the plant to get
to that point, okay, and then it'll you know, and
then it keeps the Each rhizome can throw off usually
two or three new shoots per season, and then yeah,
they just keep growing and doing that year after year
after year without flowering. And then this is this is
another one of these mysteries. They count, they somehow count,
and so when that cycle is reached for that species,
each species can have its own flowering cycle. They basically
all no, it's time and they convert to a reproductive
merrist them and they start making the flowers and they
basically have sex once and they die. That's what monocarpy means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so their monocarpic like a go, I want to
get to the flowering. The flowering uh part of this
whole conversation, which I mean that alone is weird as hell.
But these so I was I was going to say,
because obviously, you know, monocts don't produce uh, secondary growth,
They just grow up and down, not out. But these
these bamboos, in the case of Guadua this you know,
Amazonia one can get fucking ten inches. Yeah, I mean
ten inch a ten inch wide shoot ninety feet tall.
But I was gonna, I was gonna wonder, like when
the seed germinates, how does it get that big? So
basically it's the first you know, individual that comes up,
the first stem that comes up is just what you
would expect to get from a relatively small seed compared
to the mother plant. And then it just keeps sending
out rhizominously new shoots that subsequently get bigger, until you've
got this massive you know, what's the diameter of a
sewer pipe almost shoot? And so how big can these
colonies get? Like, what's the biggest one you've seen?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, there's sometimes it's hard to know, you know,
what a plant is inside of a colony because they
can be so intermixed. Guattawa, there's a couple of different
species involved. But the ones in the Amazon, you know,
they've done some studies where there's you know, I think
it's one hundred and sixty thousand square kilometers or something
that's covered by these groves of these huge bamboos, and
you know, they've done lands at images to kind of
calculate how much there is, and it's just insane how
much territory they cover.
Speaker 1: I mean, but that's not one individual plant, is that?
Speaker 2: No, No it's not. And that's but how many plants? Yeah,
that's really hard. Sometimes if it's a strict clumper, you
can go in a particular place and you can kind
of get an idea. You know, you can assume that
each clump is one individual. And even that may not
be absolutely true. If you had two seedlings germinate close
to each other, you know, maybe they're intermixed in a
single clump. Yeah, but the most part that's you know,
you got to start somewhere.
Speaker 1: But these get fucking big. I mean, this is this
is like rivaling a quaking aspen grove. I mean this
is like yeah, this I tell you man, this when
I saw this species, the Guadua and Gusta Folia, that
really I was like, Okay, this is pretty this is insane.
This is wild. I mean, And can you imagine what
those root systems look like underground? Like if you had
like X ray vision and you could just look underground
at the massive fibrous roots of like a like one
hundred and sixty thousand square kilometer, Yeah, it's it's nuts.
They The thing that's I noticed too, like these they've
got these hairs on them when they're when they're popping it.
Like that's like that six and a half foot tall
shoot that I saw. You top, you touch that sheath
because they've got these you know, leaflike or these sheath
like leaves that come up from the nodes and can
be like eighteen inches toll in some cases in prot
the new shoot, and they've got these like rusty hairs
on them and almost feel like a cat tongue or
like shark skin or something. What are what are those?
Speaker 2: And they stick in your skin? Some of those are
they're they're sharp, they're nasty, they're irritating, and so we
you know, if you're if you're actually collecting one of these,
are studying it, you've got to wear ways were long
sleeves and you know those the long gloves, gauntlet gloves,
and I've gotten them, you know I've had after collecting
his guadala, I usually have to take a my Swiss
army knife and just kind of gently scrape along my
arms because as many of those hairs out as possible.
Speaker 1: So these there's other like rivaling, like like Opunthius, like
they're rivaling prickly pairs like in there glockets the what
do you think was eating these things? Because those those
lateral branches they get have those mean ass spines. And
I remember I was asking my friend Alex, who's a herpetologist,
when I was done and one I was like, you guys,
get any bamboos is before I saw Guadua, and he's like,
just those huge ones with the spines. And I was like, chisca.
I thought it was just SKay. I didn't know there
was this much diversity in BAMBOOSORTI and I was like,
just SKay, it doesn't have spines. But then when I
saw and he was complaining about it, was like, yeah,
we get stuck by him all the time. And then
when I saw him, I realized, God, these are like
really mean spines. This is this implies something in this
thing's evolutionary past was chewing on it. I mean, probably
a multitude of things, but I mean I imagine, you know,
giant sloths too, were at some point a big pain
in the ass for this lineage for this genus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that could have been part of what
was going on, because yeah, and you know whether that
actually how much that deters you know, that kind of herbivy.
But yeah, if you have a fairly big animal like that,
maybe that's you know, but we also there's some ideas
that you know, some of these guadawa's especially there's some
in the in the Amazon, for so we kind of
divide them into some different groups. There's sort of the
big tall erect ones and then Gustafolio is definitely in
that group. There's some smaller, kind of more arched ones
that actually grow out in the savannahs that are not
you know, they've adapted to a more highlight environment and
low tree you know, they're they're out there. And then
there's some that we call tree killers because they actually
grow up and lean on the trees and they'll shade
them and essentially kill them. And the thorns could actually
help them, you know, in that sense hooking their clingers,
they're hooks. So that's another possible advantage than having thorns
could give a plant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so there might have been too, you know,
adaptive benefits selecting for thorns, you know, in the environment.
Speaker 2: So also one of the things think of the way
those branches. You probably saw this for the branches, especially
on the lower notes, they're kind of sticking out kind
of straight, and they end up kind of entwining with
each other, and so there's there may be kind of
a support function that helps somehow, you know, if there's wind,
you know, we've speculated that that could also be another
advantage to.
Speaker 1: Having supporting the main plant, or just holding the branches
up so they can collect more light or.
Speaker 2: What sort of like each other. You know, they're they're
sort of intertwined with each other, and so it kind
of keeps the whole colony from just getting blown over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, that makes sense. God, there's Yeah, they're sore.
But either way, there's a lot going on here. It
sounds like and it's not just as simple as you
know what. That makes me wonder too, what what have
you seen or you know, encountered feeding on these things?
I mean not just I mean both like macro erbivores
and micro orbivores, insects, etc. We're just talking about guadaway here.
I'm not even getting into chiscaia yet, but I mean,
are there like wooly monkeys hitting these things slows insects?
Are there specifist insects that use them as host plants or.
Speaker 2: What absolutely especially Guado is like an amazing example of this.
So there are associated vertebrates, invertebrates, there are some that
are thought to have actually evolved to be associated with
the bamboos, and so you get there's a number of
I think where to start because there is so much
going on here, so sort of think about how these
develop when a new shoot comes up. It's not uncommon
for if numoned wasps to overposit. You know, they'll punch
on through because Guadawa is hollow. Almost all the species
are hollow, and they'll overposit. And in these Amazonian ones,
they also generally have water, a little bit of water.
They're in the internodes, and so you'll get things like
these losts. You'll get various kinds of different dipternes, you know,
like mosquito type. Yeah, you know, relatives and things. So
what can happen is the ichnomnon can actually start the
process of making this little opening.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait really quick, I want to mention how you
spell this, because these fucking wasps look so cool.
Speaker 3: Ic h amazing and eu M O.
Speaker 1: N I D they look insane. God, they're so cool.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I mean that's why when you think about
what it's going to take to punch through even on
a new shoot of a guada, they can do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this as hard as how it literally
feels like PVC pipe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can do it. So they will overpose it.
The shoot grows, you know, and the plant starts to
branch out and everything, and then woodpeckers will come along
and they can tell there's actually a specific pattern. I've
seen this numerous times now on these hollow bamboos. It's
like these little square or rectangular holes all in a row,
and what they're doing is they're pecking into that internode
to get whatever is living inside. So they're going to
eat those insects. But once the hole is there and
there's water, then things like the dipterrins, the mosquitoes come in.
They can lay their eggs in there. You know, over time,
those holes can get enlarge. There's actually so you get
this whole little ecosystem inside each internode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a giant uh. It's like those bee
houses people put in their gardens, but it's got a
higher diversity of insects. And I can imagine I mean
these especially when you've got thousands of these giant stems.
This is kind of unrelated to bamboos, But have you
noticed I was. I was kind of astounded when I
was in the Amazon how few mosquitoes there were. I
thought it would be hell, but there weren't. I mean,
I got bit a couple of times, but there weren't
that many. And then I realized that, you know, I
listened at night to all the frogs and realized, oh,
there's probably a number of things frogs included eating these things,
and that's why there's not many mosquitoes. Has it been
your experience or have you been eaten alive up there?
