Speaker 1: Okay, there we go. Now we're recording kid Feel the Flame.
It's a nice opening line. It's a nice opening line
for them listeners. Okay, Jesus, all right, well I'm second
again from my four year old. Welcome to the Crime
Pace podcast. And today we have Michael Moya, who runs
atlass Nativa, which is a you like that fucking gringo accent,
Atlas Nativa, which is, uh, we tell everybody, what is
that lest nativa? What is it? Exactly?
Speaker 2: At first I did it in twenty eighteen eighteen, it
was like an artist residency program when we did like
an exchange. I did like guides through the forest and
they did artwork. But nowadays I'm doing nature guides, Like
I'm digitalizing all the leaves, all the woody plants, and
I'm doing like cool guides with this thing.
Speaker 1: So you're making we're making like Gia de campos for
all the yeah, for all the Chilean plants. And what
the region you're in too, is you're south of Santiago
by how how how far south? There was it like
three or four hours?
Speaker 2: Yes? Like five hours down going down there more or less?
Speaker 1: So and explain what the biome is because it's it's
very steep, but it's forested. It's not like northern Chile,
which is very dry. You've got the other Kama lots
of barren volcano, I.
Speaker 2: Mean one of the leasts. I mean, it's it's it's
weird because if one of is one of it's one
of the most biodiverse biomes Intila, because it's like the
mix between the Mediterranean and the temperate rainy forests. So
you have the biggest tree diversity. It's still Mediterranean climate,
but you have you have a lot of the southern plants.
So it's for that reason is kind of confusing. You know,
you have the sclerophild forest, but you also have the
kind of forest you have the most biodiversity in north
of Fagus. So that's one of the reasons why I
went to live there, you know, because it's a like
a not very studied area and it's like it has
a lot of different landscapes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it feels like for me, it felt like
like Plumus County, California, maybe like northern Sierra Nevada foothills.
And also it's so tell first telebody with the boss
Que Sclerophilo is that I pronounce that right, is the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the typic forests of the Mediterranean region
here in Chile, and I think they call it like
that also in Europe, like in Spain. Yeah, because they
have the same climate. So it's a type of forest
that have trees that are accustomed to have very little
water in the summer, actually no water in the summer, like.
Speaker 3: A long stummer. So the leaves are like tough.
Speaker 2: You know, they have like some I don't know how
to go into English, but it's like a Scotch tape
and it.
Speaker 1: Feels like plastic. Yeah, it's like, yeah, hard evergreen, feels
like plastic, maybe a little pliable, maybe some velvet, maybe
some little hairs on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they don't lose the leaves. They are evergreen,
they don't grow so tall, and they are they are
like very tough trees. They can manage these like no
water where they most need them. So that's like the
basic sclorophyll. I'm actually in Greek it means like tough leaves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What are some of the species you got? Gwena,
which is proty ac. It's in the Macadamia tribe.
Speaker 2: Lots and not of Giena give weena.
Speaker 3: It's like it's in the south.
Speaker 2: It's it's not like proper sclerophild you know that, like
like the the iconic because you have it, you don't
have it in Santiago. Like in Santiago you have like
the most standard scleral fild forest and the species like
the typical ones are kiahaaria that you love, that.
Speaker 1: Permus balder pumus boulders. Yeah, yeah, I just ordered some
bold of tea. Yeah, the tea is right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is I mean people take it not because
it's good flavor, because it's just so good for your tommy,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Monemi is the family I think, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Actually, the Kiakaaria is also very high in Saponins,
especially the bark. So in the in the old days,
they they took the bark of a lot of these trees,
but they're still.
Speaker 3: Harvesting a lot of yeah.
Speaker 2: Branches. They have like a big plant in the Maulay
region and they exported it's like I don't know, like
bubblely you know, so they used it in soda and
a lot of stuff like that. But the Pelmus baldos
is used in like all of Latin America for the
tomb is good for the Tommy yeah, you know, yeah,
so delicious.
Speaker 1: And that's the one that's got scabbard leaves, right, just
like ex toxicon. Yeah yeah. It feels like sandpaper.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, exactly like sandpaper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, that's one of the And it's very if
you bend it, it cracks, you know, it's.
Speaker 1: Very hif Yeah, yeah, it's you know. What was weird
was we were we were in Santiago on the last day,
and uh, Matt, I just wanted to go to the
fucking airport because it's it's like, you know, it's just
cars and people and fucking shitty driving, and it's much
more tolerable than any American city. But uh, but you know,
and the lack of billboards was amazing. I mean, I
still can't believe I went two weeks without the subliminal, subconscious,
horrible messaging of billboards, like it just for my soul.
It made me so much less hateful than not have
to see a shy. You know.
Speaker 2: That's funny because I think maybe over there you have
so many billbirds that you didn't sell the billboards that
have here, because we do have bilbirds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it may be horrific. It's every fucking two hundred
feet and like along a highway and there'll be some
plastic botox injected face with a shit eating grin trying
to sell you something you don't want. Like just these
fucking people that look like maggots, these horrible, horrible money
worshiping thieves, these fucking sleep Oh. It fills me with hate.
I'm like, God, I just I fucking don't want to
even know that you exist. You're like, you know, it's
like I go down to hate wormhole. But but we
went out of we went east that of Santiago into
the hills, and I was like, man, this isn't I
thought this was like Mediterranean climate, man, but this is
more of like desert. Santiago is more like it feels
like la like the climate and maybe even more so
like it's you know, there's there's it's desert plants. It
feels more like Mediterranean style desert. It's the parallels between
southern California or even like the Tijuana area are crazy.
Speaker 2: It's cool, like there's a lot of I think you
saw that there's a huge difference between the part the
slope of the mountains that face to the sun. There
you have like more serophitic plants. But the slopes the
face to the south, they are very different, you know.
But also in Santiago the forest is very depleted. You know,
it's like centuries of the forestation these I guess you
the same in California, Like this ecosystem takes like centuries
to rebuild again.
Speaker 1: Like the Yeah, there's nothing.
Speaker 3: Like they're ancient glory, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to go outside of the you have
to go to like where the rich people live in
the hills to get any taste of like what might
be native to like see a native plant. I guess
Jubeya chileansis was really common in Santiago when it got settled,
you know.
Speaker 2: They actually they actually they naturalist think it only grew
like on the coastal range.
Speaker 3: But there is.
Speaker 2: There is an ancient map of Santiago where they show
like palm trees, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because also they used it for making like.
Speaker 3: Like the sap.
Speaker 2: They boiled it down and make like a syrup. So
they cutted it down. They say nowadays there's only two
percent left of the of of the.
Speaker 3: Past distribution of the Hubaya.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a tree that if I live down there,
I'd be just growing the ship out of it. Natural
brought my friend, Natural brought over some seeds. They're like
for fruits, like the little golf all sized fruits. They
smell amazing, like you can't really eat the the music
car but the seed inside I guess is at a bowl.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's like it's it's actually a coconut.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just but it's a beautiful tree.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: They're like these big stout palm trees.
Speaker 3: And it's and and the bark is.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw the bark of Hubai
lenses is soft.
Speaker 3: You know, it's very different from other palm trees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Looks and it's and it's very thick. It looks like
the like the feet of an elephant. It's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I want I wanted to ask you about the Mapocha
River because when I first saw it, I was like,
you know, I saw the water and I was like, man,
and that's not like ship water. That's like that looks
like just volcanic sediment. It had that pink color to it.
And then I remember you would message me, and you
were like, God, it's actually a clean river. It's been
clean for like a decade. What happened with it?
Speaker 2: They I mean, they just stopped throwing the ship on
it many years ago. Actually, there's a lot of people
that go and but but people have the the memories
from from the past, so a lot of people still
think it's dirty, you know. And yeah, because in Chile
we have a lot of like clean water rivers. That's
also another reason why people think it's still dirty, you know.
But yes, that's like the natural sediment because it's so
steep that the path that this river takes, the path
that this river takes is very steep, so there's a
lot of sediment.
Speaker 1: The andes are fucking incredibly steep, man. But yeah, it's
a it's wild what can happen when you stop throwing
garbage and talks waste and human shit into an urban river.
The life comes back. We had a similar thing in
Chicago where there's fucking beavers. Someone saw a river otter
in the Chicago River, like you know, Chicago, Illinois, Like
it's a big shitty city. I'd say that with love. Yeah, yeah,
but that river is fucking filthy. I almost fell in
it once when I was running away from these crackheads
and uh, I've been painting graffiti in these crackheads where
they were like, yeah, it us twenty bucks, we're calling
the cops. I was like, fuck you man, I don't
have a shit on me. And I had to like
scale horizontally on this chain link fence with no ground
beneath it, just ten you know, it was a ten
foot drop into the river and I was like, oh fuck,
I don't want to fall in. I'm gonna get tennis
it by falling. And uh, but it was it was
like a filthy river. And now it's like there's fucking
beavers and otters in it. That's insane. It's it's really clean,
the silt at the bottom.
Speaker 2: You know that we have we have beavers here in
Chili also Native yes, no, no, some Argentinians to get too.
It's like a big island that is just when the
continent ends and they put the beavers on a lagoon.
But the beavers swam through the ocean and now they're
like each year they're going up and they're going up
and they're sucking the consistent because here the trees are
not accustomed, you know, to be so wet.
Speaker 3: You know, so they're killing a lot of our forests.
Speaker 1: So beavers are invasive down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, very invasive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there I tell you, each year they're going
more north. You know, they're colonizing new grounds, and it's
like a really huge problem for the future because now
they're very far they will Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing is, you know, that's why I
could never get the people that deny invasive species. They're like,
you know, they they're like, well, those happened before. Well, yeah,
it's occasionally every few million years you would get in
like a species crossing a continental boundary or some other
vicariates barrier and getting established. But it's having happening. It's
such a fast rate now that it's and who knows
what it did, you know, who knows what consequences happened
millions of years ago whenever a plant or animal or
fungus would cross the vikry its barrier and get to
a new continent or on the other side of the equator, whatever.
But but now it's happening. It's such a rate that
it's overwhelming the system. And so you know, like, yeah,
trees that aren't adapted. Yeah, man, trees are trees that
aren't adapted to something like beavers or fucking I mean,
it's it happens so quickly. They just while they're getting
shipped on by people, and there's habitat loss and climate
change and that's gnarly. I didn't know beavers, I mean
that makes sense though. Yeah, they would. I could say
they would fucking ecosystem up if they were just suddenly
thrown into a you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because they actually they drown the trees, you know,
in the diet that they're not like they don't have
accustomed to so wet and in those type of systems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the trees that that in North America that
are adapted to them can sprout from the base and
not all trees can do that, and and certainly not
as you know, as as readily as some of the
North American ones can it that evolve with beavers, but
as fucked man. But anyway, okay, so, but Mapocho River
is clean now, and the and these mountains, I mean
they're really fucking steep. This is a relatively new mountain range.
So like I remember when we were we were hanging
out with you we saw these massive landslides. That's a
common thing. Huh.
Speaker 2: They're in in San Fay and Lego. They're happening right
now because of the climate change, you know. I mean
they're normal, but once every one hundred years, once every
one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 3: But right now they're happening like, you know, a.
Speaker 2: Quicker pace because two years ago we had rains like man,
it was like it was crazy. It rained so much
in very few days that the land was collapsed with water.
You know, where you have the granite then it's when
it gets like soaked with water. And yeah, it's not
normal at the space, you know, because well I didn't
took you to the places that are worse. But in
the ravine that is close to my house, we counted
like ten of this how do you call it the.
Speaker 1: Fall landslides, the room based landslides?
Speaker 2: Ten ten different landslides in in one ravine, you know,
and one of the landslides is like kilometers long. You know,
it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so what happened, I mean, what like that
one that we the one that we saw in it
that eucrypia, that glutenosa, that that rare Eucreyffia when we
like that one was nuts. I mean that was basically
like half the fucking hillside just suddenly collapses and all
the plants are gone, and they just and it's like
someone pulling a tablecloth off from a fucking you know,
table with a bunch of dish wearing China and ship. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that was a small one, you know, because in
my place, there were in ravines where there was full
of very big not a fouls onbeggy. So it's full
of like very thick destroyed like cut in half trees.
Speaker 3: It's like it's crazy to see.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, and the river full of stones. I
mean it's kind of depressing, you know, to see these changes.
