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Speaker 1: Okay, we're gonna give it a little We're gonna give

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it some time for the ads, for the shitty ads

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to stop, so you could actually hear this song, because

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this is a banger. It should be what is it

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fifteen seconds? You got fingers that you can fast forward

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through the ads?

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Speaker 2: There stand, Wow, Wow? Us down.

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Speaker 1: Stands located cry Why don't you right? Job located looking girl?

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Speaker 2: Stand?

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Speaker 1: Why don't us down? No?

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Speaker 2: Don't stand? Sir, sir, sir Sarah. Excuse me, sir, Sir, Sir,

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Sir Sarah, excuse me, sir, sir.

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Speaker 1: All right, this enough of it?

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Speaker 2: Sarah. Excuse me, sir sir.

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Speaker 1: That's what they they're kicking us out. That's what they

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say when you're about to get kicked out, Sir Sarah.

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Speaker 2: Excuse me.

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Speaker 1: God, it was like a fucking nails on a chalkboard

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to me whenever I hear that, sir, God, I can't

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stand being called sir. In Texas, everybody calls you, so

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you just get used to it. I still don't like it,

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but it's you know, and even I'll do it sometimes

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it's a nice way. It's like a polite thing. Right.

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I don't know what that there's because everyone's packing heat here.

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Everyone's got to maintain this. Oh, it's like the old wist,

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maintain the surface layer of politeness even though you're I'm

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just kidding. People are People are generally nice here, if

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not somewhat insane, and uh, you know, the education system sucks.

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But okay, let's not tell me. Listen, I had to

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go to the bank today, which I would rather I

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would I would probably rather have to eat ass for

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like twenty minutes, like I don't and I'm not one

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who enjoys eating ass, so it would be like, I

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don't know, you know, it'd be like if I was

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eating Mitch mcconnald's ass for twenty Like that's like similar

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to going having to go to the bank, getting a

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call being like you have to you have to come

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in sir to uh to put your phone number because

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we ever we got the wrong addressers, you know, I

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think that's what it was. It was a wrong address.

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I don't know. I had to go in there. I

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try to turn myself, you know, off from reality. When

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I'm in there. You know, it'll be five minutes. I

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was in like forty five minutes. It was just fucking

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it's torture, the suits, the landscaping, the parking anytime. I mean,

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existing in modern American consumer society is painful enough for me.

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It's hell that is that alone is like eating Mitch

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McConnell's ass anytime I'm driving up the I thirty five

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corridor between San Antonio and also one of the most

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hideous stretches. Well, there's a lot of those, especially at

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the in the southeast, the lower latitude quarters. You know,

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I don't want to beat too hyperbolic, but you know,

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it's like eating Mitch McConnell's ass. So any and we've

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started the podcast off talking about eating the acid and

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aging Republican oligarch reporting supporting Senator. I guess we can

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get to the rest of the podcast if I've did.

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You know, it helps filter out the proofs, helps filter

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out the squares. Anyway, I just got back from god

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damn from Costa Rica. I just got back from Costa Rica.

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How many white girls in dreadlocks have you heard say it?

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I just got back from Costa Rica. I was the

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most amazing thing I had it. I went to an

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Iahuasca ceremony and it you know, because that's what I

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thought that Costa Rica was all about and I'll be honest,

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when I landed an airport, I kind of thought that too,

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because it was all Anglos. It was like all Americans.

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I said, this is just it's like a fucking United States.

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This is like, I mean, Mexico is so fucked up

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these days, well for the last decade. I guess it

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makes sense that, you know, the the gringos come down

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to Costa Rica and it's it's it's the wealthiest country

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in Latin America. I think, is that true? Most expensive

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at least one of them. But uh, you know, but

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I didn't know there was a diverse, such a diversity

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of habitat any any time a country is associated with beaches,

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I turned myself off to I just I just ignore

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it because I don't I'm not a beach pro. I

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think that shit is whack. I don't care about hanging

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out in the beach. Fucking lame. I got shit to do,

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you know, And there's hungry sharks in there, and I

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can't blame them. Shout out to the shark that ate

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that woman's leg in South Podtery Island last year. Uh

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Rome free, little buddy. So uh anyway, but I made

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the same mistake of perception with Dominican Republic. But holy shit,

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Costa Rica was you know, it was incredible. A gentleman

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invited me down there to go film some stuff and

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it was incredibly worth it. And shout out to him,

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thank you. And I'm the fucking dry force in the

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northwest part of the country, the cloud forest, the oak species,

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the fucking Jurassic Age conifers growing at nine thousand feet

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in cloud forest. So I think me and Allen and

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Mandy are gonna try to schedule some sort of like

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group tours, something that I don't want to call it

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a tour. It's not a fucking tour. You go out

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there with a bunch of science and biology nerds and

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you post up at a spot and it's all organized,

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which is way more than I can ever say for

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myself because I just get a shitty rental car and

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you know, gelevant all over the country going. I don't

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make a fucking itinerary, and I don't know what I'm

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gonna do it. I'm maybe I don't want to do

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that that day. Why would I lock myself into something,

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You know, I have no organization whatsoever when I do

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this stuff, and that's what makes it so fun. On

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a rewarding I was, you know, looking for corcasolioid. He's

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a dry tropical oak at ten o'clock at night near

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beehehe in uh Guanacaste, Costa Rica and the dry forest

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two hundred foot elevation. I didn't know I was going

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to be there. Had I stuck to a plan, I

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wouldn't have been able to see it. And I was

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just driving around looking for it, looking for oaks. It

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was fucking driving me nuts, man, I drove so much.

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But what an incredible oak and oak that grows in

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dry tropical forest at two hundred feet elevation and uh,

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just the habitat you never expect to see oaks in.

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But we might schedule we might try to schedule some

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group tour there in early July, which would be cool.

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It'll be lots of microscopy, d NA secret saying, we'll

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be giving presentations. It'll just be a clusterfuck of NonStop

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botanizing and my cologizing. Is that a word. That's the mushroom,

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that's the mushroom. Season is like May, it's the rainy

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season May through September and so in July. That's uh,

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that should be there should be plenty of mushrooms there.

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But it's just it's an if it comes to fruition,

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I'll let I'll be posting shit about it in a week,

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you know. But also the economy shit. So you know

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these things would cost like two grand or twenty five hundred.

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And before you freak out, that's all this shit is included.

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It's all paid for. And like you know, the one

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that Alan did a net quarter, they didn't make any

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money of it. They barely made They made like a

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couple grand. It was just how much it costs to

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run all that shit, all right. But uh, you know,

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since Trump's destroying the economy, since the game show host

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that his president is destroying the economy, people might be

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a little more and just fired, you know, two hundred

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thousand federal employees, people might be a little hesitant to

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spend money. So I totally understand that, But god, have

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you ever been to a fucking dry We're not going

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to be in the dry tropical force that we plan.

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This trip will be in the force like nine thousand

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feet elevation climbate of Humboldt County, California, but it's different though,

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because the air is so thin it holds, you get

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you know, greater temperature swings between day and night. So

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it's not really analogous to like lowland northern California because

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the air is so thin. So oh, and there's paramo

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up there too. I saw Puya desk larioides and this

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fucking blackn them black that it's a it's a fern.

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It's like a coalescent blacknum. You get these in South America,

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in high elevation South America or low elevation, higher latitude

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South America. These these black thems. They just look fucking

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I saw what was it? Lamerio psychus? Was it what

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I saw in Chile? What a we? It's psychis to

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you think it would be a psycha, but it's a

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it's a black them. Just incredible diversity. I was in

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like four or five completely different habitats when I was there,

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mid elevation, tropical forests, lowland, dry forest cloud for paramo,

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the paromo is fucking incredible. God damn it. Man. It's

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just you know, you get all these species in genera

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that you normally find at higher latitudes, like you'd expect

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to see in like the Rocky Mountains, or like far

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South Chile. There was Gunnera up there, and oh it's

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gonna I got a shit ton of videos to edit.

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I've got videos from Ecuador, Chile and fucking Costa Rican

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out I gotta edit. But I don't know what I'm

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gonna do it, but uh, we'll get a round to it.

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But that if you've never been to tropical dry forest,

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it's pretty incredible. It's it's I was like getting pissed

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on by He didn't piss on me, but he tried

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to piss on me from up on a tree. He

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was in a in a Cassia grandis tree for basi,

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and he tried to piss it. A little bastard tried

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to piss on me, which I can't blame him. I

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would probably do the same if I was a monkey,

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I'd be peeing on people from different trees and elevations.

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Just a natural response, especially humans to humanity, is that

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you want to you know, at least he wasn't throwing

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shit these little guys though. That was it was Jeffrey's

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spider monkey. I don't know who the fuck Jeffrey was.

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Some biologists one hundred years ago, some dead hawk I

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don't know anyway, but uh, and they were really like,

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not aggressive, but they weren't afraid. They came up and

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ran up at the Capuchins, the white faced Capuchins, those

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cute little bastards with their little vampire teeth, were afraid

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of me. I tried to give them a banana, which

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I know you're not supposed to do, but I couldn't resist.

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They weren't a fucking mango tree. Mangoes aren't even native

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to the Americas, so give me a break. Okay, what's

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the banana gonna do? All Right? They had and these

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animals had the run of the park too, because all

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the staff was gone. It was first, it was the

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week the weekday. Second, it was like the tail end

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of the dry season, so everything, all the plants, all

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the leaves were on the ground. It was felt, you know, crunch, crunch,

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crunch everywhere you walk there. It was high as balls.

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It was probably ninety five degrees that day, which now

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I'm used to after living in South Texas for how

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long I've been here four years. I didn't mean to

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live down here. It was an excellent you know, I

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just came down here for other reasons, for family obligations,

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and now you know, now I'm stuck. But we started

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a fucking you know, nonprofit conservation project, so you know whatever.

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And it's been good for fueling my hate of consumer

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society too, because that shit is everywhere. You know. It's

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a defficult done here. So there were three monkey species

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I encountered. God, the howler monkeys too. They're terrifying. Fuck me,

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I was in a I almost got a little buggered out,

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you know, I was filming Marshallow series. She's this beautiful

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columnar cac guy that branches, but the branches that it

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gets stayed close to the stem, so it's got this

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kind of parallel tuning for look to It was really

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cool parallel stem tuning fork look. And it's got this

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beautiful epicuticular wax where the growth stops and you can

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probably use that, you know, and then it'll get a

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green segment when it would burst of new growth like

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six inches, so you got towards the top of its stem,

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you got like six to eight inches of green interspersed

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with the probably like half a inch or an inch

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of white like this white wax. And that's where you know,

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it's got this pattern, this zigzag pattern on the ribs

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because that's where all the you know what, that was

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the end of the plant. That was the end of

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the stem where it's growth ceased for the dry season,

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and then when the rainy seasons start up again, then

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you get a burst of new growth. So it's kind

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of analogous to tree rings on cacti. And I've seen

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it on another columnar cactus species, like in western Chiapas, Mexico,

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et cetera. And so these marshallow series I was in

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dry tropical force put up towards the top. The kars

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was exposed and there was thin soil, so it was

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dominated by burs Simaruba, which you get in South Florida.

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To the tourist tree is the common name Frankinson's family,

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Elephant tree family. You really shouldn't use common names. So

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00:14:16,799 --> 00:14:18,840
I'm just telling you just learned a fucking genus name.

235
00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:22,600
I gotta say that, sorry, got it, hey, coming name?

236
00:14:22,639 --> 00:14:26,480
Some of ours are so stupid, so uh, you show

237
00:14:26,559 --> 00:14:28,600
some respect for the plant, all right, learn the fucking

238
00:14:28,639 --> 00:14:33,360
genus name. It's not that Hardimaruba and uh and Marshall

239
00:14:33,399 --> 00:14:36,480
is series dominated. And I was checking this out, and

240
00:14:36,600 --> 00:14:38,799
then you know the there's leaves all over the ground too,

241
00:14:39,320 --> 00:14:41,320
and there's a couple of venomous snake species. There's a

242
00:14:41,480 --> 00:14:45,919
venomous crotalus, and they're all vipers. Of course, I guess

243
00:14:45,960 --> 00:14:47,399
there's a couple of coral snakes. You don't got to

244
00:14:47,399 --> 00:14:51,360
worry about those, they're small and you know, cryptic. Uh.

245
00:14:51,440 --> 00:14:54,519
And then the fertile lance. Fucked the fertile lance. That's

246
00:14:54,519 --> 00:14:57,559
the only viper I would possibly if it was on

247
00:14:57,679 --> 00:15:00,320
my property, I would probably kill it because they they're

248
00:15:00,320 --> 00:15:02,679
so aggressive and territorial, and they're not like rattlesnakes. They're

249
00:15:02,679 --> 00:15:05,559
not kind enough to let you know when they're you know,

250
00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:09,000
when you're nearby, and they reproduce like fucking rants too.

251
00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:10,720
There's so many of them. I met some lady whose

252
00:15:10,799 --> 00:15:14,000
dog got bit. And they don't give you any warning again,

253
00:15:14,039 --> 00:15:16,360
They'll just there. It's like stepping on a land mine,

254
00:15:16,399 --> 00:15:19,559
you know, or stepping close to a landmine, because you

255
00:15:19,559 --> 00:15:21,240
don't even have to really step on them. They'll just

256
00:15:21,360 --> 00:15:25,000
bite you whatever. And it's fucking nasty venom too. It

257
00:15:25,159 --> 00:15:28,600
just causes rotting flesh and just anyway, so I was stepping,

258
00:15:28,679 --> 00:15:31,080
I was stepping around as Marshallow series filming it, and

259
00:15:31,120 --> 00:15:34,720
I later realized I lost the video. The video It

260
00:15:34,879 --> 00:15:36,639
was cool, It was only like two or three minutes.

261
00:15:38,279 --> 00:15:42,200
And then I heard this like it sounded like this

262
00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:45,960
guttural wine, and I thought, is that a fucking cat?

263
00:15:46,120 --> 00:15:48,039
What the hell is that? Like? Is that a jaguars?

264
00:15:48,519 --> 00:15:50,679
And then I heard another one from sixty feet away,

265
00:15:52,039 --> 00:15:55,039
and uh, and I realized the other monkeys, they're like

266
00:15:55,200 --> 00:15:58,759
up in the trees. And obviously it's not a cat

267
00:15:58,799 --> 00:16:03,879
because cats are outry, but it was still totally terrifying

268
00:16:06,080 --> 00:16:07,639
at first. And then I looked up and I saw

269
00:16:07,759 --> 00:16:10,360
like this little spider monkey like the size of a cat,

270
00:16:10,480 --> 00:16:12,759
maybe a little bit bigger, giant pair of nuts on

271
00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:14,679
the sky too. I mean, I said, wow, like he

272
00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:16,639
had a giant it looked like the truck nuts, like,

273
00:16:16,799 --> 00:16:20,159
you know, because the truck no pair of human balls

274
00:16:20,240 --> 00:16:24,159
ever looks like the nuts that these meatheads, these double

275
00:16:24,240 --> 00:16:27,159
digit IQ dumb as a brick fucking retards hang on

276
00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:29,440
their their trucks like in a in a you know,

277
00:16:29,759 --> 00:16:33,799
the lower in the lower latitude US Arizona to Florida,

278
00:16:34,279 --> 00:16:38,440
anywhere in between. But this monkey's balls looked just like that.

279
00:16:38,519 --> 00:16:41,159
I was amazed. I said, that's amazing, you know, to

280
00:16:41,240 --> 00:16:46,080
get to when he was like crawling headfirst, upside down, swinging,

281
00:16:46,159 --> 00:16:51,919
you know, going to different trees. Yeah, it was. I

282
00:16:52,039 --> 00:16:54,799
saw Kawai too, giant paar of nuts on him. I said, wow,

283
00:16:57,159 --> 00:17:02,399
just I've just like OBJECTI fight these animals. So but anyway,

284
00:17:02,440 --> 00:17:04,400
so this is towards the top of this cart and

285
00:17:04,640 --> 00:17:07,079
the cars. If you've never been on dog Tooth Krst,

286
00:17:07,200 --> 00:17:11,680
it's really it's bizarre rocks. It dissolves really easily in

287
00:17:11,759 --> 00:17:14,400
the high rainfall areas because these are dry forces. They'll

288
00:17:14,440 --> 00:17:18,160
be dry for six months. By five to six months

289
00:17:18,240 --> 00:17:21,480
no rain, you're still low latitude, so it's hot as shit.

290
00:17:21,640 --> 00:17:24,039
So all the plants just drop their leaves. They just

291
00:17:24,079 --> 00:17:25,599
go drought deciduous. I didn't even know what it was

292
00:17:25,599 --> 00:17:28,039
a thing until I saw it in David Attenborough movie

293
00:17:28,079 --> 00:17:31,759
a decade ago, you know, talking about drought deciduousness, Like

294
00:17:32,119 --> 00:17:35,599
so many people have no clue. This is like a

295
00:17:35,720 --> 00:17:40,279
dominant forest type around the world at the same given latitudes,

296
00:17:40,319 --> 00:17:42,880
the tropical latitudes. You know, it doesn't happen at the

297
00:17:42,960 --> 00:17:47,200
equator really, but it happens in between twenty one degrees north,

298
00:17:47,319 --> 00:17:49,440
and I mean even kind of in South Texas where

299
00:17:49,440 --> 00:17:53,640
I am twenty six degrees north. Anywhere at the same

300
00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:57,599
latitude India, you know, North hemisphere, Southern hemisphere, southern hemispheres

301
00:17:57,599 --> 00:18:00,680
obviously reversed, the dry seasons reversed, and it's all just

302
00:18:00,799 --> 00:18:04,160
because of those low pressure systems causing thunderstorms at a

303
00:18:04,240 --> 00:18:07,480
certain time of year. And then as the Earth, you know,

304
00:18:07,559 --> 00:18:11,000
it goes to the other side of its orbit, then

305
00:18:11,119 --> 00:18:13,640
that low pressure system moves to the other side of

306
00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:16,880
the equator, causes the dry or causes the dry season

307
00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:20,440
where it just was six months previous, et cetera. But

308
00:18:20,559 --> 00:18:23,559
I was the karst is wild because it's it's literally

309
00:18:23,599 --> 00:18:26,319
like a dog dog's tooth. It's you can't walk on

310
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:29,240
a barefoot. It would fucking cause you to bleed, so

311
00:18:29,359 --> 00:18:31,559
you need really thick soled boots. Would probably tear up

312
00:18:31,599 --> 00:18:35,559
tennis shoes really quickly. But that's in those thin soiled

313
00:18:35,599 --> 00:18:37,240
areas where you get to the top of it and

314
00:18:37,319 --> 00:18:39,640
there's no soil, then you get a different plant community,

315
00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:43,720
you know, your typical rocky arid microsite in a otherwise

316
00:18:43,799 --> 00:18:47,279
dense forest type thing. And that was really cool to

317
00:18:47,279 --> 00:18:49,319
see because there was a Gave Workley eye up there,

318
00:18:49,400 --> 00:18:51,440
which is the syndemic A Gave. I mean, the plant

319
00:18:51,480 --> 00:18:54,599
community just totally changed you for me. A schlechtin Dally eye.

320
00:18:54,680 --> 00:18:56,599
I've seen that name before. I don't know who Shlecton

321
00:18:56,640 --> 00:18:58,359
Doll was. I should probably look him up, but god,

322
00:18:58,400 --> 00:19:02,640
it's just stupid. You know. It's bad enough to know

323
00:19:02,720 --> 00:19:05,240
I always say that sorry obligatory rant that I was gone.

324
00:19:05,240 --> 00:19:07,240
It's bad enough to name plants after people, but it's

325
00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:12,279
when you've got that ridiculous ass European sounding name. I

326
00:19:12,359 --> 00:19:14,880
don't you know, and no offense to you know, I

327
00:19:14,920 --> 00:19:17,799
don't know what is it? Scandon Navy, no, Norwegia. What

328
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:21,279
is he German? What is the Schlechtindhal? What is it German?

329
00:19:21,400 --> 00:19:23,720
I think it's German. When you got a name like

330
00:19:23,799 --> 00:19:25,440
it just sounds goofy as fuck when you try to

331
00:19:25,519 --> 00:19:28,759
latinize it, Why would you do that? Put his name

332
00:19:28,839 --> 00:19:31,759
in there? Maybe his name was Ernie. You know, you

333
00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:34,920
for be an Ernie. I you know, shout out to Ernie.

334
00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:37,680
How many Ernies do you know in your life? You know? No,

335
00:19:37,839 --> 00:19:40,359
there's no no one's name in their kids Ernie anymore.

336
00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:43,680
And I think that's the real travesty you want to

337
00:19:43,720 --> 00:19:47,480
talk about, you know, corporate fascism, moralagarch Yet it's sad,

338
00:19:47,519 --> 00:19:49,720
But the real tragedy is no one's naming their kid

339
00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:57,359
Ernie anymore. Ernest God schlechtin you forb be a schlechtind

340
00:19:57,559 --> 00:19:59,279
you get the fuck out of here. Jesus just named

341
00:19:59,319 --> 00:20:01,519
the fucking thing after or what it? You know, it's

342
00:20:01,599 --> 00:20:05,079
got cherry, it's got bark that looks like a cherry tree,

343
00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:08,759
like peeling, red, beautiful bark. Name it after that. But

344
00:20:08,839 --> 00:20:11,920
you name it after this fucking dead guy. You know this?

345
00:20:12,079 --> 00:20:15,000
How long is this plant in a species? For a

346
00:20:15,079 --> 00:20:20,799
few million years? And your name Schlechton Dolly, Hushchlechton Doll.

347
00:20:20,799 --> 00:20:24,559
I should Oh my god. It's a guy with a

348
00:20:24,720 --> 00:20:29,359
hand in his uh, in his in his in his coat.

349
00:20:29,559 --> 00:20:31,960
Remember when they used to do that in his stick

350
00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:35,160
the hand half in your coat. Diedrich Franz Leonard, We

351
00:20:35,279 --> 00:20:38,240
get the fuck out of here. He was a professor

352
00:20:38,319 --> 00:20:40,799
of botany and director at the botanical gardens at a

353
00:20:40,799 --> 00:20:45,160
Martin Luther University of hal Wittenberg. From why the fuck

354
00:20:45,519 --> 00:20:48,039
that guy lived? How long did he live to be

355
00:20:48,559 --> 00:20:50,720
sixty to fifty years. I don't know. Maybe he was

356
00:20:50,759 --> 00:20:54,839
a nice guy, you know, Maybe he was a nice guy.

357
00:20:55,160 --> 00:20:57,440
Maybe he was giving blowjobs at a truck stop. That's

358
00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:03,720
not bad either. I don't know. I do know that

359
00:21:03,839 --> 00:21:07,200
it doesn't make sense to name a plant after him, though,

360
00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:11,839
that's anyway, schlechtin doll God, I fucking hate that. I hate,

361
00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:14,960
I hate, I hate, hate hate such a cool plant

362
00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:18,200
anyway for me shlectin Dhali, I is, I guess I

363
00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:21,200
can get medium tree size. The one I saw was small.

364
00:21:21,240 --> 00:21:24,799
It was growing on a carstick cliff, overlooking a beautiful vista,

365
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:29,519
a mirrored ore, with two black vultures eyeing me somewhat

366
00:21:29,559 --> 00:21:35,920
skeptically from a completely leafless tree. Everything there was waiting

367
00:21:35,960 --> 00:21:40,480
for the range. The range had start in May. But oh,

368
00:21:40,599 --> 00:21:44,400
this is this thing going on? But anyway, and then

369
00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:46,759
there was a guy where cosma tear. There was, which

370
00:21:46,839 --> 00:21:49,079
is tarrat a c a fern. It was all shriveled

371
00:21:49,119 --> 00:21:51,039
up and dry, but I could see the white farina

372
00:21:51,319 --> 00:21:55,720
on the undersides of the leaflets of the fronz uh

373
00:21:55,759 --> 00:21:58,240
and a gave werkley. Nowhere else did I see this

374
00:21:58,559 --> 00:22:01,920
in this habitat except on these rocky outcroppings, so you

375
00:22:02,039 --> 00:22:04,400
get it. It's you know, it's basically stuck. It's sydemic

376
00:22:04,519 --> 00:22:07,880
to these micro sites that are otherwise because it needs

377
00:22:07,920 --> 00:22:11,079
full sun, in full exposure, and it you know it can.

378
00:22:11,279 --> 00:22:14,559
It's it's adapted to grow on thin to no soil.

379
00:22:15,240 --> 00:22:18,799
And what a cool species it was. I saw it

380
00:22:18,799 --> 00:22:21,200
on another site too, which I'll we'll get too later

381
00:22:21,279 --> 00:22:24,240
in the podcast. I saw it much closer to San Jose,

382
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:29,680
the capital city of Costa Rica, growing on a sketchy

383
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:34,839
cliff composed of crumbly shale talus that was really hard

384
00:22:35,640 --> 00:22:38,640
to get up and sketchy as fuck, but uh, definitely

385
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:42,240
worth it. Yeah, so guys, just getting up there, I

386
00:22:42,279 --> 00:22:44,359
got the mosquitoes got really bad towards the top to

387
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:46,599
it because the monkeys were there and so they had

388
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:48,880
some defeast on or what, but they were horrible. I

389
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:51,400
wish I had one of those little electric tennis records.

390
00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:54,839
Just swat the fuckers because they were making filming really hard.

391
00:22:54,839 --> 00:22:59,599
They're making taking photographs really hard. That Euphorbia was completely

392
00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:04,119
leaf list, but it was flowering and tiny scyathia everywhere.

393
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:06,480
That's how I realized it was a euphorbia because otherwise

394
00:23:06,519 --> 00:23:09,000
doesn't really look like one. It's got papery, it's got

395
00:23:09,079 --> 00:23:12,400
like bark that looks like peeling birch bark, but it's

396
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:16,480
like a deep blood red beautiful. And then there was yeah,

397
00:23:16,519 --> 00:23:22,200
marshallow Sirius aragoni eye, that blue tuning fork cactus, candelabra

398
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:25,839
cactus and our gave Werkley eye and that cool, cool

399
00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:30,680
ar gyracosma. Just it's such a wonderful habitat. And and

400
00:23:30,759 --> 00:23:33,720
then coming down there was just so much animal life too.

401
00:23:33,799 --> 00:23:36,480
Like the animal there's there was no staff there, so

402
00:23:36,559 --> 00:23:38,160
the animals had the whole run of the park. I

403
00:23:38,200 --> 00:23:40,920
saw a white tailed deer in this habitat, which is

404
00:23:41,039 --> 00:23:47,039
wild to see him in a dry tropical forest. Yeah,

405
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:52,920
same species, you know, the Virginianus. But uh, but it was,

406
00:23:53,079 --> 00:23:54,799
you know, it was a really rich site. And just

407
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:58,359
being in those in those kinds of forests. Man, there's

408
00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:01,200
Leana's everywhere too, which that was what struck me. Maybe

409
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:02,559
it's just because it was the last day. It was

410
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,000
the last thing in the memory. But like everything I

411
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:09,319
encountered was new, every plant was new, every species was new.

412
00:24:09,359 --> 00:24:12,319
I had no clue half the stuff I was looking at.

413
00:24:12,799 --> 00:24:14,400
I mean, maybe I could get it down to family,

414
00:24:14,519 --> 00:24:18,119
but it was just a wonderful experience.

415
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:18,559
Speaker 2: I love that.

416
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:23,279
Speaker 1: I love being disoriented. There's so much excitement, curiosity, and

417
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:27,279
the habitat is so different because it'll get two meters

418
00:24:27,319 --> 00:24:30,319
of rain during the rainy season. That's more rain than

419
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:33,640
most places in North America in the United States. But

420
00:24:33,759 --> 00:24:37,319
then it's got this six month dry season where it's

421
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:39,920
hot as balls, you know, and then of course there's

422
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,440
not much of a change in daylight, very minuscule. You know,

423
00:24:43,519 --> 00:24:48,920
it's generally around twelve hours twelve hours slightly because you're

424
00:24:49,279 --> 00:24:51,279
not right at the equator, you're ten degrees left to

425
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:54,960
you get slightly longer days in summer, but not by much.

426
00:24:56,079 --> 00:25:00,720
But god man, yeah, it was it. And the crunch

427
00:25:00,759 --> 00:25:04,200
of the leaves too, like every the leaf litter is everywhere,

428
00:25:04,279 --> 00:25:07,759
which you know, what fun guy are eating those when

429
00:25:07,799 --> 00:25:09,480
it does rain, you know. And I love to be

430
00:25:09,559 --> 00:25:11,880
there in the summer too, and just see the night

431
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:15,240
and day contrast because it's you know, most dry places

432
00:25:16,039 --> 00:25:22,640
in North America or in the United States are most

433
00:25:22,799 --> 00:25:25,519
most dry climates, you know, they're just dry all the

434
00:25:25,599 --> 00:25:27,720
time you'll get rain a little bit, they'll be lush

435
00:25:27,799 --> 00:25:29,759
for like a month, like Sonora doesn't. There'll be lush

436
00:25:29,799 --> 00:25:31,839
for a month. Then it just it's but you could

437
00:25:31,839 --> 00:25:34,359
still tell it's a doesn't. But this is like a forest.

