Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the crime pacer Bot and
he doesn't podcasts. I'm doing us on the road again.
I'm really juggling a lot here where. Anyway, it's a
few days later since the last podcast night that we
were in San Luis Poto C. Today I'm with my
friend Seesar and we're in Hidalgo State. Beautiful Hidalgo State.
We're driving past these fucking pecan orchards right now. We're
in elevation at forty three hundred feet. It's been in
a pretty incredible couple of days. I feel totally high
from all the crazy shit I've seen, really amazing geology,
calcareous shale and yeah, mostly the calcarious shales. Look up
for to tope. We've hit a few topays along the road.
You know, it's a good analogy for life. Every once
in a while, you hit an unnecessary tope, completely pointless
that they put it there and you don't see it
till the last minute, and you end up flying up
in the whole fucking car. You know, you break the axles,
shits flying all over the place. You know, you hit
your head on the ceiling. Whatever. But anyway, these calcarious
shit topped by layers of flood basalts, some of it
columnar jointing. Ooh uh and uh, I finally got to
see Cephalo sirius sceinalists, which I don't know why I
had such a strong draw to that cactus species, but
I did. And I think because I've grown been growing
one for the last two or three years. And uh,
they're just so well adapted because those spines have been
modified into hairs. You know. It's one of many plants
colloquially referred to as the old Man cactus, the viahito
and uh, it's this guy gonna let you go with,
you know anyway, Hotel grant Adidas. It's where we stayed
last night, where they charged it for the water, you know,
and it didn't have bad bugs out. It's good, wonderful,
wonderful decoor, though I will say so. Uh, but you know,
Cephalo serious sinas. So the spines have been modified into tricombs.
Some of it it looks like it's like gray pubes.
I know that sounds really disturbing, just forgive me, but
I don't know how else to say it. Maybe because
they're wiry, you know, there're not like Hey, they're not
like smooth hairs. They're wiry hairs. And I guess they
can do that. My theory is that they can do
that because they grow on such incredibly steep calcareous slopes
that they almost don't really need spines because they're out
of reach of anything that might eat them to begin with.
So they can, you know, they say, fuck it, we're
just gonna turn these into this coat of hairs. What's been,
you know, mind blowing to me is just how mild
the climate is. I mean, it is December, it's winter,
but you know, I was wearing a hoodie yesterday, and
then I'm sure in the summer it's just hot as balls.
But yeah, I mean it's been. It's been really pleasant. Again.
We're at you know, forty three hundred feet elevation, and
we are in these canyons. They mostly grow in these
steep canyons, very very steep canyons, unstable shale and tallis
and yeah, man, it's been. It was great to see
these things thirty feet tall, some of them, you know,
growing with pinion pines. In one spot, these weeping pinion pines,
the Mexican weeping pinion pine Pinus Pinsiana. Okay, that was nice.
That was a really beautiful glaucus yucca. And we're you know,
we're headed up to the cloud forest. We're going through
all these mid elevation areas. Now we're forty eight hundred
feet going off past Cephalo series. Menzilia is so dominant here.
There's Menzilia everywhere, and this one is really I mean,
it really sticks to you. We came out covered in
the leaves. What is that leon? Notice that invasive lamy ace.
There's Florenzia resinosa again, some massive bushes of that we
saw yesterday, along with Fukaria fasiculada. Absolutely mind blowing plant.
Probably one of the most bizarre plants I've seen. Here's
Nicotiana glaca treat tobacco invasive his hell, which is invasion
of his hell in California as well. But Fukaria fasiculada
is one of the weirdest. I mean, it's up there
with well witchy. You know when people ask me the
thibor play it, and you know, it'said, fucking I love
all of them, right, but Forcaria for siculata, I mean,
there's just these doctor Sussian bottle trees. And you can,
you know, when you see like a colony of ten
of them. I don't know if it's all the same
individual or different seedlings, but each one is like the
size of a fucking yoga bowl, you know, and green
and just has it. It looks like a bottle, like
one of those weird fucking Kianti bottles? Is that what
it is? I don't drink. What's this shit called kyanti?
I think it's called kanti? What is it? What is it?
I don't know. I fucking hate alcohol. I hate alcohol.
I can't stand it makes people fucking insufferable. But uh, okay,
we go. We gotta stand on the road here. Oh
what's this leg him? But it's all this calcareous geology.
And then to this morning we eat a wonderful little jaunt,
a little wonderful sachet up a fucking really narrow wash
that was all calcareous shale. But then there'd be the occasi,
you know, boulder of basalt that came down from up
top because there was a much younger layer of flood
basalts that apparently was draped over all of the calcarious
geology like a beautiful icing on top of a cake.