I lived in Chiloe. I lived in the island of Chiloe,
and I also saw a lot of like landscape change
the human made. Like you you went to a really
nice forest and next week you went there it was
all piles of wood, you know. Yeah, So I think
I think that's one of the most depressing things to see,
like the quick face in which nature is being destroyed, you.
Speaker 1: Know, it's assaulted, just like straight assaulted. You know. What
drives me nuts that I was like when you meet people
who are like, nah, there's no way nature will recover.
There's no way that we're gonna I mean, humans can't.
We think we can do so much more than we can.
It's like, motherfucker, there's eight billion of us. Do you
know how fucking large of a number that is eight
billion fucking turds like eight billion you know, eating mouths,
shitting asses, people that need resources, you know what, you
know what I mean, it's it's just like are you
fucking in phais? Are you? Are you a child? Like
do you have any have you stopped and thought about this?
Like the scale at which you know it's all, especially
when there's no regard among like ninety percent of us,
there's no regard for the living system. It's just, I mean,
especially with religion. The two dominant world religions think that
everything was put here for them, So why not fucking
into a comma and take everything?
Speaker 2: You know, No, in Chile is like a low density country,
a population country, so I imagine like in China and like
these intruction must be like crazy, like.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, or the US the US is now in
the US, the US, I mean the US. Just the
mindset is just like cash in the chips, just fucking
you know, burn it out, you know, fuck all the
holes take everything? Why not? You know, it's just it's
it's it's such a like exploitative, single serving, single use
mindset here. But I'm telling you, man, she like, what's
the population. It's like fifteen millions. Like that's a that's million.
And when I'm a refugee, that's my spot I might
go to, you know when it gets so nauseating here.
Speaker 2: It's a million. But but you have to think that
one third of that population is in Santiago, more than
one third, and also the north and the Patagonia. If
you look at the numbers, it there's almost no people there,
you know. Yeah, it's all centered in the central region
and a little bit more in the south. But the
rest of the country huge land.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Also, I was telling you about there's plans on paranoia,
plans that maybe the Israelites want to come here and
take our land because there's a lot of water. You know. Shit,
we're scared of the we're scared of the feudure. Anytime
Trump will say, okay, we need chili, also.
Speaker 1: Need I mean, I think I think Trump was sent
by a joking God to ruin the US and cause
the downfall of the United States. I think he'll do
a good job too. I think he'll ruin everything. I think, uh,
you know, he'll just he's gonna be like Reagan two
point zero. He's going to further eradicate the middle class,
make the populace dumber. And then you know, by the
time he croaks whenever that is, the motherfucker probably be
like one hundred and ten. By the time he croaks,
you know, they'll just be like a smoldering wreck, and
the job will be done. And and you know, I
don't know what maybe China will take. I have no clue.
I don't know, but certainly who am I to say?
Though I don't. I try not to think about politics
more than I need to and focus on the plants.
But okay, so you lived in that, You lived in
Santiago for a while, and then you lived in chilo A,
which is an island the way down there by what
is that forty four degrees latitude south and the fitz
Royal Forests southwest of Puerto mont which is a lovely thing.
I love Oh you like yeah, I like it. I
was we went to Porto Varus, which is nice. Porto
Varus is nice, like you go there for a day,
you know, and then but it's very like it's kind
of wealthy. It's like very uppy. And then Puerto Mont
is yeah, and Puerto Mont is kind of grimy. It's
like a fishing town. It's got more of like a Tacoma,
Washington vibe.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like the normal people where normal people live,
you know, yeah, like for rich people exactly.
Speaker 1: I like port a month and I've known of portumonth
for like a decade and a half. It's because I
was obsessed with alers trees back in the day, you know,
when I first got into all this ship and so
but anyway, so you lived in what was living in chileaway, like.
Speaker 3: Oh it was it was very.
Speaker 2: How can I say, like some really cool things and
also bad things. You know. The cool things were that
over there the land, it's like the public property is
not like so you can enter anywhere you know and
walk and you're free to roam anywhere you want. So
that thing, I think it's awesome, you know, like you
have to have the liberty to stop your car and
because over there they have only forests and fields for
the cows and the sheep, you know, so for the
for them, the forest is like almost useless land, you know.
So in that regard, it was really nice, you know,
to see the I mean, to be able to roam
freely and feel free.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But for me, the obscure part was this climate that
is so different to Santiago. It rains like almost all year,
there's very little sunlight, so and people is like kind
of green and chiloe. There's like a tradition of witchcraft
and like obscure, like.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see what you're doing. Do they have heroin
down there?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: No, no, just crack you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay. So it's yeah, because.
Speaker 2: Alcohol, alcohol is the is the thing that goes you know,
you go is very depressing.
Speaker 1: Alcohols. Yeah, alcohol is pretty terrible, I think. I think, yeah,
it's definitely for numbing yourself and not dealing with things
you need to deal with and ruining them and taking
years off you. But it's because it so so basically
it was like it was like a gath vibe. It
was like a seasonal effective disorder. Gray Pacific in the
Pacific Northwest here in the United States. It's it's like
a similar thing, but there's heroin up there, so a
lot of people around heroin all the time, which now
is mostly fennol, so like half of them are dying,
you know, all the time. So lots of overdose deaths,
grim rain. So that's nice that it's not as bad,
you know, there's the lack of heroin Chilaway. It must
be nice. But I definitely feel you want the seasonal
effective disorder vibe, you know what I.
Speaker 2: Mean, also has a nice thing. And I think that
the culture there is like more that there was a
little bit more Pacific exchange between indigenous people and Spaniards,
so the culture is a little more cool, you know,
like they have a lot of traditions, like very old traditions.
And also you can learn a lot of no botanical
things about the plants and different ways to use plants,
I don't know, and different names. It's like a country
in itself, you know.
Speaker 1: So there's more. There's more. There's more indigenous culture. That's
like evident.
Speaker 2: I mean, the how can I say that the mix
was like healthier, you know, and and the and the
east mix is not like you go and you see
indigenous people, but normal Chilottes have like traditions that have
more indigenous parts in it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah that's cool. Yeah, not as not as stiff
and enrigid, and perhaps not as money obsessed as you
might get an urban center like Santiago.
Speaker 3: And also as a as a person from Santiago.
Speaker 2: Like everywhere you go in Chile they look you like,
oh this is they kind of hate us, you know,
and in Chilo it's worse. Like in Chiloe they hate
everyone from outside Tilo. But if you're from Santiago, like
you're like the worst ship. When I went to live there, yeah,
a lot of people ask me when you come here,
like where is your reason? Like they're very like skeptical,
you know.
Speaker 1: So it's regional beef. They've got like regional beef. They
don't like the Northerners, No.
Speaker 3: They only like and they have like a culture is
very close.
Speaker 2: You know. It's very hard. And my dream was like
to have actually a lot of friends, but I I
didn't accomplish it.
Speaker 1: They're fucking yeah, okay, so they're like, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Was hanging with a lot of people from some THIAGONI
what do you.
Speaker 1: Mean, like the witchcraft they got like like the like
the gothing are they doing? What do you mean witchcraft?
They're like etsy witches? What do you mean?
Speaker 2: They had? Like actually this is documented. At some point
they acknowledged that witches and I don't know how to
say male witch like a wizard wizard and witches where
secretly like dominating the island and they had they have
like a parallel government. So the central government Santiago went
and killed them all and they have like a big fight.
Speaker 1: Wait is this real?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's documented. When I can, I don't, I don't.
I think it was in eighteen something I can send you,
like the there's books and yeah. So it's like known
for for their wizards and which and till this day
people always talk about strange stories over there, like and
people believe and these wizards. And also when I lived there,
I also felt strange things. You know, it's I think
it's real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this isn't just you're not talking about just
like a cat, like a fifty year old cat lady
wearing a momo and a witch's hat and going to
a renaissance fair. You're talking about like actually.
Speaker 3: Like old school, old school.
Speaker 1: But but but which culture based out of like northern Europe,
like Europeans.
Speaker 2: It was again it was a really cool mixture between
the Northern European Oh no, no, I mean mostly Spaniards
and other countries of Europe.
Speaker 3: And then we eat people that is like the Mapucha.
Speaker 2: People, but from they're a little bit more southern and have.
Speaker 3: More different traditions, you know.
Speaker 1: So there was but there was a witch culture where
like the government was worried that these were anti Christian
like evil, dangerous, like similar to what we had with
like the Salem witch trials in North America.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's weird, crazy like that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that we eat a culture. And there
also the Channel culture. There was a really cool culture
that only lived on canoes and they live by the sea,
you know. So Theta culture is very like close to
the sea to the boat.
Speaker 1: That cool.
Speaker 3: And they also have the Alersa they over there.
Speaker 2: They they almost made it disappear like you can only
see on the highest slopes of the coastal cordeera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they have like a really cool architectural school
of wood without nails.
Speaker 3: The only like the wood joints.
Speaker 1: You know, or like the Japanese.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so culture.
Speaker 2: That's why we're telling you, like maybe botanically, that's not
because the island was separated like not so long ago.
There's not like the cool endemics to the island. But
culturally it's really interesting, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm seeing the indigenous people of Chilawe Island, Chile
include the Chanos, Huiliches h u i l l I
c h e s if anyone does, someone's looking at
and Councos. The Chilaway people are Chilotes are a mix
of indigenous and European.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: So this is like that's like what Mexico is basically
where Mexico.
Speaker 3: Most similar thing.
Speaker 2: We have two Mexico, but in the southern region because
in the north of Chile you also have that kind
of thing, you.
Speaker 1: Know, oh like the indigenous in the Spanish mixt.
Speaker 2: Uh always. But no, but I think I'm just telling
that in the central regions, the indigenous component it was
like almost cleared out, you know. Yeah, more in the
south and more in the north. You can see more
more of this component.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the Santiagouary I just felt like Spain. I mean,
it felt like just just Spaniards, you know, just European.
Speaker 2: I mean there's still like some indigenous left, but they're
very assimilated, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. The you know, what was the cool time
we went to was Melepuco. How do you stay that
Malapuco outside of Congo?
Speaker 3: Melipelko?
Speaker 1: Melee, Yes, fucking butchered Melepeuco. How do you pronounce that?
Say it again, Melipelko? Yeah, I'm not I'm fucked. I'm fucked.
Never mind, Okay, Well, either way, it was a cool
town and there was you know, they had LARTs of
era Carria stuff in the little shops and like a
little statue they had made of I mean, you could
tell there was a reverence for that tree, which I
was happy to see. But those those fucking trees, man,
that was one of my That was one of my favorite,
one of my favorite places that we had went to
Congio and now a Buddha, now a Buddha, I think, yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think you like the you like it better
than Buddha, right, And no.
Speaker 1: I think I like Nawa Buddha better because the the
lichen and the coastal I mean, the trees were just
more insane looking in the in Nawa Buddha. Maybe the
forest that's where the really really I mean there's massive
trees everywhere. But but now Wabuda is not that big.
I mean it's it's surrounded by pine hill right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean actually Nawa Buddha's in the latitude with
most biodiversity, like for I mean vascular plants. Yeah, I've
never been in Nawa Buddha. It's uh sad for me
I have to go. But yeah, it's I mean all
the actually now with Buddhas save that the heights saved
some of the vegetation because in other regions in the
coastal forest or the coastal range, man, it's like three
percent native forest left.
Speaker 3: It's depressing.
Speaker 2: The first time I took the first time I went
by car in this infinite plantation forest, man, I felt
like shed Like you you stop the car, you see
these plantations and there's not beards singing.
Speaker 4: There's no lfe. You know, it's like a it's like
a green desert. Yeah, that's horrible. Yeah, that's what I mean.
It really does feel bad. It feels like a bad trip.
We stopped at some of these pine plantations. I felt
like a little ten minute video, which is basically just
me ranting and looking at pine hell and.
Speaker 2: Man, it's hell, got it really is.
Speaker 1: It's fucking miserable. And that's the thing is it's funny
too because Pinus radiata occupies like a very small area
in northern California. It's an endangered tree in the wild,
but it's probably the most it's the most abundant tree
on planet Earth right now.
Speaker 2: Probably because these companies will will say they're doing XC
to conservation now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or they're doing they're doing carbon sick wist. This
is the thing. That's why you have to be wary
of this bullshit that gets put out there where they're like, oh, yeah,
we're planting trees. You know, we might be a United Airlines,
we might be you know, uh, profiting off of massive
flights whatever and people gotta fly. I fucking get it.