438
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:38,359
It's an actual forest, and two meters is a fucking

439
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:42,079
lot of rain. It gets six feet of rain a

440
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:45,240
year during the wet season, but then it doesn't rain

441
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:48,519
for five or six months. And what that brings out

442
00:25:48,559 --> 00:25:50,440
in plants, like the kinds of shit that they have

443
00:25:50,559 --> 00:25:53,480
to do to deal with that is crazy to me.

444
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:57,640
Like it's just like so tolerating so much rain, bursts

445
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,559
of growth and then sitting tight for six months. I mean,

446
00:26:00,559 --> 00:26:02,200
it's basically the same thing that plants do in a

447
00:26:02,279 --> 00:26:09,200
temperate climate you know where used to before before climate change,

448
00:26:09,319 --> 00:26:11,200
Like when it plays like Chicago still used to get

449
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:16,160
actual winters, but it's instead of it being the cold,

450
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:19,640
it's just a complete dry Like that's the only changing factor.

451
00:26:21,279 --> 00:26:24,400
I just had to stop and give a online presentation,

452
00:26:24,839 --> 00:26:28,440
So I'm back with you give an online presentation about

453
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:31,519
long killing. It's always fun, it's always so rejuvenating to

454
00:26:31,559 --> 00:26:33,519
hear how many people are on board with that. And

455
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:37,200
how insane people think lawns are. It just doesn't make

456
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:40,880
any sense. Those roots don't go deep. You're not holding

457
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:43,480
water in in areas that are prone to flooding, and

458
00:26:43,519 --> 00:26:47,839
you're requiring a lot of steroids pesticides, you know, steroids,

459
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:51,480
pesticides and herbicides to infund it's eyes, to keep the

460
00:26:51,519 --> 00:26:54,480
thing alive. In dry areas, you're keeping up perpetually bonds.

461
00:26:54,519 --> 00:26:56,519
I think, God, I fucking hate lunch. Okay, anyway back

462
00:26:56,559 --> 00:26:59,240
to the what we were talking about. So these dry

463
00:26:59,319 --> 00:27:02,440
forests were in but what was kind of disheartening was

464
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:04,160
that to get to them, I had to drive through

465
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:11,680
miles of agriculture that was previously dry forest. So so

466
00:27:11,839 --> 00:27:13,400
much you know, it's like anywhere you go in the world,

467
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:17,720
I mean, there's the human impact is so intense, and

468
00:27:17,759 --> 00:27:20,160
a lot of that agriculture is of course being used

469
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:26,799
to grow hay to feed cattle and livestock. Not the

470
00:27:26,839 --> 00:27:29,200
most efficient system. Hopefully we'll figure that out in the

471
00:27:29,279 --> 00:27:32,720
next century or two before we annihilate ourselves. Unlikely, but

472
00:27:32,839 --> 00:27:35,720
you know that's what we So we got existentialist philosophy

473
00:27:35,799 --> 00:27:43,240
for you know, and apocalyptic humorous nihilism. Oh God, anyway,

474
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,319
I'm sorry. Okay, So, but to get to these yeah,

475
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:47,559
to get to these forests, I had to go. Thank god,

476
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,839
Google Maps fucked me, as they usually do. They sent

477
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:53,559
me on this backwards ass loop. And this is the

478
00:27:53,599 --> 00:27:55,960
thing I remember when I was traveling a lot right

479
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:59,839
in freight transitionship. There was no smartphones yet. Thank god,

480
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:03,599
it was such a wonderful, wonderful time. I'm like the

481
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:06,480
last generation that got to experience that. So to get around,

482
00:28:06,519 --> 00:28:10,039
we didn't have navigation systems. We had maps. So you

483
00:28:10,079 --> 00:28:12,319
would actually go to library, print out a map, or

484
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:15,359
maybe jack one. It's from a you know, change store

485
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:18,839
or they like Walgreens and all these dructures used to sell,

486
00:28:19,799 --> 00:28:23,039
you know, these foldable maps. I don't think they'd do

487
00:28:23,079 --> 00:28:26,200
that anymore, like these foldable laminated maps that would fold

488
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:29,000
into like little pamphlet size and so, and you actually

489
00:28:29,039 --> 00:28:31,480
had to think about where you're going and navigate and

490
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:33,759
remember street names. Shit like that you have to do anymore.

491
00:28:33,799 --> 00:28:35,599
So anyway, Google Maps fucked me. It took me through

492
00:28:35,599 --> 00:28:38,160
this backwards ass way down what ended up being a

493
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:42,359
private road through agriculture. I had to turn around and

494
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:45,880
then one of them the irrigation canal had overflowed, the

495
00:28:46,279 --> 00:28:48,960
had flooded the road, and I was driving this little

496
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:54,000
beat up, said Dan that it's like little Euroca, and

497
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:56,440
so blessed that thing. I took it some places that

498
00:28:56,519 --> 00:29:00,799
it definitely should not have gone so anyway. But because

499
00:29:00,839 --> 00:29:02,559
of that, I got to see some cool stuff. I

500
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:08,000
got to see cashew trees not really being invasive but volunteering.

501
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:12,920
And it's like, actually they suck the cashew fruit, which

502
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:15,400
I don't recommend doing because it's got you rushi all oil.

503
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:18,640
It's got allergenic oils as one third of the plants

504
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:21,480
and the family Antacardiaci do similar to you rushia, all

505
00:29:21,519 --> 00:29:25,319
the same compound in poison oak, you know, Lithrea costica.

506
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:30,839
In Chile, Lithrea costica produces a similar compound called litriol

507
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:33,759
that can cause an allergenic reaction. But I think it's

508
00:29:33,839 --> 00:29:37,160
like poison ivy, like you have to get sensitized to

509
00:29:37,279 --> 00:29:39,559
it first. I don't know, But the point is is

510
00:29:39,599 --> 00:29:41,920
I wass going through these agricultural fields too. I saw

511
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:44,440
a lot of cool fucking birds. I saw a fasciated

512
00:29:44,559 --> 00:29:50,160
tiger heron beautiful bird, a jabberou which is like this stork,

513
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,440
Like this big white stork with a black hood, looks

514
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:55,200
like some ount of like a Star Wars you know,

515
00:29:55,279 --> 00:29:57,559
like it's like one of the creatures you see, you

516
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:01,640
know in the New re with the Congress, Like you

517
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,599
see the politicians in the robes in the Star Wars movies.

518
00:30:04,759 --> 00:30:07,440
Sometimes they look like one of these storks. You know,

519
00:30:07,599 --> 00:30:11,000
this real weird looking guy. Beautiful wasn't vibed out by

520
00:30:11,079 --> 00:30:15,880
me either, uh, And I saw what I see a

521
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:20,759
Cordia species. Cordia is the genus of Texas olive. Cordia

522
00:30:20,799 --> 00:30:24,079
bassierra is the Texas you see in San Antonio and

523
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:27,240
South Texas barage in ace. It's got those little hairs

524
00:30:27,279 --> 00:30:30,880
in the leaves, scabbard leaves, sandpaper like leaves, big white

525
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:35,039
flowers and a two forked style and stigma in the center,

526
00:30:35,119 --> 00:30:38,119
which was a giveaway later for or can be a

527
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,440
giveaway for family. And some of these you know baragi

528
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:46,559
and ace trees like Aredia or Cordia et cetera. You know,

529
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:50,680
the Boris family produces a lot of tree forms species

530
00:30:50,759 --> 00:30:53,519
that have it that are trees and in lower latitude

531
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:58,519
tropical environments. Yeah, so that was fucking great.

532
00:30:58,559 --> 00:30:58,759
Speaker 2: To see.

533
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: I saw Cordia then and Cordya. I forget the other one,

534
00:31:02,759 --> 00:31:09,720
but but lots of interesting stuff along the way. I mean,

535
00:31:09,799 --> 00:31:12,319
it was so it's so exciting everyone because everything is new.

536
00:31:12,519 --> 00:31:15,279
Everything I was passing by was worth stopping to take

537
00:31:15,359 --> 00:31:18,759
photos of and and try to document so that I

538
00:31:18,839 --> 00:31:22,200
could remember it. And that's all I'm doing in places

539
00:31:22,279 --> 00:31:24,680
like this. I saw a really cool fucking corvid called

540
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:28,079
a white throated magpie. J looks like a blue jay

541
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:32,200
with this big, big ass, you know, plumage on top.

542
00:31:32,319 --> 00:31:35,880
Fucking gorgeous bird. It was hanging out in Bursra. I

543
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:37,920
don't know if it was Bursra simaru, but I looked

544
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:40,119
like a different Bursra species. It didn't have the red

545
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:43,240
bark and had different leaves. But uh, it was eating

546
00:31:43,319 --> 00:31:45,799
the Bursra berries or I guess they're droops. They've only

547
00:31:45,839 --> 00:31:49,680
got one seed in them. Gorgeous birds though, And there

548
00:31:49,759 --> 00:31:51,599
was a bunch and they were just fucking Corvids are

549
00:31:51,599 --> 00:31:55,160
always so funny too. They're so loud and have so

550
00:31:55,279 --> 00:31:57,799
much personality and are just like kind of a pain

551
00:31:57,880 --> 00:31:59,559
in the ass, which is like a good quality. I

552
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:02,720
like person too. I hope on my tombstone. It says that,

553
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:05,759
you know, great guy, but he was kind of a

554
00:32:05,839 --> 00:32:08,200
pain in the ascidt times. That's if I would, I'll

555
00:32:08,319 --> 00:32:12,920
settle with that. You know. There was a really cool

556
00:32:13,039 --> 00:32:16,759
palm I saw that was used just you know, on

557
00:32:17,119 --> 00:32:20,920
marginal on the margins of agriculture, and that was cool

558
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:22,319
too us because a lot of the most of the

559
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,480
plants you saw on the sides of the agriculture were natives,

560
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:29,119
you know, as used to be the case before corporate monoculture.

561
00:32:29,119 --> 00:32:33,680
Agriculture in the Midwest, you know, annihilated all these milkweed

562
00:32:33,759 --> 00:32:38,519
strips and shit like this horrible fucking not even leaving crumbs,

563
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:42,400
like the strips of greenery along the farm fields, not

564
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:46,319
even leaving those for native plants anymore anyway. But they're

565
00:32:46,319 --> 00:32:51,720
still doing it in northwest Costa Rica. But Bactris guianensis

566
00:32:52,519 --> 00:32:56,480
was this spiny palm species and it's got these like cups,

567
00:32:56,559 --> 00:33:02,079
these like eight to nine inch cups, like elongated oval cups.

568
00:33:02,119 --> 00:33:04,759
It's like a bowl shape thing, and it's just it's

569
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:11,079
just this the like the little space that protects the inflorescences,

570
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:13,880
the flowers and then later the fruit. Okay, apparently I

571
00:33:14,079 --> 00:33:18,039
naturalists is saying Backtrisky and ensiss is invasive in Coasta Rica.

572
00:33:18,079 --> 00:33:21,319
I don't really buy that because it's native three hundred

573
00:33:21,359 --> 00:33:24,559
miles away. You're telling me it never it never fucking

574
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:28,599
made it there prior to humans. I mean, I saw

575
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:30,559
it in the forest there. That's got to be a bullshit.

576
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:34,440
There's got to be a bullshit assessment with how plant

577
00:33:34,519 --> 00:33:39,599
distributions shift and change over millennia and how climates change

578
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:44,720
over millennia, and it's crazy to think that that's right. Someone.

579
00:33:44,839 --> 00:33:51,039
I heard someone calling Verbusina and Coelioides invasive in southern California,

580
00:33:51,039 --> 00:33:52,319
and I was like, how the fuck is that in

581
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:55,799
its native like two hundred miles away. How the fuck

582
00:33:55,880 --> 00:33:58,880
would it have never made it there? I don't I

583
00:33:59,319 --> 00:34:02,960
think this. I think a lot of peoples and understandably,

584
00:34:03,039 --> 00:34:05,000
so I understand why this is a lot of people's

585
00:34:05,079 --> 00:34:11,320
understanding of invasive and native is flawed because they don't understand. Again,

586
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:14,039
it's zooming out, how did this thing get there? Right?

587
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:19,719
It's much harder to go across an ocean if you're

588
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:22,400
a seed or a little plantlet on a debris raft

589
00:34:22,519 --> 00:34:24,880
or whatever. A three thousand mile ocean than it is

590
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:30,320
to go across a two hundred mile expanse of mostly

591
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:33,639
tropical forest. I guess there's a there's not even really

592
00:34:33,639 --> 00:34:36,880
a mountain range in a way there. Yeah, it's native

593
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:41,320
three hundred miles away, and like northern Colombia. Hey, yeah,

594
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:42,719
I don't know. I don't think I buy that and

595
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:46,239
verbosena and see, I mean there's always cases. But I

596
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:49,280
was saying this before, Like the most generally speaking, and

597
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:51,000
take this with a grain of salt, the worst invasives

598
00:34:51,039 --> 00:34:52,960
are always from other continents because those are what have

599
00:34:53,079 --> 00:34:56,960
been separated the longest. There's a reason for it, right,

600
00:34:57,039 --> 00:34:59,480
And this is what idiots who deny invasion biology who

601
00:34:59,519 --> 00:35:01,920
shouldn't be taken seriously at all because they're generally not

602
00:35:02,079 --> 00:35:05,960
botanists or collogists. They're either from the permaculture community, no

603
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:11,239
offense to them, or don't know plants at all. The

604
00:35:12,119 --> 00:35:14,519
whole thing you're talking about with native and invasive is

605
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:17,400
was it adapted to this region? Did it evolve there?

606
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,679
There's a reason behind it. There's a method to the madness.

607
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:22,880
It's not just human purity. It's not just like the

608
00:35:23,119 --> 00:35:24,840
how far back in time do you have to go

609
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:27,239
out well, it's not even about that. When you look

610
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:30,079
at all the things, all the other organisms this species

611
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:35,320
has relationships with it, starts to make sense. You realize that, okay,

612
00:35:35,559 --> 00:35:37,840
this is connected to this, and you've got a specifict

613
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:42,199
pollinator here and a fungus here, beneficial fungus, and it's

614
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:45,440
evolved defenses against this certain insect because it's been in

615
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,920
an evolutionary arms race with it for you know, five

616
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:51,000
million years. For fuck's sake. I mean, this is not

617
00:35:51,559 --> 00:35:54,719
that hard of a concept to think about. So someone

618
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:58,679
was busting my balls about that too. God, he was

619
00:35:58,719 --> 00:36:00,920
fucking annoy He was on the Facebook. What would you know.

620
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:04,519
Shame on me for reading comments on a Facebook page.

621
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:06,719
But I do enjoy interacting with people some on there

622
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:09,639
sometimes cause it's you know, a lot of people are

623
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:11,840
cool and they're just curious and I get to answer

624
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:15,400
questions whatever. But some guy is some blowhard. You know,

625
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:19,239
he's responding like six paragraphs to every thing, either trying

626
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:22,400
to like it felt like showboating, or it's always men,

627
00:36:22,519 --> 00:36:26,480
it's always fucking men to do this showboating, or you know,

628
00:36:27,199 --> 00:36:29,800
oh yeah, but it's just shit like that. I ended

629
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:32,159
up just blocking them. Take a fucking hike. But talk

630
00:36:32,199 --> 00:36:34,840
to your shrink, all right. I'm not your fucking therapist.

631
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:38,119
This isn't your space. Chill out, you're not being friendly,

632
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:40,639
being a dick, all right, Just fucking block and delete.

633
00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:44,039
I mean, especially Facebook, it's so full of morons and

634
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:46,599
just bored, lonely people. And I have sympathy for them

635
00:36:46,679 --> 00:36:50,880
to an extent, but just fucking go outside, Go do something.

636
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:56,400
Go teach yourself fucking piano or astronomy or Spanish, you're

637
00:36:56,480 --> 00:37:01,880
fucking Czechoslovakia whatever, you know. God, it's just it's it's horrible.

638
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:05,199
It's it's like the what it does to the human mindset. One.

639
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:07,719
People are posers because they get you get to you know,

640
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:11,280
you get to decide what you look like to other people.

641
00:37:11,639 --> 00:37:17,559
You get a filtered, choreographed and uh and tailored uh

642
00:37:18,159 --> 00:37:22,159
wayed to you know, portray yourself. But also, you know,

643
00:37:22,559 --> 00:37:25,239
you remove the face to face interaction. People has become

644
00:37:25,519 --> 00:37:28,000
some people has become total cunts. And that's what this

645
00:37:28,119 --> 00:37:30,719
guy was, he's becoming. He was just like a cunt.

646
00:37:31,159 --> 00:37:32,679
So I said, just fucking you know, he was arguing

647
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:35,000
about something. He's like, well, not really, because how do

648
00:37:35,039 --> 00:37:37,079
you explain and I was like, listen, man, I've been

649
00:37:37,119 --> 00:37:40,079
all over the world. I've seen this. There's exceptions, take

650
00:37:40,119 --> 00:37:42,639
with a grain of salt, but generally the continents, it's

651
00:37:42,679 --> 00:37:45,000
the whole ecosystem. It's not just the plant species. When

652
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:47,840
you're thinking about invasive versus native and how something behaves,

653
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:51,079
it's all about checks and balances. It's invasive because there's

654
00:37:51,159 --> 00:37:55,840
nothing that's evolved to take it down, like cacti in Australia.

655
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:58,039
Cact I never would have made it to Australia because

656
00:37:58,079 --> 00:38:01,519
they were separated by a fucking ocean. Right one cack,

657
00:38:01,599 --> 00:38:05,039
this species made it to Africa. Not surprisingly, it's a

658
00:38:05,119 --> 00:38:09,679
bird dispersed species and only one in the last however,

659
00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:13,079
many millions of years since cacti evolved. That tells you

660
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,440
it's you know that the chances are pretty rare that

661
00:38:16,599 --> 00:38:19,559
these long distance dispersals happen, because not only does it

662
00:38:19,639 --> 00:38:22,480
does it need to get dispersed it it's got to

663
00:38:22,559 --> 00:38:24,639
be self fertile. If it's only one seed, it's got

664
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:26,840
to get established, it's got to land in the right spot,

665
00:38:27,639 --> 00:38:31,639
et cetera. Versus what humans have done moving shit around

666
00:38:32,639 --> 00:38:36,239
exponentially more. You know, thousands of times in the last

667
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:40,119
century or two all over the world anyway. Yeah, so

668
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:43,440
back Terris skiinensis it was everywhere. So it's got these

669
00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:45,800
spines on it. I'm so interested in palms now because

670
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:49,119
they a lot of them have such defenses. You could

671
00:38:49,159 --> 00:38:53,000
tell they were getting fucked with. They were like the

672
00:38:53,159 --> 00:38:57,039
kid that got kept getting beat on, you know, it's

673
00:38:57,119 --> 00:39:00,519
school and then learn jiu jitsu or fucking Muay Thai

674
00:39:00,679 --> 00:39:04,400
or something, you know, because they just some herbivore was

675
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:08,039
just destroying so many palm speed I mean everywhere you go.

676
00:39:08,159 --> 00:39:11,400
I mean some of the what was it Coco Thrinac

677
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:14,800
species I was seeing in Dominican Republic armored as hell.

678
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:19,679
And the way they use you know, whatever whatever they have,

679
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:24,760
whatever tools they have, petioles, you know, leaf bracts, whatever,

680
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:28,679
to turn into spines is remarkable. You could tell something

681
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,440
was or the herbivores were basically selecting for meanor plants.

682
00:39:33,119 --> 00:39:36,159
They were they were breeding meanor plants because anything that

683
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:38,840
didn't have these spines, they were just gnawing to the

684
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:43,000
ground or killing. And so the stuff that evolved the

685
00:39:43,039 --> 00:39:45,840
meanor spines was what was left. So Bactris ski and

686
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:49,199
enssce is one of these really cool bactor species. I

687
00:39:49,199 --> 00:39:51,880
saw another species of bactriss it's one of that edible

688
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:57,360
palm species, really ethnobotanically important in Ecuador. But yeah, this

689
00:39:57,519 --> 00:39:59,360
was bactris ki and enceince and it forms these little

690
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:04,400
palm thick it's you know what's palms are not. I

691
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,159
mean they're monocuts, but they're not closely related to grasses either.

692
00:40:07,159 --> 00:40:12,960
They're the closest family is Dazapoganas, which is predominantly Australian

693
00:40:13,039 --> 00:40:17,000
and makes some really fucking cool monocots in Australia too.

694
00:40:17,599 --> 00:40:22,320
Kingya australis the one of the quote grass trees again,

695
00:40:22,679 --> 00:40:25,039
which is a bad common name. It's like elephant tree

696
00:40:25,039 --> 00:40:29,119
because there's completely unrelated taxa, completely unrelated genera that are

697
00:40:29,159 --> 00:40:32,960
both called grass tree. But one of the grass trees

698
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:38,880
Kingya Australis, is in dazopogan Ace, which is related to palms.

699
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:43,199
And then Dasipogon is another cool genus that I saw

700
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:47,719
in Australia in Western Australia that's in the same order

701
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:51,880
as palms. Another cool native plant that I saw planted

702
00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:54,000
and this elevation was probably what are we like two

703
00:40:54,159 --> 00:40:58,800
three hundred feet elevation, I think planted along the irrigation canals,

704
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:01,039
and this really beat up their road. That was mostly

705
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:03,280
you know, I would see a farm truck every like

706
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:05,880
thirty minutes or something. God, it was fucking great out

707
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:07,519
there though, and it was just hot as balls. I

708
00:41:07,599 --> 00:41:10,000
really love the heat. Now, I can really enjoy the heat.

709
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:13,079
Just get yourself a good hat and some baggy clothing.

710
00:41:13,599 --> 00:41:17,159
None of these skinny jeans these guys are wearing, you know, Remberies,

711
00:41:17,239 --> 00:41:21,559
punk kids, the punk scene back in the fucking Bay Area,

712
00:41:22,119 --> 00:41:24,599
you know, twenty tens, show my age here. They were

713
00:41:24,679 --> 00:41:27,639
these skinny jeans, these black skinny jeans. You can't do

714
00:41:27,800 --> 00:41:33,599
that shit. And the subtropical latitudes pal all right with

715
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:34,679
tropical latitudes.

716
00:41:35,119 --> 00:41:35,719
Speaker 2: Uh so.

717
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:39,360
Speaker 1: Tababouya rosia. There was a couple species of tababuya, which

718
00:41:39,559 --> 00:41:42,519
is in Bignonia seed to Catapa family, and you could

719
00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:45,079
see it in the flowers. But these were all leafless

720
00:41:45,119 --> 00:41:47,199
because again we're in the dry season, which is roughly

721
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:50,199
what is December to May, the dry season, when that

722
00:41:50,559 --> 00:41:55,519
that low pressure intertropical conversion zone is down in Brazil

723
00:41:56,079 --> 00:41:58,559
in the southern hemisphere, not just in Brazil, southern hemisphere,

724
00:41:58,559 --> 00:42:00,599
you know what I mean, right now, and it'll be

725
00:42:00,679 --> 00:42:02,880
coming back up. It's probably crossing the equator right now,

726
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,039
coming back up. It'll be coming back to these latitudes

727
00:42:06,079 --> 00:42:09,599
in May or June when the rainy season starts, and

728
00:42:09,679 --> 00:42:14,000
so they're leafless, but they're flowering, just lit up with flowers.

729
00:42:14,039 --> 00:42:17,400
There was a couple of different tababooa species and again

730
00:42:17,559 --> 00:42:22,599
cool birds everywhere. There was Another interesting thing I saw

731
00:42:22,679 --> 00:42:26,079
was guazuma on myfolio West Indian elm, which is not

732
00:42:26,199 --> 00:42:28,480
an elme at all. It's in malvas. You can see

733
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:33,480
it in both leaves and flowers. Really got to learn that.

734
00:42:33,559 --> 00:42:35,679
You got to learn the flower structures of different families.

735
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:39,519
It's really worth it. Tribotany in a day, or plant Systematics,

736
00:42:39,679 --> 00:42:42,559
or just fucking download deep seek AI and ask that

737
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:44,519
I do use deep Seak because that's the AI that

738
00:42:44,639 --> 00:42:48,760
showed up all the all the sleazy American billionaires. Alan

739
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:51,400
got me on it. My friend Lily was busting my

740
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:53,519
balls about it. I said, hey, you know what fuck

741
00:42:53,559 --> 00:42:55,840
you pell this is leave me alone. We each have

742
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:58,719
our vices, so I can't She said, I can't believe

743
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:00,480
you use that. I said, yeah, well, well I can't

744
00:43:00,559 --> 00:43:00,960
believe you.

745
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:01,320
Speaker 2: Uh.

746
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:04,280
Speaker 1: And then I tried to think of something rude to

747
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:07,800
say to her, but I couldn't because she's the lovely

748
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:11,480
But uh, you know, I think it's Ai is going

749
00:43:11,559 --> 00:43:13,199
to be here whether you like it or not. You're

750
00:43:13,199 --> 00:43:14,800
gonna be eating the ship, so you might as well,

751
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:18,239
you know, have a couple you know, delicious fruits too,

752
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:22,039
figuratively speaking, use it to teach yourself something. Ask you know,

753
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,119
I can have Ai read research papers for me and

754
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:27,199
dig out the information I want that would otherwise take

755
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:31,079
me forty five minutes so and if Alan Rockefellers for it,

756
00:43:31,119 --> 00:43:32,960
it can't be all that bad. You know. I trust

757
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:36,639
that guy's I trust, I trust his uh, his intuition.

758
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:41,960
He's a solid fucking human. Yeah, but uh, guazuma A

759
00:43:42,079 --> 00:43:47,880
my folia little yellow flowers MALVESI exerted stamens. That was

760
00:43:48,199 --> 00:43:50,199
that was abundant. You know. What I was excited to

761
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:53,920
see was the calibash tree Crescentia kuhete. And there's a

762
00:43:54,119 --> 00:43:56,079
which is native down there. And then there's another one,

763
00:43:56,519 --> 00:43:59,719
Chrishentia a lotta, which is also big noniac, but it

764
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:03,159
may make these fucking gourds. The fruit is like a gourd.

765
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:05,880
It looks like a gourd, and it's what they make

766
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:09,400
the bowls from any Amazon. You can slice it open,

767
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:13,079
you gotta, you know, obviously have the proper tool to

768
00:44:13,119 --> 00:44:14,280
do so. I don't know if they just slice them

769
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:16,199
with a machete. Probably not. They probably use some sort

770
00:44:16,199 --> 00:44:19,679
of you know, electric vibrating saw. That is, you know,

771
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:21,679
sounds like a dildo, but isn't They just had to

772
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:25,519
throw that in there. I hope you appreciate it. But

773
00:44:26,559 --> 00:44:30,239
but it's got it's it's got a weird form too.

774
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:32,159
I thought it was like a rainforest tree, but it's not.

775
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:37,880
It's it's dry forest tree. It's got fascicled leaves, no petiole.

776
00:44:38,039 --> 00:44:39,800
It looks like a lot of the thorn scrub plants

777
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:43,440
that you might encounter in South Texas. But it's got

778
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:47,599
these huge gourds. So that's what Again, these are not deserts.

779
00:44:47,599 --> 00:44:50,639
They're dry forests. They get two meters of rain a year.

780
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:53,760
No desert gets two meters of rain a year. But

781
00:44:54,119 --> 00:44:55,440
you know, they get two meters around a year. But

782
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:59,000
they also get six months of dry of just bone

783
00:44:59,079 --> 00:45:04,079
dry as balls throughout deciduousness. But uh god, I would

784
00:45:04,079 --> 00:45:06,320
love to grow this tree in South Texas. I'm surprised

785
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:08,440
nobody has yet see anything. We can grow a lot

786
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:10,639
of stuff here in South Texas. It'll because it's the

787
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:13,239
hottest place in the United States by far, hotter than Phoenix.

788
00:45:13,559 --> 00:45:16,639
Phoenix has individually hotter days. We have more accumulated heat

789
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,599
throughout the year. Phoenix gets cold. It doesn't really get

790
00:45:19,679 --> 00:45:25,559
cold where I live. But anyway, but you know, you

791
00:45:25,639 --> 00:45:27,519
can grow this stuff, but then it'll get knocked back

792
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:32,559
during you know, the one or two days it freezes

793
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:35,440
at five in the morning or it gets close to freezing.

794
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:39,440
So yeah, anyway, Oh you know what I saw too,

795
00:45:39,519 --> 00:45:44,400
there's fucking neme everywhere. It's it's uh, it's neem oil,

796
00:45:44,519 --> 00:45:47,440
as as that rak the Indica, And it's like an

797
00:45:47,519 --> 00:45:51,960
invasive plant in some of these some of the more

798
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:57,559
disturbed areas, human areas. So mahogany family, you know, same

799
00:45:57,679 --> 00:46:02,039
family as that invasive China buried tree that's so bad

800
00:46:02,119 --> 00:46:04,320
in Texas, like in central Austin with those little golden

801
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:10,519
berries pinnate leaves, horrible invasive tree. But this name is

802
00:46:10,599 --> 00:46:13,880
in the same family. It's the mahogany family. Meliac Yeah,

803
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:16,480
as that Eacta indica, and it's you could see it

804
00:46:16,519 --> 00:46:18,639
in the flowers. Of course, if you're catching the theme,

805
00:46:18,679 --> 00:46:20,360
I've mentioned that all the time. Look at the flowers.