Speaker 2: So most of the time I'm not mostly working in
the Amazon because Ciskeia is actually up in the mountains, right,
So I tend to do most of my field's work
up in the mountains. And I'm guessing that, you know,
if you're actually out in the Amazon, Yeah, I mean,
the times I've been to the Amazon on it hasn't
been bad. But there's so much human influence too, because
and then humans get in there and start affecting the
quality of the ecosystem, then all those things that eat
the insects tend to start disappearing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Mosquitoes tend to be Mosquitoes tend to be
worse around developed areas, especially the invasive species of mosquitos.
You know, they're like, they're like coyotes. They they benefit
They're like coyotes and crows and pigeons, they benefit off
human right presence. But anyway, okay, well sorry for that.
I just I just was wondering. Yeah, I forgot you
just scay is not really in the Amazon. But okay, anyway, okay,
so going back to this, is there what other cool
ecologies are there with guadawa that you've noticed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so this was kind of like apartment living
for all these critters. And then you get frogs in there,
you get you know, but those leaf shes, those those
on the new shoots, you know that are on the
brand and so on. That's a wonderful shelter for lots
of invertebrates. So you get them. Then you get fuliage
gleaning birds that come in. There are snakes. There are
ants because there's ants that live in these innernodes. Too.
Done my share of ant dancing. Cut that thing open
and you don't realize it, and it's like, oh my God,
these things pour out.
Speaker 3: Oh god, it.
Speaker 2: Can be pretty entertaining to try to get away from them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ants live in a lot of the hollow stems.
Oh god, there was another genus. I forgot this. I've
been I've been editing a book and you know, so word,
I've had so many words going through my head the
last few weeks. I've forgotten a lot of genes. But
there's a very common genus of Amazonian tree and polygonacy
that's got you know. It's one of like thousands of
plants that have mutualist relationships with ants that live inside
of it. They live in the hollow stems. But but yeah,
so the ants will live inside the stems of guad what.
Speaker 2: They can do that or they'll just you know, build
their nests around it. Either way. There's this I've never
actually seen one. I've I've always wanted to. But these
big rats they're beautiful. Actually, I've seen pictures of them.
I think there's three species. It's like this Amazonian rat
and they're native. They they will go up and they
basically nest in the guadaluas. They'll chew off the top
of the of the growing point and that causes the
plant to send out a bunch of branches at that point,
you know, because it's they kill the april goal growth
and so they make their nests up there, and so
they will actually you know, live in these bamboo growths
and they're not really eating the bamboo, they're eating other stuff.
But it's a big alter, you know. So in addition
to food, there's the shelter aspect for a lot of
these critters that are associated with the bamboo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Amazon bamboo rat that to Lomas back to Linus
is a species of spiny rat from the Amazon basis.
You know, I imagine if you're a rat and you
get like a plat, you know, you kill the the
appical marestem of one of these giant bamboos, and then
it of course shoots out all these h you're saying,
it shoots out lateral branches. Then from that node. Oh yeah,
that's like a platform you got like an osprey. Now
you know, you really got it made. If that's you know,
if that's a platform way up there, you just got
to worry about hawks and stuff.
Speaker 2: But yeah, jaguar is not going to get you up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's so these are like major components of
the ecosystem as you would expect them to be since
they're so dominant. I mean, these these massive bamboo colonies. God,
I could spend I could spend months down there just
observing and making notes and learning about stuff. There's so
much going on, it's insane.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's butterflies that have been talking to a guy
in Florida at the University of Florida, and he studied
the little blue butterflies and there seem to be you know,
like endemic species forms associated with these these guadawa colonies
and things, and so yeah, there's just a ton of
biodiversity that is associated with all this bamboo.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean they're they're huge. Are they like
a They're not a pioneer species, right, they need you'd
like primary forest cover.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Actually, I think most so, most bamboos, they're not
necessarily colonizers in that sense, but many of them are
able to persist or even spread in secondary settings. So
there's undoubtedly some of them that are really dependent on
a primary forest kind of kind of habitat. So it
varies from species species how they're going to behave in
that situation.
Speaker 1: Does guadawa do you get that in the in the
lower Amazon, like the actual flood plain area. To I
imagine it's is it the same species or is it
something different?
Speaker 2: There's different species. There's some species that are actually very
closely associated with the river systems, and they can even
withstand flooding for part of the year. I mean, I've
seen them growing in water, which is not what I
normally expect for a bamboo. And then there's other ones
that that would not be able to tolerate that that
they're kind of more in the the forest itself. Yeah,
and then you get these ones that are in the savannahs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, God, that would be cool to see. I
love savannahs, man. I mean I like forests, you don't
get me wrong, but I just I tend to like
the you know, more open, sunny and exposed areas. Okay,
and lastly, we'll move on from this genus and get
to the today's hot topic. But the guaduas. Do you
know any is there any place in North America that's
growing them like any botanic gardens. I mean, you'd have
to have a glasshouse the size of a fucking tense
story building the house one, But do you know of
any Have you seen any in North America like plant
it out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the main place is Florida, not surprisingly. Yeah, yeah,
there's a I'll give a shout out to Tropical Bamboo.
It's the nursery in West Palm Beach and they they
have an amazing setup where they grow lots of the
asiatic ones too, but they have some guadawas that are
you can just sort of walk down the roads and
you get that sense of it's like almost like being
in a cathedral, you know, where you've got these big
arching things overhead. And so they have three or four
five species now I don't remember the exact number, but
they are really that's the main place, you know, Southern Florida.
Speaker 1: So when in Miami, hit up what is it West
Tropical Bamboo.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's called Tropical Bamboo Tropical Business. Yeah, okay,
and it's West Palm Beach.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, wonderful locks hatchies. But yeah, so.
Speaker 1: You're going down to Florida, you're going down to Miami
and it's definitely put that on the map along with
the botanic or not. What is that fair Child that've
been there before?
Speaker 2: Fairchild is the oh the one in Coral Gables and
that's beautiful. Yeah, and they have a lot of bamboo.
Speaker 1: I saw hippo maine down there. That the toxic u
for a tree. I'm really getting like pre dementia here.
I'm having trouble remembering. Remember, someone's have to go to
Someone's gonna have to take care of me when I'm
ten years you know, ten years from now. I just
got too many names in my in my head. I
can't believe I forgot the name of that polygonaceous Amazonian tree.
It's such a critical component of the egoism's there anyway. Okay,
So moving on from Guadawa to Chisca, which is your
area of expertise, Let's talk about this genus. Let's talk
about distribution, how many species in it, different clades, you know,
subclades in the genus, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, as I mentioned before, this is my favorite
thing because I've been working on this group for a
long time and right now we have a little over
two hundred named species. So it's the biggest genus of
the most specious genus at bamboos worldwide.
Speaker 1: Actually year, holy shit.
Speaker 2: And we're not done. I'm working on half a dozen
new species right now. But in the last couple of
years I've had a project. This is my grad student
has also been working on this on the Guadala side
of things in Bolivia, and so I finally made it
to Bolivia last year, and I've been corresponding with a
couple of the botanists down there, and I met with
one of them. We were in La Pause for about
a week and I'm just going through their herbarium and
looking at all the plants. This is not even getting
out in the field, just seeing what people have already documented.
And so I was able to confirm there's like seventeen
or eighteen named species there of just Ciscaia, but there's
another sixty five at least that do not have names.
They're different species. These are not you know, this is
like we just did a quick pass through and it's like, no,
these guys are different.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, undescribed just just they were. They were
just lumped in with other stuff, or they weren't named.
Someone just was like, it's a just skea. We don't
know what species. We'll get through it later.
Speaker 2: And it was just kea sp. Just kea sp. On
the labels and so I started, you know, doing some numbers,
calculating in my head because Bolivia, that's Bolivia, and then
there's Peru, which is also it's actually larger land masks wise,
and you've got that huge north south axis along the andies.
And so I'm estimating that there's probably and knowing what
I know about some of the new species that still
remained to be described in Brazil or even there's still
a couple in Mexico. There's one in Costa Rica for
crying outlets. We've done so much work there and there's
still a new one. So I'm estimating there's an one
hundred and forty or so new species. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's wild. It's so crazy that you can go
into an erbarium and find I mean, there's just there's
so much, there's so much left to be studied, like everywhere,
you know, everywhere, I mean just from herbarium records alone,
not even going out in the field. How are you?
I mean, this is and I'll be honest, I told
you this before. I kind of avoid I was grassblind.