But but but you know they're like, well, we're doing offsets,
we're doing carbon offsets. Well, you're not restoring forest jackets,
you're just planting. You're just planting farms. It's like cows
are not wildlife either, Like, yeah, you're murking habitat and
killing a bunch of wildlife. And then it's like sitting.
It's like doing that and then saying like, well, but
we're breeding cows, so it's it's okay, we're offsetting. Yeah right,
it's just anything will do right, like it's it's so.
But the fucking pines were everywhere. God, I couldn't believe it.
And they're fucking everywhere, doug fur up in the fucking mountains.
You think you're you think you've escaped them, you're in
like a somewhat native area, and then you look and
there's a fucking doug fur or a pine or a
eucalyptus orally Jesus man.
Speaker 2: When I see a pine, like any like species of pine,
I feel something bad, you know. So I'm trying to
resettle my brain to not hate every pine I see.
But for me, like this kind of landscape, it means
like death, you know it does. It's example, when I
went to the Mexico to the Sierra to see like
native pines and all, it's like a mind fuck for
my brain, you know, like I still cannot understand.
Speaker 1: Well for me, you know, because for me, it's like
eucalyptus are like that in California, they're just the desert
and it's garbage. And I guess they're still yahoos that
you know, don't want them cut down. But but then
you know, and I hated them, but then when I
saw them in Australia, I was like, man, these are
fucking dope. This is such a cool genus. They're so
unique and and they're in they're and they're an important
part of this living machine. But you know, over here,
not ten thousand miles away, And so I had more
found beautiful. Yeah, and I've seen I've seen Eucalyptus globulus
in Tasmania where there are these fucking beasts. They're so
beautiful and they they're in these beautiful forests that sound amazing.
And and then when you see them in planted in
you know, in California, you're like, god, this is hell.
And it was the same thing with the redwoods. I saw,
you know, coast redwood forests are amazing. But then I
saw a redwood plantation in New Zealand and it was
fucking horrible. There was nothing growing in the understory, like nothing.
Speaker 2: It was just when you went to when you went
to Australia, and it must be very really difficult to
tell apart the different, like they almost all looked the same.
Speaker 1: No, man, no, there's no, there's there's fucking in the
Sterling Range there's ones that aren't only like three or
four meters tall with these crazy leaves, and then in
Tasmania there's one that only gets two meters or excuse me,
half a meter tall, not even it's it's like and
it needs fire. Yeah, it forms these massive ligno tubers
underground and it needs fire to burn, and it grows
in like alpine Tasmania like it's it's so you'd never
guess it was a eucalyptus. It looks like a Arctostaphalos
or something really cool. I mean, there's so much diversity.
And then then you've got those rainbow eucalyptus with the
cool bark, and Eucalyptus regnans that gets really big and
it's basically a tempered rainforest tree. I mean, it's a
really cool lineage. There used to be Eucalyptus in South America,
I guess forty million years ago, but they wont extinct
there for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The other day I heard that it seems like
they developed here in South America and then they left us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because you guys have a lot of
Mrtesi down there too. I mean that's a huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of Yeah, we have a lot of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of.
Speaker 1: So what with the pines? What's up with when that
all started in the seventies, right, that was like Pinochet mostly,
that was that Forest Law.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2: I don't know the year as well, but I think
it was in the twentieth century that different scientists started
to look at different trees that behaved well, because I
mean beforehand, I mean, they did a lot of deforestation
of native forests, you know, but this coastal range was
really I kind of sucked up before Pinochet came and
they started to plant the pines, you know, because they
used this for planting wheat.
Speaker 3: So they cleared the forest.
Speaker 2: They planted wheat, and after some years the soil was useless,
you know. So if you see pictures, ancient pictures of
these places, it was like a desert in some areas,
you know. So then in the seventies came Pinochet with
the Special Law and they subsidized the plantation of trees.
So a lot of people like the little remains of
native forest. They started cutting down also to plant finds.
You know, r man, it's it's it's it's crazy like.
And also they don't it's like it's a shitty wood,
you know, like, yeah, they should at least some good wood.
You know that this wood sucks.
Speaker 1: Now, pine sucks. It's the ship. We make fun of
it here in the US. I mean, you'll find some
clowns sometimes that like defend it. They're like, no, it's
it's gary. You can't build gout houses. You build houses
at last thirty or forty years. And the ship grows
so fast and it needs to be. If it's got
any contact at all with moisture, it starts rotting. It's
not good wood. It's not it's you know, it's there's
no rod resistance. It's like the home you know what
home Depot is. I hope not, but if you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we here we have like Easy or come Center.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these like brandnames. God, if I could just if
I could purge it, if I could purge all the
corporate logos from my head and just never think of
them again, I would. But like, you go to home
Depot and you buy a shitty two by four, and
that's it's like rady out of pine. It probably comes
from Chile or New Zealand or somewhere else. I don't know.
I don't know. I saw this ship in Brazil too,
but it's it requires massive amounts of land that destroys
the soil too. I mean it destroys all the microbial
richness in the soil, and so all you get are
the ectomycro rise that associate with the pine roots. And
it's a fucking tinder box too. Like we went, we
went by somebody's forests that not forest pine plantations where
it's like that is a fucking tinder box waiting to
go up like that.
Speaker 2: Every three or four years or left. We have like
huge forest fires, and they're especially in the in the
pine plantations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the old limbs die and then then you've
just got this dead dry wood during a long dry
summer season, just sitting there and it's just a ladder fire.
And I saw one area where they limb them up
when the trees are closest to the road. But then
you go into the pine plantation and it's thick, and
you know, I had a friend in northern California who
had some land and it was he basically bought land
that was a garbage dump and a pine plantation, but
the pines are native there. It was Pinus ponderosa. And
so the first five years he owned that spot, you know,
we ended up restoring it. We planted a bunch of
native California cypresses is in Sisku County, California, and the
first five years we would have to go up and
limb the pines up to like fifteen feet what is
that five meters and then do burn piles in the
winter to get rid of this fuel. Because I mean,
you saw this. You'd see these forests and you're like,
that is a fucking bomb. That's literally a bomb that's
gonna go off. You're gonna get a windy day. Some
jackass throws a spark, you know, whatever lights a cigarette
forgets to put it out. There's a fire they have,
it doesn't and you get these winds that are so
strong that it's basically blowing. Laterally, it's like turns the
fire into a blowtorch and everything goes up. And so
we did that and we limbed the because once the pine,
once you get the branches up to twenty feet, the
pines are pretty fire resistant if it's a low burning fire.
But below that, man, they just it just is a bomb.
They just ladder fire, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, as I was telling you the worst
fires that we had lately, it's only in the pine plantations.
And also it's very sketchy because the like there's two
or three companies that own most of these land with
the pines, you know, and also Pinochette like gave these
to Israelatives, you know, people that is really close to
that redeem No classic and yeah, sitting from this. And
also a lot of times people also here like fires
that are not normal, like in California, you know, so
ninety point ninety nine point nine of the times is
the same company is putting fire to the plantations to
to collect insurance and stuff like that. You know, it's
really dark.
Speaker 1: Are they national? Are they foreign companies or Chilean companies.
Speaker 2: Or Chilean company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like local people ruining the landscape and not foreigners.
Speaker 3: But it's local, local rich people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure they have fun at the ski resorts.
I'm sure they love some of those, you know, luxury
resorts in the winter, of course, but but yeah, so
so the the pines were So that was episode. It
started off basically planting over degraded wheat fields, but then
it was so I mean, there was such a huge
subsidy for planting pines that eventually they were just like funk,
we just start taking the native forest. It's there's no
use for it anyway. And so that's what they do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some of the for example, the part that
you went to Besit in sang this forest is kind
of protected. You know, you cannot like go and cut
of the trees. You need special permission, you cannot cut everything,
you know. But in other parts of Chile. But par example,
in Chilo, man they're taking everything apart because they they
love these luma.
Speaker 1: Luma.
Speaker 2: No no, it has another I forgot, the the amo
miltus luma and this is a very strong wood. And
also the poliast pipularist over there. The polist tipularist is
a really cool forest that looks like from an enchanted
forest because the trees don't grow like straight. They grow
in forty five degrees, you know, like it's really cool
on the inside, it's like a net of wood, you know.
Then the roots come to the outside and they do
cool curves and all that kind of forest.
Speaker 3: They don't cut with the chain, so they go like
with a like a.
Speaker 2: Heavy machinery to take it, like all the soils, you know,
everything like the roots, the tree. So in the south
they're they're repeating the same thing that happened in the
central region in Chile, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's not protected. I mean, is there is There
are there pieces of it that are protected.
Speaker 2: I mean they're huge pieces that are protected like far
away from where the people live, you know, but where
there is population people, especially like in Chile or in
near Portomont, they're still taking a part of this forest,
you know, Jesus. Yeah, But Chilo also has men. We
have a lot of hectars, protected hectars in the south
of Chile in the Patagonia. But it's like a scam,
you know, because we have huge parks that most of
them don't have people like taking care of them. And
the place where we most need the parks in the
central region, where we have more endangered species or where
they are carriers, are you know, the the there's not
so many protected areas, you know. So Chile is doing
like this camp of doing this the huge national park
that is the same if they are a national park,
of they are not like there's no one living there,
you know. So and actually these parks are full of
salmon farms, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the salmon farm. That's right. You guys have
salmon farms down. Salmon are not native to Chile.
Speaker 2: No, they're not native, and especially Patagonia. I mean it's
full of them, especially and also in the in these
national parks, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's it's crazy. It's not the actual protection.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Amma murders luma that yeah, we saw that.
Where I see that? Where the fuck did I see that?
I forget it was, Oh that was in alert se Costero. Yeah,
mertesi there's so much more most man lamb luma. But
Luma peculata, not to change the subject, but Luma peculata
that's around you too. That's the one that looks it's
got bark like a madrone, which is a member of
the blueberry family that we have up here. But it's
got that smooth bark and makes a really delicious fruit
that's mertasty as well. That that is, I mean, that's
a really common tree. Where does that Where does that start?
What's the range of that.
Speaker 2: It's common and it's very it grows on it very
like it starts on Cokimbo or Valparaiso, I don't remember.
But in the central region you can see it more
like a shrub, you know. But in the south, in
like especially in Chiloe and in Islamocha, you have like
pure luma picolata forests. They're huge, and it's amazing. They're huge,
they're beautiful. It's it's crazy, like it's so different from
other forests that we have here because normally they don't
tend to do pure forest, you know, they do one
one over here, one over there. But I don't know why.
You know, they have a lot of like pure you know.
Speaker 1: It was going back to what you were saying about
about you know, where the word protected land is needed.
I think I mean Central Chile. Yeah, because there's more biodiversity,
it's more endangered, it's more directly there's more of a
direct threat to it from development because that's where the
population is. But also I think just that's where the
population center is, that's where people have more of a
need to be exposed to what the land looked like.
I mean, it's it's so crazy. It's so crazy to me.
I mean, you can spend your entire life in a
place and have no idea what it looked like one
hundred bucking years before, and you the only plants you
see are the invasive garbage that's brought in, that escaped
out of horticulture, that's got no ecological context, that doesn't
have any of the relationships with the insects and animals.
Speaker 2: And it's crazy. There's people that will never know how
the like the nature ecosystem and natural ecosystem is over there. Actually,
I started like my not Alison thing when I because
when I live in Santiago. When I was a kid,
I saw only like the Vattelia cavin you know, like littriacostia,
very open forests.
Speaker 3: So when I was like twenty something, I went.
Speaker 2: To the coastal forest near Santiago, where you have not
a fagus, you have Gunera victoria, you have magayanica, you
have stuff that for me was Southern stuff, you know.
So my brain just exploded and then I understood, but
was for me it was such a like impactful thing
to see, like man, like these places had like really
cool ecosystems before the destruction, you know.
Speaker 1: And where was this?
Speaker 2: In? Alto? The Chicama is the coastal range that you
have to the west of Santiago, you know, I don't
know if if you crossed from Santiago to Valparaiso, you
have to pass some tunnels. You know, there's like a
arrange that has like two thousand meters in height, so
over there you have like the most cool forests near Santiago,
you know, or the most bio diverse.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I was going to ask you, how did
you because your background wasn't in Banni, you didn't go
to school for any of this, how did you how
did you get started paying attention to it and developing
a love for it? Fuck?
Speaker 2: It was a very slow process because right now I'm
thirty nine years old, and through my twenties I didn't know.