But yeah, the Fulkaria fisiculata. I mean we left yesterday
at dusk on these completely sketchy roads, windy sketchy roads
with you know, little pecan orchards down below, going up this,
you know this place where there shouldn't it seems like
there shouldn't even be a road, you know, it felt
like you know, I used to work I was working
for the road. I used to do conductor jobs up
the Feather River Canyon and it was just the same thing.
I mean, they're just giant, just complete the whole the
mountain just wants to come down, wants to come down
and wants to get washed out to sea. It's worse,
it's going through. It's bound for the ocean, you know,
it wants to go be free. And so there's just
these giant boulders coming down everywhere. Giant. I mean, it's
the maintenance that was required both on the Feather River
Canyon Railroad in northern California and Plumus County as well
as here. It's just nuts. I mean, the canyon was
just insane, but it's all that calcarious geology and then
you'd see these massive hanging over the side of these
rock cuts high above you, these massive Fukaria fisiculata, and
then we find a little area where we get in there.
In my first experience with that species came from a
shipment of poach specimens that sewel Ross University received from
Customs was probably going to some Japanese traders or some
bullshit plant fetishes that have no collectors, that have no
respect for habitat or interest in habitat, or interest in conservation.
They're just, you know, they're like, they're like they might
as well be breeding poodles or something, you know, for
the dog shows and shit. I mean just they're kind
of like irrelevant shit and beautiful plants they make. I'll
give them that, but you know, the destruction of habitat
that's entailed versus why not just get a couple of seats?
Did do those people did? Like any of these these
you know boutiques, these boutique growers in Asia, they or
check or stuff, they have any interest in habitat? Do
they care about habitat at all? I don't know. I
doubt it. I doubt it. I just you know, they're
just hoarding primace. Might as well be collecting star wars,
figurines or fucking you know, seventies lunch boxes or something anyway,
But for cary for sticular, I didn't know they got
that bit because the only time I've ever seen them
was poach specimens that were very small. These were fucking massive,
I mean, twenty thirty feet tall. They were flowering. To
the flowers imply moth pollination. They're white, they've got exerted anthers,
so they're outside of the corolla, like, you know, jutting
outside the corolla. So a moth, a moth could uh
you know, feasibly be going for some nectar and then
just get dusted, get its head dusted with some pollen.
And what was interesting to me was that the leaves
of you know, because that's all Okatello species do is
they turn their petioles into spines, right, but all there's
lois Cilia mexicana, is that what it is, the Mexican
of the red one polmoniacy. But you know, they that's
all Oktas are doing, is turning their petioles into spines.
Like on fucurious splendns, the one you get in Arizona,
California and West Texas. The leaf blade emerges photosynthesizers for
a while, it's got a pettiole about an inch inch
and a half long, two inches long sometimes, and then
the leaf blade falls off. The petiole remains, and now
you've got a spine. But on this, on Fysiculata, it
seemed like the leaf blade emerges and then while the
leaf is still photosynthetically active, the red pettiole kind of
breaks off from the leaf blade like a like a sheath.
And then and then you know, becomes protective while the
leaf is still active. The leaf blade doesn't need to
fall off, so I couldn't see you. And then they've
got fo curious went ends has the second year's growth.
It comes out of fascicles, you know, So the first
year leaf has a pettiole. In the second year leaf
just comes out of fascicles. But in these it seems
I didn't see any second year leaves. I don't know,
but there weren't a lot of leaves. They weren't fully
leafed out, so who knows. Oh yeah, see, we're getting
much more verdant than green. God, it's crazy how quick
it changes. Holy fuck, I guess we did go up
a thousand feet. But uh, now there's junipers and oaks,
this beautiful hillside covered in junipers and oaks, junipers flaccida,
and oh wow, what is it? I don't know what
the hell end was? Was that the what is the
which the suppothe genus begins with the seas? Forget we
saw one of them, rutasies. The family pubescents is the species.
Kind of a rare species there were There was only
one other one or two other observations on a naturalist
before Cassa moroa. That's it, cassiroa. God, there's still mortillocactus,
but it's growing with oaks and juniperse It's so mind
imbing here. It really challenges it challenges your assumptions at least.
Did you come from northern latitudes about about what the
habit that is? You know, if it's if it's uh,
there's a clematis, if it's desert, if it's fucking oak woodland,
what is it? You know? It's just it's it's because
it's it's kind of neither. I mean, it can be both,
I guess, but it's just seasonal dryness. It's really all
it is. At low latitudes, it's seasonal dryness at low latitudes,
things are so different. At the lower latitudes, you can
have you know, plant communities composed of species you would
never expect to sea together. It's quite bizarre. We just
we've seen a sign. It's just say vnded Barregos. Do
you want to buy a sheep? And I had half
a mind to say yes after I saw those baby
goats in that wash today. It was quite adorable. Our
goats are terrible for the fucking East. They're like cats.