I'm guilty of it for a long time up until
a few years. I still am because the the you know,
they're wind pollinated. The flowers aren't the easiest to study
because they're small and they're not very showy, and that,
you know, But then you get into like the big
blue stems and some of the cool prairie grasses or
the desert ones, and there's some really beautiful things out there,
and also a lot of there's a lot of When
I was in California, there's god, there's so many invasive
European grasses that you're just kind of like, eh, but
but you know, how would you because generally with most plants,
you need a reproductive structure to figure out how they
differ from each other. Looking at the ciskeias, what traits,
what character traits are you looking at to figure out, Okay,
this is different from this, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, and it's actually it's kind of
like working a jigsaw puzzle because people will collect these plants,
and a lot of people they know about this weird
flowering behavior. So if they see a bamboo in flower,
build grab a piece of it. But what they don't
do is then make a complete vegetative collection. And so
that's been a lot of my work is going back
to these places where somebody collected a flowering thing, and
then I can collect the vegetative samples, and then we
have to sort of put them together to get the
complete picture. And it turns out in Tiskeia, Ciskeia is
unique in one respect among all plants, not just not
just grasses or bamboos. They have one big bud at
the node, which is like most of the other bamboos,
they do the same thing and they'll just have one.
But Ciskeia, in addition to the one big bud, has
two to many, sometimes a couple one hundred of little buds,
and those can be associated closely with the big bud,
or they can go all the way around the stem.
So these are truly independent little buds. And the little
buds give rise to the branches that have the leaves
on them, and so it's kind of like Shiskeia is
doing a you know, separation of functions because the big
bud recreates the main stem, so they can rebranch and
lean on trees or do whatever they're going to do,
and then the little buds make the leafy branches. But
it turns out that that pattern of how many little
branches and where they're located and is almost species specific.
And so if I have that, and then I have
the leaves, and I have the flowers plus the bracts,
the special things that are on the new shoots. We
call them calm leaves, but.
Speaker 1: They look like sheaths or what are they?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they look like sheaths, but they're actually a modified leaf.
So they usually have a little blade on them. It's
a big sheath and a little blade, but you don't
always see it, you know, it can fall off whatever.
But that combination, so I don't I have described new
species without having the flowering structures.
Speaker 1: Okay. And these buds these there are buds at the
note and you said there's like a big bud for
that to recreate the appical maristime if the top is
damaged and they got lateral buds too or what is it?
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, they have these little tiny they're small, much
smaller than the big bud most of the time, and
I call them subsidiary buds, but they they produce the
leafy branches.
Speaker 1: So and these are diagnostic. These are like absolutely megod
diagnostic for anyone listening. So like Chiskea, you'll get like
a main stem. It looks like a bamboo. And then
at the nodes you get you get these much smaller
stems that shoot out laterally, just like guadua, you know,
but they're not spiny. Uh and it's I've noted man.
I saw one in an Alersee forest, a temper rainforest
in southern Chile. I don't know what species of chiscay
it was. That was definitely outside of my realm. But
by the way, after this, if you could go to
my eye now, I'll send you a link to my
I Nashros if you can, I identify best you can
any of the chiskeuas. But I saw one and it
had this They looked almost like hairs, and I realized
they were lateral buds that were just really thin and
just emerging from one of the nodes like not hairs,
but it looked like a these weird spiny, almost hair
like protrusions. And they were just lateral lateral shoots coming
out of one of the They look so peculiar and cool.
Speaker 2: They look weird and they are cool, so that it
could be either that they were these lateral branches or
sometimes they will also make there'll be little root buds
in there, oh wow. And so sometimes they, especially if
they're growing under fairly humid conditions, they will actually make
these little roots coming out of the stems. And sometimes
those can be really sharp and pointy and be like
root spines. But most of the time they're just kind
of hanging out there. I mean, if the calm gets
the stem gets kind of knocked over. I've seen this
happen that, you know, those like that, whatever node hits
the ground, the big bud can sort of start growing up.
It bends itself to go straight up, and the roots
will actually start growing and become like part of the
root system.
Speaker 1: So they can root themselves basically just like.
Speaker 2: A apparently they can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, these were green, so I think there were
probably shoots. But I mean, who know, can the roots
be photosynthetic too, or are they green when they first were?
Speaker 2: They can they can? Oh wow, that's what people don't
think of roots as being able to do that, but
they actually can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just like I mean, well some just like
some orchid roots, like you know, there's there's some there's
some orchids that I think don't even produce don't even
produce shoots. They just have photosynthetic roots like some of
these weird epiphetic I saw one in South Florida somewhere.
But anyway, okay, so this so just SKA occupies a
diversity of habitats, I mean temper rainforest up to very
high high dry what's like the most drought tolerant just
skea like from the most arid climate that you know of.
Speaker 2: So it's actually there's some species in Mexico that there's
one in particular I'm thinking of. They it's from kind
of western Mexico and it kind of goes all the
way down. It's also found in western northwestern Costa Rica
and those are in dry forests and they can withstand
a dry season. They may, you know, kind of curl
up and not look very happy, but but they are
very drought tolerant.
Speaker 1: I didn't know they came up to Mexico. That's crazy, man.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's the northernmost Tiescaia is in uh Durgo, I.
Speaker 1: Think, And these are what are they growing like pine
oak a gave forests or what.
Speaker 2: Some of them are in pine oak forests, some of
them are in these like dry forests on the western side.
They can be in like a lot of the diversity
is in Vera Cruz, and so you've got kind of
temperate or not temperate, but like semi deciduous tropical forests.
Speaker 1: Yeah, verya cruise obviously much more rainfall, you know, wetter climate,
but yeah, I can imagine they'd be there. I just man,
that's crazy, though, Western myst what elevation are the ones,
these western Mexican ones that.
Speaker 2: Those don't get too high. They're around fourteen hundred meters
two maybe up to two thousands somewhere. They're you know,
I mean the mountains there are just not that high. Yeah,
you know, certainly in central Mexico you've got some that
are quite a bit higher. And there are bamboos that
there are ciscaos that will go up to over three
thousand meters in those systems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: But the highest elevation ones that are in the Andes,
and they're over four thousand meters.
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on with these Mexican ones, so they're not
they don't go too low. They're not like lowland species,
like you're not going to find them growing with like
columnar cacti with you.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, generally not Cisco's are almost all growing
above one thousand meters in elevation. There's a few that
get down to you know, almost to sea level in
certain habitats, but the ass majority or are mid to
high elevation.
Speaker 1: Okay, but but the the most diversities in the Andes,
would you say.
Speaker 2: I would say between like the northern well, yeah, the
Andes because like I was just talking about with Peru
and Bolivia, I mean, it's insane the amount of species
there that we don't even have names for. So really
all along the Andes and then the Atlantic Forest of
Brazil has a lot of species.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, God, Insulburg, that was the name I was
thinking of. Sorry, you know, I'm probably on a spectrum,
that's how that's of my brain works. But uh, Insulburgh, Granite, Insulburg,
that those are Those are some precious forests. Man, Jesus,
they were there were they were burning last year, I guess,
and they're not accustomed to fire at all.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's it's kind of scary, but yeah, some
of those are absolutely beautiful places.
Speaker 1: Yeah. These but these just cases, I mean, God, the
thing that was so cool about them was that they're
just I mean, some of them have like really glaucous
blue leaves. You know ericaria forests, they're growing in a
lersae forests. I didn't. I had no idea. I've been
in the Fitzroyal Cooper soorties the Alerses for fifteen years.
I was growing a bunch for San Francisco Botanical Garden.
When I used to spend a lot of time there,
I had no idea they shared habitat with a bamboo.
I mean, these these things are fucking everywhere, man. So
what's what's the country with the most diversity in the
genus that you know of, like Bolivia or Brazil or what?
Speaker 2: Right now? If you look at just number described I
think Brazil would would get the NOD. But if you
look at if you count describe species plus the probable
number of undescribed ones, it's going to be Peru or Bolivia.
Speaker 1: And they come. Are there any in the upper Amazon
of Peru and Bolivia? Are they a little bit higher
than that?
Speaker 2: They're mostly higher than that. Yeah. Once you and when
you're in those systems, you've got to be up at least,
you know, like fifteen hundred meters in elevation before you'll
start seeing ciskeayas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, so these and in terms of ecology, what's
going on here? How many other organisms that do Chiskeaa
species associate with that you know of.
Speaker 2: So yeah, again it's we don't even have a really
good idea that Cisquio's in these forests. You know, as
soon as there's a tree fall or you know, somebody
cuts part of it down, if there's ciscaos there, they
tend to grow in and so there's a huge amount
of biomass uh and sometimes it's almost impenetrable because it
is these are smaller, they get entangled. They're just like,
you can't get through this. So there's birds, there's a
bunch of bamboo specialist birds that track chiscaa's that are
you know, that's their habitat. There's a ton of insects,
you know, different groups of insects, different groups of birds.
Then say for guadawa because obviously you're at higher elevations
and so on. But we don't even have a good accounting.
There's been very little work on the ecology of Ciscaia.
Speaker 1: Are they're not hollow inside like the guadawas are? Are they?