Speaker 3: Much about nature. I loved the thing.
Speaker 2: I love to go to to national parks for some reason,
and like in two thousand and sixteen, more or less,
I came across these birds bird Chilean birds guide. So
when I saw that, my head, my head exploded, you know,
like I was like a fuck, there is like guides
for Chilean things. And then I mean, it was two
things to see this guide and to look at this
forest that I was telling you about, the Chica forest.
And then my head exploded and I started taking courses
of wild edible plants.
Speaker 3: And I was telling you before.
Speaker 2: I started with that, you know, I started like learning
a lot about wild edible plants foraging, and I started
making courses, you know, like teaching people about this. Yeah. Yeah,
but it was I don't know. That project is almost
dead right now because for so many reasons. I mean,
the coolest edible plants here are endangered. You know, like
for example, got that fruit is edible. It's awesome. Like
the pujas also are edible, but are very endangered. The
Jubai culensis you can need the like the thing that
is inside how did you call the heart.
Speaker 1: The seed or inside the state the heart? Yeah, the
embryo inside the leaves. Oh okay, yeah yeah, yeah, okay,
so the heart of the pond, like the inside that
where the new leaves are like that, you're basically eating
the appicle maristime. You can eat that from jubea, but
it kills the plant, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So there was so much cool stuff that
you cannot do that I was like tiny hands. And
also the the cooks and the chefs, like they don't
care about the ecosystem or to know about the story
of the planet. They just see an ingredient and they
tell you, Okay, I want tenklos of this. So it's
so very not sustainable that I was like, I don't know,
it was like mind bending or mind sucking and how
to say it. So I just left that, you know,
and I and I think, like, what can I do
to preserve nature, you know, not to use it? And
so that's why I started doing this guy and like
more teaching about the native flora than their uses, you know.
Speaker 1: So you went, you went from like an anthropocentric view,
which is I think how a lot of people get
into it. Like for me, my anthropocentric view was I
just want to plant trees that will destroy, you know,
the uh. I want to plant these large trees and
cities that will destroy, that will vandalize these you know
places basically like fuck up the sidewalk or whatever you know,
that will get big and uh cool. And I think
it was like a relation. Maybe it was a relationship
to graffiti when I was younger. So I don't know,
I don't know. I just wanted to and that's why you.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you, like, why did you get
obsessed with the Fitzroya.
Speaker 1: Well, because they were related to redwoods. Somebody told me
about Fitzroya. And you know, there's these trees that grow
in South America that are really old and evolved in
the Jurassic and there's fossils of them, you know, from
the other side of the world, from Tasmania. There's a
you know, there's a Fitzroya from Tasmania that's you know,
the cones. That's like clearly, it's clearly related to allersays.
And I was, you know, and I would think about
these distant places in these forests, and it always felt
good to be in those places, you know, versus being
in like a shopping mall. There's like a very for me.
There's a connection between the things I hate and using
the things I love as an antidote to them, because
I grew up really angry and hating a lot of
what I saw around me, which I think is good.
I think if you don't have I think if you
don't have that, you're not awake yet, You're not fucking
paying attention, you know, because the world that humans have created,
especially in this century, this consumer world. And again that's
why the billboards are like so jarring to me. It's
like it's so disgusting. There's so much more there than
just this you know, piece of metal and board that's
got an image on it, Like there's it says so
much more to me. It's like it's so much more
fucking repugnant and disgusting to me. And so but anyway,
I got into I got into redwoods when someone told
me what they were. I'd been around them for five years.
I just wasn't paying attention. And then and then it
was the same thing. I started to just pay attention
to more stuff and read about more stuff, and then
learning about taxonomy and this is related to this, And
slowly I started zooming out more and looking at other
plant groups and it was really fascinating. I just you know,
the more you learn, the more you're like, holy shit,
there's some really fascinating stuff here. And so that's what
I did, and that's how I ended up kind of
getting going down this wormhole that I'm like now perpetually
stuck in. And I think it's you know, for edible plants.
It's the same for a lot of people too. They're like,
I'm really into like foraging, going out there, you know,
I'm going out there starting off with this like just
the primal urge to eat something, to put some shit
in my mouth, see what I could eat whatever, And
then it kind of branches off into this other stuff
or herbalism, medicinal people get into like medicinal plants, what
can I use to make a potion? Whatever? And I'm
not knocking it, but but you know, and then they
kind of zoom out and they're like, wow, there's a
lot more here than I thought. This is pretty cool,
you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just one element of the whole picture. And yeah,
I mean when I started, I also like for me,
I even if I didn't get it at first, for me,
going to the forest is like a huge medicine, you know,
Like I was because when I live in Santiago, like
this life was so stressful that just going to the
forest was like a like clear your mind and you
feel so much better, like being alone, like listening to
the birds to always discovers some new thing, you know,
or the climate every day is different. So man, I
think it's such a great medicine, even if you don't know,
like which plants are you seeing or whatever, like, man,
just go to the to the end. Luckily in Santiago
we have the hills, you know, and you can just
go up a hill and you will get away from
it all and you can see it from far, like
two different, completely different worlds.
Speaker 3: I think it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and I feel bad for flat places, like
you were telling me, like you know how you o,
because I think if Tila was flat, we wouldn't have
any nature whatsoever, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the terrain protects everything. The terrain protects anything otherwise,
the ecosystem. Otherwise the death cult would have taken everything,
because it's it does behave like a tumor. It takes everything.
It's it just keeps growing.
Speaker 2: So it's a sanctuary for plants and for people or
so like you can go there and feel amazing, like
for free.
Speaker 1: But the more people you have that are turned out
of this shit, the more protection it affords it, because
then people start valuing it and there's an inherent value
for it, and they decide they don't want to let
the developers and the you know, the greedy companies and
all these people that have no clue what they're missing,
that are so thoroughly disconnected that you know, the people
that value this stuff are then you know, don't want
to let them take everything. But if you're in a
place where you have no idea what's out there, you
see a lot being developed or sign go up, you know,
telling you that, oh there's going to be you know,
five hundred town homes here or a shopping center, and
you're like, well, I don't care whatever, it doesn't affect me.
You know, I got video games and a job that
I have to go to and uh, you know, I
come home and watch Netflix and disconnect and what do
I care? Like that's my world, has nothing to do
with that. But when you value it, it's like that's
my ship. Man, what are you doing. You're taking you're
robbing me to put up like this garbage that is hideous,
you know, and that is just going to make you.
Speaker 2: Here in Tilla now, one of the biggest problems we
have is like they're selling a lot of natural landscapes
two people as something ecological, you know, say go and
live here in the forest, like, but they're like disgregating
so much land. Actually a lot of the boat.
Speaker 3: And East and specialists. This is like the most.
Speaker 2: I mean the the the actual worst danger that we
have in nature that there's so much of it is
being like turned into like developing but masquerade as ecological thing.
You know. I don't know if you have that over
there also.
Speaker 1: Where it's like, you know, come live in your dream
home in the in the forest or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and they sell it like we're protecting this,
but actually they're they're the strain it. And they also
starting use to use the mountains, like the very high
high mountains that we saw in San Fabiano. They're being
sold to people, you know, like even though it's very
steep and all. They will do a road, you know,
they will do some houses. But these people are selling
it as as preservation, you know. And this is a
big year it's happening.
Speaker 1: So it's so twisted, it's so cynical. Man.
Speaker 2: Well, actually in San Fayandco, we we have an on
g and we met up with the corporate bustards man
and then they they didn't know nothing about the place,
you know, like and and their web page they're putting
pictures of the species that grow in North America birds
that are from Africa.
Speaker 1: Man, it's crazy, classy, classy, fucking fuck.
Speaker 2: They just see that that's a business for them. It's
just a business opportunity, but they sell it us something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're tainted. They're tainted with the Yeah that's that's
so gross. Oh cup living your your dream forest and
we don't know anything about it. Yeah, it's just that,
it's that mentality, it's the disconnected. They need to be
dosed either with with LSD or with like having to
go live in these places and learn the plants.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's what I would do if I had like a
boot camp, I could force people to go take some
of these fucking business assholes on a school bus and
and make them go to a camp where it's like,
you're forced to fucking learn the plants. I'm gonna drag
your ass up these hills. You know, we'll go on
how you're gonna learn all shit, You're gonna whatever. And
if you don't, you get bat you get beaten. You
just you know, you get lashes, like a forced bootcap
punishment a prison camp where you're forced to learn botany
and hike. And it's only it's reserved specifically for businessmen.
Speaker 2: That's a really great idea, that's.
Speaker 1: What you need. Yeah, okay, well let's talk about plans.
So well, well, actually, first off, I want to get
to the when you left Santiago and then we'll talk
about plans. So you were living in Santiago and it
just felt like hell, and then you kind of already
were turned onto this and then that's when you.
Speaker 2: I mean, santiagois it's not such a word city, but
it depends a lot, like where you live and where
you work, you know, because people live in like cool
places and they go to buy through work and they
go to the coffee shop, and I think that life
is kind of cool, you know. But there's also people
that live like two hours away from their work, you know,
and that's when life turns hell. And that life for
me was kind of like that, you know. So after
first my job as a designer was it was killing
me on the inside.
Speaker 3: I was working for big companies, you know, doing.
Speaker 2: Work for corporate assholes that treated us like shit, you know,
so slowly I was thinking like, how can I leave
this work and work in the forest, you know, like
work in a natural environment. So that's why I started
learning about these edible plants to to make a living
out of it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Santiago is actually by American
city standards, like we can Americans do cities worst in Santiago.
Santiago wasn't that bad a lack of billboards alone. But
what did drive me nuts there was the car dependency.
It's like, it's so fucking polluted. Man, in Mexico City
is like that too. It's like so polluted, and everybody's
trying to drive and it's like, man, you live in
a fucking dope city. Like you can walk. You evolved
to walk, you got two legs, Like there's no reason
you need to drive everywhere. It's inane, Like you can walk. Yeah,
you know, Like that's that's the one of the best
things about cities like that that are older is that
you can walk around and and see things and it's
nice and you get exercise and to get to like actually,
you know, burn calories or get you know, spend energy.
You don't need to go to a gym and breathe
a off gassing plastic can listen to shitty techno and
hear the grunts of some meathead dropping it. You know,
weights every fucking you know, thirty seconds. You ever been
to a gym, So I try to avoid them now,
but I usually, oh god, it's so depressed.
Speaker 2: And exercise in the in the hill. Yeah. I think
Santiago is that you have a mix, you know, like
like little spots where it's cool, but most of this,
most of it, I think it's hell because we're getting
I mean we're American. I think you know, we're having
each time more cars, each time, more highways.
Speaker 3: And the thing that you said about pollution, it's big.
Speaker 2: You know, in Chile we have like most of the
most polluted cities in America because they're we're in a hole,
you know, like there's nowhere for.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, it's like the mountains are like a wall.
You're just it's like you're just poisoning yourself.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw it, but when you
you reach Santiago in by car from far you can
see like the mushroom clouds of smug you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was also a big reason for me to live
because I have like some respiratory issues, so that that
thing was killing me.
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, you're just smelling car you're just smelling like
exhaust the whole time. It's like sitting in a It's
like sitting in a garage and just running the car.
You know. It's like, which is how people kill themselves
sometimes too here. You know, I don't know if when
the last time I heard someone in the US commit
suicide with the old hose in the exhaust pipe. I
don't know, it's been a while, but that used to
be a popular way to check out, you know, in
the eighties and nineties, and it worked. It worked. I mean,
that's that parking smell. But anyway, so you go ahead.
Speaker 2: I think the crazy thing is that you get used
to it. Like right now I'm in my Alcore, like
where my girlfriend lives. That it's near Santiago. So yesterday
I was in the bus station. There was like fifty
buses with the engines on. And now that I'm used
to live in the forest, man, my brain was like melting,
you know. And I saw people around and they make
their lives like they think that it's normal. But you
can see their eye twitching. You know, it's not good.
Speaker 1: It's really it's really bad. I mean that ship is
really that's poison. You're breathing in poison air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the stressed.
Speaker 1: So tell me, but now you live in a really
nice area, and so let's talk about some of the plants.
They're like, you know, it's cool to see I really
wanted to see what it was underwhelming when I saw
it was Bokila trifolia, of the plant that's gotten so much,
so much press for being able to mimic other plants,
but we did not see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually I'm in my project of digitalizing leads.