806
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:25,320
Flowers are the most diagnostic. But but it's got they've

807
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:27,239
got a really cool flower structure they do, and of

808
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:32,320
course ethnobotanically, it's a massively important plant. Makes little droops

809
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:34,840
as well. Are they berries or droops? I don't know.

810
00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:36,320
I think cut one open to see if it's got

811
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:40,320
many seeds or one. But they've got this white corona

812
00:46:42,159 --> 00:46:47,719
like tube with these white, five distinct petals. Neme. As

813
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:51,880
a Directa indica, you can pronounce whatever you want. You

814
00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:54,599
speak Spanish as your native tongue, you're going to pronounce

815
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:59,679
things differently. But we haven't even gotten to the cloud

816
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:02,000
for us. We're just fucking around with with dry tropical

817
00:47:02,079 --> 00:47:05,760
forests yet. But that was really wonderful to see that everywhere.

818
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:08,000
And then there was the elephant ear tree, which is

819
00:47:08,079 --> 00:47:10,679
this massive fucking legum man. I saw a whole it's

820
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,760
so big. It took only three of these trees to

821
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:19,280
cover to shade a soccer field, a dirt soccer field

822
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:21,960
in this little town. I stayed in just little off

823
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:26,880
the beaten map town and so it created like this

824
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:32,440
almost like indoor auditory, indoor arena feeling with these giant

825
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:37,079
elephant ear trees. They're a legum and terra Loobium cyclo carpum.

826
00:47:37,199 --> 00:47:39,239
Was that it was it siiclo carpum. I forget, I'm

827
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:43,199
let me check this, yeah, And Terolobium ciclo carpum. It's

828
00:47:43,199 --> 00:47:45,719
a memosoid. So it's got these little clusters of white

829
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:51,719
spherical inflorescences, little white, tiny white flowers, pinnate leaves. It

830
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:54,320
looks like a lu cana, like a tepewahe or something,

831
00:47:54,360 --> 00:47:56,039
you know, one of these one of these memos sooid

832
00:47:56,119 --> 00:47:58,960
legas they get fucking the ones I saw are they

833
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:02,840
can get huge, like really big around like three four

834
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:06,400
feet diameter almost. And then the fruit is it looks

835
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:08,719
like an elephant there. It looks like some sort of

836
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:13,320
like weird baguette or croissant or something. And you cut it,

837
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:15,840
you break it open. The seeds a r attle around

838
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:17,800
in it, and you break it open and it makes

839
00:48:17,920 --> 00:48:21,480
like a It's got this really distinct smell to it.

840
00:48:21,559 --> 00:48:24,039
It smells sugary and sweet, kind of like a tamarind

841
00:48:24,119 --> 00:48:26,519
and the goo is really sticky. You'll get all over

842
00:48:26,559 --> 00:48:32,199
your hands. But but it's not I wouldn't. It's probably edible,

843
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:34,760
but it's not like it doesn't smell delicious. There's like

844
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,039
a smell of a little bit of rank in there,

845
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:39,159
no offense to the tree, a little bit of rank,

846
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:43,119
like feet and ass smell slightly slightly. It's mostly sweet,

847
00:48:43,159 --> 00:48:45,800
but there's a little bit of foot and ass smell

848
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:49,599
in there. But you know, you crack those little crescient

849
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:56,599
there's some crescent crescent shaped croissant leg and fruits open

850
00:48:56,639 --> 00:48:59,159
and there's some cool The seeds are cool, like they're

851
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:02,199
they're like size, and they've got a cool design. I'm

852
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:05,280
like tear drop, tear drop shape within a tear drop,

853
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:10,760
a tear drop shaped striation within a tear drop shaped fruit. Beautiful,

854
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:13,639
but yeah, it'll becose. I'm gonna try to grow one

855
00:49:13,639 --> 00:49:16,039
of those in South Texas. I'm sure it's not I'm

856
00:49:16,079 --> 00:49:18,280
sure it's not prone or it's not I'm sure it's

857
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:20,880
aceptule to frost. I'm sure it's supple to frost, and

858
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:23,000
we get knocked back in a freeze. But you get

859
00:49:23,039 --> 00:49:25,400
to enjoy it while you can, and a lot of

860
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:27,719
these things grow fast and if it you know, if

861
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:30,119
you get it big enough, it wouldn't die in a freeze.

862
00:49:30,159 --> 00:49:33,400
We just get knocked back. So yeah, it'd be great

863
00:49:33,480 --> 00:49:36,199
to try it. And Cassia grandez too. So many legumes

864
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:40,079
down here, so many legumes in these dry tropical forests,

865
00:49:40,719 --> 00:49:44,400
legumes and anti cards. There was a really cool anti card,

866
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:52,079
Anacardium excelsum. Anacardium occidentel is the cashew which is native

867
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:57,840
which is native to uh Southeast Asia, I think where

868
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,920
is it Southeast Asia and India. But ana Ardiem excelsam

869
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:06,079
is native to the neotropics and it's produces a cashew

870
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:08,559
like fruit. It's got that little arrow and then the seeds.

871
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:13,440
What what what did these fruits evolve with them? Wonder too,

872
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:16,760
because they're really distinct and huge, and also it's got

873
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,000
to be something that's not allergic to that you rush

874
00:50:19,039 --> 00:50:23,480
you all like oil. But anyway, Anacardium excelsum is the

875
00:50:23,599 --> 00:50:26,639
native one, the native neotropical one, also known as the

876
00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:30,559
espa vet, and another massive tree. They can get huge

877
00:50:30,599 --> 00:50:32,239
and you can really see it, you know, like a

878
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:34,800
lot of members of Anacardiac the Sumac and the poison

879
00:50:34,880 --> 00:50:36,760
oak and the mango family. You could see it in

880
00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:38,960
the leaves and the leaf a nation. They've just got

881
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:43,719
a gestalt around them, if you're interested in that. I

882
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:51,320
did an interview with Susan Bell, doctor Susan but really, Pelle,

883
00:50:51,480 --> 00:50:54,679
Susan Pell. My bad, God, damn it. This I sound

884
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:57,880
like fucking Joe Biden, you know with these wait wait,

885
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:08,400
come on, man, if they did it and then ah fuck,

886
00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:12,679
we broke medicaid man, we beat medicaid man. Susan Pell,

887
00:51:13,519 --> 00:51:18,360
wonderful botanist. She's and uh she's at the uh uh

888
00:51:19,199 --> 00:51:25,000
National God damn it, my fucking memory, the National Botanic Garden. No,

889
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:28,960
the National Yeah, that was a botanic garden. Jesus christ

890
00:51:29,079 --> 00:51:33,320
Man like remember plant names, but I can't remember someone

891
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:37,159
I had like a three hour conversation with six months ago.

892
00:51:37,239 --> 00:51:38,639
Maybe it was a year ago, Yeah, I think it

893
00:51:38,679 --> 00:51:40,360
was it. Maybe it was I can't remember when. Maybe

894
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:42,920
was a year ago. But she studies Antacardier say, and

895
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:45,920
it was a great conversation, soup. It was super enlightening too,

896
00:51:46,039 --> 00:51:49,039
because I learned a whole ship lot of stuff about

897
00:51:49,079 --> 00:51:52,119
that family that I didn't know. But these these we

898
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:55,719
really get into the fyto chemistry of these plants, and

899
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:58,400
that that conversation, which is really cool. I mean these

900
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:01,280
compounds like you rush you all is an anti fungal

901
00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:08,039
and anti herbivalry compound and just happens to cause contact

902
00:52:08,079 --> 00:52:11,519
dermatitis and people. Same thing with litterol two. I wonder

903
00:52:11,559 --> 00:52:15,480
how many different similar compounds there are in that family

904
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:21,639
that can cause you know, allergenic sensitivity. Okay, okay, there

905
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:26,559
we go, there we go. Do your tight chi. Do

906
00:52:26,719 --> 00:52:30,000
your fucking tight chi. Do it? Do it in the

907
00:52:30,119 --> 00:52:33,360
morning when you wake up, go get the sun on

908
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:38,039
your face, they get outside. Do your tight chi? You

909
00:52:38,159 --> 00:52:42,519
know this? Would you move it? Move it smooth and graceful,

910
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:47,320
stretch those muscles. Do you do your tight chi? Do

911
00:52:47,519 --> 00:52:52,559
your fucking tai chi. Huh, what's up? I'm back. It

912
00:52:52,639 --> 00:52:54,559
took a little break, you know. Is the tight she

913
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:58,360
really does help? You know, you get old, you start

914
00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:01,199
having you know, muscle issues take you're creatine or something.

915
00:53:01,199 --> 00:53:04,119
When you do a workout, you gotta do your taichi.

916
00:53:05,599 --> 00:53:07,519
Do your tight chi. I can't. I don't have to,

917
00:53:07,639 --> 00:53:11,400
you know, I have too too quote neurodivergent for yoga.

918
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:13,719
I got Badie can't do yoga, but I could do

919
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:16,760
the tight chi. So we'll do the we'll do the taichi.

920
00:53:17,519 --> 00:53:20,519
Got to go and get you smooth. And then you know,

921
00:53:20,679 --> 00:53:23,199
we're taking a little break here from talking about plants

922
00:53:23,199 --> 00:53:26,480
where we're uh, we're going down a different road now,

923
00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:33,559
you know, it's a little bit different. Check this out.

924
00:53:33,559 --> 00:53:35,880
We're just gonna we're just gonna jam for seconds. Give me,

925
00:53:36,039 --> 00:53:38,400
just give me forty five seconds here, just stay with me.

926
00:53:38,519 --> 00:53:40,440
Now we're trying to learn the song on piano.

927
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:42,519
Speaker 2: Just got it up.

928
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:52,800
Speaker 1: Lobby free, surfree. How you pronounce it? How you do

929
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:56,960
that stuff? Nika? How you supposed to play? I don't

930
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,280
know how to say this stuff. But just wait for

931
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:02,119
the chorus because you'll know the chorus because somebody else

932
00:54:02,239 --> 00:54:06,760
ripped that off. They sampled it. Here we go, Here

933
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:10,079
we go, wait, hold on, hey, hey, stay with me, now,

934
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:12,159
come here, stay.

935
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:14,840
Speaker 2: Uh uh.

936
00:54:21,679 --> 00:54:25,000
Speaker 1: You know what that is? The originals are always better

937
00:54:25,079 --> 00:54:30,199
than the one the songs they use, the samples. What

938
00:54:30,320 --> 00:54:33,519
does it starts off in a G sharp? No, no,

939
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:42,920
G G sharp than a then f? There you go, yeah,

940
00:54:43,079 --> 00:54:51,320
G sharp G G sharp a F. It's a banger.

941
00:54:53,159 --> 00:54:54,119
Speaker 2: Hey, it's a banger.

942
00:54:54,199 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 1: That's nice, all right anyway, So, uh, we're gonna talk

943
00:55:00,119 --> 00:55:01,960
about this is this is kind of new. This article

944
00:55:02,119 --> 00:55:04,440
just came out. A tree that benefits from being struck

945
00:55:04,519 --> 00:55:11,639
by lightning. This is wild and speaking of tropical lowland forests,

946
00:55:12,599 --> 00:55:15,880
dipturis oliifra, let's turn this. Let's let's can it for

947
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:19,679
a second. There we go, Uh, recruitment dynamics in the

948
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:23,000
tropical rainforest tree. Oh maybe it's a rainforest tree. It's

949
00:55:23,039 --> 00:55:26,760
not a it's not a dry forest. Oh, I'm sorry,

950
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:31,880
my bad, dip tur This was wild. I came across

951
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:36,280
this a couple of days ago and realized, God, these

952
00:55:36,360 --> 00:55:40,000
fucking man, these tropical trees are just blowing my mind.

953
00:55:40,039 --> 00:55:41,800
I was, like I said, I was at that one spot.

954
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:45,519
I got a Airbnb for like thirty bucks. Didn't have

955
00:55:45,599 --> 00:55:48,320
ac but it was fine. I had a fan, and

956
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:49,840
it was in the lowland for I was like two

957
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:53,199
hundred feet above sea level. It was as hot as

958
00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:56,280
where I live in South Texas. South Texas is basically

959
00:55:57,079 --> 00:55:59,079
tropical for nine months of the year. It's like a

960
00:55:59,159 --> 00:56:01,760
tropical lowland and forest, and it's got the same kind

961
00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:04,960
of plant community. Doesn't get as big obviously, but it's

962
00:56:05,039 --> 00:56:09,719
that thick scrub, the same density of vegetation, which the

963
00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:12,760
dominant culture here hates. Of course they hate. It's messy.

964
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:16,559
The plants are messy. We have to cut them down.

965
00:56:16,679 --> 00:56:19,039
We want to mow if it's messy. I got that

966
00:56:19,119 --> 00:56:23,280
fucking that that idea that the native vegetation or just

967
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:28,000
vegetation in general is messy. It's messy, so okay, so

968
00:56:28,119 --> 00:56:32,480
what's clean? Just like concrete and brick and asphalt. Like

969
00:56:33,280 --> 00:56:36,159
you realize you live in a place where, you know,

970
00:56:36,440 --> 00:56:39,920
it's such a low latitude, you're just getting blasted by

971
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:43,519
the sun. Like, why don't you want anyway, it's such

972
00:56:43,559 --> 00:56:46,840
as not the case in these these tropical forests. So

973
00:56:46,960 --> 00:56:49,239
like even the dry forest that I was in, it

974
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:54,239
was so the uh, it was so such a tall

975
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:57,800
canopy and there's so much vegetation that it's shady and

976
00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:00,320
generally cool, and you can still get a nice brea ease,

977
00:57:00,760 --> 00:57:02,639
so you're out of the sun, so it doesn't feel

978
00:57:02,639 --> 00:57:04,840
as bad even though it's like ninety five degrees fair night,

979
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:07,079
what is that? Thirty five celsias? All right? So anyway,

980
00:57:07,119 --> 00:57:09,800
this paper just came out and it's not on SI hub,

981
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:11,480
yet I asked somebody to send it to me. I

982
00:57:11,599 --> 00:57:12,400
just put a call out.

983
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:12,639
Speaker 2: You know.

984
00:57:14,719 --> 00:57:16,679
Speaker 1: The only thing is, you know, I get like fifteen

985
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:18,840
people sending me papers, and which is really nice. But

986
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:21,440
then I have to I have to thank everyone because

987
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:23,599
I can't just get I can't have someone email me

988
00:57:23,639 --> 00:57:26,039
a fucking paper, go to the trouble to do so,

989
00:57:26,280 --> 00:57:28,480
and then not say thank you. So then I got

990
00:57:28,599 --> 00:57:31,280
to go through fucking fifteen to twenty emails and say

991
00:57:31,320 --> 00:57:34,320
thank you, thank you, because yeah, it's just the kind

992
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:37,719
of person I am, you know, beneath the crusty, spiny exterior,

993
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:41,960
I'm very soft inside. And uh anyway, so when I

994
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:44,039
put shit like that on Instagram into stories, I got

995
00:57:44,159 --> 00:57:46,159
to make sure I go in after I've received it

996
00:57:46,239 --> 00:57:48,519
and actually delete it. Otherwise I get all these emails

997
00:57:48,719 --> 00:57:50,440
and then I don't. If I don't respond to them,

998
00:57:50,519 --> 00:57:52,559
they're gonna, you know, say he's an asshole. They're gonna,

999
00:57:52,559 --> 00:57:56,159
I'm gonna hurt their feelings. So anyway, new Phytologists. Just

1000
00:57:56,239 --> 00:57:59,760
paper just came out by Evan am Gora at All,

1001
00:58:00,599 --> 00:58:04,159
Helene C. Mueller, Landoc, Casey Cushman, Janine Richard shout out

1002
00:58:04,159 --> 00:58:09,880
to Jannine Philip Bitzer, Jeby Birchfield, Jeffrey Birtzfield, Poplin RD. Anyway,

1003
00:58:10,119 --> 00:58:12,960
how some tropical trees benefit for being struck by lightning

1004
00:58:13,039 --> 00:58:18,440
evidence for dipterix oliifra and other large stature trees summary.

1005
00:58:18,559 --> 00:58:21,159
Lightning strikes kill hundreds of millions of trees annually, but

1006
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:23,880
their role in shaping tree life history and diversity is

1007
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:26,960
largely unknown. Here we use data from a unique lightning

1008
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:31,360
location system to show that some individual trees counterintuitively benefit

1009
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:34,800
for being struck by lightning. Oh shit, there's pdf download

1010
00:58:35,159 --> 00:58:37,960
never mind, I guess it's free. Oh no, you can't

1011
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:39,840
download it. You can look at it, but you can't

1012
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:42,440
download it. They'll take a bunch of screenshots. I don't care.

1013
00:58:42,599 --> 00:58:46,440
Someone's gonna put it on SI hub anyway. Lightning killed

1014
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:49,079
fifty six percent of ninety three directly struck trees and

1015
00:58:49,159 --> 00:58:51,360
cause an average of forty one percent crown die back

1016
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:55,320
among the survivors. However, among these struck trees, ten direct

1017
00:58:55,360 --> 00:59:01,239
strikes cause negligible damage to dipterix olifra, while killing seventy

1018
00:59:01,239 --> 00:59:05,880
eight percent of their lianas and two point one mg

1019
00:59:06,199 --> 00:59:11,800
of competitor tree biomass so dipterix oliifra is an enormous tree.

1020
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:16,800
It's in the pa family Fabasi, specifically faboid subfamily, and

1021
00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:19,760
it's it's got pink flowers and I guess it's a

1022
00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:22,440
you know, is it a pioneer species. I don't know.

1023
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:24,960
And it occurs in Costa Rica, but it doesn't occur

1024
00:59:25,039 --> 00:59:27,159
in the lowland dry forest that I was in, it's

1025
00:59:27,239 --> 00:59:29,199
too dry. It occurs on the east side of that

1026
00:59:29,320 --> 00:59:33,840
mountain range that receives the rain off the warm Atlantic waters,

1027
00:59:33,880 --> 00:59:36,440
of course, because the warm waters cause more rain than

1028
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:43,719
the colder waters and colder ocean currents, and so rains

1029
00:59:43,880 --> 00:59:45,920
you know, are coming from the east hit that mountain

1030
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:50,480
range gets you know, squeezed up to higher elevations. As

1031
00:59:50,519 --> 00:59:53,079
they cool and condense, they dump all their water, they

1032
00:59:53,159 --> 00:59:55,239
dump all their rain, and then the air that comes

1033
00:59:55,719 --> 00:59:58,679
they don't they don't reach the west, the west side

1034
00:59:58,679 --> 01:00:01,119
of those mountains. So this is this is a much

1035
01:00:01,199 --> 01:00:05,199
more a wetter tree, a more music tree than the

1036
01:00:05,280 --> 01:00:07,800
stuff that I was seeing, you know, stuff like in

1037
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:11,280
terra Lobium cyclocarpum, the elephant theater tree, which was just

1038
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:13,960
fucking massive. Man. There was at one spot I saw

1039
01:00:14,039 --> 01:00:19,079
there was like a soccer field under the under these trees,

1040
01:00:19,119 --> 01:00:22,599
you know, like I said, the indoor auditorium, you know,

1041
01:00:22,639 --> 01:00:24,920
And it was only like four of these massive trees

1042
01:00:25,039 --> 01:00:27,480
that were really doing most of the shade. They get

1043
01:00:27,559 --> 01:00:33,559
that big, they're just they're beautiful, beautiful angiosperms. So yeah,

1044
01:00:33,639 --> 01:00:38,360
So it occurs in wet forests, you know, rainforests northern

1045
01:00:38,599 --> 01:00:42,920
northeastern Costa Rica, eastern Panama. What's the rain, what's the

1046
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:45,719
rest of the range. It goes into Columbia a little

1047
01:00:45,719 --> 01:00:52,039
bit maybe, but apparently this tree benefits from being struck

1048
01:00:52,039 --> 01:00:55,079
by lightning. It can it can recover, it's adapted to it,

1049
01:00:56,000 --> 01:00:58,480
but it kind of sheds all the leanas. There's lots

1050
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:01,159
of leanas in these forests. I was seeing even in

1051
01:01:01,199 --> 01:01:04,039
the dry force, I was seeing these massive twisting vines

1052
01:01:04,599 --> 01:01:08,639
because you know there's during the even in the dry forest,

1053
01:01:08,719 --> 01:01:10,400
in the rainy season, they get upwards six feet of

1054
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:13,440
rain a year. It's very wet. Stuff grows very lush,

1055
01:01:13,639 --> 01:01:17,079
very tall, very dense, and so to get light these things,

1056
01:01:17,639 --> 01:01:20,960
you know, this is a common growth habit, the leana's

1057
01:01:21,000 --> 01:01:23,760
and the vines and so, but they can also be

1058
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:25,639
a pain in the ass to the tree. Obviously, you

1059
01:01:25,679 --> 01:01:28,880
know you got like a tree with a bunch of

1060
01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:30,880
shit growing all over it. It's going to be stealing

1061
01:01:31,039 --> 01:01:33,840
light and also burdening it with a little bit of weight. Anyway,

1062
01:01:33,840 --> 01:01:36,159
we'll cut to the chase with the paper results the

1063
01:01:36,280 --> 01:01:39,679
minor costs and major benefits of direct lightning strikes to

1064
01:01:39,800 --> 01:01:43,800
d Olifra trees to dip direct soliffra trees, the observed

1065
01:01:43,880 --> 01:01:46,400
costs of being directly struck by lightning were negligible for

1066
01:01:46,519 --> 01:01:50,239
d Oliifra trees. This species survived all ten direct strikes

1067
01:01:50,280 --> 01:01:54,320
to nine individuals with only minor visible injuries. And these

1068
01:01:54,320 --> 01:01:55,639
are big trees. I mean they have to be the

1069
01:01:55,760 --> 01:01:59,719
tallest thing in that immediate area to get struck by lightning. Obviously,

1070
01:02:00,599 --> 01:02:03,039
with only minor visible injuries, damage was so minimal that

1071
01:02:03,119 --> 01:02:06,280
peak crown dieback of directly struck do oliferate did not

1072
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:11,639
differ significantly from die back among the general population of conspecifics.

1073
01:02:12,440 --> 01:02:17,920
Repeat digital surface models from drone photogrammetry photogrammetry what is

1074
01:02:17,920 --> 01:02:21,239
photogrammar confirm that these directly struck trees did not decrease

1075
01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:24,000
in crown height or crown area during the two to

1076
01:02:24,039 --> 01:02:27,079
three year interval encompassing the strike date. In contrast with

1077
01:02:27,159 --> 01:02:30,920
the minor damage to these directly struck de Oliphra trees,

1078
01:02:31,360 --> 01:02:35,159
directly struct trees of other species exhibited high damage immortality.

1079
01:02:35,559 --> 01:02:38,679
The majority sixty four percent of the other eighty three

1080
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:41,280
directly struck trees died within two years of the strike,

1081
01:02:41,719 --> 01:02:45,840
as compared to zero deaths for directly struck de Oliphra trees.

1082
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:49,840
The difference in mortality between doliffer and other species cannot

1083
01:02:49,840 --> 01:02:54,840
be explained by differences in mean mortality rates among species.

1084
01:02:55,920 --> 01:02:59,280
Why is Diptrix olif for surviving? That's what I want

1085
01:02:59,320 --> 01:02:59,440
to know.

1086
01:02:59,519 --> 01:02:59,840
Speaker 2: How is it?

1087
01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:01,719
Speaker 1: How's it doing that? How's it doing it? Stuff? I

1088
01:03:01,719 --> 01:03:04,000
don't know's doing it stuff? Did they look into this

1089
01:03:04,119 --> 01:03:08,079
at all? Among trees surviving after one year post strike,

1090
01:03:08,199 --> 01:03:11,800
mean crown die back was five point seven times higher

1091
01:03:11,920 --> 01:03:16,039
for directly struck trees of other species than for d

1092
01:03:16,199 --> 01:03:20,079
oli ifra trees five point seven times higher mean crown

1093
01:03:20,159 --> 01:03:26,880
die back Jesus and crown loss was three times higher, respectively.

1094
01:03:27,000 --> 01:03:29,880
Lightning caused significant damage and depth to trees neighboring the

1095
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:34,320
directly struck d oliiphra. On average, direct lightning strikes. The

1096
01:03:34,400 --> 01:03:38,559
d olipher killed nine point two neighboring trees and costs

1097
01:03:38,639 --> 01:03:42,360
two point one mg. Is that mill graams? I don't

1098
01:03:42,400 --> 01:03:45,440
know what the fuck mg means two point one mg

1099
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:50,559
SD equals to they're using units. I don't know what

1100
01:03:50,639 --> 01:03:52,480
the fuck this is. This is some shit. I'm not

1101
01:03:52,599 --> 01:03:56,880
schoolding of biomass on average direct lightning strikes the do

1102
01:03:56,920 --> 01:03:59,719
olifer killed nine point two neighboring trees. There you go there,

1103
01:04:00,079 --> 01:04:03,360
removing the competition and cost two point one mg of

1104
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:07,960
biomass mortality among neighboring trees. Oh MG, it is milligrams,

1105
01:04:08,039 --> 01:04:11,639
but it's it's in relation to another unit, like milligrams

1106
01:04:12,280 --> 01:04:16,519
perconmet bio biomass density can be expressed as milligrams per

1107
01:04:16,679 --> 01:04:21,400
unit area, you know, like milligrams per square centimeter. Okay,

1108
01:04:21,480 --> 01:04:24,239
that makes sense. Now they were leaving out that centimeter part.

1109
01:04:25,519 --> 01:04:28,679
Direct strikes. Direct lightning strikes that d oli ephra trees

1110
01:04:28,760 --> 01:04:32,800
also reduced LEANA loads. Oh, they got a video. Leana

1111
01:04:32,840 --> 01:04:35,719
abundance has decreased on all six directly struck the oli

1112
01:04:35,719 --> 01:04:40,039
effer that were initially infested with leanas four others struck

1113
01:04:40,119 --> 01:04:42,920
the oli effra had no leanas before. After the strike,

1114
01:04:43,000 --> 01:04:45,760
the average number of leanas in a tree decreased seventy

1115
01:04:45,800 --> 01:04:49,280
eight percent. So this is like, gad, this just like

1116
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:51,760
if God went in there with the hedge trimmers and

1117
01:04:51,960 --> 01:04:54,519
just pruned all that shit off. Let the tree breathe,

1118
01:04:54,840 --> 01:04:57,760
get a little bit more light, increase the airflow around it,

1119
01:04:57,760 --> 01:04:59,920
which is very important in these very these human four

1120
01:05:00,000 --> 01:05:03,400
trust too leads to less rot, more airflow, less rot,

1121
01:05:04,440 --> 01:05:09,199
less fungal pathogens, less propensity for fungal pathogens to attack

1122
01:05:09,920 --> 01:05:12,559
things like bark or you know, crotches of trees or whatever.

1123
01:05:12,639 --> 01:05:16,400
I would assume this decrease far exceeds the expected mortality

1124
01:05:16,440 --> 01:05:18,559
of these leanos over the same time period based on

1125
01:05:18,639 --> 01:05:21,360
community wide rates of leano mortel. Yet duh, they're not.

1126
01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:24,920
They're getting struck by lightning. They're gonna die a lot

1127
01:05:25,079 --> 01:05:28,440
faster and more abundantly than if they're just you know,

1128
01:05:28,719 --> 01:05:31,760
for then a control. So that's cool. So the lightning

1129
01:05:32,159 --> 01:05:36,239
this tree is benefiting, is benefiting from getting struck by

1130
01:05:36,320 --> 01:05:40,840
lightning and suffering minimal minimal costs. Again, that's the thing,

1131
01:05:41,000 --> 01:05:45,159
minor costs and major benefits. And so now something is

1132
01:05:45,199 --> 01:05:48,719
selecting for it the lightning in these tropical forests where

1133
01:05:48,760 --> 01:05:50,480
every you know, I think it's like every day there's

1134
01:05:50,559 --> 01:05:53,719
a thunderstorm. God, it's such a wonderful fucking feeling to

1135
01:05:53,800 --> 01:05:55,239
be in these forces and hear the thunder.

1136
01:05:55,960 --> 01:05:56,159
Speaker 2: Ah.

1137
01:05:57,199 --> 01:06:02,239
Speaker 1: There's such special places. They really are. If you can,

1138
01:06:02,360 --> 01:06:04,760
If you ever get a chance to visit a tropical forest,

1139
01:06:04,800 --> 01:06:08,239
whether it's a dry forest or a rainforest, whatever it is,

1140
01:06:08,400 --> 01:06:12,480
it's so worth it. It's so incredible. Even you can't see.

1141
01:06:13,440 --> 01:06:16,559
It's disorienting and it's overwhelming because it's you know, even

1142
01:06:16,559 --> 01:06:18,440
from a bondness perspective, because you can't tell what the

1143
01:06:18,480 --> 01:06:20,239
fuck you're looking at half the time because the trees

1144
01:06:20,239 --> 01:06:22,400
are so high up, can't see the flowers, which you

1145
01:06:22,480 --> 01:06:25,519
need for identification. Every once in a while you'll get

1146
01:06:25,679 --> 01:06:28,320
flowers on the ground like the you know, after their

1147
01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:31,800
post mature and the corolla falls off over and shit

1148
01:06:31,920 --> 01:06:34,360
is still up there whatever. But so you could there,

1149
01:06:34,440 --> 01:06:36,159
you can figure it out. There's stuff you could do.