Speaker 2: No? These are solid?
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, when we were when we were going through
some of these habitats, I kept having nightmares of these things,
like poking me in the eye because you'll see dead
branches everywhere, like the colonies alive and thriving, but like
maybe the shoot died and you could see how they
must have made excellent arrows too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely you could use them for yeah, not
for flutes, but for a lot of other things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm really interested in this monocarpic thing and the
fact that I mean they it'll take thirty years for
some of them to flower. Can you explain that a
little bit more, because I mean it's it's a very
weird reproductive strategy. But I guess when you've got the
ability to produce clonal offsets and these massive colonies, it
doesn't matter. I mean, you can help ensure your survival
and you can wait longer before producing seeds. But what's
going on here? Some of them take thirty years to flower,
and what do the flowers look like? And I assume
they're just wind pollinated like most grasses, right, That's.
Speaker 2: What we think, Although we know that there are insects
that will that do visit bamboo flowers and also other
grass flowers, so they may be there may be some
insect assistance, you know, in scattering the pollen, but fundamentally
they seem to be wind pollinated. I think it's it's
kind of tied together because if you're going to grow
in a place like a forest and you're competing with trees,
it's going to take a lot of energy to do that,
and so you spend you know, there's there's a certain
amount of time that you're going to spend an energy
doing that competition and establishing yourself and growing, and then
you know, once that happens, once you start getting that
these longer time periods between flowering, it's really important that
everybody flower at the same time or else, you know,
one plant can flower, but that pollen may go to waste,
or you may only be you know, producing self fertilized seed,
which over the long run is not going to be
the best thing. So there's also going to be a
pressure to have a group flowering, you know, where everybody's
blooming at the same time. You can do the cross pollination,
but it may take so much energy to do that
conversion that that essentially exhausts the plant. And so they've
done on their pollination, they produce their seeds, and they
just die because there's so there's nothing left in there.
And so, you know, there's been some there's different ideas
out there about this. That's kind of my favorite is
that it's more related to the competition with trees and
the amount of energy that it takes, you know, to
both do that vegetative growth and then to switch over
to reproductive mode. But there's been some ideas like they're
avoiding predators, either predators of the shoots or predators of
the seed especially, But you know, at some point, if
you are doing this flowering like every ten years, that's
a pretty yeah. I mean, you're going to avoid most
of them, the melian predators, most mammals, most small mammals
have a shorter lifespan than that. So it doesn't make
sense to me necessarily that that's the driving there. You know,
the longest known cycle in these bamboos is one hundred
and twenty years.
Speaker 1: One hundred and twenty something will grow for one hundred
and twenty years before it flowers.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's the Japanese timber bamboo Jesus. There are records,
you know, it was cultivated by monks, in the monasteries there.
So there's written records of these cycles in every one
hundred and twenty years boom they had to. So the
you know, the thirty to forty year cycles in the
South American bamboos don't seem quite as daunting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or nothing compared to it. Yeah. Philostacky's bamboo soidis
is also known as Madaki, the giant timber bamboo. Okay,
so what the seeds, Well, I got a couple questions.
First off, the seeds of these things, the grains are
probably a huge food source, is I mean, that's just
sco When it does produce seed, I imagine it produces
a lot of them, and a lot of them get eaten.
Speaker 2: That's what we think. Yes, very likely. There are a
lot of birds that will track the bamboo flowering. The
small mammals so and the ones that don't germinate immediately,
they don't really have a long dormancy period. So if
the birds don't get them, and if they don't germinate,
they probably get eaten by fungi.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they don't last too long. Probably. No, there's
not like a seed bank of chisca seed in most
of the habitats no.
Speaker 2: And I think for most bamboos are this is another
This would be another great ecological study. I've seen at
least in a couple of places what I would characterize
as a seedling bank. So the seedlings germinate and they
can sit there in the understory for a while and
you know it's not light enough, they can they act
like the little herbaceous bamboos. They're just growing there. You know,
as soon as an opening occurs, treefall, whatever, boom, they
can start growing like they're you know, like they're supposed
to be to get to their mature size. So I
think there's actually a phenomenon there that just nobody has
really spent much time looking at. And that's the idea
of a seedling bank instead of a seed bank.
Speaker 1: Like a like coast redwoods, which yeah, could they can
tolerate shade and then they wait for an opening. You know,
they're growing kind of leg even then they wait for
an opening and then they can put on seven feet
a year. Yeah, that's a cool. That's a really cool theory.
So it's like germanatum now and they can just hang
in there, don't worry about it. And then if you know,
in a decade there's an opening, they'll take off exactly.
That's a really cool strategy. I'm confused about this, this monocarpeting.
Do again, I mean, like agaves do it. Part of
the reason a gave is so good for tequila is
because it's got this giant heart that's basically a storage
bank of sugar. And why do they do that so
that they can produce this massive, you know, mellow, dramatic
inflorescence that's in some cases thirty feet tall And there's
no way that that thing's not going to get pollinated.
It's so big and out there and so full of sugar.
But of course the catches. Now you've spent all your
sugar and you got to die. But that's why a
lot of agaves evolved, the ability to produce clonal offsets
from the base. Where with chisca, where is it? Where
is it storing all this energy? And what I mean,
why does it take so much energy? I mean, what
are the is it like a is the is it
the flowering just so massive and impressive that it's such
a large expenditure of energy or what? So? Where is
it storing it? And why is it require so much energy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we think that probably a lot of that storage
is happening in the rizone system. You know, the underground
parts in Chiskea specifically because it's solid. I think you've
got the stems there too. You know, most other bamboos
are not going to be solid, so going to be
more a rhydown things. But literally, when they're ready to flower,
every single growing point switches over into reproductive mode. It's
not like they just make a couple of shoots. You know,
like every single branch sends out an inflorescence and so
that does take a lot of energy to you know,
have this big flush of growth to make this new
all these new structures. Yeah, everything, everything, they're reproductive.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Okay. So I can imagine like one
main shoot can have thousands of wind pollinated flowers on.
Speaker 3: Them, yep.
Speaker 2: And the flowers are they're small, they look like you know,
grass flowers, and most of them produce fruits or grains
that look a lot like you know, a grain of
rice or something like that. There are some bamboos that
make fleshy fruits, which are fascinating. There's it's not a
huge number of them, but that that phenomenon seems to
be kind of more associated with the like more rainforesty,
you know, lower elevation, more humid forests, and we assume
that that's you know, for animal dispersal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy. What is is it like a berry?
Does it or does it just have an arrow attached
to it or what.
Speaker 2: It's actually the there's so there's some Asiatic bamboos that
do this and some New World ones and they can
there's a couple of different ways they can do it,
but essentially, yeah, the the outer part of the the
the paracrp, you know, the ovary wall would have been
the ovary wall becomes fleshy.
Speaker 1: God, that's crazy. That's wild man. To think of a
grass doing that.
Speaker 2: It's really bizarre. There's some like the there's the one
uh in the from the Atlantic forests of Brazil. They
look like olives, look like little green olives hanging on
you know about the size of olives.
Speaker 1: Oh god, that's crazy. What's it? You need a genius
name really quick? Sorry, I have to get any rupty.
What's the genus thing? So I could look this up?
You know?
Speaker 2: Oh, so that one is al vimea A l v
I M I A.
Speaker 1: M is in mary el Vimia. Okay, yes, okay, keep going.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Oh and ol Meca O l m e c A.
There's a couple of species of ol Mecca in Mexico
that make even bigger, kind of more roundy, rounded, kind
of fleshy fruits. There's even a guadawa that does it.
Speaker 1: God, that's wild, man. This is like the Ian Malcolm moment.
You know, like life uh finds a way. It's you
got a niche to exploit. You can get some bird
or something that help you disperse your seeds. It's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: So mm hmm. I like to think of monkeys dispersing
these guys, but I don't know if that's true, but
it seems like it would be big enough to get
their attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's man. I saw one of those common wooly monkeys,
which are not so common anymore. I guess there's only
like ten thousand left in the world. But uh, we
went to this, We went to like this indigenous village
and there was like this couple in there that had
found one that, like its parents had been killed, and
they named it Pepe and it was super friendly and
you know, fucking adorable and super mischievous and like hanging
out with us. It was pretty funny. It was cool
to see it, but I imagine, yeah, that was that
was going on too.
Speaker 2: Yep, So exactly life finds the way. These guys are
just amazing.
Speaker 1: So the uh so when they so whence scay of flowers?
It's like a huge event. And I guess you can
gauge how big an individual plant, like an individual clonal
colony might be, you know, one that's all the same
phenotype what. But the thing that's more mysterious and confusing
is how and yeah, if you you know, if that,
if that colony flowers and there's not another in another
phenotype or another you know, individual flowering, how does it?