But but you know, they are cute, and they are cute,
you know, and you can you keep a goat indoors?
Can you do that? Could you keep a goat? You
could put it in a little touxedo and shit dress
it up? Is that animal abuse? I don't think so
put a little sailor head. Yeah. We were walking up
this really narrow wash, but very easy to climb due
to the tilted bedding planes of the shale, and I
saw these two little baby goats. I was just standing
there filming a thirty foot tall cephalo series growing out
of the canyon wall, and there was a there was
a couple of little baby goats and then one of
them was one of them was chilled. The other was
kind of freaked out. I think they had just been born.
The placenta was still there. And AM heard the one
freaking out and came down. I saw, I saw those horns.
I said, fuck this and jetted. But then she seemed
timid anyway, and I was able to just walk right
by them, thankfully, like two feet away from them, because
it was a narrow canyon, you know, they were, and
she chose a good spot to you know, to do
her to have her kids. But shit, So anyway, we
just passed the little garden full of Brookmonzi's in this
tiny little cobblestone village. And so there's brook manzi is
growing here too, which you know, if you know, don't
like a lot of heat. So that's the thing. And
there was just mortillocactus five hundred feet below. So that's
fucking with. That's what's going on here ecologically and floristically
and climatically in terms of plant communities. Got that lois
Cilia's beautiful. Okay, that's a common genus. We've been seeing.
This one, the red one, the red flowered one, is
quite common at higher elevations. It's a more music and
cooler species. But then you've got these little purple ones
that grow on the more lower elevation dry scrublands. But
they've all got those purplish blue anthers, purplish blue pollen. Okay,
so now we just went over this little ridge, I
mean literally, it's been thirty seconds and now we opened
opened up into this tree filled valley filled with cypresses
and oaks, has sparaciprus. Oh, there's pines here. I guess
it's just petula and planted cypresses and oaks. It's just
it's totally verdant in green, and it looks like the
countryside of Marine County or some shit. It's crazy Marine County, California,
you know, very expensive, very expensive, lots of rich people.
You're gonna get yelled at dogs not on a leash,
and uh, you know, and then maybe someone might try
to sell you an herbal colonic. You never know, could
be both right. It's some new age healers, you know,
they're having tantric sex orgies in a fucking yert somewhere.
It's one Marine County. That's Sonoma too. Anyway, it's wild.
So it's just it's crazy how quick it changes all
the moisture evidently kept in this little bowl, and then
when you go outside the bowl it gets drier. Yeah,
this is so verdant in it's crazy. Myrtillocact's just on
the other side of that little ridge nuts. Oh it's shady,
it's music, it's moist. It's very nice here. But anyway,
back to the Bucharia physculada, So that's that spot again.
It's in a very narrow canyon. They're up on the
on the ridges too. On these slopes. The terrain again,
really I think it really affects what I guess, how
armed these plants can be or not armed in the
case of Cephalos series, because it's so steep, it's such
unstable terrain. You know, you figure a giant sloth would
have a lot of trouble, you know, a ground sloth
would have a lot of trouble fucking around on those
slopes without falling and breaking its ass because they're they're
unstable and there's I mean, a human can barely walk
on any of on any of these It's it's really
really sketchy, and especially because of how easily the substrate crumples.
But but yeah, god, there was some beautiful Tilanzia species
like three feet long, you know, leaf plates five inches long.
You know, some of these designer tilanzi as you see
in these expensive plant boutiques. They were just draped all
over these these things at the base, I mean, really peculiar,
you know, just drinking through their leaves, doing the whole
Tlanzia thing. You know, no roots, barely any roots at all.
I don't need them. They're just facultative anchors. Anyway. They
drink through the peltate, that is, shield like tricombes on
there on their leaves. Looks like a little umbrella. If
you were to do a cross section, like a vertical
cross section of the leaf, it would look like a
you know, it's a pelte tricho. It looked like a
little umbrella coming right off the leaf surface of the epidermis.
Beautiful plants though, beautiful, I mean fuck. There were like
four or five different species of Tilansia. And then we
saw this this area we went by. I could see
it from high up on this sketchy one lane ridge
that you know, strangely enough, had giant mac trucks going
by every thirty minutes on it, you know, like dump
trucks often they go over because it, again, it's really steep.
And it was on those sketchy ridges that I saw
a Nahuatlia species, which is endemic to Hidalgo, you know,
relative of guk Nadia. This thing looked like it might
have been a proteace or something. It had sessile I
think it was mostly sessile eaves, or if they were,
there was only a tiny petiole. It had a white undersides.