1150
01:06:37,280 --> 01:06:39,679
I got this, uh you know, I use a Nikon

1151
01:06:39,719 --> 01:06:41,599
of take photos. I got this. I found this old

1152
01:06:41,760 --> 01:06:45,440
eighteen to three hundred millimeter lens I had purchased. It's

1153
01:06:45,480 --> 01:06:47,079
like a five hundred dollars lens or some shit. I

1154
01:06:47,159 --> 01:06:49,480
got it a couple of years ago, and I hadn't

1155
01:06:49,480 --> 01:06:53,519
been using it because it wasn't very good for macro photography.

1156
01:06:54,079 --> 01:06:56,840
You know, it's like an extendable lens. But now I'm

1157
01:06:56,880 --> 01:06:59,800
all about it, you know, because you know, you can

1158
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:03,320
still take decent photos even though you have to be

1159
01:07:03,960 --> 01:07:06,159
you know, like a foot back from the subject, which

1160
01:07:06,159 --> 01:07:09,199
if you're photographing a small flower, whatever it's, you can

1161
01:07:09,280 --> 01:07:13,000
still do it. But also just for you had to

1162
01:07:13,039 --> 01:07:15,840
have that telephoto capability to zoom in up to three

1163
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:18,679
hundred millimeters, which is like a you know, a really

1164
01:07:19,199 --> 01:07:22,679
it's like a telephoto lens. Is great, and to do

1165
01:07:22,760 --> 01:07:24,480
it on the fly too. I'm not getting like, you know,

1166
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:28,599
these big two thousand dollars burden nerd lenses or something

1167
01:07:28,639 --> 01:07:31,159
like that. I would I would break that, but I

1168
01:07:31,280 --> 01:07:33,519
need this stuff. I take so many fucking photos. I

1169
01:07:33,599 --> 01:07:36,519
probably took twenty thousand photos when I was there, because

1170
01:07:36,559 --> 01:07:39,840
it's it's a kin to taking herbarium specimens, and I'll

1171
01:07:39,960 --> 01:07:43,000
use them. I learned so much from the photographs I take.

1172
01:07:43,079 --> 01:07:45,199
I take at least six or seven photos of every

1173
01:07:45,239 --> 01:07:48,960
plant from different angles leaves, stems, pubescents on the stems, flowers,

1174
01:07:49,440 --> 01:07:55,639
et cetera, habit habitat, et cetera. Both habit and habitat. So,

1175
01:07:56,639 --> 01:07:58,039
you know, but if you're just starting out, get like

1176
01:07:58,079 --> 01:08:02,360
at eighteen to fifteen millimeter fifty five millimeters stock lens

1177
01:08:02,440 --> 01:08:04,639
and if you can afford it, like a decent one

1178
01:08:04,679 --> 01:08:06,639
oh five macro. I use Nikon because they got a

1179
01:08:06,760 --> 01:08:10,960
nice so they got nice software. You know, Cannon doesn't

1180
01:08:11,000 --> 01:08:12,880
have nice software. It's a fucking pain in the ass.

1181
01:08:13,480 --> 01:08:18,119
But you know, especially for geo tagging, Nikon is the

1182
01:08:18,199 --> 01:08:20,920
only one that snaperdge app as much of a pain

1183
01:08:20,960 --> 01:08:22,560
in the ass that can be at time, still works

1184
01:08:22,600 --> 01:08:25,840
pretty good. So anyway, so I had this telephoto lens,

1185
01:08:25,840 --> 01:08:27,319
I could, yeah, I could zoom in on all this

1186
01:08:27,399 --> 01:08:30,560
shit and get photos of these leaves way up in

1187
01:08:30,680 --> 01:08:32,680
the canopy, one hundred feet up in the canopy, so

1188
01:08:32,680 --> 01:08:34,800
I could at least tell what it is. I could

1189
01:08:34,800 --> 01:08:36,439
take a picture and then zoom in on it on

1190
01:08:36,520 --> 01:08:39,279
the camera on the screen and see what it is.

1191
01:08:39,399 --> 01:08:43,479
It was incredibly helpful. And also you see cool birds

1192
01:08:43,520 --> 01:08:45,079
and shit, I get a photo of a bird, it's

1193
01:08:45,119 --> 01:08:47,279
not going to be a fucking uh. You know, it's

1194
01:08:47,319 --> 01:08:49,159
not going to be like a magazine photo. I could

1195
01:08:49,199 --> 01:08:52,319
still tell what it is and it's clear. So anyway,

1196
01:08:52,359 --> 01:08:54,439
walking down, we'll finish with the drive force and move

1197
01:08:54,520 --> 01:08:56,199
on to different habitat in a minute. But I want

1198
01:08:56,199 --> 01:08:58,079
to stick with these drive forces for a minute because

1199
01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:02,239
they're so you know, in their own way. And it's

1200
01:09:02,279 --> 01:09:05,039
also nobody was there because it's the dry season and

1201
01:09:05,159 --> 01:09:07,840
it's so fucking hot. It was at least ninety five

1202
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:11,399
degrees walking around, you know, crunching on the leaves on

1203
01:09:11,439 --> 01:09:15,079
the ground everywhere. But you know, the heat doesn't face

1204
01:09:15,159 --> 01:09:17,600
me anymore because I live and I've gotten so accustomed

1205
01:09:17,680 --> 01:09:20,920
to it living in South Texas at a low elevation

1206
01:09:21,000 --> 01:09:23,039
in South Texas too, more like one hundred and twenty

1207
01:09:23,079 --> 01:09:25,800
feet here at twenty six degrees latitude. So it's hot

1208
01:09:25,880 --> 01:09:29,319
as balls most of the time, you know, unless those

1209
01:09:29,479 --> 01:09:31,800
odd odd days in the winter you get like a

1210
01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:36,079
cold front from up north. But and so I've gotten

1211
01:09:36,199 --> 01:09:38,800
used to just sweating all the time. You wear baggy clothes,

1212
01:09:38,840 --> 01:09:40,760
you wear a baggy shirt, you sweat all the time.

1213
01:09:41,000 --> 01:09:44,079
Light colors and never fucking wear black anymore, and you

1214
01:09:44,159 --> 01:09:45,920
get used to it and you just learn to appreciate

1215
01:09:46,000 --> 01:09:48,720
the sweat and roll with it. But yeah, just you

1216
01:09:48,800 --> 01:09:50,600
gotta watch your heart rate, make sure your heart rate

1217
01:09:50,640 --> 01:09:53,199
doesn't get too elevated because of the heat, you know

1218
01:09:53,319 --> 01:09:56,439
above like one forty one fifty hit the one fifty area,

1219
01:09:56,479 --> 01:09:58,760
you got to stop and take it easy, you know,

1220
01:09:58,920 --> 01:10:01,840
which I definitely did going uphill in some of these areas,

1221
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:03,239
Like when I was climbing to the top of the

1222
01:10:03,359 --> 01:10:07,479
karst the car stereo hitting one fifty one sixty, It's like, fuck,

1223
01:10:07,520 --> 01:10:09,319
you gotta take it easy because that's when you're gonna

1224
01:10:09,359 --> 01:10:11,920
have an issue, So when you're gonna keeel over. But

1225
01:10:12,159 --> 01:10:16,840
uh yeah, got cacti and howler monkeys, fucking nuts man

1226
01:10:17,319 --> 01:10:21,800
cacti growing in the understory of forests, like tall columnar

1227
01:10:21,840 --> 01:10:25,119
cacti growing in the understory of these dry forests with

1228
01:10:25,279 --> 01:10:30,039
burst ros simaruba on dog tooth karst limestone that's been

1229
01:10:30,119 --> 01:10:34,800
so so eroded by the rain, by the tropical rains,

1230
01:10:34,960 --> 01:10:38,239
you know, in a rainy season, and you learn to

1231
01:10:38,399 --> 01:10:40,560
you learned to love the heat so and it was

1232
01:10:40,640 --> 01:10:42,359
cool too because a lot of those what I noticed

1233
01:10:42,439 --> 01:10:46,079
is a lot of those legume seeds need scarification to germinate.

1234
01:10:46,199 --> 01:10:48,359
So what I was doing. I got one of those

1235
01:10:48,479 --> 01:10:51,119
dog electric nail files. It's like a you know, it's

1236
01:10:51,199 --> 01:10:55,880
just a spinning grit disc, not disc, but like a

1237
01:10:56,079 --> 01:10:58,199
you know, a roller. You can get them on Scamazon.

1238
01:10:58,279 --> 01:11:00,520
I hate to fucking advertise it. There was a alternative

1239
01:11:00,520 --> 01:11:02,640
to Scanada. You can get them on Scammazon for like

1240
01:11:02,680 --> 01:11:05,439
fifteen twenty bucks. And that's you know. I usually that

1241
01:11:05,520 --> 01:11:07,680
to cut the dog, to file the dog's nails down,

1242
01:11:07,720 --> 01:11:10,239
because I don't want to. I don't want to, you know,

1243
01:11:10,399 --> 01:11:12,880
mess them up. Back when we used to live in

1244
01:11:13,000 --> 01:11:14,840
a climate that wasn't hot as balls, I would just

1245
01:11:14,880 --> 01:11:16,399
take the dogs out on the bike all the time

1246
01:11:16,439 --> 01:11:18,920
and they the concrete would file their nails down. But

1247
01:11:19,000 --> 01:11:20,359
now I got it, and now I use this thing

1248
01:11:20,840 --> 01:11:22,760
right because we're a bunch of fatties living here in

1249
01:11:22,800 --> 01:11:25,359
South Texas. That's what happens, you know, when you move

1250
01:11:25,479 --> 01:11:29,880
to Texas, really anywhere in the South. So anyway, so

1251
01:11:30,640 --> 01:11:33,359
I use that to scarify these seas. And I did

1252
01:11:33,399 --> 01:11:36,399
it with Dermatophylum. Texas Mountain Laurel probably one of the

1253
01:11:36,479 --> 01:11:39,199
dumbest common names that exists because it doesn't grow in

1254
01:11:39,199 --> 01:11:42,920
the mountains, and it's not a laurel but a Dermatophylum

1255
01:11:42,960 --> 01:11:46,800
secunda florum, really common native plant here. I guess it's

1256
01:11:46,880 --> 01:11:51,159
on that band that State Bill eighteen sixty eight banned

1257
01:11:51,239 --> 01:11:55,560
substances list that you know, only it's so retarded it

1258
01:11:55,600 --> 01:11:57,880
could only come out of a place like Texas, out

1259
01:11:57,920 --> 01:12:01,640
of the Texas politician's mouth. So some guys filing this bill,

1260
01:12:02,079 --> 01:12:04,359
State Bill eighteen sixty eight. I think he was an

1261
01:12:04,359 --> 01:12:07,560
accountant before he became a politician. I'm sure he's got

1262
01:12:07,560 --> 01:12:11,600
a wealth of world experience. He wrote this bill banning

1263
01:12:11,640 --> 01:12:13,640
all these plants that no one in their right mind

1264
01:12:13,680 --> 01:12:16,760
would ever use to get high. Most of them are toxic.

1265
01:12:16,920 --> 01:12:21,079
They're mildly psychoactive, like I guess a lot of poisons are.

1266
01:12:21,560 --> 01:12:23,680
I guess you get I guess you feel a little weird,

1267
01:12:24,439 --> 01:12:26,560
you know, in the head before you you have blood

1268
01:12:26,600 --> 01:12:29,119
pressure raised and you start vomiting blood. I don't know,

1269
01:12:29,279 --> 01:12:33,159
I don't know, but but but it supposedly it's, you know,

1270
01:12:33,239 --> 01:12:37,319
you have to show intent to you know, to produce

1271
01:12:37,399 --> 01:12:39,800
these for consumption. But they could make that up. That

1272
01:12:39,880 --> 01:12:43,000
could be easily weaponized against anybody who's growing any of

1273
01:12:43,039 --> 01:12:47,840
these plants like heimiasilisifolia in the loose strife family Lithraci

1274
01:12:48,119 --> 01:12:53,239
or Dermatto philem secundaflorum, which has been used for beads

1275
01:12:53,479 --> 01:12:57,079
and was used for beads by native people Cohill Tecans

1276
01:12:57,520 --> 01:13:02,640
among other tribes in Texas for so long. So anyway,

1277
01:13:02,920 --> 01:13:07,279
the mezcal bean, which is where mescaline came from, It

1278
01:13:07,479 --> 01:13:12,239
was a confused with peyote a lot when Honkey Death

1279
01:13:12,319 --> 01:13:15,159
Cult was you know, initially starting the first culture War

1280
01:13:15,199 --> 01:13:20,199
against the natives in the late eighteen hundreds, the first

1281
01:13:20,239 --> 01:13:25,479
culture war against the natives in Texas. So anyway, but yeah,

1282
01:13:25,640 --> 01:13:28,399
but you could scarify all these things, any seeds, any

1283
01:13:28,479 --> 01:13:31,079
legumes that need scarification used that dog nail file works,

1284
01:13:31,119 --> 01:13:33,479
works like a charm. So before we move on, what

1285
01:13:33,560 --> 01:13:38,560
are the dominant plant families in these ecosystems in these

1286
01:13:38,920 --> 01:13:45,119
neotropical dry forests. Fabees, the legume family euphour bac just

1287
01:13:45,560 --> 01:13:50,520
exceptionally specios, especially in you know, Brazilian and Katinga in

1288
01:13:50,880 --> 01:13:55,920
Central America. You know, crotons Sapium et cetera, burser ace,

1289
01:13:56,359 --> 01:14:03,520
the frankinsense family like Bursra simaruba, and burso, Graviolens, Palo Santo, apostanac,

1290
01:14:04,399 --> 01:14:09,760
the milkweed and oleander family. You know, species like Espidosperma

1291
01:14:10,399 --> 01:14:13,840
or genera like Espidosperma and ruby ac.

1292
01:14:14,720 --> 01:14:15,720
Speaker 2: So you know.

1293
01:14:17,800 --> 01:14:20,119
Speaker 1: That's that's those are gonna be the some of the dominant,

1294
01:14:20,439 --> 01:14:23,880
dominant families that you'll end up seeing. And lots of mimosoids,

1295
01:14:24,319 --> 01:14:28,920
but again like dipteryx Oliiphra is not a mimosoid, that's

1296
01:14:29,079 --> 01:14:33,119
a faboid. It's from the phaboid E subfamily. And I

1297
01:14:33,199 --> 01:14:37,600
we'll take a little break for some shitty commercials, all right,

1298
01:14:37,720 --> 01:14:40,600
and now to talk about some of my favorite habitat

1299
01:14:41,199 --> 01:14:46,239
besides deserts, is neotropical cloud forests. So anywhere in the tropics,

1300
01:14:46,319 --> 01:14:49,920
elevation plays such an important part in the type of

1301
01:14:50,000 --> 01:14:53,079
plant community you're gonna get, the type of clades of

1302
01:14:53,239 --> 01:14:57,279
plants that is, evolutionarily related groups of plants, you're gonna encounter,

1303
01:14:58,600 --> 01:15:02,640
the rainfall, the imperatures, you're gonna get it. And there's

1304
01:15:02,680 --> 01:15:05,760
so much variation, all right. It's it's such a there's

1305
01:15:06,199 --> 01:15:09,520
so many different kinds of habitats depending on elevation. Whether

1306
01:15:09,640 --> 01:15:13,399
you're in Wahaka, whether you're in the mountains around Mexico City,

1307
01:15:14,000 --> 01:15:20,399
whether you're in Sonora, Mexico, whether you're in Peru, Ecuador.

1308
01:15:21,479 --> 01:15:25,279
You know, you get the you get the lowland forests,

1309
01:15:25,319 --> 01:15:27,920
you get lowland dry forests, and on the in the

1310
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:31,520
rain shadow of mountains, you get tropical more tropical music

1311
01:15:31,680 --> 01:15:35,119
forests where you're not in the rain shadow of mountains,

1312
01:15:35,119 --> 01:15:38,640
like on the on the warm water, warm ocean current

1313
01:15:38,800 --> 01:15:41,800
side of a mountain range. And then up at the

1314
01:15:42,159 --> 01:15:46,760
mid elevations you get a little bit not necessarily dry forest,

1315
01:15:46,840 --> 01:15:48,880
but you get you know, a different plant communities, start

1316
01:15:48,920 --> 01:15:50,720
encountering plants you're not going to see down below. And

1317
01:15:50,760 --> 01:15:54,199
then up at the higher elevations like eight thousand and

1318
01:15:54,279 --> 01:15:58,199
nine thousand feet, you're gonna start encountering cloud forests, which

1319
01:15:58,279 --> 01:16:03,880
is totally bizarre. It's unlike anything you'd ever experience in

1320
01:16:04,239 --> 01:16:08,119
more temperate latitudes like the United States or Europe. You know,

1321
01:16:08,199 --> 01:16:11,439
you'll see a lot of temperate lineages of plants, plants

1322
01:16:11,479 --> 01:16:15,039
you would see at more temperate latitudes, but they're growing

1323
01:16:15,119 --> 01:16:18,000
at tropical latitudes and they can do that because they're

1324
01:16:18,079 --> 01:16:20,479
so high up. And that was where I spent a

1325
01:16:20,520 --> 01:16:23,800
lot of time bodanizing and looking at plants, you also

1326
01:16:23,880 --> 01:16:26,840
get a lot of cool mushrooms, many more cool mushrooms

1327
01:16:26,880 --> 01:16:30,680
than you get at lower elevations. Up in the higher

1328
01:16:30,720 --> 01:16:34,760
elevation forests, you know, in places like Mexico, like where

1329
01:16:34,760 --> 01:16:37,399
the Monarch reserve, those are all Aby's forests, those are

1330
01:16:37,439 --> 01:16:40,960
all coniferous forests. You don't normally don't get members of

1331
01:16:41,039 --> 01:16:46,079
the pine family that low latitude, unless it's of course montane,

1332
01:16:46,159 --> 01:16:48,239
unless it's a high elevation area, and they are of

1333
01:16:48,359 --> 01:16:51,479
course Michael riislhosts to a lot of cool mushrooms, just

1334
01:16:51,600 --> 01:16:53,720
like oak trees, And there was a shit ton of

1335
01:16:53,840 --> 01:16:57,920
oak trees I encountered in Costa Rica at the like

1336
01:16:58,000 --> 01:17:02,119
around a five thousand to six foot mid elevation forests.

1337
01:17:02,159 --> 01:17:06,279
I saw Corcus in signus, one of the largest acorns

1338
01:17:06,640 --> 01:17:10,039
in the whole oak family, size of a baseball kind

1339
01:17:10,079 --> 01:17:15,439
of tomatos. Pubescent leaves, beautiful leaves, very coriaceous and leathery too,

1340
01:17:15,560 --> 01:17:21,600
but having like a glabrous ad axial surface upper side

1341
01:17:21,600 --> 01:17:24,319
of the leaf, and then a more pubescent like a

1342
01:17:24,399 --> 01:17:28,479
rusty indument on the underside of the leaf on the

1343
01:17:28,560 --> 01:17:32,039
ab axial surface. And of course these are huge trees,

1344
01:17:32,119 --> 01:17:35,399
and they were all over this this mid elevation forest

1345
01:17:35,479 --> 01:17:37,399
that roughly, I think it was like fifty five hundred

1346
01:17:37,439 --> 01:17:40,520
feet what is that a meters fifteen hundred meters sixteen

1347
01:17:40,600 --> 01:17:43,680
hundred meters maybe nah, probably that's a little bit higher

1348
01:17:43,680 --> 01:17:46,840
than that. Seventeen I don't know anyway, but really interesting

1349
01:17:46,920 --> 01:17:48,720
stuff there. But you're still getting a lot of the

1350
01:17:48,760 --> 01:17:54,840
gazaniriads and interesting stuff from lower elevation wet forests as well.

1351
01:17:54,880 --> 01:17:56,760
And this was right around San Jose, Costa Rica. So

1352
01:17:57,039 --> 01:17:59,760
in Costa Rica, the mountains go from northwest to southeast.

1353
01:18:00,800 --> 01:18:02,800
On the east side of the mountains and the lowlands

1354
01:18:02,840 --> 01:18:05,680
you've got the more amusic kind of rainforest habitat. On

1355
01:18:05,760 --> 01:18:08,760
the northwest side you've got the dry forest, the dry

1356
01:18:08,840 --> 01:18:11,439
tropical forests where all the cool cact iron at gaves.

1357
01:18:12,199 --> 01:18:14,079
There's even a melo cactus you get in the far

1358
01:18:14,279 --> 01:18:17,000
northwest of Costa Rica. You know, melo cactus is the

1359
01:18:17,039 --> 01:18:18,600
cake this It looks like it's wearing a FETs like

1360
01:18:18,640 --> 01:18:21,159
the fucking Shriners on a big Kennedy's album, you know.

1361
01:18:22,359 --> 01:18:25,600
And then you get Paramo really high up, which is

1362
01:18:25,680 --> 01:18:28,359
where it's you know, summer every day, winter, every night,

1363
01:18:28,479 --> 01:18:31,880
really thin air. The plants have hairs and pubescents on them,

1364
01:18:32,000 --> 01:18:34,720
not because of drought like you would encounter in a

1365
01:18:34,800 --> 01:18:37,680
desert like in western North America, but they've got hairs

1366
01:18:38,399 --> 01:18:43,520
to protect against ultraviolet light, which is much exponentially stronger

1367
01:18:43,600 --> 01:18:46,039
up there, like by an order of magnitudes stronger at

1368
01:18:46,079 --> 01:18:50,039
higher elevations because there's less atmosphere for that light to

1369
01:18:50,119 --> 01:18:54,600
travel through that breaks it up. And also because it's

1370
01:18:54,640 --> 01:18:57,039
so high up the air is so thin, it loses

1371
01:18:57,439 --> 01:19:00,600
warmth really really quickly, and so it it can get

1372
01:19:00,680 --> 01:19:03,000
down to freezing, It'll be eighty degrees during the day,

1373
01:19:03,000 --> 01:19:05,399
and they can get down to freezing at night, and

1374
01:19:05,520 --> 01:19:10,600
so those hares act as an insulation against the freeze damage,

1375
01:19:10,760 --> 01:19:13,760
you know, to deal with those drastic temperature swings. And

1376
01:19:13,880 --> 01:19:17,159
I saw, you know, an illustration of the benefit of

1377
01:19:17,279 --> 01:19:20,720
hairs when I was growing Helianthus argo fhylus during the

1378
01:19:20,760 --> 01:19:23,359
Texas freeze. The spot I was staying at, I had

1379
01:19:23,439 --> 01:19:26,159
some of these, you know, the hairy sunflower get fifteen

1380
01:19:26,239 --> 01:19:29,640
feet tall. It grows in the Texas sand sheet. I

1381
01:19:29,680 --> 01:19:32,600
think there's a disjunk population in Louisiana, which is cool too,

1382
01:19:32,840 --> 01:19:36,039
like in coastal Louisiana somewhere on sand, but it's a

1383
01:19:36,119 --> 01:19:40,079
sand endemic like many sand plants, many sand dune plants.

1384
01:19:40,119 --> 01:19:43,880
It's very hairy and it gets a big taproot. And

1385
01:19:44,000 --> 01:19:46,600
during that Texas freeze it got down to like twenty

1386
01:19:46,880 --> 01:19:51,159
six degrees fahrenheit where I live. And Helianthus argophylus, despite

1387
01:19:51,239 --> 01:19:54,640
being an annual, a non woody plant with just you know,

1388
01:19:54,840 --> 01:19:59,439
soft tissue, it survived. It came out through the freeze

1389
01:19:59,439 --> 01:20:03,880
because that thick layer of wool. I mean, the leaves

1390
01:20:03,920 --> 01:20:08,319
are almost white Argophilus silver leaf. The thick layer of

1391
01:20:08,359 --> 01:20:11,640
wool protected against the freeze. It insulated a little bit.

1392
01:20:11,680 --> 01:20:14,319
It'll you know, same thing that like if citrus growers

1393
01:20:14,359 --> 01:20:16,640
do they wrap their trees with frost cloth when they

1394
01:20:16,720 --> 01:20:18,119
know it's going to freeze, and they're you know, in

1395
01:20:18,199 --> 01:20:21,279
Florida or South Texas or something. It's a it'll it's

1396
01:20:21,319 --> 01:20:23,720
not going to save the plant in a deep, deep freeze,

1397
01:20:23,760 --> 01:20:27,920
but it'll buy you a few degrees celsius of protection,

1398
01:20:28,039 --> 01:20:30,520
which is exactly what it did. And so that's why

1399
01:20:31,159 --> 01:20:33,279
many of the plants in the Paramo are hairy. It

1400
01:20:33,399 --> 01:20:35,640
was the Paramo was fucking insane. I mean, it's a

1401
01:20:35,680 --> 01:20:39,199
whole other it's above cloud forest. It's like a whole

1402
01:20:39,279 --> 01:20:45,159
other world. Esclonium ortilioides is the dominant tree there, you know,

1403
01:20:45,319 --> 01:20:48,760
forms these short forests to like fifteen twenty feet tall

1404
01:20:49,239 --> 01:20:53,880
seven meters tall, and everything's covered in epiphytes, and there's

1405
01:20:54,039 --> 01:20:57,880
epiphytic liver warts, these red liver warts everywhere that don't

1406
01:20:57,920 --> 01:21:02,800
they're not like the Thallus rewards the uh, you know,

1407
01:21:02,920 --> 01:21:04,560
not the thallus what is the word on the leafy

1408
01:21:04,600 --> 01:21:06,720
liver They don't look like that. They're like they look

1409
01:21:06,800 --> 01:21:09,800
more like a moss almost, but they've they're just covered

1410
01:21:09,840 --> 01:21:13,079
in these they've got these these red and orange pigments

1411
01:21:13,560 --> 01:21:16,199
to protect against the increased ultra violet light. Least, that's

1412
01:21:16,199 --> 01:21:22,000
what I would assume, just wild shit everywhere. That pooyasilerioides,

1413
01:21:22,359 --> 01:21:24,279
which is a bromeliad, was the target plant that I

1414
01:21:24,399 --> 01:21:28,039
was looking for. It's the northernmost species in a genus Puya,

1415
01:21:28,079 --> 01:21:33,159
which is a fucking dope genus of bromeliad. That's mostly all.

1416
01:21:33,279 --> 01:21:36,560
It's all South American except for I think a couple

1417
01:21:36,600 --> 01:21:39,119
of species, this being one of them. And this grows

1418
01:21:39,159 --> 01:21:42,159
of course at high elevations. And what's remarkable is Pooya

1419
01:21:42,279 --> 01:21:45,880
is a really drought tolerant genus, like Puya Alpestros, Puya venusta.

1420
01:21:46,159 --> 01:21:49,119
You see them in Chile. They form these huge clumps

1421
01:21:49,640 --> 01:21:55,000
of really razor sharp, serrated leaves that would be a

1422
01:21:55,159 --> 01:21:58,399
horrible thing to fall into because they they've got these

1423
01:21:58,439 --> 01:22:00,800
recurved teeth that would just turn into yours. But they

1424
01:22:00,880 --> 01:22:04,760
get these inflorescences, these flowering stalks that look like wooly

1425
01:22:04,880 --> 01:22:08,439
blue torches, just fucking incredible flowers, a lot of them.