I mean, then it's just kind of not screwed, but
there's a reduction in genetic diversity. It's just self plony.
How do they and that's not ideal? How do they?
How do they trigger each other to flower? Like? How
is there some sort of communication? Shouldn't use that word,
but basically what it is where they're able to flow?
Or is there not? Is it just chance?
Speaker 2: So it I mean it is genetically controlled in some way.
We don't know how because there's been enough you know,
I've seen this myself where we've dug up plants. I'm
thinking of like one in particular in Mexico. It was
in on the volcan Perote in Sara Cruz, and I
knew it was a new species. It was a bizarro thing,
but it hadn't flowered. But we went back every chance
I got, and we finally the deforestation there was, you know,
clearly going to threaten it. So we dug up plants
and moved them to a local botanical garden outside of Halapa,
and in January of ninety three, I got a report
from somebody down there. It's like it's finally blooming. And
the plants that were in the garden loomed at exactly
the same time as the ones on the mountain. They
were obviously counting, you know, exactly the same way. C
There's other reports, like there was a guy back in
the I think, and he would have gone there exactly,
but he went to Jamaica and he dug up there's
a bamboo a ciscaia, there's basically one species of ciscaya
that's found in the Caribbean, and he dug it up
and took it back to q Gardens in England and
it lived there. And when the mother population flowered and
died in Jamaica, the one in England flowered and died
as well, exactly the same.
Speaker 1: So they're they're counting. It's I mean, there's obviously they're
not communicating across the Atlantic Ocean. There's not like hormones
being exuded from the roots that are. They're just counting.
Speaker 3: That's yep.
Speaker 2: And I think it must be associated with the marristems
at the growing point in some way. You know, it's
not unusual when you see, like if you're in a
preserve and you've got all these bamboos and somebody's cutting
a pass and so they're they're using their machete and
they're cutting them ones right next to the pathway that
the others inside the forest or in other spots are
not being cut. Those ones will often flower out of
synchrony with the rest of the population. So I think
that you know, there's like more cell divisions happening that
encourages them that they think they've they're older than they
actually are, so.
Speaker 1: Cutting them changes that it kind of messes up their
counting rhythm.
Speaker 2: It may it seems, but you know, we've never done
an experiment actually do to really see if that's you know, so, yeah,
we don't know. This is one of those things we
really do not know how they count that.
Speaker 1: I mean that that seems like, you know, instead of
going to Mars, we should find stuff like this up.
You know, this is like, I mean, I'm done for
going to Mars. I don't want to live there. But
you catch my point. I'm just saying there's so much
I mean, I am smacking the face of every day,
like how there's so much about the life on this planet,
the other life forms, the living machine that we don't
know yet. But I mean that that alone is pretty
It's very mysterious. It's very cool. How does a plant,
if it is counting, how does it do that? And
I assume, I mean, that's a I could see how
that theory is workable too, because if the seeds don't
last long and they you get these masked events where
there's tons, there's tons, you know, hundreds of thousands of
seeds being produced, and you know they're all germinating at
the same they don't last that long. They're probably all
you know, one stand that population will all be the
same age, you know, they're all they all germinated the
same year or the year after, and so I can
see how that would work. Then then it's just a
matter of counting. But you know, God, like, if it
is counting, like, how how does it know when to
stop counting? And how do the other individuals next to
it know when to stop counting?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it's it's encoded in thes somehow, and that's
you know. I like to say that cicadas are the
bamboos of the insect world. Yeah, but they must be
doing something very similar because how do they know?
Speaker 1: Does every get well with cicadas? I mean that's the
peculiar thing too. Like seventeen years, thirteen years, like those
are solid numbers. I wonder if it's like that with
a lot of the bamboos, some of them.
Speaker 2: You know, we actually don't know the flowering cycles for
most of the species, which is another ridiculous thing, but
it's it can be very hard to It's not like
you can get a grant, you know, to like go
back every thirty years and.
Speaker 1: Check something, especially not now in the United States. Right
now we're trying to make our population dumber, so they're
better consumers and we can give tax cuts to billionaires.
Yeah that's wow.
Speaker 3: Sorry, go on, yeah, no, I hear you.
Speaker 2: So, you know, we we often rely on these herbarium
collections that go back, you know, several hundred years in
some cases, and so we can try to estimate approximately,
you know, when was this thing flowering, and you know,
how often and so on, and so we can get
a rough idea. But unless you can pinpoint. You know,
most of these species do have multiple populations, and you
can certainly get a little bit of drift between populations.
If they're geographically separated enough. They may may not cross
pollinate when they do flower. But you know, we have
some records of basically seedling to seedling, so we know
for some species with high confidence that you know, it's
about this amount of time. But because they take you know,
the flowering process in any of these standards can take
over a year, sometimes two years, from the time they
first start to produce the flowers and then they're out
there for a while and then pollination and so on,
and by the time they produce the seeds, it can
be over a year. Yes, and so there's a you know,
a little wiggle room there as far as calculating the dates.
Speaker 1: Do all bamboos do this? I mean, do all bamboo
species generally take a while to flower? Like they're all
relatively I want to say long live, but I mean
some can be one hundred and twenty years old obviously,
but some, I mean, do all of them do this?
Like they take like between ten to one hundred and
twenty years, depending on the species, to flower.
Speaker 2: Most of the woody bamboos, yes, the herbaceous bamboos actually
mostly just bloom every year, so they don't have There's
a few species of herbaceous bamboos that seem to do
the same gregarious monocarpy. And there are some woody bamboos
that will bloom fairly frequently and not die.
Speaker 1: You said gregarious monocarpy, Like what what do you What
do you mean? Gregarious means like like happy and drunk
or what is it?
Speaker 2: The means no group, it's like the whole group, all
of them at the same time. Yeah, that's the term
in the literature, is gregarious monocarpy. Monocarpy is one thing
because that means an individual plant will die after flowering,
like those agaves yeah, but they don't all all the
members of one species all flower and die at the
same time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the that's the weird.
Speaker 1: That's the weird, Like where the gave is always assumed
like okay, it's only you know, for if a if
a gave that doesn't produce offsets, that just relies on pollination,
that's obviously a setback because you've got to be in
I just assume you've got to be in a large population,
like a whole hillside that's covered in numerous individuals, and
not all of them are going to be flowering at
the same time, but you know, ten or twenty mite
and that's going to be good enough. But with this,
I mean, yeah, I realized if smaller populations, that's going
to be impacted. If it's not producing clonal offsets and
it's just it's it's all a gave or monocarpic, then yeah,
you're sol If the population is small, there's a reduction diversity.
But I guess with these chesscas it's a it's a
little bit different. There's something else going on.
Speaker 2: There's something else going on, but you know, most of
these populations you're going to have multiple individuals so at
a minimum, most of the time you're going to get
the cross pollination at least between individuals of the same population.
But the other amazing thing is we know almost nothing
actually about their reproductive biology. Are they self compatible? So
can one can the pollen from one individual actually fertilize
the stigmas of the same ends? We have no clue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was the thing though really quick. Sorry with
the like the mono back to the monocarpy thing, I mean,
will the whole population of chiskeaya's often be all flowering
at the same time, or will only like a quarter
of it be, because that's what I imagine it is
with the gave's, like you know, with these no offsetting,
but monocarpet gaves, I always imagine that's not the whole
population that flowers, because you know, they're not communicating somehow,
there's not like hormones or whatever. But with these chiskeaya's,
I mean, is it generally like the whole population since
it's probably an even aged stand, or is more likely
to be they in their counting they they will flower
at the same time or is it just a few
will be or what? What have you noticed? What? What
do you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there is some variation among species, but most
of the time, yes, if it's time for it to flower,
all of them in that population will flower at the
same time.
Speaker 1: God, that's so it's not hit or missed. It's like
everybody's doing it.
Speaker 2: Everybody's doing it. That's the gregarious part.
Speaker 3: God, that's absolutely.
Speaker 1: So fucking just based on counting too.
Speaker 3: That's so it seems weird.
Speaker 2: They know, they know, they just they have this mechanism
that tells them. But we also know that you know,
for example, in Ciskeia, the higher in elevation that you go,
the less the cycle seem to be shorter for one thing,
and then also they tend to lose their gregarious part
of it. So you can find, you know, some percentage
of the population, maybe only five or ten percent, isn't
flower at any given time, and so individual clumps might
flower and die, but everybody's you know, on a different cycle.
The best example of that, I don't know if you've
been to Costa Rica, but if you go up on
the Inner American high Way up to ser A Mountain
of Death up there, the highway goes right right up there.
You know, they got antenna towers now and everything. But
there's a dominant Ciskeia in the habitat there. It's called
soup parmo, and that behaves exactly that way. It's always
got some plants and.