It was Nahualia Herlingiana h E R. I'm not gonna
try to spell it. I'll suck it up. But if
you look in the Floristic Checklist of Mexico, it's a
list of the entire country of Mexico, a checklist. I'll
actually put it. I'll put a link in the podcast
description because it's a great it's a great resource to have.
But but yeah, anyway, so you know, if you find it,
you can find it if you just look up Nahuatlia
formerly guk Nadia. I guess it would have been guck
Nadia maybe when the list came out, I don't know,
but I saw that there as well. But when that
was really peculre, I mean, again, the terrain is just
so incredibly steep. It's like the Andes. It reminds me
of parts of the Andy's and so anyway, when shortly
after that, I was looking over the side of the
ridge down below at some beautiful columnar cacti that were
probably twenty thirty feet tall, multiple stems, but they looked
like they were all white at the top, so I
assumed it was Cephlo Serious, but that would be You
never see Cephalo Serious clumped so closely together like that,
you know, twenty thirty stems on the same individual, So
that seemed very odd to me. But they did have
this white top, and I figured it was just the
white hairs of Cephalo Serious sceniless. And then we got
closer and I realized it was all vulture shit, and
the vultures were hanging out on top of these cacti,
shitting on them, shit, pruning the cacti. You know, a
columnar cactus can only take so much shit on top
of it before it starts to rot, you know, from
excess nitrogen as well as just bacteria in the shit
slowly starting to finally decompose the cactus. And so these
cactus the tops would get shipped on by the vultures.
We hang out on them, got some wonderful shots of
all the vultures hanging out of them, and then the
top would die and then it would re sprout from
the bass from a dormant but at the base and
grow a new stem, and so they were kind of
like shit printing them. They had ended up having a
very a very bizarre shape, a very bizarre habit, and
it was fucking hilarious. But yeah, then the tops would
die and they were just covered in bird shit and
then they would you know, start rotting away, and then
it would so that it was not severalo serious. It
was isolato series du mortierray, which I realized when I
got closer to it almost looked like which can look
like Pakistris webre, you know, the giant what's the common
name for Pakiste's webre? You know oregonos? Yeah, so, uh,
but they don't come that, they don't come that far north,
so uh yeah, man, I don't know. It was it
was really bizarre to see, really cool. I also saw
an endemic and very rare species of Scootelaria, a red Scootelaria,
growing out of the cliffs with very short abbreviated leaves.
Probably I don't know what a centimeter was it just
a male of propism, I mean to say attenuated. I
don't know, like abbreviated it works too very uh, you know,
maybe a centimeter long opposite leaves. And then the big
giveaway that it was a scuotelaria is when you look
at the klyx, it looks like a little mouth, like
a little like duck lips mouth, like a duck lip selfie,
you know, looks like the Mara a Lago face. God,
that's fucking you know what mar a Lago faces say? Sir,
you do do it? Yeah, do it. Let's do an
impression of it, like look, but when you gotta get
a face lift and some shit injected. You know, when
you hate yourself and you don't you don't know how
to love yourself and the way you look, and so
you you have to fuck your face up with injection.
I think it's hilarious. It's also very tragic and sad.
But when it's happening to rich people, it's okay. It's well,
it's not okay, but it's funny. It's I have sympathy
for everybody, love for all you know, uh, you know,
even the fucking Charlotteans that profess to be Christians, but
you know, if they met Jesus, they'd probably crucifying themselves.
You know, he's a fucking pacifist Kami. We don't want
that shit here, right, We're gonna believe our our bottom
of the brainstem. What the fuck. Oh that's a massive landslide.
Huh Holy shit, that's a massive landslide. God damn it
that they're working on repair and I see three guys
staring at a hole in the ground. Holy shit, God,
the mountains just want to come down. You know, it's
just constant maintenance. But you get that the rumbas, and
maybe you get some you know, celasipies. I wonder if
silasipes up at the Korum comes up this far north
it does, right, Yeah, that probably because it's down in Mexico.
Yeah yeah, Oh, get alane up here, and it's one
of the most beautiful psychoactive mushroom species. Velasa bees up
at the Coorum with this. Oh god, it was it
was I remember almost I remember it was getting rained
and we were in a very narrow gorge and uh,
I think it was in Morels in twenty twenty two,
and we were looking at these like nine inch talls
velasa bees up at the corum and we got we
got fucking started pouring on us and I had to
climb up a hillside covered in poison ivy. I didn't
get any though, amazingly, I think because it was raining
so hard, completely soaked. I had a luckily, I had
a waterproof you know, messenger bag. I threw my gear
in there. This slope was just you know, excruciating to
climb up because he kept falling, was so steep and unstable.