1426
01:22:08,520 --> 01:22:11,479
Most of them are bird pollinated. There's a whole group

1427
01:22:11,960 --> 01:22:16,319
in the genus Puya and evolutionary clade of plants in

1428
01:22:16,359 --> 01:22:19,560
the genus Puya a number of species that produce sterile

1429
01:22:19,640 --> 01:22:23,399
inflorescence branches. So it's a branching inflorescence, but the branches

1430
01:22:23,439 --> 01:22:26,720
don't produce any flowers. They're sterile. They literally just provide

1431
01:22:26,760 --> 01:22:29,000
a perch for birds to hang out on so they

1432
01:22:29,039 --> 01:22:32,199
can stick their heads in the flower, suck nectar and

1433
01:22:32,359 --> 01:22:35,399
pollinate it. And the pollen is like this orange. Puya

1434
01:22:35,399 --> 01:22:40,079
Alpestros gets these iridescent blue flowers and then gets like

1435
01:22:40,279 --> 01:22:43,039
orange pollen It's just incredible. I just one I planted

1436
01:22:43,199 --> 01:22:45,920
is just about to uh. One I grew from seed

1437
01:22:45,960 --> 01:22:48,840
and plant that on eighteenth. The Mendela in West Oakland

1438
01:22:49,079 --> 01:22:51,479
is just starting to flower. Someone sent me photos. I

1439
01:22:51,479 --> 01:22:53,960
think that I already mentioned that probably who knows anyway,

1440
01:22:55,199 --> 01:22:59,399
So this was Pooya dasillarioides because it looks like Dasileian,

1441
01:22:59,520 --> 01:23:03,119
the genus of sodaal, which you know people make booze

1442
01:23:03,159 --> 01:23:06,239
from and generally don't grow. They just go take it

1443
01:23:06,359 --> 01:23:09,199
from habitat, which isn't very cool. There's got it. Come on, guys,

1444
01:23:09,239 --> 01:23:11,119
figure out a way to get around it. You can

1445
01:23:11,199 --> 01:23:15,680
grow Desilarians so easily. Someone started dasillian farm. It's worth

1446
01:23:15,720 --> 01:23:19,199
the investment. It'd be fucking cool regardless, right, Just start

1447
01:23:19,239 --> 01:23:23,880
planting a bunch of Dasillyrian, uh texanam or Leophylum, which

1448
01:23:23,880 --> 01:23:25,560
are the main ones we get in Texas. You get

1449
01:23:25,600 --> 01:23:32,159
Dasillarian wheeleraye in Arizona and uh Dasillarian some of the

1450
01:23:32,279 --> 01:23:36,039
colescent ones that look like the Kingy Australis the Australian

1451
01:23:36,079 --> 01:23:39,039
grass tree. You know, they got like a stem wild

1452
01:23:39,119 --> 01:23:43,319
looking plants down in Correthoro, Mexico and tom alipis. It

1453
01:23:43,439 --> 01:23:46,000
was a desialarian logisimum. I forget, well, I forget what

1454
01:23:46,039 --> 01:23:50,039
they are, the collescent thesillian. But anyway, this puya apparently

1455
01:23:50,279 --> 01:23:52,880
whoever named the things that it thought that it looked

1456
01:23:52,920 --> 01:23:55,319
like a dasillarian, which it does. It's got a similar

1457
01:23:55,960 --> 01:23:58,600
form to it, but it's it's a clumping bromeliad with

1458
01:23:58,960 --> 01:24:02,119
recurved teeth. But it grows in fucking bogs. It grows

1459
01:24:02,159 --> 01:24:05,600
in sphagnum bogs. It's not drought tolerant at all. It's

1460
01:24:05,920 --> 01:24:08,960
it grows in Sphagnum bogs at nearly twelve thousand feet

1461
01:24:09,000 --> 01:24:13,680
elevation in Costa Rica with a really cool fern species

1462
01:24:13,760 --> 01:24:15,880
that looks like a psycat. It looks like some sort

1463
01:24:15,920 --> 01:24:18,239
of what, you know, what you would call a sago palm,

1464
01:24:18,319 --> 01:24:22,199
what a fucking layperson would call a sago palm, you know,

1465
01:24:22,279 --> 01:24:24,359
which is like, you know, it's like a plant that

1466
01:24:24,479 --> 01:24:28,560
gets planted. I have terrible visions of sago palm surrounded

1467
01:24:28,600 --> 01:24:33,720
by blankets of Saint modes, freshly mode Saint augustine grass

1468
01:24:33,840 --> 01:24:38,600
kept alive with a morphine drip of irrigation and fertilizers

1469
01:24:38,640 --> 01:24:42,680
and pesticides and like the Florida suburbs. Horrible vision, horrible

1470
01:24:42,760 --> 01:24:46,239
place to be, But that's a sago palm is a pycat.

1471
01:24:46,319 --> 01:24:47,680
It's not a palm at all, but they call it

1472
01:24:47,760 --> 01:24:50,800
sego palm. And that's what this black num species look like,

1473
01:24:50,840 --> 01:24:53,960
which I guess is now in the genus Lamerio Psychis,

1474
01:24:54,840 --> 01:24:57,159
and Psychis is a genus of psychad. It's a fucking

1475
01:24:57,199 --> 01:24:59,800
super confusing so you would think lamerio Psychus is a psychat.

1476
01:24:59,840 --> 01:25:03,760
It's actually a fern species black them black nacy is

1477
01:25:04,199 --> 01:25:08,119
a very common family of ferns at lower latitudes, and

1478
01:25:08,279 --> 01:25:12,560
so Lamerio Psychis Buktinia or was it blackham buctina. I

1479
01:25:12,640 --> 01:25:15,960
think it's Lamerio Psychus book tinII. Now was growing all

1480
01:25:16,039 --> 01:25:19,920
over the place with this puya Puya des larioides and

1481
01:25:20,079 --> 01:25:25,520
cheskeaa subteslada species of bamboo. In these really low growing

1482
01:25:27,119 --> 01:25:31,560
Sphagnum bogs, there was fucking Sphagnum peete everywhere, like living Sphagnum,

1483
01:25:31,640 --> 01:25:34,079
you know, like red and yellow. I think it was

1484
01:25:34,520 --> 01:25:38,760
Sphagnum magillanicum was the species. But there was I mean, god,

1485
01:25:38,800 --> 01:25:40,680
it was just such a fucking wild habitat. It was

1486
01:25:40,760 --> 01:25:44,039
so cool. You know, in these PuYas, they weren't blooming

1487
01:25:44,079 --> 01:25:45,359
when I was there. I guess if you can be

1488
01:25:45,439 --> 01:25:49,159
there when they're blooming. It's literally a wooly torch. The

1489
01:25:49,279 --> 01:25:53,159
inflorescence is a wooly torch. There's so much hair and

1490
01:25:53,239 --> 01:25:56,159
wool on theeds things to protect them against the UV

1491
01:25:56,840 --> 01:26:01,600
and of course that frost. Especially Espiletti, which is like

1492
01:26:01,680 --> 01:26:06,359
the iconic genus of paramo plants. It's an astorace E

1493
01:26:06,680 --> 01:26:08,760
s p E l E. T I A. It's a

1494
01:26:09,000 --> 01:26:13,119
fucking wild looking genus that's had an adaptive radiation. Many

1495
01:26:13,159 --> 01:26:17,800
different species at the higher elevations in Colombia, and even

1496
01:26:17,920 --> 01:26:23,039
there's a couple disjunct populations in Ecuador. They're very remote though,

1497
01:26:23,079 --> 01:26:24,840
you have to hike to them. They're far the fuck

1498
01:26:24,920 --> 01:26:30,640
out there. And when I was in Ecuador, I read

1499
01:26:30,680 --> 01:26:34,039
about this disjunc population that was it was the southernmost

1500
01:26:34,079 --> 01:26:37,840
population of Espaletia and it was just north of Mara,

1501
01:26:38,279 --> 01:26:40,479
where I was staying. But it's again it's you got

1502
01:26:40,560 --> 01:26:42,479
to like hike way the fuck in there. It's way

1503
01:26:42,560 --> 01:26:45,319
in there, but it's an interesting disjunk. It's like, you know,

1504
01:26:45,359 --> 01:26:47,520
the rest of the population is much further north, and

1505
01:26:47,600 --> 01:26:49,920
then this by the Colombian border, and there's just one

1506
01:26:50,039 --> 01:26:55,399
stand farther south. But all the espialetias are. You know,

1507
01:26:55,520 --> 01:26:58,479
they've got this same form that a lot of plants

1508
01:26:59,079 --> 01:27:04,039
at the high elevation. It's a convergent form, an evolutionarily

1509
01:27:04,119 --> 01:27:06,039
convergent form that a lot of plants that are not

1510
01:27:06,159 --> 01:27:10,520
related end up evolving when they grow at very high

1511
01:27:10,680 --> 01:27:14,760
elevations at tropical latitudes. The spiletti has looked like that.

1512
01:27:16,199 --> 01:27:18,279
You know, they get like and they retain their old

1513
01:27:18,359 --> 01:27:21,520
leaves because it acts like an insulation skirt. You know,

1514
01:27:21,680 --> 01:27:24,840
as the thing grows up, it acts like an insulation

1515
01:27:24,960 --> 01:27:28,960
skirt along the stem again protect it from frost and

1516
01:27:29,079 --> 01:27:32,039
I guess from UV to a lesser extent. But this

1517
01:27:32,359 --> 01:27:35,600
where this pooyu was growing, it was so foggy it was.

1518
01:27:36,159 --> 01:27:40,359
It rained on and off, it pissed on and off. God,

1519
01:27:40,439 --> 01:27:42,720
it was just so fucking cool. And all the other

1520
01:27:42,840 --> 01:27:45,680
plants there there's ferns on growing on everything. It's but

1521
01:27:45,760 --> 01:27:49,760
it's scrub vegetation too, and it must have been hard

1522
01:27:49,880 --> 01:27:51,720
panned beneath it, because I could see it was the

1523
01:27:51,800 --> 01:27:53,479
dry season now, but I could see there were areas

1524
01:27:53,520 --> 01:27:57,079
where water certainly pulled up and formed little bogs. And

1525
01:27:57,479 --> 01:27:59,920
I bet there's so many cool amphibians up there too.

1526
01:28:00,399 --> 01:28:03,279
I came across the paper that talked about some sort

1527
01:28:03,279 --> 01:28:06,720
of salamander species that uses Puya dasa leary oides to

1528
01:28:07,119 --> 01:28:10,680
hunt arthropods like it climbs up the stem. But we're

1529
01:28:10,680 --> 01:28:13,880
getting ahead of ourselves, so we'll talk about the paramol

1530
01:28:14,279 --> 01:28:16,760
in a minute. If there's anything left to actually get

1531
01:28:16,800 --> 01:28:19,199
to tons of cool lycopods and ship up there too.

1532
01:28:19,840 --> 01:28:26,439
But uh, but anyway, so the main things. I started

1533
01:28:26,520 --> 01:28:31,399
off in Santa Sidro General down there on the other

1534
01:28:31,479 --> 01:28:33,960
side of the mountains and got like a little fucking

1535
01:28:34,000 --> 01:28:37,600
Airbnb and took this little shitty sedan that I almost destroyed,

1536
01:28:38,600 --> 01:28:40,960
took it up and started. You know, the road starts

1537
01:28:40,960 --> 01:28:43,319
getting interesting. Right around five thousand feet. You start seeing

1538
01:28:43,359 --> 01:28:48,159
gunnera and sickness with you know, the Chilean rhubarb. It's

1539
01:28:48,199 --> 01:28:50,800
called a lot of plants that you see at these

1540
01:28:50,920 --> 01:28:53,960
higher elevations you also see at lower elevations in Chile,

1541
01:28:54,199 --> 01:28:57,600
like gunnera. That was a good it was. There was

1542
01:28:57,640 --> 01:28:59,880
a couple other ones too, or at least you know,

1543
01:29:00,119 --> 01:29:03,680
related species in the same genus because those temperate rainforests

1544
01:29:03,680 --> 01:29:08,079
of southern Chile have some floristic affinities with the higher

1545
01:29:08,199 --> 01:29:15,199
elevation paromo or higher elevation cloud forest. So Gunnar run

1546
01:29:15,319 --> 01:29:17,600
Sigmas was there on five six thousand feet there was

1547
01:29:17,680 --> 01:29:20,600
wigandhia urins, which is a giant borage. They can get

1548
01:29:20,680 --> 01:29:24,479
like eighteen feet tall. It's one of the coolest rutural plants.

1549
01:29:24,560 --> 01:29:26,680
What do I mean What do I mean by rutural plants? Well,

1550
01:29:26,760 --> 01:29:30,079
ruteral comes from the word rubble, the land word for rubble,

1551
01:29:30,479 --> 01:29:33,600
which which is you know, just means human disturbance. So

1552
01:29:33,720 --> 01:29:35,880
like on the edge of the city or a developed area,

1553
01:29:35,920 --> 01:29:39,000
a neglected area with gandy urns will pop up. It's

1554
01:29:39,039 --> 01:29:42,039
got it's a fucking great plant. It's got leaves that

1555
01:29:42,119 --> 01:29:45,439
are probably a foot and a half two feet, you know,

1556
01:29:45,800 --> 01:29:50,000
half a meter long by out of I fuck, I

1557
01:29:50,000 --> 01:29:53,840
don't know what a foot wide, big peltate leaves, big

1558
01:29:54,079 --> 01:29:59,159
big peltate leaves. And and they got you know, those

1559
01:29:59,239 --> 01:30:01,640
little urticade hairs all over them, like so many members

1560
01:30:01,680 --> 01:30:03,760
of bridge. And they see the flowers at the size

1561
01:30:03,760 --> 01:30:05,880
of golf balls. They're purple. This is a really common

1562
01:30:06,000 --> 01:30:09,079
plant you see in Mexico, and it's a ruteral plant

1563
01:30:09,159 --> 01:30:14,439
in Mexico too, like Mexico City wahaka, especially growing on

1564
01:30:14,520 --> 01:30:17,079
the side of the road. It's it's everywhere. I think

1565
01:30:17,159 --> 01:30:19,479
there's a couple of trees. If you want to see

1566
01:30:19,560 --> 01:30:22,359
some cool stuff and you're in California, go hit up.

1567
01:30:22,800 --> 01:30:25,279
You see Berkeley Botanic Garden, right. I don't know what

1568
01:30:25,359 --> 01:30:27,760
they're charging to get in there now. It's probably way

1569
01:30:27,840 --> 01:30:30,840
too much. It's fucking Berkeley. I'm sure it's charging way

1570
01:30:30,880 --> 01:30:32,800
too much. But there's other ways to get in. You

1571
01:30:32,880 --> 01:30:34,720
can go around a bag in the fence. Whatever. I

1572
01:30:34,840 --> 01:30:38,239
don't recommend that, I would never recommend it. I recommend

1573
01:30:38,359 --> 01:30:41,800
purchasing a membership and then using the fuck out of it,

1574
01:30:41,880 --> 01:30:43,720
you know, because you get the reciprocal admissions. You can

1575
01:30:43,760 --> 01:30:46,079
go to any botanic garden that they got that's part

1576
01:30:46,119 --> 01:30:50,600
of that program. But purchase a membership for like eighty bucks.

1577
01:30:51,600 --> 01:30:55,279
They're probably charging more the fuck no than God. Everything's

1578
01:30:55,279 --> 01:30:59,079
such a goddamn rip off now, but go there. They

1579
01:30:59,199 --> 01:31:01,079
just go the religious and that's you know, it's like, oh,

1580
01:31:01,399 --> 01:31:03,439
you'll fucking learn something every time. One of the best

1581
01:31:03,479 --> 01:31:07,800
botanic gardens in the country. None of that just esthetically

1582
01:31:07,920 --> 01:31:12,399
pleasing Hallmark greeting, card board housewife shit, you know, like, oh,

1583
01:31:12,439 --> 01:31:13,479
I need something to do, so I'm going to go

1584
01:31:13,560 --> 01:31:16,239
volund there at the botanic No offense to board housewifse.

1585
01:31:16,399 --> 01:31:18,279
But that was the thing in the fifties I noticed,

1586
01:31:18,319 --> 01:31:21,319
and that's why a lot of botanic gardens are garbage.

1587
01:31:21,319 --> 01:31:25,000
They're scientifically worthless, and they're just for looks. They're just attractive,

1588
01:31:25,520 --> 01:31:27,680
you know, five hundred of the same thing planted because

1589
01:31:27,720 --> 01:31:30,880
it applies color whatever. I've been saying this like nine

1590
01:31:30,920 --> 01:31:33,600
thousand times on this podcast. But you see, Berkeley is

1591
01:31:33,640 --> 01:31:35,600
not like that. You see, Berkeley's got a lot of

1592
01:31:35,640 --> 01:31:37,840
good stuff, and they've got an amazing cloud force collection,

1593
01:31:38,000 --> 01:31:41,479
partially because my friend Martin Grantham worked there and was

1594
01:31:41,640 --> 01:31:44,359
really interested in cloud forest stuff and was collecting and

1595
01:31:44,479 --> 01:31:46,760
growing a shit ton of it. And so that's where

1596
01:31:46,760 --> 01:31:53,960
I encountered many of these higher elevation neotropical music forests.

1597
01:31:55,079 --> 01:31:58,720
High elevation music forests, montane force, or even cloud forest

1598
01:31:58,800 --> 01:32:03,920
cloud forests generally very high, like just below Parmo, the

1599
01:32:04,039 --> 01:32:08,439
central Pogons, the all the cool Obelioids, you know the

1600
01:32:08,640 --> 01:32:14,239
central pogon Lobilia bermistera, which is bat pollinated central pogon

1601
01:32:14,319 --> 01:32:18,640
normally hummingbird pollinated. Libilia can be anything. I guess. The

1602
01:32:18,640 --> 01:32:21,039
difference between Lobelia and central Pogon too, is the way

1603
01:32:21,079 --> 01:32:24,840
the fruit the hisses, among other characteristics, but they can

1604
01:32:24,920 --> 01:32:27,199
be really hard to tell apart. But the fruit splits

1605
01:32:27,760 --> 01:32:31,680
laterally at the hisses laterally in central pogon, you know,

1606
01:32:31,760 --> 01:32:34,840
like up and down the fruit and then it op

1607
01:32:34,960 --> 01:32:38,079
the In Lobilia, the fruit just opens at the end.

1608
01:32:38,119 --> 01:32:41,479
But I've seen lobelias that produce like a a berry

1609
01:32:41,600 --> 01:32:44,319
fruit too. But in all these things, the seeds are tiny,

1610
01:32:44,359 --> 01:32:46,960
and that's how what makes them so ecologically successful and

1611
01:32:47,079 --> 01:32:49,600
so good at getting around. It's like the fruits produce

1612
01:32:49,720 --> 01:32:52,760
tons of seeds and then the seeds can get around.

1613
01:32:52,760 --> 01:32:57,640
Bermistra produces these like inflated little leathery bag fruits, like

1614
01:32:57,720 --> 01:33:00,000
the size of a golf ball, maybe a little bit less.

1615
01:33:00,720 --> 01:33:04,520
And then the seeds are on this little structure that's

1616
01:33:04,600 --> 01:33:10,319
in the center of that air filled bag. It's it's wold,

1617
01:33:10,359 --> 01:33:14,079
but the seeds are still tiny. And Bermestra bremeistro looks

1618
01:33:14,159 --> 01:33:16,920
it's a lot looks a lot different than lobelia, but

1619
01:33:16,920 --> 01:33:19,479
they've all got that same flower structure with the rod

1620
01:33:19,560 --> 01:33:23,199
and the fused anther tube, no visible sexy parts inside,

1621
01:33:23,279 --> 01:33:26,439
just that single rod sticking out of a bioletterally symmetrical flower.

1622
01:33:28,239 --> 01:33:31,279
But anyway, so I started off with Gunnara and Signus

1623
01:33:31,279 --> 01:33:34,520
and then just started photographing and stopping a check out

1624
01:33:34,680 --> 01:33:37,520
everything I saw. On the way up. I was at

1625
01:33:37,560 --> 01:33:42,279
like five thousand feet and on the other side of

1626
01:33:42,600 --> 01:33:45,479
the mountains in the kind of a more music forest,

1627
01:33:45,680 --> 01:33:47,920
you know, getting more rainfall from the Atlantic. That's where

1628
01:33:47,960 --> 01:33:51,319
that quirkus in Signus was that giant oak and h

1629
01:33:51,600 --> 01:33:55,199
Micuna was it or was it moocuna? Hold on, Yeah,

1630
01:33:55,239 --> 01:34:01,560
it was moocuna mcuna monte coola, which is a legume

1631
01:34:01,600 --> 01:34:05,000
that produces these like bean pod fruits with this really

1632
01:34:05,119 --> 01:34:09,399
weird texture to it, like it's broken up into I

1633
01:34:09,399 --> 01:34:11,720
don't know, man, it's not smooth. It's not a smooth text.

1634
01:34:11,760 --> 01:34:13,199
It's got a weird fucking texture. I don't know what

1635
01:34:13,279 --> 01:34:16,479
that's about. But the it's a leana. So it's this

1636
01:34:17,000 --> 01:34:19,760
big ass vine that goes like sixty feet up the

1637
01:34:19,840 --> 01:34:22,640
tree and you'll see them draping across the middle of

1638
01:34:22,680 --> 01:34:24,560
the canopy, and then when it has the flower, it

1639
01:34:24,640 --> 01:34:29,079
sends down this pendent influorescence. It can sometimes be, you know,

1640
01:34:29,359 --> 01:34:31,800
hanging twenty feet down from the vine, well, maybe like

1641
01:34:31,920 --> 01:34:34,000
ten feet down from the vine. Was the three four

1642
01:34:34,079 --> 01:34:36,920
meters down from the vine. And it's got these big

1643
01:34:37,239 --> 01:34:39,880
p shaped flowers. They look like a p flower banner

1644
01:34:39,920 --> 01:34:43,960
wings and keel petals, but they're they're kind of pendant

1645
01:34:44,159 --> 01:34:46,960
and like a light lime green color, and they're pollinated

1646
01:34:47,000 --> 01:34:49,640
by bats. I guess all the mucunas are pollinated by bats.

1647
01:34:50,239 --> 01:34:52,039
But it's a cool genus that I did not know

1648
01:34:52,079 --> 01:34:55,000
about until just recently when I saw it. It kind

1649
01:34:55,039 --> 01:34:58,560
of looks like the jade vine, which is in the Philippines.

1650
01:34:58,600 --> 01:35:00,479
I forget the name of the jade vine. Forgive me

1651
01:35:00,560 --> 01:35:02,920
for using a common in this case, it applies. But

1652
01:35:03,079 --> 01:35:06,720
jade vine's a cool fucking legume, a cool leana, a

1653
01:35:06,880 --> 01:35:13,159
cool vining legum with incredible inflorescences like those iridescent blue

1654
01:35:13,199 --> 01:35:18,000
anytime you see an iridescent blue, iridescent blue flower. But

1655
01:35:18,079 --> 01:35:21,960
the mukuna was like in the foothills of volcan POAs,

1656
01:35:22,920 --> 01:35:24,840
which we went up to but it was blowing up,

1657
01:35:25,000 --> 01:35:27,439
so they had the road closed and there was like

1658
01:35:28,159 --> 01:35:32,600
the fucking plastic horses they had to protect the road

1659
01:35:32,880 --> 01:35:37,199
to block against going up like the plastic you know,

1660
01:35:37,359 --> 01:35:40,199
road horses. They had had volcanic ashole over it, like

1661
01:35:40,399 --> 01:35:42,279
grains of pumps and shit all over you. Like the

1662
01:35:42,359 --> 01:35:44,960
thing was freshly blowing up. They're worried about some tourists

1663
01:35:45,000 --> 01:35:48,560
getting killed, getting cooked, but you know, even just going

1664
01:35:48,640 --> 01:35:50,199
up that high, there was a bunch of cool shit

1665
01:35:50,239 --> 01:35:52,039
on the side of There are giant chef flearras and

1666
01:35:52,119 --> 01:35:56,960
Oreo panax and god, there was where Rawia I think

1667
01:35:57,000 --> 01:35:58,800
it was, what was it mont I think it was

1668
01:35:58,840 --> 01:36:01,600
where Rawia montana, which is a bromeliad. There was a

1669
01:36:02,159 --> 01:36:06,319
a tree. It was Drimus granit edensis. Drymus is in

1670
01:36:06,399 --> 01:36:08,479
the family winter racey. It's one of the more basal

1671
01:36:08,520 --> 01:36:13,760
angiosperm families. Got Appocarpus fruits. The carpals aren't fused, you know,

1672
01:36:14,840 --> 01:36:20,000
typical snapomorphies and traits characteristics of the more early branching

1673
01:36:20,079 --> 01:36:23,720
lineages of angiosperms, and winter Race is normally a southern

1674
01:36:23,800 --> 01:36:28,000
hemisphere like almost Gondwanan genus there's some I saw some

1675
01:36:28,119 --> 01:36:34,119
really cool drymis. There was drymis and dina and another

1676
01:36:34,199 --> 01:36:38,359
one was it d was drymus winter in Chile, you know,

1677
01:36:38,439 --> 01:36:42,560
but it's more of this Gondwana and flora. But up

1678
01:36:42,640 --> 01:36:46,560
here at like seven thousand and eight thousand feet, drymus

1679
01:36:46,640 --> 01:36:50,640
granted dentist was everywhere. It looks almost similar, like glabrous leaves.

1680
01:36:50,680 --> 01:36:54,399
You crack the leaves open, they smell kind of like sassafras,

1681
01:36:54,479 --> 01:36:59,159
which is another trait of a lot of early branching angiosperms,

1682
01:36:59,239 --> 01:37:05,840
and Lora or Magnolia leis or any of those orders canalales,

1683
01:37:05,920 --> 01:37:10,239
pipe rayles, Magnolia alies, loreleis, the four orders of the

1684
01:37:10,359 --> 01:37:14,239
Magnoliods and winter aces and the canalales. And then you

1685
01:37:14,319 --> 01:37:19,239
know like Aristolochia the pipe vines, and piper uh and

1686
01:37:19,439 --> 01:37:23,119
Soroa soura lizard's tail, which is a kind of plant

1687
01:37:23,119 --> 01:37:25,560
you get the Midwest and in East coast like it's

1688
01:37:25,560 --> 01:37:27,680
a wetland plant. Those are all pipe raleys. And then

1689
01:37:27,720 --> 01:37:31,960
Magnoli a lies is like the anonas, the pawpause and

1690
01:37:32,119 --> 01:37:35,479
an ac uh. I'm really going off the fucking deep

1691
01:37:35,560 --> 01:37:40,479
end here with these magnoliods, and then Loreles lorace monimiace

1692
01:37:41,279 --> 01:37:44,520
athospermatase is like a southern Hamshere a lot of these plants.

1693
01:37:44,640 --> 01:37:46,840
You crack the leaves open, they've got that sassafras smell.

1694
01:37:46,880 --> 01:37:51,399
They've got this distinct smell that they produce volatiles in

1695
01:37:51,520 --> 01:37:55,319
the leaves and dry mass. Of course, winter ace is

1696
01:37:55,520 --> 01:38:00,319
u does that same thing. So that was I did

1697
01:38:00,399 --> 01:38:03,079
not expect to see that genus up there either. It

1698
01:38:03,159 --> 01:38:05,640
was wild, but there was a dry miss covered in bromeliads,

1699
01:38:05,920 --> 01:38:08,000
which turned out to be the genus where rawi at

1700
01:38:08,199 --> 01:38:12,119
w E r a u hia. And you know these

1701
01:38:12,159 --> 01:38:18,159
epiphetic promeliads producing these upright stalks, these upright inflorescences everywhere

1702
01:38:18,239 --> 01:38:21,880
with these white flowers that were very obviously bat pollinated.

1703
01:38:24,039 --> 01:38:26,479
That was fucking cool to see, just like the perfect

1704
01:38:26,600 --> 01:38:29,640
shape of a bat's head, like these flowers, just you know,

1705
01:38:30,640 --> 01:38:34,279
very obviously these things didn't evolve for for bees. It

1706
01:38:34,399 --> 01:38:37,239
was very obvious and probably produced a ton of starchy

1707
01:38:37,840 --> 01:38:42,359
nectar too, But some epiphytic promeliads that evolved with bat

1708
01:38:42,479 --> 01:38:45,119
pollination bats being their main pollinators. I'm sure there were

1709
01:38:45,119 --> 01:38:48,920
probably hummingbirds that hit these things too, but uh, you know,

1710
01:38:49,039 --> 01:38:52,880
hummingbirds generally go for more red flowers, and then I'm

1711
01:38:52,880 --> 01:38:55,880
sure the nectar chemistry will be different, like the nectar

1712
01:38:56,000 --> 01:38:59,079
content will be different. It'll be a richer sugar, most

1713
01:38:59,199 --> 01:39:04,199
likely for humming words. But POAs was it was wild

1714
01:39:04,239 --> 01:39:06,920
they end. There was gultheria everywhere, and all these cool

1715
01:39:07,039 --> 01:39:13,199
epiphytic blueberries and you know family Eric Casey, but Macleania Satyria,

1716
01:39:14,520 --> 01:39:17,800
big red flowers, delicious fucking fruits. I think it was Satyria,

1717
01:39:18,319 --> 01:39:21,800
or maybe it was Macleani. I forget, but I was

1718
01:39:21,840 --> 01:39:24,039
eating the fruits of one of them later on in

1719
01:39:24,119 --> 01:39:28,600
the cloud forest and uh in the Talamanca range, and

1720
01:39:28,680 --> 01:39:31,279
it was just it was so fucking good. It was incredible.