I'm also every bokilla that I see growing on a
specific tree, I'm digitalizing it so I can so maybe
I can see a pattern. But like you, every time
I see a I don't see it. Like especially like
mimicking the plant where it's growing on the leaves are
some like it changes a lot from plant to plants,
but for me, it's not evident that the plant does this.
Speaker 1: You know, large dieselbilasi order with an alas yeah, and
large lard lard disabella. Yeah. What was any other genus
was lard disabella in there? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one didn't copy the other plants.
Speaker 1: And they just got these tiny you know, like almost
as flowers, small flowers but uh, but it was still
cool to see. It was like, okay, well this is it.
And also nah, you know, but you know, not to
be not to be you know, not to be rude
to the plant or anything. I still appreciate it as
part of a living system. But but drymus winter I
you guys, there's all these Magnolias. You guys got all
these magnoliads down there, the four Magnoliad orders Canalalies, pipe Ales,
magnolia alis, and Loreles. Although like more basil angiosperms, and
it was cool to see. I mean these weird family
like monimiac I don't really I don't you know what
that's a that's a family we don't get that much
in North America. Athosperma tacy which I think was at
Loureliopsis or Lourelia I forget which one. But that's a
family that I saw in Tasmania. I mean all these
Southern hemisphere Magnoliad lineages, which also have members on the
other side of the globe in New Zealand or Tasmania.
Was really cool to see all those.
Speaker 2: I think it's for for us to see other people
like getting a kick out of our forest. It's I
mean for us that's the normal thing, you know.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 3: So it's very cool to see.
Speaker 2: You and Matt and when Nolan and Mia came that
you have like you have like a more world flora view,
you know. So I also wanted to ask you, like,
what do you think is so special about the Chilian flora, like,
because I know you guys like.
Speaker 3: The conifferst because here are.
Speaker 2: Like rare, you know, over there they're like the norm,
but here all the conifers are like kind of rare.
And also the violas Nolan was also crazy about, I
mean something about viola's the form that you like or.
Speaker 1: Well it's well with the alpine stuff. It's not just
the violas that do that rosolate rosette form. It's so much.
I mean, there's so many different families. You know, it's
a convergent trait. It's a convergent evolution among high alpine environments.
You know, you're staying out of the wind, You're staying
closer to the ground where it's warm where because it
gets chilly up there obviously, and you're also conserving moisture.
You're preventing the wind flow from getting in between those
leaves and the axis of the plant. You're basically like
becoming a little helmet, you know. But what the lower
elevation forest though, that I think is cool. You know
when you see like Lourelia sempervenance, which is at therospermatas,
or any of these weird magnolia lineages, or fuck the Lomosia,
I mean that is that's proteace. That's the other Lomosia.
The other Lomeosia grows in the other Lomesias grow in
Tasmania and Australia. I mean, these are these are plants
that have this innate connection to deep time and that
we're the whole time. I'm down there, I was like, man,
this ship was growing on Antarctica forty million years ago.
This is what was growing, like, there was a lursa
growing on Antarctica. Maybe the fossils haven't been found yet,
but it was there. It's on the know, there's fossils.
In Tasmania, there's fossils, I mean, and that's that's what
it feels like in parts of like western Tasmania. I
remember being on this like quartzitic white sand in Tasmania
on this mountain, you know, it's only like a thousand,
two thousand feet not even a thousand meters tall, and
being like man, this feels like fucking this is some
wild shit, like this is what and it was all
gray and and you're like, this is what Antarctica was
probably like during the Eocene. This is the same stuff,
The same lineage is the same. You know, they've got
Lagaro Struggles Franklinia over there, which is yeah, not though Vegas. Yeah,
same thing. I mean, there's like so many lineages that
are in Tasmania, dozens dozens of lineages that are in
Tasmania and also in South America and Chile and and
don't grow anywhere else. And it was it's so cool.
I mean, it's did you have there was a movie
that came out where they filmed it in uh? I
think it was in Patagonia. I forget it was Prometheus.
It was like part of the sci fi alien movies,
you know, like the you know that hr Giger.
Speaker 3: I didn't know they here. I saw it, like the Alien.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's parts where I mean you could see
Alersay trees in the fucking yeah, where was it? Where
was you can see Alersay trees and that, and then
you know it's all gray and it looks like a
temperate rainforest. The yeah, it's it's wild, man.
Speaker 3: But forest is like a forest. That was it is
like past in time.
Speaker 1: Oh you know what, I'm wrong, I'm sorry, it's it
was filmed in Iceland, Scotland, England, Jordan, in Spain. What
the fuck do I know? But there were I feel
like there was a scene though where there was fucking
huge allerses. I don't know either way, but it's got
that I mean still high latitude. It's just the other
side of the globe, but these high latitude environments and
I think, you know, for me, that was the coolest
part being at Chile was seeing these these plants that
I know, you know, I've seen on the other side
of the world, and that they are relictive when all
those continents were together fifty million years ago, you know,
because count the tectonic plates move at the rate that
your fingernails grow. And it's like, man, this is I
mean to think that like Antarctica had forests on it once.
It's crazy. It's so nuts, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think not many people know this the specific data.
So I also think it's very interesting and they're always
finding like not the fact with fu yeah.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and the reason that it that it froze
over was basically once the contents moved far enough away
the ocean currents around it, you know, because oceans are
like the heat transport mechanisms. You get a warm ocean
current that's going to change the climate on the continent.
Once it was cut off from those warm ocean currents,
then then it fully froze over, and then we just
entered the glaciation in general, global cooling in general. But uh,
you know, play tectonics are part of the reason why
Antarctica froze over, and they're also the reason why there's
these disparate you know, these disjunctions, you know, southern Chile
and Tasmania and New Zealand and eastern southeastern Australia. So cool,
so cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, I've read I've read many papers on the notaphous
and they say they enough houls developed on Antarctica and
it started irradiating like through the centuries to Chile.
Speaker 3: Well, first like the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2: Ones were the biggest leaves were the one to come first.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And lastly, like the Dombeyi and these ones they need
more cold or I don't know, Antarctica.
Speaker 1: What was that? Because you love the the not of Vegas,
which is fucking I mean that's huge. How many species
not of Vegas you got down there where I live? Well,
where you living? Then further south, like what did you
see on chilaway? What are some of the dominants?
Speaker 2: The Yeah, Chile, the dominant is not a fab but
over if you go south, the biodiversity starts getting less,
you know, like where we were in San Faandlico and
especially the Maule region is the hot spot for biodiversities.
Speaker 3: In Maula they have eight species.
Speaker 1: What was to me so like around you because I
remember you were you were we were walking with you, man,
you were listening. You were like popping off not a
Vegas species like nothing like that's not a Vegas blah
blah blah, that's not a Vegas in this And I
was like, holy shit, I can't keep up. And these
these are like massively important trees. I mean they're scaffolding
for a host of microorganisms in the soil. They associate
with that Sitaria fungus, which is that cool edible you
know orange fungus, which is that doesn't come out till winter, right.
Speaker 3: No citarias come out in spring.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, and they formed alls.
Speaker 3: I think you saw one hard one with matt in
the ground.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah. Yeah, but I mean I first saw them
in Tasmania and then in New Zealand. They're everywhere. I mean,
you can you know. They're edible. They kind of taste
like mildly like apricots, but better than that, the kind
of flavors.
Speaker 2: Not that facus is so important in Chile because they
like dominate like fifty percent of all the forests, you know,
and you have different they dominate, each specieses dominant, and
some of them in Patagonia.
Speaker 3: Are like pure forests. So yeah, it's really important.
Speaker 2: And also the thing you were telling about the mushrooms,
like some of the coolest for example, edible mushrooms are
associated with nota fouls Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they're i mean, they're related to oaks or
in the order for gaillies.
Speaker 2: But we saw in the Spanish the word for like
not a fhaus obliqua it's oak, you know, like the
Spaniards saw it and they said, oh, this is like
the biggest and most dominant tree. It's an oak, you know.
Speaker 1: What is it Robla or encino or what? Yeah, yeah,
there are We saw a dambie. I I mean, I'm
pretty sure it was a dambia. The leaves were like
one hundred feet above the ground, you know, thirty meters
of the ground. But it was fucking massive in Conillo.
And then there was Alpina and Pumilio. Pumilio is one
of my favorites. Antarctica and nited A.
Speaker 2: What was that they leave?
Speaker 3: It's beautiful. It's like a little cloud.
Speaker 1: You get you get the dambie around you, right, But
that's like the Northern Enche, northern edge of the range.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember.
Speaker 2: The biggest trees we saw in San Fabian are actually
DOMBEYI is the biggest tree we have in Chile after
the Yeah, man, it grows huge. Actually, in Congill it's
full of like really huge dombeys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we saw one. It was so it
was so cool to see. I was like, man, how
the fuck how old is this? How fast did they grow?
Are they like medium? Right? Not very fast? Not very slower?
Speaker 2: Yeah, media, Actually at first they grow relatively fast and
they start pacing. But some of these trees are six hundred,
seven hundred years old. So cool to see them and
think that they have seen all the story of Chile
and they've been saved, you know, because here there's such
a long history of the forestation and selling.
Speaker 3: Wood to all the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to see a big one, it's like, man, this
God's saved.
Speaker 1: You know. Did you say they can live? How old?
Fifteen hundred no?
Speaker 2: No? No? Seven seven zero zero? I think seven yeah, yeah,
a little bit less than one thousand.
Speaker 1: Years can reach Yeah, okay, yeah, that makes because they.
Speaker 2: Start they just at some point they always grow by
the water, the die off or they fall.
Speaker 1: I don't know the SKA I want to. I'm trying
to get someone about on the podcast talking about Chisca
that that was seeing that down there as wild because
it's so dominant the further south you go. I mean
like in Congeo, it's like the whole understory. I don't
know if it was just keay aquila or uh cool
you or how how you pronounced that, but I mean,
you know it's just sk is one of those genero
like oh it's a scale which species, I don't know,
it's scae just it's just your scale what it's like.
But there's still I.
Speaker 3: Mean the big one, the Kullo.
Speaker 2: That one you can tell because it's the thickest one,
you know, Yeah, that one is easy to to know,
but all the small ones.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Actually there's a paper and argentinan guy that made are
a woman or no.
Speaker 3: They made the taxonomy and they are confused.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: They need more studies to know when which piecies which.
Actually in Chile here it's difficult because they they flower
like its ten years, fifteen years, so you see the
too sky flowers. It's hard, you know.
Speaker 1: I didn't see any flower match that you sawone with
a with an inflorescence sound, and I didn't see any.
My friend Nico sent me the key to the genus
and I was like, yeah, I don't. It's like the keys.
It's you know, right, like the characters may or may
not be present when you're viewing, you know, when you're
seeing this thing.
Speaker 2: But ecologically, to sky is very interesting because when there's
a fire, to sky is like the first one to appear,
you know, and it could last some years, like a
whole section of a hill can be covered and to
ska until the soil is healed to get the trees again.
You know, it's h And also they they they flower
all at the same time, like one species in one vallet.
It will flower all at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's that's wild.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 3: You know, they die off all at the same time.
Speaker 2: So it's crazy to see that the landscapes changed a lot,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and how do they signal to each other? You know,
what what queues are they really like that that triggers
every individual to flower at the same time. But there
are pioneer species basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're pioneers. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There were some cool spots we saw, well, I forget
where it was we were. It was a higher elevation spot.
We were at like seven thousand feet and there was
just sca up there forming but it was forming these
little patches. And then it was surrounded by Dyscaria, which
is uh, what is that ramnacy?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, very pointy spiny planets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of ramnassy up there. But but god,
it was it was wild to see it. I was like, man,
this is like an alpine bamboo. This is that's forming
these little colonies on like what is an otherwise kind
of barren slope near these geothermal areas, near this hot spring.
Speaker 2: It was in Tasmania and those places you don't get
to scap.
Speaker 1: Uh no, no, there's you get that. In Tasmania you
get a dominant One of the most dominant species is
a sedge called uh oh god, spherrocephale. It's it's cyperasi.
It's forget the name. I'd have to look it up,
but but it's everywhere, and it's it's called like button
sedge or something. I forget the I forget the name,
but uh but it's everywhere and it forms these peat
It's got really thick roots. And if the roots form
like this peat like material, let me see what was it? Yeah, Jim, no,
sheenas spirocephale. This is like the dominant gramminoid in Tasmania.
Speaker 2: So this was something you haven't seen before in other
places uses the space.