And then we got to the top and we were
all all fucking stoke because these things, these mushrooms were
so beautiful, they were so it was such a cool spot,
you know. But you know, it's so you had to
go through the ovelget see if garbage to get to
them first, because everybody get the litters, so they see it.
It's like they see a hillside down here, and they
want to just throw garbage over the side of it.
You know, if you don't have any garbage, fuck it,
we'll make them. You know, do we have any garbage
we can we can get to throw over the hillside,
say sor let's pick a. Let's pick a fucking right
up here, pull over here, we'll throw some garbage over
the side, fuck it, you know, just like plastic bottles, shit, paper,
plastic bags. Ah, it's been it's been disconcerting seeing the
amount of disrespect that Mexicans have for their native flora,
just like Americans. You know, it's everywhere. This is like
a I guess, you know, if I was like a
twenty year old sociology student, I'd say it's, you know,
the product of colonialism. But I think it's a little
bit more nuanced and deeper than that. I think it's
I think it's a fundamental disconnection from reality. And I
do get tired the identity indigenous people. Indigenous people are
the protectors. There was that stupid fucking meme going on, right,
and I'm not knocking indigenous people, of course, but this
is really simplistic thinking. It's buzzwords, it's token ism, it's
borderline racist and fucking corny. Aside from just being fucking
corny as hell, you know, a human is a human
is a human right. Not every culture some did, some don't.
Not every culture that was happened to be indigenous you know,
has naturally has respect for their place and things right,
some do, some don't. But uh yeah, it's been it's
been wild to just see them. Mean, you know, the
ship that the destruction that goes on the like, you know, plants,
the native plants are always seen as messy. And then
you go to like the downtown plaza and its plazas,
and it's always the corniest. You know, I will lead
a grandma shit, no offense that do love. You know,
the granty's are shut out to them. You know, we
much some wonderful uh you know, old old ladies here,
but it's you know what I mean, the the bogain
v is, the abulitist style garden design of like bogain
v is, and just fucking cast arrhinas, the Australian pines
as they call them, which are actually more closely related
to oaks. You always, you always see this shit, you know, planted,
and wherever Latin America or United States, you see complete
disregard for the native plants, complete disinterest in them. They're
seen as messy. You know. I think it's just again,
technology allows humanity to get far away from nature, and
once we realize we don't need it anymore, or we
think we don't need anymore, then we stop caring about
it and failed to see the bigger picture, you know,
whereas societies that realize they do need it because they
have to live within it, that's where it comes from,
you know. But again, just because someone's inherently got a
certain fucking there's no like genetic disposition for this, which
you know, the identitarians seem to imply, there's no genetic
position for an awareness or appreciation of these things or respect.
You know, yes, I don't know, I think that. But again,
the thing that's kept most of Mexico intact comparatively to
the United States is the Ahito system, the fact that
developers can't move in and swiftly fuck up and destroy,
and just the fact that they don't have this you know,
they want they might want it, but they don't have this.
This economy based on urban sprawl, you know, intense consumerism
to the extent that Americans do, and especially fucking driving.
The driving requires so much space, the parking lots, all
that shit. But you know that said, I was in
Mexico City and of course it smells like a parking garage.
Cancer rates through the roof due to all the pollution.
There's extreme health effects, and people insist on driving despite
the fact that the fucking bus and the subway system
are excellent and they only cost six pace. We rode
a lot of buses just a few days ago, a
lot of buses. Wonderful system they got, these street buses.
The buses basically are treated like street cars. They've got
their own lane no one can drive in. They're separated
from the other traffic lanes by concrete bumpers. You board
them at four feet high. You know, they're so there's
like a platform where you wait in the center. You know,
it feels like the Brown Line in Chicago when it's
running at street level. You know you're the or like
the Blue line on when it's running down the I
two ninety, like where the platforms in the center and
and the bus lanes on either side. It's really nice,
and people still insist on driving despite the faith. We
will fucking take you an hour to go what it
would take you forty minutes to walk. That's how fucking
bad the traffic is. People still insist on doing It
makes everything fucking stink. The high hell smells like a
park of great. Metro city is great. Downtown area is
fucking amazing. Right, you can walk, you can find anything.
There's tons of cool museums, and people still insist on driving.
Get the fuck out of your car. It's crazy. This
is what people do anywhere, you know, it's wild to me.
I don't understand why the people drive in Chicago when
you got a wonderful public transit system there. It's fucking pathetic, man,
Get out of Get out of your car, fatty, get
out and take a fucking walk. What are you doing?
You bring these thank ye, I think you have it, Mike,
and then I can have my trunk and threaking Dean,
and then you gotta spend twenty minutes looking for fucking parking.