1721
01:39:31,359 --> 01:39:34,800
We were at our friend Nacho's house, who grows shittaki

1722
01:39:34,880 --> 01:39:37,279
mushrooms and lives with his family, and it is an

1723
01:39:37,279 --> 01:39:41,399
amazing chef. He lives in this this Qrcus coasta ri

1724
01:39:41,560 --> 01:39:46,279
Kansas forest, these massive beautiful oak trees h courses Corcas

1725
01:39:46,399 --> 01:39:50,319
coco coasta ri Kansas and Corcus copaiensis. Uh, there was

1726
01:39:50,399 --> 01:39:55,159
a zanthoxlim. There was a zenthoxlum milano sticktum which I

1727
01:39:55,279 --> 01:40:02,479
thought was uh. I almost thought was a sumac of first,

1728
01:40:02,479 --> 01:40:05,159
because I had glabrous leaves and similar flowers, tiny white

1729
01:40:05,159 --> 01:40:09,960
flowers in a panicle, and one of the leaves had

1730
01:40:10,079 --> 01:40:12,079
black spots all over it, which I guess was probably

1731
01:40:12,159 --> 01:40:14,560
just the fungus, but I assumed it was one of

1732
01:40:14,600 --> 01:40:17,239
the allergenic you rush you all oils, because they tend

1733
01:40:17,279 --> 01:40:20,119
to do that when they're oxidizing, so that if you see,

1734
01:40:20,760 --> 01:40:23,960
you know, the same leaf structure, same flower structure, and

1735
01:40:24,119 --> 01:40:28,159
you're in you know, the pinnate or odd pinnate leaves,

1736
01:40:28,640 --> 01:40:33,000
tiny white flowers, a bunch of flowers in the inflorescence,

1737
01:40:33,079 --> 01:40:37,399
tiny flowers, and the inflorescence in a panicle, and it's glabrous,

1738
01:40:37,560 --> 01:40:41,640
like the leaves are glabrous, and you're in like lower latitudes,

1739
01:40:41,720 --> 01:40:44,960
stay the fuck away. Especially see the black spots because

1740
01:40:44,960 --> 01:40:49,079
it's probably in anacardiac the mango family, and it's probably

1741
01:40:49,159 --> 01:40:53,279
producing one of those super allergenic oils that's going to

1742
01:40:53,359 --> 01:40:59,760
give you an as rash, you know. Comocladia, of course,

1743
01:40:59,880 --> 01:41:02,119
was the one I touched the Dominican Republic that really

1744
01:41:02,199 --> 01:41:07,760
fucked me up. And then there's Amphipterygium and pseudo Smodingium,

1745
01:41:08,359 --> 01:41:13,119
which are Mexican genera Mexican. They might go into Nicaragua too,

1746
01:41:13,600 --> 01:41:19,039
Mexican genera Nicaragua hinders, the you know, neotropical genera that

1747
01:41:19,359 --> 01:41:22,359
produced those same volatile oils too, and you can see

1748
01:41:22,399 --> 01:41:26,479
it on the leaves some of the neotropical bamboos. The

1749
01:41:26,600 --> 01:41:30,079
chiscaeas that I saw, and I was midland, those mid

1750
01:41:30,239 --> 01:41:34,680
elevation cloud forests were fucking incredible too. What was it chskeaa?

1751
01:41:35,159 --> 01:41:38,159
Was it piti Ei? I think they were massive and

1752
01:41:38,239 --> 01:41:41,119
they had this wax on them. They had this white

1753
01:41:41,199 --> 01:41:44,920
wax which made them give them like a blue hue,

1754
01:41:45,079 --> 01:41:47,239
and they were like twenty feet tall. It was fucking great.

1755
01:41:47,239 --> 01:41:49,720
I wish people when they want to go wild with

1756
01:41:50,359 --> 01:41:52,800
bamboos in North America, I wish they'd planted some of

1757
01:41:52,840 --> 01:41:56,680
the Chiskeaya species instead of the invasive Asian ones. I

1758
01:41:56,840 --> 01:41:58,560
just feel like it's better to have something that's a

1759
01:41:58,600 --> 01:42:01,640
little more local that at least has been on the continent,

1760
01:42:02,439 --> 01:42:07,319
you know, for longer than the Asian ones. Another cool

1761
01:42:07,399 --> 01:42:10,680
plant I saw, and this was on volcan poass it's

1762
01:42:10,800 --> 01:42:15,000
like eight thousand feet was clebadium Surinamnse, which is astoraci.

1763
01:42:15,119 --> 01:42:18,520
It's a member of the sunflower family that produces berries

1764
01:42:19,439 --> 01:42:22,279
like almost like a viburnum. It looks like it looks

1765
01:42:22,319 --> 01:42:24,640
like a viburnum kind of, but then you get up

1766
01:42:24,640 --> 01:42:26,800
close you see those discoid flowers. They don't have any

1767
01:42:27,159 --> 01:42:30,239
any rays, there's no ray flowers, and you realize it's

1768
01:42:30,239 --> 01:42:32,760
a composite. It's asta Raci. I saw viburnum too, I

1769
01:42:32,800 --> 01:42:34,319
think was what was it by Burnham? Maybe it was

1770
01:42:34,479 --> 01:42:38,640
by Burnham coast re Kents, but that was at nine

1771
01:42:38,680 --> 01:42:42,520
thousand feet on the other side of the mountains. There

1772
01:42:42,720 --> 01:42:45,319
was God, there were so many cool epiphytes in these

1773
01:42:46,199 --> 01:42:53,000
these trees though, in these Quirkus in Signus, especially Jesus

1774
01:42:53,119 --> 01:42:55,680
Christ and the yeah, you know, so it was mecuna

1775
01:42:55,840 --> 01:42:59,239
growing in Quircus in signess. And this is probably the

1776
01:42:59,319 --> 01:43:01,560
lower extent of the range of Qurcason signas. You get

1777
01:43:01,600 --> 01:43:06,479
Carcason signas in Veracruz, Mexico two, which is probably one

1778
01:43:06,560 --> 01:43:10,279
of the closest. You know, vera Cruz has a lot

1779
01:43:10,319 --> 01:43:13,279
of it's the northern extent of the range of many

1780
01:43:13,359 --> 01:43:20,760
of the Central American meso American wet montane forest plants,

1781
01:43:21,399 --> 01:43:25,319
and there's a lot of cool stuff and vera Cruz God.

1782
01:43:25,359 --> 01:43:27,680
I'd love to fucking go there some time, So Fido

1783
01:43:27,800 --> 01:43:30,800
lacar ugosa to the poke berry. It looks like a

1784
01:43:30,880 --> 01:43:34,600
poke berry with more vivid pink flowers. You know, a

1785
01:43:34,720 --> 01:43:37,359
poke weed. You get phytal whaca, one of the final

1786
01:43:37,399 --> 01:43:40,039
locas you get in in uh in the Midwest. They

1787
01:43:40,079 --> 01:43:42,640
could be really weedy. You have to eat the berries.

1788
01:43:42,640 --> 01:43:44,520
They'll make you puke. I think they're toxic, but they're

1789
01:43:44,560 --> 01:43:50,279
really beautiful plants. And there was there was monina too,

1790
01:43:50,439 --> 01:43:54,159
which is a genus of Polygalaci. It's like a polygalacy,

1791
01:43:54,560 --> 01:43:59,560
little spikes of purple flowers. Uh Polygalasis, the family and

1792
01:43:59,640 --> 01:44:02,680
the peace order for Bailey's which the flowers kind of

1793
01:44:02,680 --> 01:44:05,600
look like peas in some cases. Some a bunch of

1794
01:44:05,720 --> 01:44:08,920
different moninas, Uh yeah, Gunnar and signats again. There were

1795
01:44:08,960 --> 01:44:18,359
climbing hydranges, fourth ferns, h a bunch of acanthoids acanthace,

1796
01:44:19,319 --> 01:44:21,920
and a bunch of Uh saw a few peppermias. I

1797
01:44:22,000 --> 01:44:25,720
saw Heliconia torturosa right there, which is in those same

1798
01:44:25,800 --> 01:44:34,319
mid elevation forests just below Volcano POAs and uh, Heliconia

1799
01:44:34,359 --> 01:44:38,479
of course is ginger orders in Gibberele's heliconi ac a

1800
01:44:38,520 --> 01:44:40,920
lot of them are bird pollinated. It's a fucking dope

1801
01:44:41,560 --> 01:44:45,159
family of plants with you know, often bright red flowers.

1802
01:44:45,239 --> 01:44:48,199
They they've got the table cale almost looking like a bird,

1803
01:44:48,279 --> 01:44:51,840
a quote bird of Paradise, which you know we say

1804
01:44:52,000 --> 01:44:55,359
for for Strilizia, for the genus Strilizia, which is in

1805
01:44:55,439 --> 01:44:59,680
South Africa, same same order, but unrelated. Then there was

1806
01:44:59,720 --> 01:45:02,279
a ton. I mean, it's like anywhere in the neo tropics.

1807
01:45:02,279 --> 01:45:07,079
There's a shit ton of melostomatas University too. The melastomes

1808
01:45:07,159 --> 01:45:12,399
with those anther connectives, those really in those those three

1809
01:45:12,600 --> 01:45:15,840
veined leaves that are so distinct, you know, one of

1810
01:45:15,920 --> 01:45:18,479
the few plant families where you could see the leaf

1811
01:45:18,560 --> 01:45:23,039
and know automatically what family it's in. Okay, we'll take

1812
01:45:23,079 --> 01:45:25,039
a break to listen to some shitty edge, then I'll

1813
01:45:25,039 --> 01:45:33,319
get back here we go. Okay, so anyway back to

1814
01:45:33,399 --> 01:45:36,239
the other side, the south side of the Talamanca Range

1815
01:45:36,239 --> 01:45:39,199
where we're starting off with Gunner written Sickness. We talked

1816
01:45:39,199 --> 01:45:45,119
about the mid elevation forests just beneath the POAs Volcano,

1817
01:45:45,800 --> 01:45:48,800
which was closed due to the fact that wash there

1818
01:45:48,840 --> 01:45:52,840
were some slight explosions, but that was you know, that's

1819
01:45:52,920 --> 01:45:54,920
that's a little bit closer to San Jose. Now we're

1820
01:45:55,000 --> 01:45:57,199
on the other side, a little bit south, on the

1821
01:45:57,239 --> 01:45:59,560
other side of the Talamanca Range, starting off, and they're

1822
01:45:59,560 --> 01:46:03,239
Sandy's Seedra de can Aral. Going up. We started off

1823
01:46:03,279 --> 01:46:08,520
with Gunnerra and signus massive peltate leaves, leathery, correaceous. This

1824
01:46:09,279 --> 01:46:14,279
genus of course forms a symbiotic association with nitrogen fixing

1825
01:46:14,359 --> 01:46:20,159
bacteria in a genus nostoc photosynthetic bacteria cyanobacteria. Remember the

1826
01:46:20,239 --> 01:46:23,479
word algae blue green algae. Remember the word algae is

1827
01:46:23,520 --> 01:46:27,279
a polyphyletic term. Doesn't mean that they're related at all,

1828
01:46:27,399 --> 01:46:29,680
doesn't mean they're all the same. It's just it's like

1829
01:46:29,840 --> 01:46:32,159
calling you know, it's like saying birds if you had

1830
01:46:32,159 --> 01:46:35,600
a word for birds and bats, just because they both

1831
01:46:35,680 --> 01:46:37,720
have wings, but they're not related. You know, it's a

1832
01:46:37,800 --> 01:46:43,079
polyphyletic term. The word algae is unrelated clad It's just

1833
01:46:43,199 --> 01:46:52,239
means generally photosynthetic and very small. Photosynthetic, very small, generally aquatic,

1834
01:46:52,359 --> 01:46:55,840
not always its terrestrial alergies too, as we see here

1835
01:46:56,079 --> 01:47:00,920
with Gunnera insignus, but it was it's such a weird

1836
01:47:01,199 --> 01:47:02,000
fucking lineage.

1837
01:47:02,039 --> 01:47:02,159
Speaker 2: Man.

1838
01:47:03,000 --> 01:47:06,079
Speaker 1: I had just seen the same plant in southern Chile

1839
01:47:06,279 --> 01:47:08,239
and videos I still have to edit, which hopefully I'll

1840
01:47:08,279 --> 01:47:12,079
get around with it. They get fucking massive. They've got

1841
01:47:12,119 --> 01:47:15,479
these kind of prickly petioles to the leaves. They're an

1842
01:47:15,520 --> 01:47:18,560
herbaceous plant, but they can be sometimes twelve feet across

1843
01:47:19,359 --> 01:47:22,319
by eight feet tall, just absolutely massive. Again, if you

1844
01:47:22,359 --> 01:47:25,039
want to see a good one, go to UC Berkeley

1845
01:47:25,119 --> 01:47:28,239
Botanic Garden. They're also invasive, I guess in the UK,

1846
01:47:28,439 --> 01:47:30,560
but hey, whatever, it's the UK, it's trashed anyway, No

1847
01:47:30,680 --> 01:47:35,439
offense to the UK. There was also Dahlia imperialis there,

1848
01:47:35,439 --> 01:47:37,760
which is another plant which is that I knew from

1849
01:47:37,880 --> 01:47:41,680
just horticulture in the Bay Area of California. It's like

1850
01:47:41,800 --> 01:47:45,359
it looks like basically like a pink, a big ass

1851
01:47:45,479 --> 01:47:50,000
pink sunflower that hangs down from a stalk. You know,

1852
01:47:50,199 --> 01:47:52,520
it's an herbaceous plant. Well, I guess it can get

1853
01:47:52,520 --> 01:47:55,680
a little woody towards the bottom, but they'll be you know,

1854
01:47:55,840 --> 01:47:59,640
fifteen feet tall in some cases with these pendant flowers.

1855
01:48:00,760 --> 01:48:04,319
Almost certainly evolved for hummingbird pollination. I'm sure bees hit

1856
01:48:04,399 --> 01:48:08,279
them too, But it was cool to see that these

1857
01:48:08,319 --> 01:48:10,560
giant dahlias, you know, and they're easy to root. You

1858
01:48:10,640 --> 01:48:12,880
can cut them, and then they don't like it dry.

1859
01:48:13,000 --> 01:48:14,800
They like it cool and wet, which is why they

1860
01:48:14,880 --> 01:48:16,800
do so well in the Bay Area of California. But

1861
01:48:16,880 --> 01:48:19,079
of course they need an irrigated garden there. They don't

1862
01:48:19,159 --> 01:48:23,560
like the dry Mediterranean summer. There was a Biden's species

1863
01:48:23,720 --> 01:48:27,560
as well, the same bidens that you get in a Midwest,

1864
01:48:27,640 --> 01:48:32,359
East coast whatever, with those those seeds that can stick

1865
01:48:32,399 --> 01:48:37,119
in your to your pants. You know, you get those bidens.

1866
01:48:37,159 --> 01:48:40,119
That's the goddamn it. Thanks Joe Biden. You got those

1867
01:48:40,600 --> 01:48:44,600
two prongs you know at the top of the sunflower seed.

1868
01:48:44,640 --> 01:48:47,680
Bidens is in the sunflower family. Asked the racy. But

1869
01:48:47,840 --> 01:48:50,560
this was this Biden's was like a scrambling shrub. It

1870
01:48:50,640 --> 01:48:55,760
was almost like a Leana Biden's reped hands and it

1871
01:48:55,880 --> 01:48:58,840
had you know, it was just like like like yellow

1872
01:48:59,000 --> 01:49:04,239
sunflower with less rays, less ray flowers with less rays

1873
01:49:04,279 --> 01:49:06,920
around the flower head. But yeah, it was fucking like,

1874
01:49:07,319 --> 01:49:10,319
you know, twelve feet tall, like twelve feet scrambling through

1875
01:49:10,479 --> 01:49:14,520
another plant. That was pretty uh, pretty cool to see,

1876
01:49:14,680 --> 01:49:17,079
you know, just the variations on a theme. That's the

1877
01:49:17,159 --> 01:49:19,000
main reason I traveled to see this shit is to

1878
01:49:19,039 --> 01:49:23,920
see what evolution is produced in all these different climates, latitudes, elevations,

1879
01:49:24,159 --> 01:49:29,960
different environments, cast of pollinators, cast of antagonistic fungi and

1880
01:49:30,079 --> 01:49:34,880
herbivores and insects whatever. So anyway, so that was that

1881
01:49:35,079 --> 01:49:38,239
was fucking wonderful. Still only like six thousand feet, So

1882
01:49:38,359 --> 01:49:41,960
we keep going up and then the alders appear, Yes,

1883
01:49:42,079 --> 01:49:46,760
the tropical alder all this Acuminata which also has nitrogen

1884
01:49:46,880 --> 01:49:50,560
fixing bacteria that it associates with. It associates with nitrogen

1885
01:49:50,600 --> 01:49:54,720
fixing actino my seat bacteria actino my seat because it

1886
01:49:54,800 --> 01:49:58,079
was thought to be a fungus for the first like

1887
01:49:58,800 --> 01:50:00,880
eighty years that it was now to exist, I think,

1888
01:50:00,920 --> 01:50:03,119
and that was later realized to be kind of a

1889
01:50:03,199 --> 01:50:10,199
mycelium producing bacteria essentially is what it is, a filamentous bacteria,

1890
01:50:10,359 --> 01:50:14,720
but in the genus Frankia. But they produce, they can

1891
01:50:15,319 --> 01:50:22,119
fix atmospheric nitrogen using nitrogenase enzymes, and they still require

1892
01:50:22,239 --> 01:50:25,560
root nodules because that nitrogenase enzyme requires a low oxygen

1893
01:50:25,720 --> 01:50:30,479
environment to function. But all alders do this so far

1894
01:50:30,600 --> 01:50:34,520
as I know, so all the Sacuminata is no exception,

1895
01:50:34,600 --> 01:50:36,880
and it was growing when I first encountered it. Here

1896
01:50:37,039 --> 01:50:38,920
was growing in kind of a waste theea. It looked

1897
01:50:38,920 --> 01:50:40,640
like a quarry, like it had once been a quarry.

1898
01:50:40,800 --> 01:50:43,239
There was disturbance there. There was rock talus everywhere, but

1899
01:50:43,319 --> 01:50:45,479
there was also a lot of cool shit growing, including

1900
01:50:45,960 --> 01:50:49,680
Hemichina fruticosa, which is a monkey flower if you know,

1901
01:50:50,000 --> 01:50:54,239
aaryth rant, and the plachis and the genus Mimulus. They're

1902
01:50:54,279 --> 01:50:57,039
all monkey flowers because I guess because the flower head

1903
01:50:57,119 --> 01:51:00,399
looks like a monkey. I don't fucking know. It does

1904
01:51:00,520 --> 01:51:06,640
maybe really cool and specios uh out West, very species

1905
01:51:06,760 --> 01:51:09,640
rich out West, Like in California, there's a Death Valley

1906
01:51:09,680 --> 01:51:12,520
monkey flower. There's a there's a mojabbi monkey flower. There's

1907
01:51:12,560 --> 01:51:16,239
a fucking uh the play is pict This is like

1908
01:51:16,359 --> 01:51:20,000
the really rare looks like a rat fink, you know,

1909
01:51:20,159 --> 01:51:24,640
bloodshot crackhead eye monkey flower. The flower head looks like that.

1910
01:51:24,760 --> 01:51:27,000
And there's a bunch of earth rant species you get

1911
01:51:27,039 --> 01:51:31,119
in Chile as well as in uh all over California.

1912
01:51:31,159 --> 01:51:33,760
There's a couple of earth rants we get in UH

1913
01:51:34,319 --> 01:51:36,720
Texas to UH and then you get you know, the

1914
01:51:36,800 --> 01:51:39,920
genus Frima. Anyway, frim Ac is the family order is

1915
01:51:39,960 --> 01:51:44,239
lamey A LEAs so opposite leaves bi ledosymmetrical flowers for

1916
01:51:44,520 --> 01:51:49,479
stamens Hemmikina fruiticosa. Again, it was another plant that I

1917
01:51:49,560 --> 01:51:53,720
had seen in Wahaka. Tends to colonize disturbed sites, roadsides,

1918
01:51:54,119 --> 01:51:58,520
gets five feet tall, big yellow flowers, probably bumblebee pollinated,

1919
01:51:58,560 --> 01:52:02,479
I would assume, but it's very sticky, like incredibly sticky,

1920
01:52:03,319 --> 01:52:06,960
uh and just a really fucking cool plant. Another plant.

1921
01:52:07,039 --> 01:52:08,960
I think they used to sell it at Antie's annuals

1922
01:52:09,079 --> 01:52:11,319
or something in the uh I wander whatever happen in

1923
01:52:11,399 --> 01:52:14,760
that place and in a Bay area and it was

1924
01:52:14,840 --> 01:52:17,960
in It was another plant that was you'd find in

1925
01:52:18,039 --> 01:52:22,800
like San Francisco Botanic Garden or Berkeley Botanic Garden. You know,

1926
01:52:22,800 --> 01:52:24,640
it was nice when the botanic gardens used to be

1927
01:52:24,720 --> 01:52:27,239
free and you get you know, everyone from like graffiti

1928
01:52:27,359 --> 01:52:30,479
kids to just any degenerates going They're like, hey, let's

1929
01:52:30,479 --> 01:52:32,279
go hang out in the botanic garden like they would

1930
01:52:32,399 --> 01:52:34,920
just you know, because it was a culture to just

1931
01:52:35,199 --> 01:52:37,920
like to fucking be around plants, even they didn't know

1932
01:52:37,960 --> 01:52:40,800
what they were, you know, so you get like fun

1933
01:52:41,079 --> 01:52:44,920
people to hang out with. You just degenerates and mischievous

1934
01:52:44,960 --> 01:52:49,119
bastards whatever, going to enjoy the botanic garden. Surely probably

1935
01:52:49,279 --> 01:52:52,560
taking forties and smoking weed in there, but still enjoying

1936
01:52:52,600 --> 01:52:55,239
the botanic garden. You know, much different get up than

1937
01:52:55,239 --> 01:52:57,399
you might expect, a much different demographic than you might

1938
01:52:57,439 --> 01:53:00,159
expect to see botanic gardens. You know, the region to

1939
01:53:00,239 --> 01:53:03,119
a country, you know where you might get kicked out.

1940
01:53:03,159 --> 01:53:05,800
You tried it edit Chicago Botanic Garden. I'm just kidding.

1941
01:53:05,800 --> 01:53:07,760
They got a nice library. Shout out to the region.

1942
01:53:07,840 --> 01:53:10,680
Stein Library. I had a dream that it was closing.

1943
01:53:10,760 --> 01:53:13,560
But then when I gave that presentation in Chicago last month,

1944
01:53:13,600 --> 01:53:15,319
I talked. I spoke to somebody who works at the

1945
01:53:15,359 --> 01:53:18,199
Botanic Garden and she told me that they're not closing

1946
01:53:18,279 --> 01:53:23,199
a fucking reagan Stein Library, Reagan Stein, Reagan Stein Stein.

1947
01:53:26,319 --> 01:53:28,600
So anyway you get so if you get a membership,

1948
01:53:28,640 --> 01:53:31,000
you get in there free too, reciprocal admissions. They can't

1949
01:53:31,039 --> 01:53:33,359
throw you out unless you're peeing in the bushes like

1950
01:53:33,439 --> 01:53:37,199
they did to me. Where is the security guard that

1951
01:53:38,079 --> 01:53:42,800
kicked me out. However, long ago in two thousand and nine.

1952
01:53:45,239 --> 01:53:47,840
He kicked me out in two thousand and nine because

1953
01:53:47,880 --> 01:53:50,199
I was peeing in the bushes. He he accused me

1954
01:53:50,279 --> 01:53:53,119
he was exposing myself to old ladies. I said, hey, pal,

1955
01:53:53,479 --> 01:53:55,560
I didn't know they were in that trailer. Why the

1956
01:53:55,640 --> 01:53:58,119
fuck are they looking at me? I didn't know there

1957
01:53:58,199 --> 01:54:00,239
was a trailer. Donal way. I don't think they could

1958
01:54:00,279 --> 01:54:03,000
see my schlong though I was. I was pissing in

1959
01:54:03,079 --> 01:54:05,640
the bushes. It was, you know whatever. Maybe they were

1960
01:54:05,640 --> 01:54:07,239
just they called the cops to me because I peed

1961
01:54:07,279 --> 01:54:09,880
in the bushes. Which if you do that to someone

1962
01:54:09,880 --> 01:54:12,159
who pees in the bushes a botanic garden, you're dick

1963
01:54:12,560 --> 01:54:17,199
because that person's nourishing the plants. They're providing nitrogen and

1964
01:54:17,319 --> 01:54:19,640
as long as the irrigations on that spot, it's not

1965
01:54:19,720 --> 01:54:21,520
going to burn the plants or be too much. It's

1966
01:54:21,560 --> 01:54:26,479
they're doing a favor. Yeah, fucking prude, somebody's somebody's genteels.

1967
01:54:27,119 --> 01:54:30,159
You know, you gotta you gotta know, you gotta dose them,

1968
01:54:30,159 --> 01:54:31,880
you gotta do something with them. I can't take them.

1969
01:54:31,920 --> 01:54:34,520
I can't take these fucking people, these stiffs, these prudes,

1970
01:54:35,279 --> 01:54:39,760
these genteels, these pearl clutchers, you know, I want to

1971
01:54:39,840 --> 01:54:43,600
live in a world that's free of them. Anyway. Uh

1972
01:54:43,760 --> 01:54:50,479
hesperomile's uh ubtusifolia was there as well, which sometimes has thorns,

1973
01:54:50,560 --> 01:54:53,720
sometimes doesn't like other members of the rose family, the

1974
01:54:53,840 --> 01:54:56,720
rose a see. But I'm not thinking about it. Don't

1975
01:54:56,720 --> 01:54:59,039
think about roses. I'm talking about, like, you know, Pyracanthus

1976
01:54:59,159 --> 01:55:02,119
probably one of the worst there's plants I've ever encountered

1977
01:55:02,159 --> 01:55:04,239
in my life. I'm sure they're great where they're native.

1978
01:55:04,239 --> 01:55:07,399
They're not native in North America, but people they'll plant them.

1979
01:55:07,399 --> 01:55:09,359
I don't know why they cause not only do they

1980
01:55:09,439 --> 01:55:11,800
jab you with this razor sharp spine. They're in the

1981
01:55:11,880 --> 01:55:15,640
rose family rose cy, but they also can be really

1982
01:55:15,720 --> 01:55:18,439
hard to get rid of. They form colonies, they spread

1983
01:55:18,520 --> 01:55:22,920
by rhizomes, send up shoots, and once that thorn goes

1984
01:55:23,000 --> 01:55:25,640
in you, it like breaks off and it hurts for

1985
01:55:25,760 --> 01:55:27,760
like six days after. It's fucking wild. I don't know

1986
01:55:27,760 --> 01:55:30,840
if they're I doubt they're injecting anything, but maybe they

1987
01:55:30,960 --> 01:55:35,720
just leave little pieces of barbed you know, woody tricomb's.

1988
01:55:35,800 --> 01:55:37,279
I don't know who knows, I don't who the fuck

1989
01:55:37,359 --> 01:55:41,039
knows anyway. Hesperomilees is in the same family Hesperomiles of

1990
01:55:41,119 --> 01:55:47,000
two sifolia cool flowers, edible fruits as well white rosaceous

1991
01:55:47,279 --> 01:55:50,680
flowers rose cy typical flower morphology the rose c five

1992
01:55:51,239 --> 01:55:54,880
white petals, dentate leaf margin, they're glabrous. I also saw

1993
01:55:55,000 --> 01:55:59,640
this same species, just like escloni and Murdalloides, growing in

1994
01:55:59,720 --> 01:56:05,239
eck at higher elevations as well. That Dahlia imperialis was

1995
01:56:05,279 --> 01:56:07,600
all over this quarry site on the side of the

1996
01:56:07,680 --> 01:56:12,239
road too. I saw a white flowered phenotype which was

1997
01:56:12,399 --> 01:56:16,880
nuts and then there was Fuschia piniculata, evening primrose family

1998
01:56:17,199 --> 01:56:20,359
on a graycie. But it forms these dense clusters of

1999
01:56:20,520 --> 01:56:26,479
pink flowers, four petals, four sepals, a prominent pink stigma

2000
01:56:26,600 --> 01:56:30,199
and style indicating you know, exerted out of the flower

2001
01:56:30,399 --> 01:56:34,600
indicating it's hit by hummingbirds. Lots of hummingbird pollinated plants

2002
01:56:34,640 --> 01:56:37,439
in the cloud forest, lots of reds, lots of pinks,

2003
01:56:38,319 --> 01:56:43,680
lots of orangish reds, whatever, you know, because the hummingbirds

2004
01:56:43,720 --> 01:56:44,039
get going.

2005
01:56:44,079 --> 01:56:44,279
Speaker 2: There's that.

2006
01:56:44,359 --> 01:56:46,760
Speaker 1: David Edinburgh had a nice documentary on his stuff. He

2007
01:56:47,159 --> 01:56:51,960
talked about why hummingbirds tend to prevail in higher altitude

2008
01:56:52,239 --> 01:56:57,439
montane neotropical areas because it's generally a little bit cooler,

2009
01:56:57,560 --> 01:57:00,119
especially because that air is so thin. Cold air at

2010
01:57:00,159 --> 01:57:02,680
higher elevations is not the same as cold air at

2011
01:57:02,720 --> 01:57:07,279
lower elevations. You've got that much thinner atmosphere at higher altitudes,

2012
01:57:07,840 --> 01:57:10,000
which means that the air is not as dense, it

2013
01:57:10,079 --> 01:57:12,800
can't hold as much heat. Things cool off a lot quicker,

2014
01:57:13,359 --> 01:57:18,279
there's more UV, et cetera. So anyway, now we're going up.

2015
01:57:18,279 --> 01:57:22,199
We're continuing to go up in these forests in the

2016
01:57:22,279 --> 01:57:27,319
Tallamaca range, and it's getting it's getting darker. Well, the

2017
01:57:27,359 --> 01:57:31,039
trees are getting taller, uh, and it's it's we're starting

2018
01:57:31,039 --> 01:57:34,279
to see some really cool stuff. Massive oaks start appearing.