Speaker 1: No, I mean I've seen SKA. I've encountered it in
Brazil it like, you know, more music montane environments, but
I've never.
Speaker 3: Or other or other bamboo species.
Speaker 2: That's my question, Like you see like other species behaving
this way or do you think it's like kind of
unique to these places.
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about bamboos. There's a name we
get to ruinin area Gigantia, which is a bamboo in
in uh North America. But but I think that's it.
I think that's the only one. They call it giant kane.
It's like it's very it's common among like like on rivers.
It's like more of like a riparian plant. But yeah,
there's a couple other run also here.
Speaker 2: To I mean here culturally to ski is also so important.
We were talking about this in is such a good
construction material.
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, it's I mean, it's the fuck. I
bet they were, like, I bet some species were used
as zeros. I mean obviously back in the day.
Speaker 2: No, no, I hear it was a spear, you know,
the use of spears and yeah, a lot of Spaniards
heads were put on these two gas and and show
it around the villages, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what was the The Mapuche were the dominant
tribe down there right in like south of something.
Speaker 2: There's like nowadays they like get all together and say Mapuche.
In the old days, there was like the Waches and
in the north, and Mapuchas were more like in the south,
especially in the Aracania region.
Speaker 3: And actually they have like the record.
Speaker 2: Of hanging on to the colonization, for they weren't weren't
like totally colonized until like two thousands, I mean two hundred,
two hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: They stayed in Araucania and it was their place, you know,
until Chile appeared. And then the Chileans entered with great
force and horrible ways. But they hanged very long because
they were five sty people, you know, they and they
wanted to defend their land.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The Arabcarias were very important to them, especially because they
ate you know, the pinions, the seed. So yeah, I mean,
but nowadays in south central Chilla, like the Maputas are
seen like the most important culture and they they're still
hanging on, you know, but they're also like they were
left with the worst spots, you know, like the nicest
places are now like Pertavarda's places like this, you know,
like near the lagoons like which people live, but they
were like taking them out of the nice places step
by step. Now a lot of them live like near
the plantations, you know, in awful places.
Speaker 1: We went to the museum, that pre Columbian museum in Santiago.
That was pretty dop. There was some cool shitting there.
That's a good one where there. Do you know where
their era carriers in the in the valley between naw
A Buddha and Congio.
Speaker 2: I think I searched this, but I think, I mean,
I think not in the central valley. But Akaria did
grow a lot, because you see Aurcaria now and you say, oh,
this is a high attitude three, you know, but it
grows some one hundred meters lower, you know. But I
don't think it reached the central valley, you know. But
nowadays it's like it's it's uh, it's what's left, you know. Yeah,
because it's crazy. All the Aracaia trees you see, they're
really old. So it it's crazy to see so much
old growth forest inca like all around you in those
highest places.
Speaker 1: Massive they were saved and covered in that that usnia.
That liking is like, that's like the cherry on top
of the sunday Man. That's the most incredible. It makes everything.
Speaker 2: It's like creepy, but in a good way.
Speaker 1: I love it. Oh, it's psychedelic. It makes the whole
like landscape in front of you just look wild.
Speaker 2: Just moved with the wind. Yeah, it's so beautiful enough
for us, I mean until it is so like iconic,
you know, like it's like one of the most iconic
trees and it's part of the culture nowadays, like people,
I love it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was fire adapted too. Supposedly it's
fire adapted. It's got that thick bark. Yeah, yeah, I
mean that's what it's what niko It said, there's like
a history of fire. I thought that thick bark was
more of a you know for cold, but I guess
there's history of fire. But the bark, those plates and
they look like the plastrons on the shell of a
tortoise or something. Those plates on the bark.
Speaker 3: Look like it's like a complete dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean some of them are like some are
like ten centimeters thick. It's so it's crazy, man, It's
it's a really thick bark.
Speaker 2: But you went to Gongiyo, you saw the like the
really huge one yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a millenario yeah. And there's one in uh now
a Buddha. Two. There's a couple of really huge ones
in now a Buddha that are just I mean, you
can't like it's one of those places you go to
and if you're if you're not a jadrul, you stand
at the base of thing. You just stare at it
for like ten minutes. You're like, man, what the fuck?
What is what is this living thing in front of me?
This is insane. This is a fucking dinosaur. This tree
is a dinosaur.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've heard a lot of stories of Chilean
people when they go abroad and they are taken to forests,
they say, what this is it? Expecting so much more?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, the Allerses, I mean you lived on Chilaway.
The Alersas are mostly gone on ChIL Away. Huh yeah.
Speaker 2: You there. To get to them, you have to put
boots and walk some days in the mud. It's great.
I didn't win there. You know. I go with the
guide because it's so easy to get lost. There's no
real trails, you know, you have to go like opening
the forest, but you can from the highway in the
lowlands you can see and the altitude, you can see
all the alert trunks that were burned, you know, because
before when they wanted to cut a forest first, they
burned it.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, you saw me and they saw me.
That thing about the Germans, right, that was it was
German and it was it was that what it was
German immigrants burning a lursay for because you when we
were some smart I mean.
Speaker 2: That was two things, like the government started to bring
Germans but also the government itself to open the land.
They were Yeah, I guess some Germans also did this.
They were just burning it, you know, because at that
time that saw it, they saw it as something infinite,
kind of infinite would so they just burned that. They
didn't see any purpose to leave the forest besides doing cattling,
you know, and some agriculture. So these fires, some of
them lasted for months.
Speaker 1: You know. I didn't mean to single out the Germans.
That was you know, that was unfair of me. They
get it a lot. You know, a lot of people
have no problems sometimes with the Germans, but I don't.
I just want to put that out there. But the uh,
the because you said you sent me those foot I
still didn't look at them yet because I was in
the middle of doing all this shit and running around.
But it was about the fires that were set because
I remember we were at we were at a lerce
costero and we were on a hillside and there was
pilgeriodendron growing there too, not a hillside like the top
of a hill that was really boggy. It was really
bizarre beautiful. There was pinguicula there, there was pilgerodendron and
a lers growing together. The pilgerodendron didn't get taller than
like two meters. And then we were in another spot
where it was a bog where the pilgerodendron was like
forty feet tall, you know, like twelve fifteen meters. It
was large, but it was growing in a depression like
in a bog you could tell it stayed wet. But
in this boggy hilltop it wasn't getting that tall. But
the alerse got kind of tall, and then you would
look out across this valley and there was just tons
of dead gray lers, trunks.
Speaker 2: Most probably most probably were the fires.
Speaker 1: That's grist. So I'm so confused about the ecology of
the Alertsa ecosystem because alersa are not shade talerant like
redwoods are, but they need a lot of water at
the same time, so they're growing in like like really
boggy areas where it's wet, but it's nutrient poorest so
they don't get smothered and shaded out or what. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually in Til I heard a lot of stories that
the the Alersas grow on the lowlands on the on
the spacnum. I don't know how you call it the
moss yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you call the bug.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, phagnum yeah, like sphagnum.
Speaker 3: They grow on the box before like the squishes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And and you're right, like if the two skak
covers the forest, the alersay is not able to grow,
you know. Yeah, it's they need some sunlight.
Speaker 1: It was. It's a really peculiar and cool habitat. And
then Alersa and Dino. Uh what is that like? Because
we went we just went to like the main tree.
They had the lake off access. You couldn't get to
the top, but you could see a bunch of Alersas
on the ridge. There's have you been there? There's more
there's older ones up top right.
Speaker 2: No, I've been to other parks that have a lot.
I have to Pumlin that it's a little bit south.
It's I don't know if you know the owner from
Patagonia made a lot of parks in southern Chile.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I've seen that. I've seen the documentary
on that guy a while ago. Yeah, there's so you
but what is it like further south? I mean, is
there like are there still big ass old alers trees
and where there's like a number of them, like not
just one because in a coster you walk.
Speaker 2: You can see them by the highway and in this park,
you are in the highway, you stopped and you you
walk like five minutes and you can see big alerses.
But they say that the most old alertas are like
maybe they don't know where they are yet because they
the log was so heavy that they are like in ravines,
you know, like very far. You have to walk a
lot of days to get to the really old alerts,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, do you think there's
areas where you could I mean like remote areas where
they weren't able to get in and log where there's
still like a forest of really large two or three
or four meter diameter trees.
Speaker 2: What we were talking before, like the mountains saved some
of this ecosystem and some of the biggest trees you
can see anchilla. They're like in places that you know,
it was hard for them to get caught, or they
were not like tubular perfect trees. There were more deformed.
So some of the deformed trees they left it there,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, where it's just so steep, it's so rugged
and steep and steep places.
Speaker 2: It's also must be really difficult to get to one
of these to discover new big trees. You know. But
I think if in California they discover these hyperion three
three here, we must have a lot of big annessas
that haven't been discovered yet.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure when you look at a map of
southern Chile and you see how much is carved up
with all those fjords and and and estuaries, and you know,
I mean to get like, once you go south of
Puerto Mont you gotta take what like five different ferries
to get to the very end of the the road, which.
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually yeah something like that.
Speaker 1: Where where is where is that highway end? Where is that?
I got to look at a map. Somebody sent me
photos of some really wild ass plants from the Andes
Way further south of Puerto Mound. Where does that road end,
you know.
Speaker 2: Fuck, I don't know specifically, but then you have to
cross to Argentina at some point, you know, no ship
really yeah, yeah, Chile is not connected through a highway.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of places that, I mean, at some
point you have to to cross to Argentina and then
you can cross again to Chile. But is especially in
this part full of fjords, that it's really really hard
to make a highway and and there's no people there,
so there's also no not much reason to do it.
Speaker 1: You know that it's the fucking end of the world
down there, man, it really is. It's where there's sidewalk,
so fucking cool where yeah, yeah, it's all ferries. Man,
you need ferries to get every wow geezeh.
Speaker 2: I mean you live for tomato and you have to
take a ferry right away, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you go south of Alers Andino National Park
and then there's like a small stretch of what is
that the highway Route seven, Highway seven, and then you got.
Speaker 3: To get the highway.
Speaker 1: Highway is a Cardadero whate okay, yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 3: This part also it's like a jungle.
Speaker 2: You know, if you want to walk where there's no path, man,
it's crazy. You will get lost so easily. You have
to go with a machete. It's especially in the Sus
it's impossible to gross so and I think it's a
good thing. It's helping to prefer more these places, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then there's alpine areas like volcan what is it?
Chai tan? Chai tan? Yeah, how do you pronounce it?
You know what? You know what it is? That volcano?
I'm looking at a satellite.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a big pink over.
Speaker 2: There, the Cordillera. It's a lot. It's not so high,
you know, it's.
Speaker 1: It's a big pink volcano of andesite surrounded by temperate rainforest.
It looks incredible. Jesus, Yeah, I see where over there,
I see where that guy real or preserved all those parks. Yeah,
and you could see everything's just been carved up by glaciers.
Holy ship, there's all these cirques and valleys and Jesus man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, over there you can see the actually the over
there was like the the frontier of the last ice Age.
For example, the half of Chiloe was with ice and
the other half was not, you know. Yeah, and this
and these big lakes also format when the glaciers retreated, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Jesus, Oh my god, man, oh Higgins. Yeah, that's
what it was via oh Higgins. Have you been down
that far before?
Speaker 2: No? I haven't been so far away yet.
Speaker 1: Via oh Higgins. Their parquet Cerro Santiago, It's wow, Jesus man,
that's insane.
Speaker 2: Say over there they have like the the most awesome
lass landscapes. But for me also it's like one part
of the crazy capitalism that we have here. So for us,
it's so expensive to go to the south, you know,
rent the prices for us are crazy, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure everything is just price gouched probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, And for me, I have a
little bit of rage because of that, so I don't
move so far. For example, last year I went, I did.
I did a research and said, man, it's cheaper. I mean,
it's the same price to go to Brazil, to go
to Patagonia, you know, So I said, okay, I'll meet
a new landscape in Brazil. Yeah, but yeah, it's so
fucking expensive for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If I yeah, I think the thing, if I
was going to do it, I get like a van
that could sleep in and then just stock up like
a prepper and cans of fucking you know, just like
have on my own food, so I could just I
was entirely self contained, and I was only getting rabbed
for gas and the occasional hotel the wash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but also Chilas it's so fucking huge, that means
so long. You know, for us, it's okay, it's normal.