Speaker 1: Flower What is that? Is that just the cold temperature?
Do you think that probably impacts that causes that or
what do you think it could be?
Speaker 3: It could be.
Speaker 2: It's I I don't know, there's so many I can
think of a lot of different you know, because the
you have a sort of a day night cold warm cycle.
The higher you go, it gets really yeah, you know, summer,
every day, winter, everything, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the paramo, Yeah, totally, yeah.
Speaker 2: So it could be something to do with that. It
could be. I think about the sun. You've got much
stronger insulation up there than you do at lower elevations.
I don't know, but.
Speaker 1: There's still I mean, they're still obviously monocarpic, right like
ol traske monocarpic.
Speaker 2: As best we can tell.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, okay, yeah, cool. I've never seen them flowering,
so maybe i'll get a maybe I'll get a chance
to actually see one. In flower God, there was a
species I don't know which one it was. We were
at like six or seven thousand feet in southern Chile
and these like relatively barren volcanic slopes, not barren, but
they you know, it was it was stressful up there.
You could tell we were near these hot springs, well
that's hot springs. They were like geothermal areas that smelled
like hydrogen sulfide. But I just remember looking across on
this other hill, like three hundred yards away, and there
were these massive colonies of chiskeaa in the center, and
then with a ring of the one of the ramnaci
members like this shrub like subshrub, ramnacious thing. I don't
know if it's a colletia or what surrounding them, but
these ciscaa's just had multiple stems. It was really beautiful.
I mean, it looked like a garden setting, you know,
like someone had intentionally planted it. But that was remarkable.
I forgot that, Yeah, I forgot how out of place
that seems to see in that kind of habit that
it was like this subalpine you know, southern Chile. It's
just fucking nuts. And then they're growing up in the
Paramo and in you know, arid montane areas of Bolivia.
To do you get many from like the arid montane
regions of Bolivia.
Speaker 2: Not so much the arid parts because there is you know,
even though there are some very drought tolerant ciscaos, there
is a limit, you know, and they just don't typically
get into the really driest part.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, everybody's got theirs with the arid parts of
the andes. I think that really tests drought tolerance. Man. Yeah,
for sure. What are most are any polyploid? Are most
of them polyploid? Are they diploid? What's going on there?
Speaker 2: Oh, they're all They're all polyplids. All the neotropical woody
bamboos are tetraploids.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they got four sets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they got four sets.
Speaker 3: Damn. Okay, So that's their basis.
Speaker 2: Bamboos are diploids.
Speaker 1: Okay. So and that kind of is key to them there.
That's kind of like a clue to them being these
being two separate clades.
Speaker 2: It is definitely one of the one of the clues.
Speaker 1: But you said that some of you said some of
the herbaceous ones have hybridized with the woody ones or
am I did I mishear you?
Speaker 2: So what we think is that going back to that,
you know, thirty million years ago or thirty five million
years ago, that there was a herbaceous ancestor and a
woody ancestor, and so that this one lineage had probably
already started down the pathway to becoming you know, woody.
But the genomics show pretty clearly that they crossed with
each other. So there was a herbaceous ancestor crossed with
one of the woody ones, and that gave us you know,
the like the paleotropical the old World tropical bamboos. It
looks like there were at least two woody ancestors that
crossed with each other and that gave rise to the
temperate woody bamboos. And I actually think that there was
another cross between one of those species and the herbaceous ones,
and that gave rise to the neotropical bamboos. But the
neotropical and paleotropical woody bamboos, they for the most part,
it's really hard, you know, like if I just showed
you a couple of them randomly chosen, you would have
a very hard time figuring out how those two clades
could be different. So it seems to be largely kind
of a genomics thing, because that paleotropical woody bamboo group
is actually hexaploid or higher. So they had even another thing,
some other chromosome doubling thing happened in their ancestry. So
they're hexaploids. The neotropicals are tetraploids, and so that at
that genetic level they are really different.
Speaker 1: And so we know they had different I mean the
tetraploids and diploids and hexaploids. I mean, these would all
theoretically they shouldn't be able to hybridize though.
Speaker 2: Right once they get to that point, it would be
a lot more difficult. And of course we figure that
all the original ancestors, which probably were all diploid, no
longer exists, you know, they they've probably gone extinct, certainly
at least for the woody bamboos. There are no diploid
woody bamboos, so at least in that lineage they went away.
And but they still can do it. You know, if
another if you had a tetraploid and a tetraploid, they
can hybridize.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 2: I mean, Cisco's do it all the time.
Speaker 1: God, I was gonna say, I've.
Speaker 2: Documented some of these and if they're if they're in
bloom at the same time, they can cross than for
the temperate bambooths they can. There seem to be no
genetic barriers once you get past the flowering cycle.
Speaker 1: Well, you said you've caught insects on these things. Sometimes
what are they probably doing just harvesting pollen or what
the flowers?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, this is something we've been trying to Like
the forests, like the olyary, these herbaceous stamboos have very
the pollen has a lot of texture on the surface,
just as you would expect if maybe they were going
to be insect pollinated, they could be a little a
little spiky things. Generally, grass pollen is fairly smooth. So there,
you know, we're not sure there's but there's never been
a demonstrated strictly insect pollination event that people have done
some of these experiments. So what we think is that, yeah,
they're probably over there, these insects are crawling around and
they're probably harvesting the pollen, and at this as they're
doing that, they're you know, helping to kick it out
of the anthers, and we don't think they're actually like
traveling from one flower to the next and really pollinating,
although that could happen, you know, I mean, but I
don't think that's the main mechanism mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: From many of these flowers, you know, they'll the the
answers come out first, and then once they've withered, then
the stigmas will come out or vice versa.
Speaker 3: So oh so they're protandrius then they can be yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, because I've seen I've seen bees on ambrosia,
which is when pollinated before harvesting pollen really quickly. Earlier,
you had said that when you brought up a plant
that I said it's invasive, was that a Rundinaria gigantea
or a Rundo donax.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, so a rundin area gigantea is a woody bamboo.
Speaker 1: And that's nice. I think I confuse that with the
Rundo donax. My apologies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what so, and I mean a lot of
people do because a roundinidy it's like, of course it's
a run anaria, but no, so arundo danax and fragmighties
are reeds, and that's a rundanoity E lineage. A runding
area is a temperate woody bamboo native to the southeastern US.
And there's three other species now of a rundin area,
So we actually have four native bamboo species in the
southeastern US.
Speaker 1: And so but and you're saying this isn't a different
subfamily now it's not considered part of Bamboos sodi or
because I still has it in bamboo sodi.
Speaker 3: But are they just a rending area?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a rundon area, Yes, is bambusoid Okay? And
what but it's it's the origin of the name that
confuses people for the undenoit e. Oh, because yeah, I'm
confused now all right, Okay, Now a rundanoiity e is
named for arundo.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: But when you you can't say a rundoity e, so
they add an i n in there to make it according.
Speaker 1: To oh, okayization, So earlier? Did you say arundo earlier?
Or was it a round? I'm having like a geriatric moment.
You got to forgive me here, this was.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, is a reed?
Speaker 1: Okay, Arrondo's a reed. And I don't think there's are
there any arundo that are native to North America. I
don't like, no, no, Okay, so that is yeah, that's
the invasive, that's the big one, all right, So but
that's that's a different Okay, that's again, that's the cluster
fucking confusion man Arundo and a Rundin area. A Rundin
area is subfamily Bambusti Arundo, the big invasive. Uh like
you see him on the Rio Grand at like Big
Ben National Park or down where I live in South
Texas right at like twenty six degrees latitude fucking everywhere.
But okay, thank you and my apologies. Okay, I want
to talk about before we before we dip out some
of the the you United States species of bamboo soidy.
You know, if you pull up Bambu soidi on i
nationalists and go to United States, you get a lot
of the invasive ones, which is not surprising. But then
there's a couple members like a Rundon area Gigantia that
are native here. Do you know much about those if
you studied them or what's going on there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've I've done some work on them. I
had a grad student who did his PhD that on
that group, and so he's the real expert and he
actually works at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. His name
is Jimmy Triplett. But we did do some field work.
He did a lot of field work there in the
southeastern US. And originally there were two species known, the
river cane, which is a Rendinaria gigantea, and which kaine,
which is a Rendonaria tecta. And that one is not
quite as widespread. It's more limited to kind of the
coastal plain and kind of swampy areas, like if you
ever go to the Dismal Swamp, you know, on the
border with Virginia North Carolina, it's going to be one
of the main understory plants, and it's in really swampy places.
And Gigantea is much bigger distribution. It gets in like
the very southern part of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, actually over
into Texas. So if you go to East Texas you
can find native populations of a runding area gigantea, which.