Fuck you walk? Huh? Are we going right? I think
we're going right away. Look it's so pleasant. Look at
these pines. Patula is there? Heart weggy and not yet
not her weggy as higher up right right? Yeah? Man,
oh god, beautiful mushroom diversity here. Look there's an older
older Where could you see older growing twenty minutes after
you just seen him? Martillo cactus? Anyway, so we just
took a quick break. We left you for a minute.
We were in a cloud forest fucking around looking at
Magnolia's Guysandra I foind a really interesting centric pogon, which
is a lowbilioid. You know, it's got that bilatterally symmetrical
flower with the tubine. It looks like a lobilia. But
uh but uh yeah. Now we're going to look for Meliosma,
which is in proty alies. It's a relative of protea,
so this should be fucking weird. Oh wow, there's obsidian
in the mountain. That's kind of cool. We should go
back and stop and look at that. There's obsidian buried
in this road cut. Can we back up with a yeah?
Let me they put the tires here for the mud
and shit, God damn the giant chunks of obsidian. Yeah,
let's keep going up. Uh, you're good. I think there's yeah,
giant chunks of obsidian in the mountain. Yeah. Me and
Seesar both were both we were just we were dreaming
about the Fukyria fisiculada last night. Yeah, we're just gonna
park here in the side of road. It's fight. We'll
put the blinkers on. We're gonna look at this obsidian. Oh,
that was nice. Just the massive obsidian flow, well wasn't
a massive It was like, you know, the sixty meters maybe, no,
there's more. Okay, it is pretty massive on this road
cut just coming up. Probably pretty old. It's not like
Glass Mountain in northern California where you can actually get up.
It's not like Glass Mountain in Northern California where you
can actually get up and walk on the flow. This
is uh, this is just coming on the roadside and
it's all you know. It's in a matrix of volcanic mud.
Like it looks like like sticky, it looks like volcanic ash,
and you touch it, it's like volcanic clay. But but yeah,
very interesting. So now we're going to see Meleosma, which
is in proty Ales. Oh it was a ssyathea. It
was a tree fern. But we're in this you know,
really green music forest. I was excited to see Skysandra
where we just wore as well, which you know, the
first time I saw that planet was in Atlanta, Georgia,
growing in a like the outskirts of a residential area.
I think it was technically church property, but it was
basically forest. It was still in the city limits. But
it was for whoa fuck, and that's a broad turn.
We should be careful anyway. Uh, but it was in
you know, it was it was It was remnant forests
in the Atlanta city limits that had never been destroyed
and had been overtaken with English ivy, and you know,
poison ivy. Poison ivy was really thriving. There is a
is a ruteral plant and then in Sky'sandra everywhere. So god,
I've never seen English ivy behave so invasively as I
have in that little patch. It's very invasive. In the southeast.
Always saw this cool solinum too, with orange fruits and
papery papery klyxes, you know, still like the fruit ensconced
in the klyx. But wow, look at these fucking ferns. Man.
And we just saw a really bizarre fungus. I don't
know what the fuck it was. I couldn't tell what
it was, a bright orange fungus and if you touch
it it squirted out white sportes. But it looked like
it was had these like jelly like seeds in it too.
It was really bizarre, right, would you say? They looked
like seeds? Yeah, they looked like frog eggs. It was
fucking wild. But oh yeah, thanks to Sezar for driving
right now. My friend who's a biologist, My friend Saysar
who's biologists from Mexico City. It did a video at
his house last year where he was breeding all these
rattlesnakes for release back into the wild like crotals. Zopkhn
You still got that one, yeah, yeah, yeah, And he's
got a male du so you know, he's making rattlesnake
baby's in his apartment in Mexico City, which is great.
And uh and then he's there. They're from the UK.
He said, that's from the Yucatan likes yeah, pat h huh.
It's a beautiful rattles like jasus. So anyway, we're gonna
check on this smelliosma and which I was not familiar
with until my friend Mark Olsen, who teaches at you know,
told me about it. So got tons of landslides here
though tons of the room bays. Yeah, and just like that,
we're out of the cloud forest. We come down on
the west side. Now we're in the rain shadow and
there's slopes full of Isolato sirius and Martillo cactus. And
large yuccas. There's still oak trees worth sixty five hundred
feet elevation. So it's really just it's that rain shadow,
all that all that warm moist there coming off the
Gulf of Mexico, hits the Sierra Madre and then dries
out on the west side. But it is very pleasant
temperatures now it is Chili got It's fucking beautiful lista,
the sun going down lighting up these hillsides covered in
blue columnar cact the Isolato sirious rocks. There's fucking oak
trees here. It's very lush, very very lush. That there's
this montanoa that I've been seeing everywhere as well, which
was the genius that the laid Vicky Funk was studying.