2019
01:57:35,199 --> 01:57:38,520
There's a tree carrot, a member of the carrot family

2020
01:57:38,600 --> 01:57:43,279
apac Merhidendron M. M y R R H I D

2021
01:57:43,399 --> 01:57:46,680
E N D R O N Donald Smithy I was

2022
01:57:46,720 --> 01:57:48,920
the species that I saw, I believe, but there's quite

2023
01:57:48,920 --> 01:57:52,039
a few species in a genus looks like a giant angelica.

2024
01:57:52,239 --> 01:57:55,840
It's got the whole leave, it's got the leaves and

2025
01:57:55,920 --> 01:57:59,039
the floral structure and the inflorescent structure of the carrot

2026
01:57:59,199 --> 01:58:04,279
family of a partially celery carrots, et cetera. But it's

2027
01:58:04,359 --> 01:58:07,960
fucking eighteen feet tall. And one of these I saw

2028
01:58:08,239 --> 01:58:11,800
later in the paramo, growing above a little pond. It

2029
01:58:11,920 --> 01:58:14,720
had a trunk that was easily a phot across. It

2030
01:58:14,840 --> 01:58:18,399
was wild. I mean, these are massive forms. Plants that

2031
01:58:18,479 --> 01:58:23,479
are normally herbs or small perennials in more temperate latitudes

2032
01:58:23,520 --> 01:58:27,680
turn into giant trees and take on these arborescent forms.

2033
01:58:27,760 --> 01:58:31,000
Not giant trees, giant shrubs, small trees and take on

2034
01:58:31,159 --> 01:58:35,640
arborescent forms at these higher elevations in the lower latitudes,

2035
01:58:35,800 --> 01:58:41,279
these neotropical montane forests. This mirodendron was massive, though. I mean,

2036
01:58:41,319 --> 01:58:43,239
this thing blew my mind. It was so obviously you

2037
01:58:43,319 --> 01:58:46,520
see and you're like, that's a fucking carrot. It's an apac,

2038
01:58:47,520 --> 01:58:51,199
it's got leaves like an angelica, it's got influorescence, it's

2039
01:58:51,239 --> 01:58:54,760
got you know, the compound dumble looks like an umbrella

2040
01:58:54,840 --> 01:59:00,359
that's been blown upwards, like blown upside down. Just just

2041
01:59:01,359 --> 01:59:04,479
wild shit. And I'm sure it's got tons of phyto chemists,

2042
01:59:04,520 --> 01:59:08,319
like toxic phyto chemistry, weird chemicals. It's it's synthesizing. I mean,

2043
01:59:08,560 --> 01:59:10,479
to be that big and not be getting chewed on

2044
01:59:10,600 --> 01:59:16,159
by giant ground sloths, you have to evolve some chemicals,

2045
01:59:16,319 --> 01:59:21,039
some fucking chemicals, my friend. Many members of APAC, of course,

2046
01:59:21,119 --> 01:59:26,119
are toxic or can produce photodermatitis, you know, compounds that

2047
01:59:26,279 --> 01:59:29,960
upon exposure to sunlight, burn your skin and cause blistering,

2048
01:59:29,960 --> 01:59:32,680
et cetera. I don't know. Maybe so with myrodendron. And

2049
01:59:32,800 --> 01:59:37,000
of course there's tons of cool obeliads everywhere, centripogons. There

2050
01:59:37,119 --> 01:59:40,800
was a fucking raspberry. I don't rubis is such a

2051
01:59:41,000 --> 01:59:43,000
nightmare of a It's such a cluster fuck of a

2052
01:59:43,720 --> 01:59:46,800
They all look the same except for very subtle differences,

2053
01:59:47,119 --> 01:59:49,920
all the raspberries and blackberries. This was very obviously a

2054
01:59:50,000 --> 01:59:53,159
native one, though it was clambering up a tree night shade,

2055
01:59:53,199 --> 01:59:58,039
a tree solanum, you know, that was probably the so

2056
01:59:58,279 --> 02:00:00,399
I think it was Solanum storky. It was probably like

2057
02:00:00,520 --> 02:00:04,159
fifteen feet tall, like five meters tall. This raspberry or

2058
02:00:04,239 --> 02:00:08,600
BlackBerry produced delicious fruits, though fucking delicious. There were a

2059
02:00:08,720 --> 02:00:11,640
number of native blackberries that I encountered here. You can

2060
02:00:11,680 --> 02:00:14,479
tell their native because they're not forming these massive monocultures

2061
02:00:14,520 --> 02:00:17,640
and overtaking things. They're kind of just you know, taking

2062
02:00:17,680 --> 02:00:22,079
their place amongst the other species. And they were all delicious.

2063
02:00:22,159 --> 02:00:26,119
They were all incredibly delicious. They produced delicious fruit. They

2064
02:00:26,199 --> 02:00:29,279
had cool flowers, pink flowers. I think this one I

2065
02:00:29,319 --> 02:00:32,680
saw had white flowers. I saw one later in the

2066
02:00:32,760 --> 02:00:36,640
Potocarpus forest. I couldn't believe there was potocarps there either,

2067
02:00:36,680 --> 02:00:41,840
these massive Jurassic fucking conifers in the cloud forest. There

2068
02:00:41,920 --> 02:00:43,960
was one in the potocarp forest I saw later in

2069
02:00:44,000 --> 02:00:50,399
near Eyok that had big pink flowers, just stunningly gorgeous,

2070
02:00:50,720 --> 02:00:53,840
all cords, all kinds of fucking jupatore, you know, the

2071
02:00:53,920 --> 02:00:57,680
Stevia tribe of Astraci, the joe pieweed tribe of Astraci,

2072
02:00:57,760 --> 02:01:03,640
with those long styles, large shrubs, opposite leaves, big leaves.

2073
02:01:03,800 --> 02:01:06,520
I mean just this is a really pleasant environment to

2074
02:01:06,640 --> 02:01:10,039
grow in if you're a plant. I'm sure there's ample moisture.

2075
02:01:10,079 --> 02:01:12,119
It never gets too hot, it never gets too cold.

2076
02:01:12,239 --> 02:01:15,359
This is why I love these forests. There's so much diversity,

2077
02:01:15,399 --> 02:01:18,279
and they're so cool, and there's tons of epiphytes too.

2078
02:01:19,359 --> 02:01:22,119
It never freezes, it'll freeze up in the paramo maybe

2079
02:01:22,159 --> 02:01:24,720
at twelve thousan thirteen thousand feet, but down here at

2080
02:01:24,760 --> 02:01:28,359
eight thousand feet elevation, nine thousand feet elevation, it's not

2081
02:01:28,479 --> 02:01:31,520
going to freeze. Well, maybe sometimes it can, and it's

2082
02:01:31,560 --> 02:01:33,920
not going to get too hot either. I'm sure you

2083
02:01:33,920 --> 02:01:37,560
can get upwards in ninety degrees on certain certain days,

2084
02:01:37,720 --> 02:01:40,920
maybe certain hot days, but otherwise it's not going to freeze.

2085
02:01:41,399 --> 02:01:44,399
I went and saw. I knew it was there. I

2086
02:01:44,520 --> 02:01:46,159
wasn't looking for it, but I went to this one

2087
02:01:46,279 --> 02:01:49,319
area that was again really boggy. There's sphagnum. It probably

2088
02:01:49,479 --> 02:01:52,880
just didn't drain for whatever reason. There was a black

2089
02:01:52,960 --> 02:01:56,840
num there. Another Lamerio Psychis species looks like a psycha,

2090
02:01:56,960 --> 02:02:01,279
but it's a fern. It's got distinct vegetative leaves and

2091
02:02:01,359 --> 02:02:05,720
then distinct sporophylls. The sporophyll is like a rusty orange

2092
02:02:05,760 --> 02:02:07,520
leaf that comes up in the center of the plant

2093
02:02:07,560 --> 02:02:11,800
that doesn't you could tell. It's not built for photosynthesis

2094
02:02:11,880 --> 02:02:14,119
as much as the vegetative leaves are. This is a

2095
02:02:14,239 --> 02:02:17,600
leaf that's just built predominantly for shedding spores, for shedding

2096
02:02:17,680 --> 02:02:20,920
those haploid spores so that the fern can reproduce. But

2097
02:02:21,039 --> 02:02:24,680
this fern was I don't know, eight feet tall, almost

2098
02:02:24,760 --> 02:02:28,199
three meters tall, you know, six foot spread on it,

2099
02:02:28,720 --> 02:02:33,000
two meters spread in a fucking bog with just such

2100
02:02:33,039 --> 02:02:35,439
a cool habitat man again, they look like psychads. They

2101
02:02:35,520 --> 02:02:39,239
look like some sort of short palm. Palms and psychads,

2102
02:02:39,279 --> 02:02:41,319
of course are not related, but they have that same

2103
02:02:41,439 --> 02:02:46,000
similar form. And down on the ground I realized was

2104
02:02:46,079 --> 02:02:49,560
this member of the coyote bush clade, the Backerus clay,

2105
02:02:49,600 --> 02:02:53,319
but it was a spreading herbaceous plant, the creeping crawling

2106
02:02:53,399 --> 02:02:59,960
herbaceous plant, Talamancaster saccharanas, which was I guess just describe

2107
02:03:00,079 --> 02:03:02,520
in twenty seventeen. But you look at the flowerheads and

2108
02:03:02,560 --> 02:03:05,439
they look like backars flowerheads. They've got that very distinct

2109
02:03:06,239 --> 02:03:09,800
yellow little rod. This looks like a you know, it's

2110
02:03:09,840 --> 02:03:13,600
the pollen pushing pollen pushing rod, a little style poking

2111
02:03:13,680 --> 02:03:17,439
out of it. And I think there was only one

2112
02:03:17,479 --> 02:03:20,159
other observation on I naturalist that I had seen up

2113
02:03:20,199 --> 02:03:24,399
to this point, and it was just described in twenty seventeen.

2114
02:03:24,439 --> 02:03:26,960
The taliman casters are a relative. I think it's like

2115
02:03:27,039 --> 02:03:29,520
six or seven speaks and the genus some are much

2116
02:03:29,640 --> 02:03:32,399
larger than this. This was tiny. It was just a

2117
02:03:32,439 --> 02:03:35,279
little spreading, creeping plant, but it was still cool to see.

2118
02:03:35,359 --> 02:03:37,359
It was, you know, this little known plant endemic to

2119
02:03:37,439 --> 02:03:41,399
Costa Rica, only described in twenty seventeen, and a relative

2120
02:03:41,520 --> 02:03:44,479
of the coyote bush. The bacharis was in the Baccaris

2121
02:03:44,600 --> 02:03:48,079
claye of astrac and I love the fucking bacharis. I

2122
02:03:48,239 --> 02:03:51,119
love that clay. Whether it's backers Helmutholia that I saw

2123
02:03:51,520 --> 02:03:54,319
growing on the Newtown Creek and Queens and near my

2124
02:03:54,399 --> 02:03:58,800
friend Pauli's illegal houseboat, or whether it's backris pillolarius, which

2125
02:03:58,880 --> 02:04:03,840
used to come up in the destroyed fucking mad Max

2126
02:04:04,039 --> 02:04:07,319
like train yard in West Oakland, which later turned into

2127
02:04:07,399 --> 02:04:10,319
like a massive bummy camp, a bummy camp and tweaker.

2128
02:04:10,359 --> 02:04:12,399
It was like an outdoor tweaker lab. You know, they

2129
02:04:12,520 --> 02:04:14,880
would have tweakers and it was a chop shop too.

2130
02:04:15,600 --> 02:04:17,800
There were all kinds of cars there. They'd flip over.

2131
02:04:18,479 --> 02:04:20,680
You know, why would they flip over these cars that

2132
02:04:20,760 --> 02:04:22,880
were stolen, because that they didn't have a lift and

2133
02:04:22,960 --> 02:04:25,239
that was the easiest way to pull parts off the bottom.

2134
02:04:25,600 --> 02:04:27,760
So they'd flip the fucking thing over like a tortoise

2135
02:04:27,840 --> 02:04:31,359
on its shell. And then you know, looted for parts.

2136
02:04:33,119 --> 02:04:37,079
Oh that brings back memories to twenty nineteen, when you

2137
02:04:37,159 --> 02:04:39,159
know where I used to live in West Local, My

2138
02:04:39,199 --> 02:04:42,119
neighborhood really got just fucking wrecked. And it was all

2139
02:04:42,239 --> 02:04:45,159
because housing prices went up, rent went up. People got

2140
02:04:45,199 --> 02:04:46,560
pushed out on the street, and when they get on

2141
02:04:46,640 --> 02:04:49,960
the street, they get into dope, you know, heroin or

2142
02:04:50,079 --> 02:04:52,600
meth or fentanyl. Obviously no one does hero anymore. It's

2143
02:04:52,600 --> 02:04:55,359
all fendanyl. That's why people just dropped. They just turned

2144
02:04:55,600 --> 02:04:59,920
fucking zombies. And then of course there was this ment

2145
02:05:00,399 --> 02:05:02,239
that just came out. God, this is what drove me.

2146
02:05:02,399 --> 02:05:05,000
I'm all for harm reduction to a point, but when

2147
02:05:05,039 --> 02:05:06,720
it comes to the point that people are shitting in

2148
02:05:06,760 --> 02:05:10,760
the park, like shitting on like children's playground equipment, and

2149
02:05:10,920 --> 02:05:14,119
like setting fire at the oak trees, like these beautiful

2150
02:05:14,560 --> 02:05:16,439
seventy year old oak trees that have been in the park,

2151
02:05:16,760 --> 02:05:18,560
you got to you gotta crack down a little bit.

2152
02:05:18,560 --> 02:05:20,840
You gotta be you can't do this. You're destroying the commons.

2153
02:05:21,319 --> 02:05:23,199
Like a harm reduction my ass. At that point, you're

2154
02:05:23,239 --> 02:05:27,439
just enabling fucking degeneracy. You gotta there's gotta be some

2155
02:05:27,680 --> 02:05:31,680
some level of discipline now in stigmatize Fuck that, if

2156
02:05:31,680 --> 02:05:35,760
you're gonna it's more not stigmatizing homelessness, We're stigmatizing shitty

2157
02:05:35,800 --> 02:05:40,159
behavior that ruins the park for everybody. You know, how

2158
02:05:40,199 --> 02:05:43,319
did I go from a cloud forest in Costa Rica

2159
02:05:44,119 --> 02:05:47,319
to talking about, uh, you know, the bummy camps and

2160
02:05:47,399 --> 02:05:51,039
mad max degeneracy of the homeless problem caused by the

2161
02:05:51,119 --> 02:05:54,359
obscene hustle for wealth in the Bay Area and these

2162
02:05:54,439 --> 02:05:58,920
grotesque housing prices by these shitty corporate landlords and investment

2163
02:05:59,000 --> 02:06:02,039
firms that base caused the homeless crisis. And then, like

2164
02:06:03,000 --> 02:06:06,520
the fucking weird blend of all that shit, those Republicans

2165
02:06:06,560 --> 02:06:08,560
say too. I hate it that they're right about some

2166
02:06:08,680 --> 02:06:11,640
of this stuff. I fucking hate it because it's they

2167
02:06:11,680 --> 02:06:15,119
have so little experience and so much of this stuff,

2168
02:06:15,159 --> 02:06:18,199
but on some of that stuff they absolutely are right.

2169
02:06:18,359 --> 02:06:20,640
Like the shit I saw in California just got got

2170
02:06:20,680 --> 02:06:25,199
it got so gnarly, man, it got so crazy. Pardon

2171
02:06:25,319 --> 02:06:28,079
the pardon the digression. You'll be all right, don't worry

2172
02:06:28,079 --> 02:06:29,279
about it. Shut up. I don't want to you whine

2173
02:06:29,279 --> 02:06:31,640
about it. I'm talking. I get a chance to vent

2174
02:06:31,760 --> 02:06:33,720
now too. That's how I keep this that's how I

2175
02:06:33,840 --> 02:06:35,640
could do a two and a half hour podcast. It's

2176
02:06:35,680 --> 02:06:38,199
not all you, okay, part me too. All right, I'm

2177
02:06:38,319 --> 02:06:42,640
I'm treating like my therapist. It just got so gnarly, man,

2178
02:06:42,880 --> 02:06:46,000
God damn like it just would look like everyone was

2179
02:06:46,039 --> 02:06:48,720
living in RVs, of course, because you know, rent cost

2180
02:06:48,880 --> 02:06:52,800
five thousand dollars for a fucking two bedroom, and they

2181
02:06:52,840 --> 02:06:54,680
were living in RVs and then like every once in

2182
02:06:54,720 --> 02:06:56,359
a while. But then at the same time they were

2183
02:06:56,399 --> 02:06:59,159
on meth in fentanyl. So it was just you know,

2184
02:06:59,199 --> 02:07:01,840
if you've ever been around junkies, I have. I've had

2185
02:07:02,039 --> 02:07:05,079
plenty of friends that are now dead that got into

2186
02:07:05,279 --> 02:07:08,840
heroin or whatever, you know, wise life choice. They decided

2187
02:07:08,880 --> 02:07:10,880
to make no offense to them. I always love them,

2188
02:07:10,920 --> 02:07:16,319
but for fuck's sake, man, And so anyway, so if

2189
02:07:16,359 --> 02:07:18,159
you ever been around and you see the behavior, just

2190
02:07:18,560 --> 02:07:20,920
totally shit the bed and go down and you just

2191
02:07:21,000 --> 02:07:24,880
see the fucking trash. They start like pack rat style

2192
02:07:25,039 --> 02:07:28,239
behavior like bringing garbage home and just I mean, I'm

2193
02:07:28,239 --> 02:07:31,600
gonna use that one day, I'm gonna I'm gonna do something.

2194
02:07:31,720 --> 02:07:34,800
And then in these failed projects everywhere that they swear

2195
02:07:34,840 --> 02:07:37,479
they're gonna do, you just watch as you watch their

2196
02:07:37,520 --> 02:07:39,359
life fall apart, and did you so you just get

2197
02:07:39,399 --> 02:07:43,039
these explosions of garbage spilling out of these RVs like

2198
02:07:43,199 --> 02:07:46,359
cartoon style, you know, like a water balloon that got

2199
02:07:46,439 --> 02:07:48,760
filled up too much, and instead of water, it's just

2200
02:07:48,920 --> 02:07:52,760
like garbage, the detritus of consumer society.

2201
02:07:53,560 --> 02:07:53,720
Speaker 2: You know.

2202
02:07:54,800 --> 02:07:56,920
Speaker 1: God, it was gnarly though. But when they set the

2203
02:07:57,000 --> 02:08:00,279
oak tree on fire in Remande Park, that really bumm

2204
02:08:00,319 --> 02:08:02,520
me out that way. I said, this is fucking too much.

2205
02:08:02,720 --> 02:08:04,359
Like you can't go to the park anyway. Used to

2206
02:08:04,439 --> 02:08:06,880
like to go to the park and hang out, walk

2207
02:08:06,960 --> 02:08:10,560
the dogs, whatever, just to like have some open space.

2208
02:08:10,640 --> 02:08:12,640
You can't do that anymore because there's human shit and

2209
02:08:12,760 --> 02:08:15,279
like rigs, needles and anyway. I don't know how I

2210
02:08:15,359 --> 02:08:16,840
got to talking about it. I need event though, so

2211
02:08:16,920 --> 02:08:19,560
you know we're gonna keep going and just let that go.

2212
02:08:19,680 --> 02:08:22,359
I don't I don't know how we got anyway. We

2213
02:08:22,439 --> 02:08:29,319
were talking about back rists. So telemancaster Saccharinus sakkaranus was

2214
02:08:29,600 --> 02:08:32,000
growing all over this boggy area and it was like

2215
02:08:32,079 --> 02:08:36,159
an opening in an otherwise thirty foot tall canopy forest

2216
02:08:36,239 --> 02:08:40,760
ten meters tall canopy forest. But it was God, it

2217
02:08:40,880 --> 02:08:42,920
was just so cool. I think it was mostly Escalonia

2218
02:08:43,319 --> 02:08:47,000
murteloides the main tree, but again just covered in moss,

2219
02:08:47,600 --> 02:08:54,079
bryo fights, probably a few orchids I missed, just wild shit, bromeliads,

2220
02:08:54,159 --> 02:08:58,159
there was a Greggia species and you know, and I'm

2221
02:08:58,279 --> 02:09:01,199
sure there's a peck and other things. There was some

2222
02:09:01,359 --> 02:09:03,720
animal that was producing a lot of shit that we've seen.

2223
02:09:03,920 --> 02:09:08,760
We've seen the turts, I've seen the evidence. Pal you know, tapeiers.

2224
02:09:09,119 --> 02:09:11,319
Did the tapeiers go up to the high elevations? You

2225
02:09:11,439 --> 02:09:14,479
bet your ass they do. The tapers do go up

2226
02:09:14,520 --> 02:09:18,680
to the high elevation. So does pecori ta jaku? What

2227
02:09:18,880 --> 02:09:28,520
is that? Does have a lina collared pecory the muskhog anyway, Yeah,

2228
02:09:28,680 --> 02:09:30,520
so that is uh, what is them? I'm looking at

2229
02:09:30,520 --> 02:09:33,880
the mammal diversity and igh naturalist Jesus got puma con

2230
02:09:33,960 --> 02:09:37,680
color bassariskus Suma crasty. What is that?

2231
02:09:37,960 --> 02:09:38,319
Speaker 2: What is that?

2232
02:09:38,680 --> 02:09:43,439
Speaker 1: Weird little man? It's just ringtail. Coco missile is a

2233
02:09:43,520 --> 02:09:48,000
primarily nocturnal, arboreal omnivorous member of the carnivor the pro scionage,

2234
02:09:48,079 --> 02:09:55,279
the raccoon family of course, the pro Scionage prosyonity. It

2235
02:09:55,479 --> 02:09:57,199
just looks like a ringtail, but I guess it's like

2236
02:09:57,279 --> 02:10:02,239
a lower latitude neotropical ringtail. The cocko, missile cake, a

2237
02:10:02,319 --> 02:10:09,119
missal basariscus, Sue mccrasty, Jeffrey's spider monkey. That's got to

2238
02:10:09,159 --> 02:10:10,680
be at lower elevations. I don't think they're up in

2239
02:10:10,720 --> 02:10:14,119
the parmo. I've seen those guys, leopardess part Dallas. What

2240
02:10:14,319 --> 02:10:17,039
is that? Ocellent? My high naturalist is set to use

2241
02:10:17,119 --> 02:10:20,039
scientific names only because I fucking hate common names, especially

2242
02:10:20,039 --> 02:10:22,199
for plants. They don't help me. But obviously with this

2243
02:10:22,359 --> 02:10:25,560
it doesn't. The mantled howler, Oh there's that howler monkey?

2244
02:10:26,359 --> 02:10:27,720
Is that the same one? I don't think that's the

2245
02:10:27,760 --> 02:10:31,319
same one I seen. That's a terrifying sound they make.

2246
02:10:32,560 --> 02:10:40,600
Listen to this, Listen to this, Okay, that's one. That's

2247
02:10:40,640 --> 02:10:42,680
the difference. I think there's a couple of different species,

2248
02:10:44,960 --> 02:10:47,039
because the ones I heard didn't sound like this. They

2249
02:10:47,119 --> 02:10:50,479
sounded like a damn giant cat. It was terrifying. I

2250
02:10:50,560 --> 02:10:57,720
mean this would be terrifying too, But okay, yeah, this

2251
02:10:57,800 --> 02:11:00,880
is what I this is, This is what I heard.

2252
02:11:00,920 --> 02:11:16,760
There's a different species. You listen to this, Okay, this.

2253
02:11:16,920 --> 02:11:28,399
Speaker 2: Is the fuck?

2254
02:11:28,520 --> 02:11:33,880
Speaker 1: Is it? It's terrifying. It's not a howl, it's like

2255
02:11:33,960 --> 02:11:41,880
a guttural. It's like being it's like being accosted. It

2256
02:11:41,960 --> 02:11:44,560
sounds like some sort of fucking horror movie, you know,

2257
02:11:49,119 --> 02:11:52,239
all right? Anyway, yes, anyway, the point is there were

2258
02:11:52,279 --> 02:11:56,760
tapers up there. They were shitting, so, uh, they were

2259
02:11:56,840 --> 02:12:00,319
shitting a lot. It must have been a tapers up

2260
02:12:00,359 --> 02:12:03,960
there at ten thousand where we had ten eleven thousand feet.

2261
02:12:06,000 --> 02:12:09,479
So anyway, so up now I'm getting to the paramo,

2262
02:12:10,479 --> 02:12:13,640
and there's the forest has all but disappeared. Now I'm

2263
02:12:13,680 --> 02:12:16,920
going up. I'm high enough up the paramos disappeared. And

2264
02:12:17,239 --> 02:12:20,039
I actually went to this little outcropping to see if

2265
02:12:20,079 --> 02:12:23,720
I could look over this hill which looked like looked

2266
02:12:23,760 --> 02:12:25,640
like it went for miles, to see if I could

2267
02:12:25,680 --> 02:12:28,039
see any of this puya or any of these bogs.

2268
02:12:28,039 --> 02:12:30,439
I knew it grew in bogs. It grew with the

2269
02:12:31,119 --> 02:12:34,520
corded area, a pampas grass and a chiskeaa, and that

2270
02:12:34,800 --> 02:12:38,800
bleck num which is now lameriopsychis that coalescent tree fern

2271
02:12:38,880 --> 02:12:42,199
looking black num. And when I climbed up to uh,

2272
02:12:43,439 --> 02:12:46,800
there was a small outcropping with one a single tree

2273
02:12:46,840 --> 02:12:50,600
of Esclonium or todya on it that was otherwise looking

2274
02:12:50,680 --> 02:12:54,439
over all this scrub vegetation, and on that tree was

2275
02:12:54,600 --> 02:12:59,880
a species of Epidendrum, a flowering pink orchid here at

2276
02:13:00,319 --> 02:13:03,159
what had to have been eleven five hundred feet so

2277
02:13:03,640 --> 02:13:06,800
roughly thirty three hundred meters. And it turned out to

2278
02:13:06,880 --> 02:13:11,159
be Epidendrum pastifolium, which is only known. It's a Costa ricanandemic,

2279
02:13:11,279 --> 02:13:15,359
bright pink flowers. It's hummingbird pollinated. It's an epiphyte. It's

2280
02:13:15,439 --> 02:13:21,039
growing on Esclonium murder looides again. And I think the

2281
02:13:21,119 --> 02:13:24,239
only other trees there there was bud Laya Nightada bud Leya,

2282
02:13:24,319 --> 02:13:26,880
the butterfly blues genies. But this is a this is

2283
02:13:26,960 --> 02:13:28,800
a wonderful but layd. This isn't a bud lay It.

2284
02:13:28,880 --> 02:13:30,640
It's gonna make you see red and want a sept

2285
02:13:30,680 --> 02:13:32,720
fire at that the home deepot garden section. This has

2286
02:13:33,119 --> 02:13:38,880
got little orange flowers and very white pubescent leaves, almost

2287
02:13:38,920 --> 02:13:41,920
tomatos leaves that grows in the parimo. I mean it

2288
02:13:42,000 --> 02:13:44,159
grows further down too. I saw it at my friend

2289
02:13:44,239 --> 02:13:50,159
Nacho's house at the nine thousand feet with camaro staphless arbutoids,

2290
02:13:50,239 --> 02:13:52,920
which is again a Kamara staffless arbutoids I. I haven't

2291
02:13:52,960 --> 02:13:57,119
really talked about that much, but the mushrooms that come

2292
02:13:57,199 --> 02:14:01,920
up beneath that tree and some of the quircus in

2293
02:14:02,000 --> 02:14:04,880
that habitat have got to be fucking incredible. There's got

2294
02:14:04,960 --> 02:14:08,800
to be so many different mushrooms. There's probably silasiby, maybe

2295
02:14:08,840 --> 02:14:13,199
even new species of silasibe because there are some endemics,

2296
02:14:13,760 --> 02:14:15,600
you know, in terms of just plants and fungi that

2297
02:14:15,680 --> 02:14:18,600
have apparently have been isolated in these mountains in Central

2298
02:14:18,600 --> 02:14:22,239
Costa Rica enough long enough to not have spread very far,

2299
02:14:23,600 --> 02:14:27,239
you know, or to be physically distinct, morphologically distinct from

2300
02:14:27,840 --> 02:14:30,159
you know, the mountains to the east in Panama or

2301
02:14:31,319 --> 02:14:33,720
Nicaragua doesn't really get any tall mountains like this. I

2302
02:14:33,720 --> 02:14:37,920
guess Honduras gets some pretty tall mountains similarly tall mountains,

2303
02:14:37,960 --> 02:14:41,000
but uh but yeah, you know, and then of course

2304
02:14:41,479 --> 02:14:44,439
most of eastern Panama's lowland. So these mountains right here

2305
02:14:45,119 --> 02:14:48,439
from central Coasta Rica that go south into southeastn to Panama,

2306
02:14:48,520 --> 02:14:51,000
I mean, they're kind of an isolated little island. So

2307
02:14:51,079 --> 02:14:55,800
there's going to be some endemics. But that Kamara Staphlis

2308
02:14:55,960 --> 02:14:59,960
Arbuti's I don't think it grows up into Mexico. Maybe

2309
02:15:00,000 --> 02:15:01,960
it does a little bit. Maybe it does a little bit.