I mean you've come from the US that it's even bigger,
you know. But the distances are also crazy, you know. Yeah,
go to to some places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, character Australa. I'm looking at that right now. That
is like that's the end of the world. Jesus, there's
probably are.
Speaker 2: And also and also I don't think there's a there
as it's only in the Los Lagos region, like Chilo.
It's like the final part of that latitude is like
the end of.
Speaker 1: There's pill Gero Dendron down there, though I know Piller
Dendron was way south Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and oil Oilar arguments is that the biodiversity starts
going down over the like the lichens and the most
go crazy, but the bus plants starts the biodiversity.
Speaker 1: So if you get like the biggest nerds, they'd be
having a blast down there. But anyone else who's into
a little yeah yeah, allers is the last observations on
I net are down by check ten. Yeah yeah, all right,
well uh okay, But going back to the forest, like
around you like plants like ex Toxicon punctatum. That was
a weird one. I thought was really cool to see
Citronella mukaranada. You said, Citronella mucranada is kind of endangered.
Why is that?
Speaker 3: Because they're so scars.
Speaker 2: You know, you do see one over here, one over there,
but you don't see patches of Cinderella karnata. You know,
there's so each population. It's very few in DVDs, and
it's always separated from the other population, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cardiac Terra deacy is the family. That's a fucking
weird one. Aquafoli, which is the that's the aquafolia, So
that's like the that's like the namesake order of Yuruba
mate ilex. The hollies are in family Aquafolia ce.
Speaker 3: Oh really, I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember I told you the
story that at some point the Chilean governors wanted to
stop importing from Argentina and start drinking. Now I understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder, I bet it's got caffeine. Does it
have caffeine? Let me look that up. But that's a
that was a taste.
Speaker 2: It sucks.
Speaker 1: Really, what does it taste like?
Speaker 3: Like some random plants?
Speaker 1: You know, like just like you're like eating leaves, You're
just like yeah.
Speaker 3: And also there's so spiky.
Speaker 2: I don't know that was cool.
Speaker 3: Ladies will get spiked.
Speaker 1: Remember we saw that that's spontanea the e fulgens, and
but it was growing like draping off of a cliff
high up and it didn't have those You were like, oh,
the leaves on this are different. And then but I
didn't know because that was my first encounter with it.
And then we saw it and saw it in the South. Yeah,
and it was fucking it was It's like spiky European holly.
It's like crazy leaves much different.
Speaker 2: For me, it was crazy because I've seen this plant
so many times in the South and when I saw
it the first time I saw it in South Abion, man,
it looked like it was another plant. And also the
flowers were were like longer and thinner.
Speaker 1: What do you think that is is that just as
the as the it means it just normal heteroblasty, like
as the tree gets older and gets above the height
at which herbivorous can chew on it, then it just
it stops producing sharp leaves or what.
Speaker 2: No. I think think maybe it's a latitude thing, maybe
because in the South they all have really but you're talking.
Speaker 1: About this or that's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that must be the latitude because
in the South that plant is very common, you know,
and it always has these very pointy leaves.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So but actually I want to take some samples and
talk to uh buttanist or something. Maybe it's I don't know,
subspecies or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was. It was really cool to see, and
it's it's one of the more dominant plants too, Like
when you go when you go to like it now
all Buddha was everywhere in the understory. It's everywhere, and
it alers costero to columeliac order brune alis, which I
think is sister escaloni ales. But that's a common I
mean that What is tell me about that plant, like
the Despontanea, is that you got these red flowers bird pollination.
They're like two or three inches long, very spiky, holly
like leaves that are glabrous and evergreen. What is it?
Was it like when you were in that all the
edible stuff was this? Was there any edible use for
this or what? No?
Speaker 3: I think it has some magical uses, but edible.
Speaker 1: Or witches are into it. They're like they're doing potions
or something. Okay, yeah, cool family though, I mean that
was that was a really fascinating thing for me, was
to see these lineages that are just completely foreign to me,
you know, in North America, or to any North American bondanists.
But but yeah, citronella. I wish we would have seen
more than just that that little one.
Speaker 2: But they it's hard to see the big trees. It's
hard to get to them. I haven't seen a big
one in santal And yet.
Speaker 1: Really they're mostly further south.
Speaker 2: Or or no, their central region tree. Yeah, weird, very endangerous. Yeah,
and then one of the trees. If you want to
take like a a permit to gout your forest and
they find these trees or fuck you know, so.
Speaker 1: If they ever come for the forest, you go you
start planting citronella mucrona.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, good thing to do, the.
Speaker 1: Go more and then go moore Tega too. That was
one I wanted to see because that's a really weird
that's one of those Magnolia lineages. It's in its own
monotypic family, right, and uh, but that's it's rare as hell?
What's what's up with that tree? Why is it rare?
Speaker 2: It's true. I mean, all the trees that we have
here that have big fruits are rare. I think because
of the natural propagators. The animals are not here anymore.
You know, this fruit just falls and stays there. We
have this also with Potaia splendors.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know this tree?
Speaker 1: No, what is that? But how do you spell it?
Pot p o U t e r puteria. Oh yeah,
I see it. Okay.
Speaker 2: So they say that this kind of fruit was eaten
by by not dinosaurs but megafauna. So it's naturally it's
a tree that it's scarce. And also the natural range
of the gombrtega.
Speaker 3: It's right where the pine seas.
Speaker 2: Are, you know, so it was rare before, but now
it's rare because it's naturally system has been devastated, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was it had the misfortune of growing and
what would become one of the most densely populated regions
of Chile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so especially for the pine plantations, because these songs
are not so I mean, there's a there's a latitude
where we have like these very endangered trees between Maule
and Araucania. You know, you have Gortega, you have Pavia puntata.
You know if you saw that one.
Speaker 1: I think we I think I saw Petavia puncta. Yeah
where where?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What family is that? You know?
Speaker 2: Uh, let me see it? Family that that's as cars
as you know. Also the the I mean it's also
it's in this like lat range from right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that one you have also.
Speaker 2: In in Tasmania or New Zealand. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's another one of those Cantwana and Connifer lineages.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay, but for you Connifer loving guys, that wasn't
so cool, right.
Speaker 1: No, it was it was cool.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I was stoked to see it. I mean all those
things I want to you know, I try to take
I go and I see them and I take as
many photos of as many different aspects of a morphology
as possible. So I have like a bank you know
of a photo bank that I can reference later. God
more Tega I had seen in before because they have
one U see Berkeley Botanic Gardens. But I really wanted
to see the habitat. But you know then I had
heard it's like kind of out of the way and
it's surrounded by uh it's not flowering now and it's
surrounded by pine.
Speaker 2: Hell, so man, it's it's over the I mean, now,
Buddha is a dream compared to where Gomrtega grows. It's
actually you see the pine sea and got the Gomortega reserve.
Speaker 3: Man, it's just like not even an entire hill.
Speaker 2: It's like the the house of one hill, you know, Jesus,
And I think, like, how can the state cannot like
expropriate some territory to make like a to make this bigger?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's like an army. It's being surrounded by
the pines. But this echo, this ecosystem is really wet,
you know, So I think restoration wouldn't be so hard,
you know, because has all the humidity from the from
the coast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna ask, I mean, why is nobody
grown and like we're storing it somewhere else, or planting
the ship out of it, or even just you know
what I mean, if it's a rare plant, just propagate
the ship out of it and introduce it. There's cultivation too.
Speaker 2: There's people doing this. But as I was telling you,
this range of in the middle of the Mediterranean climate
and the temperate first climate is like a rare place
where there's not all the people go straight to the south,
you know. Yeah, the people or people do restoration near Santiago,
you know, but this is like kind of a forgotten place,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're selling it on rare palm seeds
really yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it's like this European
seed distributor that they sell like rare shit for really
expensive you know amount.
Speaker 2: Actually, they say, if you eat the fruit of the
of the go marchega you it's like a drug you
get drunk or something. Really yeah, and it's it's awesome.
It's like a queen's you know, it tastes really good. Queens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really really good.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. Why does nobody growing.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's really it's really hard to grow.
I forgot to tell you before. It's a tree. One
of the most hard to grow trees, and it's very sensitive,
like you have to grow it and it's distribution range.
Speaker 3: If it's not, it's that it dies.
Speaker 2: You know. You have to grow it in the coastal range,
like in that kind of latitude because it's very sensitive,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean they're but they're growing it. You
see Berkeley. I don't know if they have two trees
or what like, if you know, if it needs out crossing,
I assume it probably does. It's always better for a.
Speaker 3: Genetic Berkeley what kind of climate has.
Speaker 1: It's Mediterranean climate, but they irrigate, they have a bunch
of stuff. They've got massive gunners there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think you saw that here, like the
botanical park. See, it sucks, you know, it really sucks.
In Santiago, we had, like in the nineteenth century, I
mean beginning of the twentieth century, we had they had
a botanical park where they grow plants from Confernandez or not.
You heard of Confernando?
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, there's some weird show.
Speaker 2: The biodiversity over there is crisis. So we have this
really cool Now it's abandoned, you know, and you cannot
find like a good as any capital seat in the world.
You cannot find a good botanical garden in Santiago.
Speaker 1: It's crazy what happened White, you know, there's I.
Speaker 2: Think, I don't know, maybe they think that national parks
are enough, so the government doesn't put resources and they
have to you know that there's some but they don't
have resources.
Speaker 1: That sucks. No, man, That's like that's where you need
it the most, you know, and you need one that's
not like you know, pretty garden beds for old ladies
to go, you know, get their pictures taken and no
offense to the old ladies of course, but but you know,
but you need it. That's like one that's dedicated to
native plants. You get a nice fucking informational kiosk and
people who are really good at growing the natives there.
And it's an exit to conservation source and also a
seed source. They're basically producing seeds for horticulture to get
the native plants back into into the native you know,
into the like gardening and landscaping in the region. I
mean that is like the most it's one of like
the most pressing needs for every region is to have
like a native plant botanic garden that's dedicated to educating
people about the plants that grew there before the sprawl
took over, you know, because that's how you connect people
back to land, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's like it's like a showroom for the
nights violversity that we have here exactly.
Speaker 1: It's a museum and a living museum people.
Speaker 2: It's not that there's not capable people, you know, it's
just resources.
Speaker 1: Resources, and yeah, the money and you know, convincing people
that it's.
Speaker 2: To do shopping malls here with here the shopping malls
grow like fungus, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh god, Yeah, it's the consumerism. It's like the consumerism
plays into the most like bottom of the brainstam basal
primate urge. You know, it's a and it leaves you
feeling so empty, you know, when you're doing like shopping
and consumerism is therapy. It's like, you know, you might
as well just do fucking heroin. It's like it's you know,
it's maybe not you know, you die a little bit
faster Heroin, but but it's it's basically the same thing.
It's like you're not going to fill the hole within
yourself you're not gonna fill the void by buying ship
you don't need. But that's that's what we were basing
our economies on a lot of them. Now, all right,
well before I'll let you dip out here. But archidasaphyle
excelsum that's another really rare one I want to talk about.
It's it's a Barnet dizyoid. It's a it's in a
sunflower family. It's like the most basal sub family. Weird, weird.
Speaker 2: That's a very rare one. Yeah. And also it's endangered,
just as the Gomortega. And I don't know why it's
so scarce this one. I don't know, because this has
flying seeds. It should have like more success this person itself.
But it's it's similar to Gomrtega. You can only see
like a few places where it's surrounded by pines or
surrounded by houses. Deforestation, you know.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, there's some in La Campana.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: How far is La Campana National Park from Santiago.
Speaker 2: It's like one hour and a half something like this,
so one hour you yeah, but you have to like
really look for them. You know that it's not here.
They don't in the national parks. They don't have much
sick signature or anything. You have to go on an
adventure to look for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not there's and there's not many trees, right,
there's not many individuals.
Speaker 2: I know, there's not many individuals.
Speaker 1: Are there? Are there?
Speaker 2: Actually? For my for my project that I give it
to you, the the Chilean Trees Guide. One one really
cool botanist gave me the like a pinpoint and it
was in between men. It was a really small ravine
in between two in between plantations. But it was just
one row of trees, you know, like only one row,
and then the next trees were pines. It was like
asphyxiated with pines, you know, crazy.
Speaker 1: The fucking pines there everywhere.
Speaker 2: We all we go back to this all the time. Yeah. Well,
one good thing about these fine seas is that you
have like a sheetload of sui Us fungus that here.