Speaker 1: Is a true a true bamboo. It's in the and
these are I mean, these have got to be these
formed massive? Is this this was cane break? Right? Is
that what they referred to as.
Speaker 2: Camber exactly exactly? And sure the cane break.
Speaker 1: They grew along rivers and they I mean they were
like form their own ecosystem too. They were huge and
dominant components each of these biomes. So yep, and did
they exactly what was the what was the Are there
monocarpic too or what's going on there?
Speaker 2: So a rendnera gigantea apparently individual populations kind of show
the monocarpic thing, but as a species, it does not
flower and die like across the whole part of its distribution.
So it has you know, there's people who've been trying
to track this and look at it, and you there's
there seem to be cohorts that bloom and die at
different times. So monocarpic but not gregarious.
Speaker 1: Okay, So so but you said some populations are not monocarpic, you.
Speaker 2: Know it, We don't really know. It looks like maybe
there are some that that kind of you know what.
And all the information I've seen is that yes, when
a plant of a rundinery edge identity of flowers and
you know, goes through the cycle, is going to die.
But it may not even be like the whole population.
There may be even within a relatively restricted geographic area
you might get cohorts and so it's complicated.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, man, all this you're telling me, I mean what
I've learned today is yeah, man, it's pretty like it's
very mysterious. They're reproductive cycles. The how long do they
normally live before flowering? Like, assuming they are monocarpic, I mean,
a runding area is not something I mean, is it
like chesca? Like you're if you go into a place
where they're dominating, you're probably not going to see them flowering.
You're not going to see.
Speaker 3: Spikelets most of the time.
Speaker 2: That's probably true. They I think their cycles are more
trying to remember because I just saw somebody give a
talk on this in October, trying to remember. I think
even he was kind of struggling to define what a
cycle was. Yeah, but it's at least twenty years. It's
probably closer to forty.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Jesus, I mean so still, yeah, it's it's
out there. How many other true bamboo bamboosoids are there?
Native bamboosoids are there in North America, well, in the
United States of say so.
Speaker 2: In the United States, Yeah, they're they're not. In Canada,
they're not, you know, I mean Obviously there's other tropical
bamboos in Mexico, but around an area is a member
of the temperate woody bamboo clade. And so the four
species that we have in North America are the only
representatives of that clade that are native to North America.
All the rest of them are from China and Japan
pretty much that that area, plus some of them are
native to high mountains in like India, Sri Lanka, Africa.
But the the four species we have, two of them
have been described in the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: And this is what was this one of your students
was working on, like splitting them out of Yeah, where'd
they split them out of? Gigantea or attecta or what?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, those are the two that everybody recognized,
and you know, they have their common names. And we
were talking to these spotanists in North Carolina and we
kept hearing about this thing called hillkane. It's like hillcane. Well, okay,
what's hillcane? And so we went one of these guys
went with us and we went to the western part
of North Carolina and pulled up in front of a
population of it, and Jimmy and I are looking at
each other. It's like, this is a new species. This
is different.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Nobody had worked on it before. No, God,
it shows you how plant I mean, I think that's
a lot. I encounter that a lot too, like just
regular plant lins like, oh, it's just cane, you know,
like someone walks, but it's just a cane.
Speaker 2: But the locals knew that it was different. I mean
it had the name. Yeah, and you know this thing
is like three feet tall, it's deciduous, it grows higher
up in the mountains. It's actually deciduous, leaves new every year.
Speaker 1: You know what's the species? Hillcane?
Speaker 2: Is? What a runding area Appalachiana.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's cool. That's a cool name. Appalachian runding area.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what was the other one?
Speaker 2: The other one Jimmy just published it a couple of
years ago. And that one is a runding area. Let
me see what did he call it? Alibam Is it alabamensis?
I think it's alabamns's got.
Speaker 1: All about I need to get there. There's some cool
There's so much cool stuff there mm hmmm, lots.
Speaker 3: Of diversity, yep.
Speaker 2: And this one probably we knew there was some weird
things out there from the field work he did that
it's like it's not really Gigantea and it's not really tecta.
And he finally got around to, you know, doing some
of the genetic analyzes and that sort of was like,
oh that is that's different. You know, it has a
hybrid origin probably between Gigantea and Tecta. But it's stable,
it's been here a while, and it's different.
Speaker 1: Does it does it look different or is it kind
of like a cryptic species like you need get it's
hard without molecular analysis or what So he.
Speaker 2: Came up with some some characters that you can actually
use to identify it and separate it out. But it
was that reciprocal illumination process that you know, they some
of them looked a lot like tectas, some of them
looked in between. And then okay, you do the genetic
analysis and it's like, oh, this is a this is
a different clade within ourundon area. And then you go
back and take another look and it's like, oh, yeah,
it's got morphologically it looks a bit different in this
way or that way. Yeah, And so going back and
forth like that, we finally figured it out.
Speaker 1: That's cool. Yeah, okay, So so the cities of Birmingham, Montgomery,
Columbus in Atlanta formed like this little semi rhombus, and
it basically grows in within the boundaries of that. You
get a couple of populations southwest of Birmingham, but it's
mostly Yeah, that's man, that is such a cool region.
I really need to get there. There's a lot of
good stuff there. Lastly you would uh, well, not lastly.
I always say that, and then there's like ten more questions.
But what you said there was deforestation you would seen
in Verkus and you were collecting one of the just
gay is what was it? What was Was it just
deforestation for agriculture or was it logging or what?
Speaker 2: It kind of starts out mostly as deforestation, at least
in that region. They'll start off by going into areas
and burning trees to make coal for fuel. And as
these little pathways get more used and you know, then
people will come in. They may do some logging, it
depends on the area, but then you just start getting
over time they will just start using it more and more,
and then they'll start running cattle in there, and yeah,
it ends up then mostly being converted to pasture for
cattle or yeah, used for agriculture.
Speaker 1: So this isn't even like multinational companies like you'd see
in like Southeast Asia are parts of Brazil. It's just
it's just regular old what people do. Yeah, yeah, that's brutal. God,
there's so Yeah. I don't think it's ever. I don't
know if it's ever gonna stop unless there's Yeah, you'd
need like a paradigm shift, like a whole sea change
in the way people view things for it to stop.
But I mean, I just did a podcast with a
friend who was talking about explaining these like really sleazy
you know, World Bank funded development scheme not development schemes,
but natural resource extraction schemes and Laois where they've Laois
has lost like a fifth of its forest in the
last twenty or thirty years. It's like it's it's insane.
It's like, I believe deaficult behavior, Like wait, where do
you think this is going to go? Like you guys
can't keep doing this, you know, But it's mostly corrupt
politicians and then large companies basically exploiting people like cutting
like you know, going into an area, cutting the forest down,
turning the villagers into employees that they pay shit wages
and then you know, good old predatory capitalism. Anyway, So
with with you, how did you get you're you're you're
in Iowa right, You're at the Iowa State or what university?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Mine at Iowa State University. I've been here a
long time. I actually did my PhD here and then
the year I retired or sorry, the year I graduated,
my professor retired and I ended up getting his job.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's cool.
Speaker 2: Cool, it's pretty great.
Speaker 1: It worked out great. How so you, I mean, I
guess being in Iowa, like it's well, it's probably not
too cold there right now because of it.
Speaker 2: You know, the Midwest, we're gonna have a blizzard tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Oh lovely. Okay, well the Midway, the Midwest doesn't really
get winters too much anymore. I've noticed. I still go
visit my mom in Chicago and she's like, oh, yeah,
I didn't start snowing until like late December, early January.
Speaker 2: It assisted. I mean, in the time I've been here,
we've gone from being at like zoned for uh for
A to five B or something thing. I mean, yeah,
we still hat winter, but it's been a lot more
up and down. Yeah, Like today's going to be seventy
degrees and tomorrow we're having three to six inches of snow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, God, that's crazy. It's crazy. I remember like last
January in Chicago, was they had like they were having
sixty degree days or fifty or sixty degree days. It's like,
it's it's so undeniable. All the oil company pr in
the world is would still have a hard time convincing
everyone just open.
Speaker 2: Your eyes and look and you'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what you're in is Ioway stayed in like
the eastern part of the state, or western part of
the state, or.
Speaker 2: Where we're kind of right almost right in the middle.
Speaker 1: What was the habitat? Was the habitat just prairie back
in the day, like prairie slowly becoming more arid as
you go west.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically before European settlement there was like seventy to
eighty percent of Iowa was tall, rest and yes, getting dryer,
shorter as you go to the least part.
Speaker 1: That must have been incredible. I tell people too. I
Mean someone asked me the other day, like they're like,
what's your favorite part of the world to go look at? Plants.