2310
02:15:01,960 --> 02:15:04,439
I would assume it does because the berries are bird dispersed,

2311
02:15:04,439 --> 02:15:06,880
so there's probably some birds making the long flight. They

2312
02:15:06,880 --> 02:15:10,039
don't take a shit, apparently, probably if they're you know,

2313
02:15:10,159 --> 02:15:12,159
or maybe it takes a long time for them to

2314
02:15:12,279 --> 02:15:15,000
pass the seed. But when I saw this Camaro staphlus.

2315
02:15:15,439 --> 02:15:17,119
Now we're out of the Paramo, we're back down at

2316
02:15:17,199 --> 02:15:20,239
nine thousand feet. Will I distract you from talking about

2317
02:15:20,239 --> 02:15:23,079
the paramo to talk about this fucking oak forest because

2318
02:15:23,119 --> 02:15:24,960
it was so cool. I'm trying to cover a lot

2319
02:15:25,000 --> 02:15:28,279
of material here. So we're back down at nine thousand feet,

2320
02:15:28,600 --> 02:15:31,520
we're not at thirteen thousand feet where this epidendrum was.

2321
02:15:32,319 --> 02:15:35,239
And U Camara Staphlus arbutoids. When I saw it, I

2322
02:15:35,279 --> 02:15:37,880
thought it was a madrone. I thought it was arbutus.

2323
02:15:38,600 --> 02:15:41,359
That's the name rbutoids because it looks like an arbautist

2324
02:15:41,359 --> 02:15:43,640
looks like a madron. But of course all these this

2325
02:15:43,920 --> 02:15:48,359
ar buttoid clade of the blueberry family Eric Casey, the Manzanitas,

2326
02:15:48,399 --> 02:15:52,720
the Arctostaphalos, the Kamara Staphalus, the arbutus, the Texas madron,

2327
02:15:52,760 --> 02:15:55,279
and all the cool manzanitas you get in California and

2328
02:15:55,760 --> 02:16:00,079
highlands of Mexico, et cetera. They are all they they

2329
02:16:00,119 --> 02:16:10,000
all form endopitic relationships with or endo micro hizel relationships

2330
02:16:10,079 --> 02:16:14,079
with Ecto micro hyzol species. So they kind of let

2331
02:16:14,119 --> 02:16:17,640
these ectomycro hizel species penetrate the cortex of their roots

2332
02:16:18,239 --> 02:16:21,720
and form associations with them, like me and Allen saw

2333
02:16:21,760 --> 02:16:24,640
happening with the Baja bird bush or not those staphlos

2334
02:16:25,039 --> 02:16:29,159
in northern Baja and the chaparral of northern Baja Mexico,

2335
02:16:30,319 --> 02:16:34,280
Baja California, Mexico. And so I would assume the mushroom

2336
02:16:34,319 --> 02:16:38,920
diversity there is insane, because you know, the oaks and

2337
02:16:39,360 --> 02:16:44,159
this Kamarastaphlus are all micro hizel, they're all ecdo micro hizol.

2338
02:16:44,280 --> 02:16:47,879
They form, you know, relationships not just with the glomero miceats,

2339
02:16:47,920 --> 02:16:50,280
the small fungi that don't produce fruiting bodies that you

2340
02:16:50,360 --> 02:16:53,680
can't see, not just with those micro risey, but with

2341
02:16:53,799 --> 02:16:55,840
the Ecto micro rise that produce a lot of the

2342
02:16:55,959 --> 02:16:59,840
choice edible mushrooms and some of the toxic amanitas and

2343
02:17:00,079 --> 02:17:02,840
some of the edible aminitas et cetera. So I want

2344
02:17:02,879 --> 02:17:04,719
to go back this summer and check out some of

2345
02:17:04,760 --> 02:17:08,920
the the fungal diversity there because it's got to be nuts.

2346
02:17:09,079 --> 02:17:11,840
And some of these oaks are just fucking massive. There's

2347
02:17:12,000 --> 02:17:14,959
such cool oaks Corcus Coast, three Kansas. I believe that

2348
02:17:15,120 --> 02:17:17,200
is an endemic oak. It might it might go on

2349
02:17:17,280 --> 02:17:21,440
the Panama a little bit. But this Camaro staffleus was

2350
02:17:21,520 --> 02:17:23,959
really cool. Camara stafflus. I think we only get one

2351
02:17:24,040 --> 02:17:27,360
species in the United States. It's in California. There's quite

2352
02:17:27,360 --> 02:17:29,760
a few in Mexico, and then of course this, but

2353
02:17:29,879 --> 02:17:32,959
you know there's shrubs there, like the one in California

2354
02:17:33,040 --> 02:17:34,840
is a shrub or a small tree. This was like

2355
02:17:34,920 --> 02:17:39,959
a forty foot tall, maybe fifty foot tall, you know,

2356
02:17:40,159 --> 02:17:44,959
fifteen meter tall tree. It was nuts, but it's still

2357
02:17:45,000 --> 02:17:48,079
got those ersy lit flowers, those white blueberry shaped flowers.

2358
02:17:48,159 --> 02:17:52,159
That whole habitat down in that oak forest was just incredible.

2359
02:17:52,200 --> 02:17:52,360
Speaker 2: Man.

2360
02:17:53,120 --> 02:17:56,559
Speaker 1: I saw Nasa speciosa hiked down in this ravine, three

2361
02:17:56,639 --> 02:18:00,479
hundred feet down this ravine, super steep. It was good,

2362
02:18:00,520 --> 02:18:02,600
though I needed it was like a Brazilian butt work up.

2363
02:18:03,120 --> 02:18:06,000
Get down to the ravine. There's Nasa speciosa down there,

2364
02:18:06,120 --> 02:18:10,879
which is a member of Lois sace, the Loasa family.

2365
02:18:10,959 --> 02:18:16,600
The Menzilia family known for the stinging hairs. Sevalia sinuata,

2366
02:18:16,639 --> 02:18:18,280
which we get in Texas, is a member of the

2367
02:18:18,399 --> 02:18:21,440
same family. Savilla is the only one that stings. Yuk

2368
02:18:21,520 --> 02:18:25,200
Nitie and Menzilia don't sting. Menzilia get. You get a

2369
02:18:25,239 --> 02:18:27,319
couple in the Midwest to it, but they generally all

2370
02:18:27,399 --> 02:18:31,399
like dryer sites. They're more like a Western plains, Western

2371
02:18:31,479 --> 02:18:34,719
plains like the northeast end of their range. California there's

2372
02:18:34,760 --> 02:18:37,159
a ton of diversity. Deserts there's a ton a ton

2373
02:18:37,239 --> 02:18:42,280
of diversity. Mexico there's quite a bit of diversity. Chile

2374
02:18:42,440 --> 02:18:45,079
there's a lot of diversity. There's a one disjunct species

2375
02:18:45,120 --> 02:18:49,079
in the Mibia in South Africa that's got really cool

2376
02:18:50,760 --> 02:18:53,920
little helicopter like fruits like it's got those the sepals

2377
02:18:53,959 --> 02:18:57,440
form these little propellers. But the whole family is cool.

2378
02:18:57,440 --> 02:19:00,120
It's got little barbed hairs, the velkral leaf family and

2379
02:19:00,239 --> 02:19:03,600
so this. But this Nasa was it's evidently hummingbird pollinated.

2380
02:19:03,600 --> 02:19:07,120
It's got a big you know, baseball sized orange flower.

2381
02:19:07,200 --> 02:19:09,120
The whole thing stings like hell. And it was just

2382
02:19:09,200 --> 02:19:12,639
growing in this one of the few sunny openings in

2383
02:19:12,760 --> 02:19:15,360
this otherwise dense forest near this creek, at the bottom

2384
02:19:15,399 --> 02:19:17,920
of a ravine that certainly seems like, you know, it

2385
02:19:18,000 --> 02:19:21,239
gets a lot of puma traffic. It certainly seemed like that.

2386
02:19:22,120 --> 02:19:26,799
I definitely had nightmares day, nightmares of being pounced on

2387
02:19:26,959 --> 02:19:30,159
by a large, you know, two hundred pound cat in

2388
02:19:30,719 --> 02:19:34,040
this forest. And anyway, so this isn't in the forest.

2389
02:19:34,120 --> 02:19:37,879
Then when I came back out and hiked back up

2390
02:19:38,719 --> 02:19:42,239
past all these cool aeroids, I mean, the cloud forest aeroids,

2391
02:19:42,280 --> 02:19:46,959
cloud forest and thorium, there was Chiscaia everywhere. It's all shady,

2392
02:19:47,079 --> 02:19:49,280
it's all generally cool.

2393
02:19:50,520 --> 02:19:50,639
Speaker 2: Uh.

2394
02:19:50,879 --> 02:19:52,639
Speaker 1: And I get to the top of the redge again,

2395
02:19:52,639 --> 02:19:54,760
and then that's where I saw. I saw this viburnum,

2396
02:19:54,799 --> 02:19:58,920
a fucking viburnum coaster ricanem again one of these more

2397
02:19:59,040 --> 02:20:03,920
temperate latitude ude genera. But this is growing in the

2398
02:20:04,000 --> 02:20:07,639
tropical attitude. But it said, again, it's at nine thousand feet.

2399
02:20:07,680 --> 02:20:11,120
That's how can do that? Really really cool? I did

2400
02:20:11,200 --> 02:20:13,600
not expect to see if I burn them there, it's wild.

2401
02:20:13,680 --> 02:20:16,559
It's always cool being in the tropics but at high elevasions,

2402
02:20:16,600 --> 02:20:20,840
and then seeing these more temperate North American or temperate

2403
02:20:20,920 --> 02:20:24,479
South American lineages just so cool. Then you think about

2404
02:20:24,479 --> 02:20:28,319
the biogeography, like how they got there, were they you know, uh,

2405
02:20:29,120 --> 02:20:31,159
how is it? How how long did it take, how

2406
02:20:31,200 --> 02:20:35,040
their distribution spread, how did they speciate once they got there,

2407
02:20:35,319 --> 02:20:38,879
et cetera. I remember seeing Klethra too, which Clethra is

2408
02:20:38,959 --> 02:20:43,440
in Clethracy order Eric Hayley's blueberry order. I don't know

2409
02:20:43,520 --> 02:20:46,280
what clethrough species it was, but it certainly had the whites,

2410
02:20:46,600 --> 02:20:50,559
the spikes of white pendent flowers almost they almost look ersiolate.

2411
02:20:51,799 --> 02:20:54,559
And there's I think, I think Clethra in the United States,

2412
02:20:54,600 --> 02:20:59,000
it's almost all eastern US, right, It's like southeast pretty sure,

2413
02:21:00,000 --> 02:21:02,559
but you know, you get Clethra. The only places I've

2414
02:21:02,600 --> 02:21:05,760
seen it was in Mexico, so another I think it's

2415
02:21:05,799 --> 02:21:09,440
a neotropical genus. There might maybe there's Asian species. I

2416
02:21:09,559 --> 02:21:12,959
saw a Loopinus two up there. Anyway, So this is

2417
02:21:13,399 --> 02:21:16,760
we go from the forest now to up to the Parrimo.

2418
02:21:17,000 --> 02:21:21,079
So now we're back up at thirteen thousand, twelve thousand

2419
02:21:21,159 --> 02:21:27,120
feet thirty two hundred meters thirty three hundred meters scrub

2420
02:21:27,200 --> 02:21:31,159
vegetation interspersed with like this short these patches of short

2421
02:21:31,280 --> 02:21:36,520
canopy forest dominated by Escalonia myrtiloides. There's cordaderia there. There's

2422
02:21:36,719 --> 02:21:39,360
entire thickets like you can stand on a ridge and

2423
02:21:39,399 --> 02:21:42,920
look out over this thicket of chiskeya bamboo, you know,

2424
02:21:43,360 --> 02:21:46,000
like corn maze height, like six or seven feet tall,

2425
02:21:46,920 --> 02:21:51,159
seven to eight feet tall, maybe corn maze height, and

2426
02:21:51,239 --> 02:21:54,639
it's just the thicket of chiskea that extends for three

2427
02:21:54,760 --> 02:21:58,680
hundred four hundred yards. There was a Loopinus species I

2428
02:21:58,760 --> 02:22:00,799
saw there as well. I forget what it was. And

2429
02:22:00,920 --> 02:22:02,440
then I went up to this. I hiked up to

2430
02:22:02,520 --> 02:22:05,879
this like little TV tower area, looking again, just looking

2431
02:22:05,920 --> 02:22:07,559
to see what I could find, what wild shit I

2432
02:22:07,600 --> 02:22:10,760
could find. Getting a little hypoxic, losing a little bit

2433
02:22:10,799 --> 02:22:14,000
of steam, you know, the lack of oxygen, the low

2434
02:22:14,079 --> 02:22:17,159
air densities getting to me. But uh, you know, as

2435
02:22:17,239 --> 02:22:19,280
I keep going up and I just start seeing more

2436
02:22:19,440 --> 02:22:23,000
weird ass members of Astorasi, but they've all got arochoid leaves.

2437
02:22:23,559 --> 02:22:26,680
What do we mean by arochoid leaves? Leaves like in Erica,

2438
02:22:26,879 --> 02:22:29,120
you know, like the genus erica like you would see

2439
02:22:29,719 --> 02:22:33,319
in South Africa and some of these Mediterranean climates. You know,

2440
02:22:33,440 --> 02:22:38,559
these these you know, that kind of candelabra shape sometimes

2441
02:22:38,760 --> 02:22:42,239
or monocolus a single stem, but then the leaves looking

2442
02:22:42,360 --> 02:22:48,040
like almost snake scales around the shoot. No petiole, glab

2443
02:22:48,520 --> 02:22:52,079
you know generally sometimes glaber's up top and then pubescent

2444
02:22:52,239 --> 02:22:57,239
down below. There was a couple massive thistles uh circium,

2445
02:22:57,280 --> 02:23:01,200
I think it was pretty sure was circium, circium subcoreacium.

2446
02:23:01,399 --> 02:23:04,319
There was another member of the coyote bush lineage, the

2447
02:23:04,360 --> 02:23:08,360
Backerus leneas Lino Kylis coast three knses had that same form.

2448
02:23:08,399 --> 02:23:10,799
It was well, it was mildly. It was mostly glabrous

2449
02:23:10,840 --> 02:23:14,360
on the top surface of the leaf, mildly plute, pubescent below.

2450
02:23:14,559 --> 02:23:17,879
This is obviously so it can shed water, doesn't You

2451
02:23:17,959 --> 02:23:19,840
have hairs in the top of the leaf. Water is

2452
02:23:19,879 --> 02:23:21,280
going to collect Your leaves are going to be more

2453
02:23:21,360 --> 02:23:25,000
likely a rat and the stomata are generally on the

2454
02:23:25,079 --> 02:23:28,440
underside of the leaf anyway. Lino Kylas coast three kinches

2455
02:23:28,479 --> 02:23:31,440
it was a shrub six foot by six foot, but

2456
02:23:31,639 --> 02:23:35,159
like purpleish flowers, coyote bush looking flowers on it in

2457
02:23:35,239 --> 02:23:39,280
a panicle, but or a syme rather, but they had

2458
02:23:39,360 --> 02:23:42,600
this kind of purple texture to them. There was monte

2459
02:23:42,680 --> 02:23:46,360
Kellia two, another genus of Astoraci, which is in Sinisio,

2460
02:23:46,520 --> 02:23:52,719
the Sansio tribe, so unis syriat you had multi syria fieries,

2461
02:23:52,879 --> 02:23:57,159
yellow flowers, but same general leaf structure like no petiole

2462
02:23:57,520 --> 02:24:01,799
glaber's up top, smooth up top and then pubescent beneath.

2463
02:24:01,920 --> 02:24:07,719
Monte Calia fermipes was up there too, just wild stuff.

2464
02:24:07,760 --> 02:24:12,079
There was Jamisonia, that cool fern up there as well,

2465
02:24:13,600 --> 02:24:18,200
and and what other shit? So this is so yes anyway,

2466
02:24:18,280 --> 02:24:21,040
so we're this is again parmel vegetation. I'm looking out

2467
02:24:21,079 --> 02:24:24,639
over all this just scaya. There's hesperomalles of twosofolia. I

2468
02:24:24,719 --> 02:24:28,120
saw some of that cora, liking that pisidio lichen that

2469
02:24:28,319 --> 02:24:31,239
looks like it's almost a little shelf mushroom, but it's

2470
02:24:31,280 --> 02:24:34,000
like papery and it's just growing on the ground with

2471
02:24:34,079 --> 02:24:36,239
a bunch of other lichens. So it's a basidio like

2472
02:24:36,319 --> 02:24:40,399
in instead of a asco my seat lichen. It's meaning

2473
02:24:40,479 --> 02:24:43,680
its forms a relationship with basidio my seat fungi instead

2474
02:24:43,680 --> 02:24:48,000
of asco my seat fungi. There was Gaeodendron punctatum, which

2475
02:24:48,120 --> 02:24:52,000
is a parasitic shrub hemiparasitic shrub in Lori anthesi, the

2476
02:24:52,079 --> 02:24:55,879
tropical misletal family. But it was growing in a much

2477
02:24:55,959 --> 02:24:58,559
different form here, like it wasn't forming a shrub, it

2478
02:24:58,680 --> 02:25:01,920
was forming these little stems of opposite leaves and they

2479
02:25:01,959 --> 02:25:05,719
were all red and yellow, probably probably due to the

2480
02:25:05,799 --> 02:25:11,440
increased UV, remember, because there's there's much more intense, exponentially

2481
02:25:11,879 --> 02:25:16,079
more intense UV up here. And there was a wine

2482
02:25:16,120 --> 02:25:18,959
mania two q nona, which is not surprising because you

2483
02:25:19,000 --> 02:25:21,879
generally see wine manias in similar climates, like you know,

2484
02:25:22,079 --> 02:25:25,760
Lose New Zealand temperate rainforest. You know, they like it

2485
02:25:25,920 --> 02:25:29,079
chili and wet. And then you know, getting to the

2486
02:25:29,159 --> 02:25:33,079
Puya dass larioides spot was once I finally got you know,

2487
02:25:33,120 --> 02:25:36,760
I started seeing the inflorescences from thirty or forty feet away,

2488
02:25:36,840 --> 02:25:39,440
those stalks, you know, those so tall like stalks, and

2489
02:25:39,479 --> 02:25:42,479
that's when I knew I was there and just lost

2490
02:25:42,600 --> 02:25:45,360
my shit, lost my absolute shit. It was just felt

2491
02:25:45,399 --> 02:25:49,399
like I was on another planet, just the wildest flora.

2492
02:25:50,280 --> 02:25:56,799
And then of course that red Sphagnum mog bog mad

2493
02:25:57,040 --> 02:26:01,879
mog that way that Sphagnum peats fag the magillanicum. I

2494
02:26:01,959 --> 02:26:03,600
got this fish eye lens too, so I was taking

2495
02:26:03,680 --> 02:26:06,040
much of cool habitat photos. Fucking great for doing that.

2496
02:26:06,520 --> 02:26:08,280
You know, you could feel like you're like a nineties

2497
02:26:08,639 --> 02:26:11,840
like a nineties alternative CD cover, but you could do

2498
02:26:11,920 --> 02:26:14,760
it with habitat shots, which was great. And then it

2499
02:26:14,840 --> 02:26:16,760
was there that I realized my macro lens took a

2500
02:26:16,799 --> 02:26:20,879
shit and the little plates that spiral around to change

2501
02:26:20,920 --> 02:26:25,600
the aperture size were fucked and fell off. So I

2502
02:26:25,680 --> 02:26:28,440
got to send that in. But but overall, I mean

2503
02:26:28,479 --> 02:26:30,479
the whole day I went so hard. I went from

2504
02:26:30,600 --> 02:26:34,479
like eight am to like eight at night. I mean,

2505
02:26:34,559 --> 02:26:36,920
the sun's only out from five to five pm. But

2506
02:26:37,000 --> 02:26:39,600
I was fuck it. You know, it's the sun going

2507
02:26:39,680 --> 02:26:42,120
down at five point thirty like it does in the

2508
02:26:42,200 --> 02:26:48,920
tropics is not going to affect my my botanizing. Those

2509
02:26:49,079 --> 02:26:51,920
those red liver warts were nuts too. It's so weird

2510
02:26:52,000 --> 02:26:54,879
to see again again. Why red y orange because of

2511
02:26:54,920 --> 02:27:00,159
that increased UV intensity. They're protective pigments. You know what

2512
02:27:00,239 --> 02:27:04,239
else I saw too, There was that uh Gentian that

2513
02:27:04,399 --> 02:27:09,799
neotropical gentian genus. Let's see where the fuck did it go?

2514
02:27:10,399 --> 02:27:13,719
Where was it that neotropical gentian genus? I saw it

2515
02:27:13,799 --> 02:27:16,559
in Ecuador too. It's another paramol plant. They'll be videos

2516
02:27:16,559 --> 02:27:21,120
out on all these. It was, where the hell did

2517
02:27:21,159 --> 02:27:23,319
I put it? I hit it thought, oh, hold on,

2518
02:27:24,280 --> 02:27:26,879
that was it Helenia. Yeah. I wonder if it's I

2519
02:27:26,959 --> 02:27:30,959
wonder if that's how I parasitic because it looks like

2520
02:27:31,079 --> 02:27:33,840
it's not producing as much chlorophyll a is it otherwise?

2521
02:27:33,840 --> 02:27:35,879
But it's not as green as you would normally expect.

2522
02:27:36,319 --> 02:27:42,040
I couldn't find anything Helenia aqualgiella because I guess it's

2523
02:27:42,399 --> 02:27:46,600
supposedly looks like aqualsia, a little bit like columbines. But

2524
02:27:46,760 --> 02:27:49,440
you know, some of those Gentians and Gentian ac like

2525
02:27:49,680 --> 02:27:54,719
especially the Voyrhea clad are micoheterotrophic, so they're parasitizing fungi.

2526
02:27:55,559 --> 02:27:58,520
But some, I mean, Helenia is not in that clade.

2527
02:27:58,600 --> 02:28:02,040
But it certainly looked just the just you know, the

2528
02:28:02,079 --> 02:28:03,479
same way you could look at some members of oor

2529
02:28:03,600 --> 02:28:07,000
bank cacy and tell that they're they're a little parasitic.

2530
02:28:07,680 --> 02:28:10,000
There's just the there's just the look about them when

2531
02:28:10,040 --> 02:28:12,959
you look at the leaves at the veg they're not

2532
02:28:13,079 --> 02:28:14,799
as green as they could be, or they're off they

2533
02:28:14,879 --> 02:28:17,719
look kind of you know, there's something about like that

2534
02:28:17,840 --> 02:28:21,680
helenia that I made me wonder is it partially mico heterotrophic.

2535
02:28:21,760 --> 02:28:23,799
It's obviously it's got chlorophyll in there, so it's not

2536
02:28:23,879 --> 02:28:27,639
fully mico heterotrophic. It's not fully parasitizing fungi, but maybe

2537
02:28:27,680 --> 02:28:30,440
it is a little bit. There's no studies. It does

2538
02:28:30,559 --> 02:28:33,799
grow in shady ass environments, so form where you know,

2539
02:28:33,879 --> 02:28:38,600
in a place where forming a symbiosis with fungi or

2540
02:28:39,079 --> 02:28:41,440
parasitizing them a little bit taking more than you give

2541
02:28:42,159 --> 02:28:46,600
would prove beneficial. I mean no doubt. Genti and ac

2542
02:28:47,079 --> 02:28:51,520
is you know mico rhizals. So it's there's fungi doing

2543
02:28:51,600 --> 02:28:53,760
someone the work. There's an exchange there, but is it

2544
02:28:53,840 --> 02:28:56,639
an unequal exchange a little bit? I wonder it would

2545
02:28:56,680 --> 02:28:59,840
make sense because where it's growing is very shady, so

2546
02:29:00,280 --> 02:29:03,000
who knows. Anyway, I could keep going on and on,

2547
02:29:03,159 --> 02:29:05,520
We'll say for another podcast. It's been two hours and

2548
02:29:05,559 --> 02:29:08,120
a half the paramo. It's fucking wild. Look for the video,

2549
02:29:08,200 --> 02:29:10,799
which should be out. I'm trying to figure out what

2550
02:29:10,920 --> 02:29:13,520
I should do, like a long ass just go fucking nuts,

2551
02:29:13,600 --> 02:29:16,360
like totally insane, do an hour twenty minute video which

2552
02:29:16,440 --> 02:29:20,479
nobody will watch, or like break it up. I'll probably

2553
02:29:20,520 --> 02:29:23,440
break it up. But because I filmed a lot of

2554
02:29:23,440 --> 02:29:25,479
footage that day, and I don't cut a lot of

2555
02:29:25,520 --> 02:29:28,000
stuff unless it's repetitive, I just I'd like to put

2556
02:29:28,040 --> 02:29:31,280
everything in there, because there's so much. You never know it.

2557
02:29:31,559 --> 02:29:33,840
I mean, the coast of Greek is pretty protected, but

2558
02:29:33,879 --> 02:29:36,200
you never know what will happen, especially in the US,

2559
02:29:36,319 --> 02:29:38,879
or especially in Texas or in other places in Mexico.

2560
02:29:39,440 --> 02:29:43,600
What'll be what habitats will be gone in thirty forty years,

2561
02:29:43,680 --> 02:29:46,719
maybe even sooner. So anyway, hopefully got something out of that.

2562
02:29:47,200 --> 02:29:49,159
I didn't even talk about the herb farm that I

2563
02:29:49,239 --> 02:29:54,280
went to, This guy, Harrvor Thomas, wonderful man. It was

2564
02:29:54,319 --> 02:29:56,440
growing i boga. He had the little sacred garden area

2565
02:29:56,479 --> 02:29:58,360
with a whole bunch of cool psychedelic plants in there,

2566
02:29:58,399 --> 02:30:01,959
which are all legal, those three tabern anti boga and

2567
02:30:02,079 --> 02:30:08,399
Banisteriopsis and really cool, really cool guy, really cool garden,

2568
02:30:08,520 --> 02:30:12,000
really wonderful spot. That the giant cicadas were out. They

2569
02:30:12,079 --> 02:30:14,959
were fucking insufferable, But I love them just in saying

2570
02:30:15,399 --> 02:30:17,840
they were just so loud. It's amazing. I love it.

2571
02:30:17,920 --> 02:30:20,079
It's so pleasant, though, it's so I'd so much rather

2572
02:30:20,239 --> 02:30:24,680
hear loud, obnoxious cicada noise than than the the noise

2573
02:30:24,719 --> 02:30:29,520
you hear in dense population centers, human population centers that

2574
02:30:29,600 --> 02:30:32,319
you just become accustomed to, and you don't realize it

2575
02:30:32,399 --> 02:30:35,319
until you're like standing on a boat, you know, in

2576
02:30:35,479 --> 02:30:38,520
the in the San Francisco Bay looking at Oakland, or

2577
02:30:38,760 --> 02:30:42,479
in the you know, the the East River looking at

2578
02:30:43,159 --> 02:30:46,520
at New York, and you hear that that rory, Like God,

2579
02:30:46,559 --> 02:30:49,680
I live in that What the fuck? That horrible road

2580
02:30:49,760 --> 02:30:53,360
noise and fucking morons with their stupid revving engines and

2581
02:30:54,000 --> 02:31:02,959
oversized cars and shiitas, oh, you know, all the sounds

2582
02:31:03,000 --> 02:31:07,479
that just start debilitating. It blows my mind that people

2583
02:31:07,600 --> 02:31:11,120
find shit like Cicada's annoying, and then they live and

2584
02:31:11,760 --> 02:31:18,920
some of the loudest, most insufferably just like offensive, cacophonous shit,

2585
02:31:19,200 --> 02:31:21,799
you know, the fucking car noises, especially, God, it's such

2586
02:31:21,799 --> 02:31:26,000
an awful, awful noise, you know. I just I find

2587
02:31:26,120 --> 02:31:30,280
so much about our current predicament as humans just totally revolting.

2588
02:31:30,920 --> 02:31:33,799
You know, it's like every day I just I hear

2589
02:31:33,879 --> 02:31:37,959
people say shit, whether it's on a form of media

2590
02:31:38,120 --> 02:31:40,520
or in person, that just blows my mind. God, it's

2591
02:31:40,559 --> 02:31:43,239
the dumbest shit I've ever that's like the most or

2592
02:31:43,280 --> 02:31:46,680
it's just the most vile shit whatever, you know. And

2593
02:31:46,799 --> 02:31:48,799
then of course the places we build, at least here

2594
02:31:48,840 --> 02:31:51,879
in first world America. Who doesn't love car dealerships and billboards?

2595
02:31:51,920 --> 02:31:52,120
Speaker 2: Eh?

2596
02:31:52,639 --> 02:31:57,079
Speaker 1: God, may they may they all burn and fall over. Anyway, Okay,

2597
02:31:57,159 --> 02:32:00,760
that's all I got, have aggressive day. Probably do another

2598
02:32:00,799 --> 02:32:03,799
podcast here next week following up on this, talking more

2599
02:32:03,840 --> 02:32:05,600
about a little bit more about the Parmo and some

2600
02:32:05,760 --> 02:32:08,840
of that more cool Lowland forest shit. Alright, have a

2601
02:32:08,920 --> 02:32:10,000
gross to day, Go bike