People do have an economy for them, you know, people
that grow that lives near these plantations, gather forests these
mushrooms and it's like the typical mushrooms that you can
buy in the supermarket, right, you know, like.
Speaker 1: Bow leaves and chantrails and everything. But they're all invasive though, right.
Speaker 2: No, no, but you know how we don't have chanters,
nothing fancy, only suit us luteos and a couple more.
You know, we don't see ones.
Speaker 1: But they're not native fungi though, right.
Speaker 3: No, no, they're not native, not at all.
Speaker 2: But they're edible and they're and they're appeared by thousands,
you know, it's full of them on the season.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's cool at least. Yeah that but but going
back to the archid, I mean, how tall were the
trees that you saw?
Speaker 2: They were like fifteen meters more or less.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is like a this is like a
fifty foot tall member of the sunflower family that's got
woody bark. Yeah, archied asaphylind But then archidesa flain Diekantois
is everywhere. That's a very common one, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's more southern. And this is very very typical, you know, yeah,
very similar. Yes, it's the same general.
Speaker 1: It's a more southern. It's so it's adapted to like
a more music like a wetter climate, whereas excelsum is
more adapted to like the the Mediterranean style climate of
near the Santiago area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyhow, I think this is because it's so scarce.
Also maybe in the past there were more of them,
but yeah, it needs it also needs humidity. You know,
it lives like on the on the bottom of the ravines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to develop. Meant if anything where you
didn't you weren't able to get any flowers where you
like to see what the inflorescences look like.
Speaker 2: No, no, no. When I went the like the the
branches were very high, you know, and I think it
wasn't time for flowering. But in the places you've been, Like,
have you seen any other like aster trees like that
grow so big?
Speaker 1: Uh? What was it we saw? Yeah, there was a
small one. It was anti what is it antiogony? How
do you pronounce it? There was one, only one we
saw in uh in a Lerce costero, hold on, I
could tell you it was. I think it was a mutissioid.
I love the mutissioids, which is all all the composits
down there, mostly mutissioids. They're fucking beautiful. The real flower
structure so unique too, Like you could tell it's a
mutis look at the flowers, You're like, oh, this is
like a mouth doesn't look like a five.
Speaker 2: Like actually, for my project that I'm like digitalizing the
leaves then with DCI. Man, it's impossible. It's like fused
with the stem and.
Speaker 3: It's like wavy. It's a really tough one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah it was. Yeah, okay, it was a Christiane,
a Christie Simosa. I want it. We saw we saw
a this genus with you, but not this species, different
species Christiana. Yeah, see yeah Christiana. Yeah, it didn't take
you a lot up. But I was a little one.
How big this is?
Speaker 2: They say it's a small tree, but they say it
grows till six meters but I've never seen such a
big one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This thing was like three meters tall by three meters
wide and had really lenate leaf undersides, like really really wooly,
which was yeah.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't develop like a real thick trunk, you know,
It's always remains like thin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man branched. Yeah, it was cool though. I mean
it was one of those things you see and even
before I saw the flowers, I'm like, this is probably ESTRACI.
Speaker 2: I was asking you, like in other parts of the world,
like have you seen the asteracia like big vascular plants?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah in Brazil. In Brazil, there's a ton
of diversity in the Vernonia tribe. Well, I think it's
Arimanthus is one of the genera, and they formed these
big trees that get to like fucking you know, ten
meters tall. Yeah, really cool. It's and that the flowers
are like wild, they're you know, they're like pinkish purple,
but like they're little mini sunflowers with no no rays,
no ligules, and they're all aggregated together in these heads
so that there's like one hundred flowers and this small
little structure. Yeah, they're really cool. And they get big too.
I mean they're like you know, for a asta, they're
like thirty forty feet tall, ten meters tall.
Speaker 2: So so the other day I found that paper on
the trees of that island I was talking to you
about in Brazil, in La Grande. Yeah, it has like
two hundred and more lived the trees. But you look
also you look these trees on Google and there's no
no images.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Brazil, nothing's documented there. That was what was cool
to see in Chile was that there was way more
of a presence of native plants and like the dominant
popular culture there than I saw in Brazil.
Speaker 2: Also, I think here also there's there's a lot of
like people is on the Internet all the time. So
when you look for plantilem plants and Wikipedia, you get pictures,
you get a lot of information. But you look plants
from other parts and there's nothing. Some of them doesn't
have Wikipedia entries. So I think that's crazy. Like and
now I understand Brazil, Like if you want to learn, like,
how do you do it if there's no photos, there's nothing.
Speaker 1: There's no field guys, Yeah, there's no there's no access, man,
it's just it's just academics. There's a lot of good
bondanists in academia and Brazil, but there's not like there's
no access to information in the popular culture.
Speaker 2: So you have to like, oh, maybe this information is
like they have it like in the botanical garden.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they've got a cool botanic garden and a
cool orbarium. But uh, in a lot of like I
think there's a lot of like literature like obscure books
that are produced by universities, but there's nothing. You go
to a bookstore in Brazil, there's nothing. You're not gonna
find anything.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I have the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah have you you haven't want the what you haven't
been to Wan Fernandez Islands, have you? No?
Speaker 3: No, that's no. I wish.
Speaker 2: This is one of my dreams. I have a friend
that went there. Man, it's crazy. We have so many
crazy man, a weird species, giant gunera, like a lot
of over there, a lot of mirtasi trees that dominate.
It's crazy, like huge, also huge assis.
Speaker 3: I think this is common in islands.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh there's over there gunner is that I
wonder if that's an endemic. I think it is.
Speaker 3: Then almost everything that grows there is endemic.
Speaker 2: It's crazy. You believe they have a record in Confernandez.
It's like I think by square meter. I think it's
one of the most bioleverse places because they say the
island was much bigger in the past, so it has
been shrinking, so the so the biodiversity has been like
compacted together.
Speaker 1: You know, there's Dicksonia's, there's tree ferns, dendroceris, little realis
was a weird it's that orange flower probably bird pollinated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, remember, like that's the more emblematic one because like
on the verge of being extinguished, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean you can buy it in cultivation in the
Bay Area of California. Now it's a it's a chickory,
but it's a giant one, you know, because these little
herbs get to islands where they don't have any herbivores
and they can.
Speaker 2: Get big, like yeah, get it, get huge, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Selection allows them to just get huge. It's like a
typical trade of of island biogeography for plants around Ochagavia
Elegance Merk, Eugenia Fernandeziana.
Speaker 3: I have a field guide of the I will send
it to you.
Speaker 1: You can go. I mean you can go there too, right,
Like there's flight I saw there's like flights and ship
like it's like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can go there, no problem. Yeah, there's the
flights there, there's a boat they go there. Yeah. But
most the people that go there, it is like for
scientific I mean my friends that have went there for
scientific research and stuff like that, you.
Speaker 1: Know yeah yeah yeah, so they're like and it's.
Speaker 2: So stupid man. And then in the Confernandos, the exotic
plants there are straying everything are native Chilean plants, you know, crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh the ones I want, like the invasives and want Fernandez.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of them are native Chilian plants.
Speaker 2: They took their Jesus and and the rabbits are so
are fucking everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the fucking rabbits. Why would you bring rabbits man.
Speaker 2: Because you can eat them? I understand that. Why would
you take you somewhere free food?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, they are eighty anthem Chileans. You know that fern, right,
the tree fern. No, it's a it's a little fern,
but it's it's like a little maidenhair, but it's like
a Xeric. It's like a Xeric maidenair. It's like a
drought tolerant maidenhair with these really incredible yellow undersides.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's really nice, ye call them yeah on
the bottom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was That was another cool one to see.
All right, well, I guess I'll let you go now.
I really appreciate the time, thanks Manarah. Yeah, is there
anything else? Is there anything else you want to talk about?
And you're how can people find you on the intergram?
It's Atlas dot Nativa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at last dot not you. That's the instagram we are.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: This year we will launch a lot new guides. Actually
I'm doing a guide of the Enemy of the Exotic
I mean urban trees that we have in Chile and
it's crazy, man, like ninety percent of the species are
I guess this is everywhere, but I think it Chila
is even worse. Like in Santiago. You get so little
native trees that are planted that are part of the landscaping.
If you have been around the world, I think this
is it's like this everywhere, right.
Speaker 1: It is wild. Yeah, it's like this human urge that like,
oh no, we can't use what's growing here already, we
need something exotic, which is like but then there's the
ship you plant this all garbage. It's like already in
hortoric culture. I call them, yeah, the horticultural atrocities where
the natives, the natives you have don't grow anywhere else,
and they're so fucking incredible. I quick pretend think you're
somewhere else, you know, Like I did see a lot
of kilaha and Cryptocarria alba, and.
Speaker 2: These are the common, common native ones. There's many reasons.
I mean, they grow slow, obviously, but also a lot
of native chile and flora doesn't.
Speaker 3: Like it die off with the with the pollution. You
cannot stand it.
Speaker 1: The fucking car thing is yeah, that's I wonder how much.
Speaker 2: People people love, people love Acasia albada.
Speaker 1: That's one of the worst. That's terrible. Yeah, man, plant,
But then you got a cavan and the all the
cooled senna, like the native senna's there.
Speaker 2: Like they grow they grow slow, you know, I mean
the senna, I don't know how fast it grows, but
like Kelly Cavin, grows really slow, so people and it
has spines, so people just don't like it. In Santiago,
it's especially worse. They did a study. I think it's
an eighty five percent of the plant of the trees
are exotic. Yeah, because for example, in the south of Chile,
you do see a lot more native trees in the streets.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, the t yeah, the Tricho serious
Chilo ancestor Lucos steely whatever they're calling. And now I
mean I think is like that's that crew there that's
like a native Santiago plant. I'm surprised they don't And
they're beautiful. When that flower, they're fucking huge, like huge flowers, Like,
I'm surprised they don't plant those more commonly in I'm
hoping it's change though, Like maybe I'll go back and
you know what.
Speaker 2: It's the part at least the government is changing a lot.
Speaker 3: They're doing a lot of like Miawauqi forest, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, this kind of first. Yeah, they're doing a
lot of these kind of forest finance by the steak,
especially in Santiago. So yeah, now nowadays you can see
a change very slow, but you can anyways, you can
see a change in new parts and this kind of stuff.
They do put a lot of more native species, you know,
and especially because there's no water left, so it's also
like a strategic measure, you know, like we need trees
that we don't have to put water every day on it,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think especially too, it's so important to
connect people back to the land that they live on
and the things that evolve there over hundreds of thousands
of years. You know. That's yeah. So and changing the shift,
changing the focus on plants from is it medicinal? Is
it edible? Is it pretty? Whatever? That means too? Is
it native here? How is it related to the soil,
the climate, the geology, the pollinators, the insects, the life here?
Like the living machine is the local biosphere? Like that's
what we need to shift our focus from. And that's
the same reason I used to hate botanic gardens because
the ones I grew up with in Chicago on the
East Coast were like the bard Rich housewife. Botanic are like.
Speaker 5: My husband's a family law attorney and I need something
to do. Well, my husband's at work and the kids
are at school, so I go to you know, and
then it's like, you know, and so that was the
and it's like, oh, that's like we played the garden
bed with one hundred of the same.
Speaker 1: Flower because it's colorful and there's no connection to anything else,
Like you don't have any connection to the land, there's
no you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, and I think also it's part of us,
our story, you know, like all the indigenous people use
these trees. They absolutely the common names for it. And
it's what makes every space, i mean, every spot on
the world like a special your native flora, and that
gave you, gives you identity. It's so important to have
a relations with that instead of something that has nothing
to do with your history. I think that's as really
it gives you a purpose of living, you know, like us,
like we're through plants, you know, like it's it can
be not only like a hobby, it can be a lifestyle,
you know, be in touch with your with your local biome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Plants define place like nothing else does,
you know, especially in an age where like you can
go to a shitty big box store outside of Santiago,
or you can go to a shitty big box store
outside of Houston and it's got the same feel. It's
like just depressing consumerism. But then when you see the
plants there that are unique to that area, you know,
and how that biosphere evolved in that place over time,
it's it's so it's so unique and special. And everyone
is different, you know, each each of these regions is different.
So well, thank you.
Speaker 2: Man, Yo, you're welcome. You're welcome to a pleasure to
talk with you. And I don't know, I hope you
come again to Chile soon.
Speaker 1: I'll be back, man, I'll be back probably probably next
year or some all right, man, have a good and
have a good Michael Thinker
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, see you bye,