I was like, well, there's hyperdiverse areas, you know, like
South Africa or Brazil, but I mean, really, any place
where there's still native plant covers totally fascinating. Even if
there's not a lot of diversity, there's probably going to
be a couple of cool endemics or lineages that are
restricted to that biome. And then I was I used
IOA as an example. I was like, fucking Iowa was
probably incredible five hundred years ago, Like probably you know,
you think of it now and you think of like
you know, high you know, big lane freeways with mode margins,
you know, and and like plastic signs for the come
and go or whatever, you know, gas station, But it
must have been absolutely stunning some of those tall grass prairies.
There are there any left, Yeah, there.
Speaker 2: Is, But you know, Iowa is actually the most highly
altered state in the Union. There's about two percent of
more or less native vegetation cover left. But there's a
couple of places you know that there are preserves. There's
less than one tenth of one percent of actual native
prairie left. Yeah, I mean it's you know, but there's
a lot of efforts to reconstruct prairies. The biggest single
contiguous area of Native prairie is in the Lost Hills
in the western part.
Speaker 3: That sounds cool, Lost Hills loss.
Speaker 2: L o E s s oh Okay, I.
Speaker 1: Was thinking the Okay Lost Hills is in California, Lowess Hills, Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is you know, through connected with the
process of glaciation and when they were seated, you know,
you get these winds blowing dust and you get accumulation
of these very fine particles and that's what these hills
are actually composed of.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they're not like super high, but it's a
very unusual substrate.
Speaker 1: You get any endemics or not endemics, but like specialists
and like plant specialists on that kind of substrate or what.
Speaker 2: Not. That many that I'm aware of, but there are,
you know, I mean, it's one of these things that
the lust is actually very stable. It's pretty fertile, but
so is the rest of you know, at least the
northern two thirds of Iowa. But it's it's a special
kind of drains. It's got more dry adapted things than
you would find out for because of the drainage. It's
just much better drained than a lot of the other parts.
Speaker 1: So it's like a it's almost like a dune almost
like it's like a more arid micro site or more
arid sites surrounded by more music stuff. That sounds pretty cool,
right there.
Speaker 2: A lot as calcareous, yeah, because most of Iowa is
actually alkalin's that you know, limestone underneath, but this one is, yeah,
this is it's going to be a little bit more acetic,
but it's better drained, and so you're going to get yeah,
more dry adapted stuff.
Speaker 1: So what made you what made you want to get
into bamboos?
Speaker 2: Hm hmmm. So this was one of those serendipitous things.
I grew up in northern Virginia and I had the opportunity.
My dad had studied botany, so he sort of set
me on the path. He got me interested in plants.
But when I was in high school, I had a
chance to work at the US National Herbarium during the summers,
just as a volunteer. They didn't even have a formal
interim program at the time. But and the guy that
I worked with, his name was Tom Soderstrom. He worked
on bamboo. He did other grasses too, but he was
mostly working on bamboos, and so I showed up in
the summer and he put me to work on the
bamboo collections, you know, like labeling, sorting them out, just
getting everything in order, the slide collections. And I was like,
this is cool. You know, bamboos are fantastic. And so
I did that for a couple of summers, and then
he and one of the other colleagues there that you know,
we went to lunch and they're like, oh, hey, you
want to keep going on this, you should go to
Michigan State University. There's a guy there and he's really good.
He works with undergrads, you know. So I ended up
going to Michigan State and worked with this guy name
was John Demon and then you know, I was always
going back and forth home, so I was always visiting,
working into herbarium there. And then when it was time
to go to grad school, same thing. We kind of
went to lunch and they're like, oh, you need to
go work with Richard Pohle out at Iowa State University.
So I did, and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: But what about this lineage of plants though? Because these
are the stories I like hearing, because like I mean,
I'm into everything now I'm fascinated by everything that's growing
and forming an ecology and has an evolutionary story. But
I like asking people, you know, who specialize in one thing,
what got them so pad Like, what do they see
in that one thing that gets them so passionate about
it and gets them so jazz and that they're thinking
about it, you know at night, Like when I was
first getting into plants, I was really into the native
California cypruses, and I would go to sleep at night
thinking about these weird habitats, these things grow on the
weird soil, Like why are they not more widespread? Why
are they so restrict? Did that kind of thing? What
was it? And I can think of plenty about bamboos,
But for you, what was it that they got? You?
Their fast growth rate, how they formed these colonies, how
long lived they are? What was it?
Speaker 2: I think it was actually, I mean part of it
initially was, you know, I have all these wonderful mentors
and they were just you know, it was exciting to
sort of share something with folks who were so enthusiastic
about these plants. But when I first came here to
work with doctor Pohl, he had a project he was
working on a publication on a treatment of the grasses
of Costa Rica. So after my first year in grad school,
I went down with him to Costa Rica to do
field work and just getting out there. I remember before
we left, he's like, you need to learn how to
drive afore wheel drive stick shift. I'm like, okay. So
somebody one of the other grad students taught me and
we got down there and we had our Toyota land
Cruiser and we were driving to the first field site
and we get to a certain point. It was all
paved road and I was thinking, oh, this isn't to
your dad. And we pull up and all of a sudden,
he's like, okay, you drive now. So I got in
there and you know, and started and it turned into
this god awful dirt road. He saw what he was doing,
he knew what he was doing, but it was like,
you know, and I did it. I was able, So
I was kind of proud of myself. But we got
up there and then we were in this cloud forest
and there's the bamboos and it was just so you know,
the discovery because there were so many new species and
just being in the field and being able to look
at them, and you know that all kind of just
went like, Okay, this is what I was meant to do.
You know, in so many beauty full places like those paramos,
like the soup paramos, Yeah, cloud for it, I was
just like, oh, this is it. I know what I
want to do.
Speaker 1: It's just it's so overwhelming with diversity, and you're I mean,
that's what gets me is when I'm in those places,
I look at everything growing around me, and it just
it all feels so mysterious, so mysterious, and I don't
want to say foreign because it's you almost feel like
you're at home. Yeah, You're like, this is what I
was meant to do. But there's just so many questions
to answer to. You know, how does this, how does
this associate with this? Why is this doing this? How
did this get here? You know, how did it evolve?
What else it related to? Where? You know, it's a
it's really fucking magnificent. It's like such a it's such
a joy, and it's such a distraction from like how
droll at times and ugly the human world can be
and just you know, biophilia just being just.
Speaker 3: So interested exactly with life.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: You know, you're there, you're looking at your plants, and
all of a sudden a two can flies overhead or something,
and just all the surprises and all the discovery that
you can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was it Chasca you were going to see
in Costa Rica. Yes, what elevation was it?
Speaker 2: Uh, that was about I'm gonna say it was about
twenty twenty two hundred meters something like that.
Speaker 1: It's like almost seven thousand feet about.
Speaker 2: Pretty close. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, it's cool. Well, thanks a lot for being
down to do this. I appreciate it. I'm trying to
think if there's any questions I forgot to ask you,
but I think I think we got most of them.
Speaker 2: So we covered a lot of stuff. Yeah, that's been
fun because you gave me a chance to talk about
my favorite things.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's wild. It's cool. There's such a
cool story there. You think how these things got here?
It was probably the bre raft from Asian, like, you know,
twenty million years ago.
Speaker 2: It's certainly one possibility. Although bamboos don't like salt water
very much, there's really no that I'm aware of. There's
no like really salt like you know, coastal adapted things
like that. So you know, we we speculate about that,
and you know, was it birds?
Speaker 1: Was it?
Speaker 2: Did they hoped in some way? You know? Yeah, they
like they didn't do it all in one fell swoop.
I still I tend to go with birds, but I
like even that that birds preams like what they're not
going as these things sitting their feathers for you know,
a trip of well, yeah, a thousand miles.
Speaker 1: That and most migration, most migration patterns are north to south.
There's very few that go across I mean, I don't
think there's any that go across the Atlantic the Pacific
at lower latitude. Certainly at higher latitudes there's less distance
between land masses, so it's not as much of a
big deal. But yep, yeah, I think about it. I
wonder if there's you know, extinct birds that maybe were
doing you know, east west flights across large bodies of
water or who knows. Man, it's it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, I mean, that's where it is. It's it's
great stories we can tell that we don't really know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it leaves so much to imagination. Man, It's it's
fun to think where some.
Speaker 2: Of those questions come from. And that's that's the part.
It's like there's no shortage of questions to ask and
things to discover.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, hopefully someone figures out the reproductive cycles and
strategies of ciscaia and you know the gregarious monocarpy and
how that's how that works and if they are counting
or what.
Speaker 2: You know exactly, that would be so cool cool.
Speaker 1: All right, well, doctor link Clark, thank you so much,
and yeah, until next time.
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks, YenS, great talking to you.
Speaker 1: Bye you too. Bye.