Really nice woman. She sent me the composite e book,
the Astrace Book, for free. It's like a thousand page
she used to work of the Smithsonian. I wrote her
and I was like, man, is this where can I
get this? She's like, I'll just send you one and arrived.
It was like fifteen pounds, one of my cherished books
in my library. But we just saw, yeah, we just
saw Meliosma from the family sabi Ace, which is order
of prote alies. Really bizarre. The flowers weren't open yet,
but you know, I just didn't know what it was.
Just like I said, I have to get flower money
shots somewhere else. We'll see where. I'm totally scared of tops.
Now we've had a couple bad run ins with the
pes in the whole fucking car, you know, because you
don't see him until it's too late. Next thing, you know,
you're just shit's flying everywhere, and yeah, it's it's brutal. God,
it's so lush man for for the dry season, it's
very lush. Okay, So now we're you know, we're back
on a quarta. We came down out of the mountains.
We came down out of fucking where'd we stayed mineral
what was it called Mineral del Chico? Minorrel del Chico? No, No,
what was this town? And we stayed in like a
dory a tourist town. Yeah, Mineraelo del Monte up at
eight thousand feet. We like rented a room in this
little this family's little house because it was the only
thing available that wasn't a ripoff. And then we went
to go see Doug fur Man the forest up there
are brutal. They look like shit. It's said there's an
invasive beetles. Do you remember the genus name of the beetles.
I don't know. So it's from it's from another continent.
It's from a very disjunct ecosystem, and it's wrecking the forest.
I'm surprised that. I wonder if it's hit because I
haven't heard of it in the United States. I wonder
if it's non tolerant, the freezing or something. Maybe that's
why it hasn't hit the I don't know, but it
just sounds like maybe they need to give it back
to indigenous stewardship. Could that be? It? Is that what
they need to do. This is a brave two spirit
indigenous disabled in a wheelchair with long COVID, and they're
gonna change it. They're doing a lot more work than
you are with your Western with your Western science, you
your westerns. Yeah, that's right, you better start apologizing to me,
mister Mayor on you fucking piece of shit Western scientist.
Did you know that taxonomy is just the history of
white people stealing things? That's all it is, all botanical science.
It's just actually had someone say it to me. They
were Caucasian, of course, like they always are, but we
don't need to. We were talking about that earlier. It
is so hilarious. Anyway, the forests looked kind of rough,
lots of dad Amy's religiosa, and we kept man, we
drove around for like fucking what was it like four hours?
Save Shark was very patient, seriously, because I was, I
gotta fix. I had the fuckings I've seen Suda suga
in the way we lay owned before. But the cones
on the on the ecotype down here look wild. The
the little mousetails that come out of the cone scales
like recurve upwards. It's fucking bizarre. Man. It looks totally
different than any of the the ecotypes I've seen in
the United States. And uh so, anyway, I was we
had to find it. Then my friend Jeff Bisbee, old friend,
I mean, we're not like super tight, you know, we
wouldn't go fucking play back gaming together and ship on
the weekends, you know, But in acquaintance he got me
into Conifers like fifteen years ago. God, that guy's driving
like a cunt too. Fuck, but he uh, he had
he had seen it here, and it's it's where I
found it. It's you know, AB's is very shade tolerant,
and they're getting hit hard with this invasive beetle. I mean,
I don't know if it's the beetle or another insect,
but they wrapped the ends of the voliage into these
little cocoons. It sounds more like caterpillar activity, I suppose,
I don't know. These trees look like shit. It's really sad.
Entire swaths of forests dying here. And since the insect
pathogen is in native like pine bark beetles are in
North American, you know, the United States, it seems like
it's going to take a lot to stop them because
there's the trees have not probably dealt with them or
any of their close ancestors in nine or ten million years,
however long it's been since, you know, temperatures were warm
enough and you could get kind of a continuous eco
tone between North America and Asia. You know what I
just won the last time. I just won a lot
of these different lineages. It seems got separated, you know,
like Chinese and American chestnuts, et cetera a million years ago.
So we're talking Mia scene, you know again, and they
again it was because the higher latitudes were warmer. I suppose,
I think that's what it is, you know. And then
western North America used to have all this a lot
of these lineages too, but as it started to dry
out anyway, you know, you've read Dave had axl riding anyway.
But uh, but yeah, so these forests just looked rough.
And so we finally found it going around this curve
in this kind of more open area up against this
rocky pinnacle, this this volcanic pinnacle, and there was a
stand of like nine or ten Pseuda suga trees and
and that was it. I had to shimmy up this
roadside to go photograph them. And they looked kind of
rough too, but they weren't getting as hit hit as
bad as the abies. The furs are really getting taken out.
It was. It was rough to see. It just makes
you wonder, man, between that and climate change, invasive species
and climate change, you know, what are this What are
these areas gonna look like in fifty years? Really makes
me wonder, you know, if they're doing this little parade,
what's it for the Guadalupe what's it called? Yeah, just
the day of the Virgin. You know, they're they're doing,
you know, for the Guadalupe thing. The Spanish made it.
What was it? The Spanish made it up. It was
like throw the people a bone. But it was based
on an on uh because they don't call them mass
text down here. It was based on a what Michigan
got us. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, they having parades. You know,
everyone's eight million people flood Mexico City mid December. Uh,
and they're they're you know for the sal got like
little Guadalupe shrines on their trucks and ship. It was
people biking, lots of people biking on the on the kuotos.
It was nice to see. But anyway, so now we're
headed to Wahaka and uh, we're gonna look at some
of the drive forests that I'm very excited to be
in those lovely forests again, the lovely drive forests of Wahaka.
But yeah, man, it's wild. It's during the place to scene.
I bet I bet there was a you know, those
those abs forests of course came down to somewhat lower elevations,
but it's white. It's wild though, because you're in these
forests and uh, and then you'll see like all these succulents,
you know, because you think, you know, if you're thinking,
if you grew up in the United States, you grew
up more temperate latitudes. You know, high elevation montane forests
get really cold. But I don't believe it really freezes
up in these forests, even though you're at ten thousand feet.
Maybe occasionally you'll get a frost, but I mean there's
delanzias on everything. All these fir trees of giant Delanzia
is on them. There's uh tons of like arborescent not arborescent,
but they're you know, for a seedum, they're arborescent seedums
and shit, you know, like shrubby seedums growing on the
sides of these rock walls and echavarreas everywhere, and it's
it's really cool to see. And then there, you know,
it's just all these lineages that you don't think of
as high montane, especially if you grow up to say
in the rocky mountains, you know. But but yeah, there
was massive opuntius. But a puntius can be pretty pretty
cold tar. But I think this was a punti of
robusta or something up there. I mean, the pads, the
pads of this a Punthi award, a size of hubcaps,
fucking massive, you know, it's it's it's mind blowing for
people that you know, don't aren't aren't familiar with high elevation,
low latitude, and the latitude here is like twenty degrees,
but we're ten thousand feet. You've got increased increased solar
radiation because you're closer to the equator, a different angle
of the sun. But also it's a lot of the
moisture in these cloud forests has a very moderating effect,
you know, I think just specifically because it takes much
longer to you know, well, it prevents the heat from
radiating out at night because it acts like a blanket
of fog and cloud cover. And then also just it
takes longer for the air to cool down as well
as heat up, so it stays a somewhat consistent temperature.
Incredible for us though, you know, multiple different species of
salvia everywhere to most reaching you know, four to five
six feet tall fern diversity all over these rocks. It's
highly diverse, really cool to see, really kind of mind
blowing to see, and it also gives an idea of
what you know, some what plant lineages may have been
occurring at higher latitudes pre glaciation, you know, like three
four million years ago to two to four million years ago.
Some of these lineages were probably further north. All right,
I'm back, I'm back in the States. Flew back, went
through Dallas four were Worth yesterday and at the god
flying during the holidays as fucking hell. Anyway, the continue
we left off. We were in that cloud forest that
roughly seven thousand feet with a number of oak species.
Magnolia shidiana was there. Also saw Skysandra glebra. There was
a Lippia miriocephala, which is it was a tree lypya.
It was like eight feet wide with giant leaves. Looked
looked kind of like bud laya cordatta, which is a
super common but leaya in Mexico. But yeah, the libya
was fucking wild, man. It was at the edge of
this quarry on this incredibly steep hillside. We went down this,
you know this when we found the magnolia. We went
into the cut, like into the woods, very thick cloud forest.
I mean, these forests feel like they've got way more
in line with you know, apple or the southeastern United States,
and I'm sure they do. I mean, there's so many
floristic affinities, you know, similar if not the same species,
than the same genus, et cetera. You know, the same
lineage in these areas. I mean, you could totally tell
prior to glaciation, like say two million years ago, one million,
two million years ago, when the Southeastern US was a
little bit warmer, many of these these plants occurred there,
or you know, their last common ancestor did. But this
magnolia was growing right up against you know, a liquid ambar,
a sweet gum, which you still get in you know,
fucking Louisiana, for instance. But here it's growing at like
sixty five hundred and seven thousand feet and then a
thousand feet below that there's giant you know, candelabras of
Martillocctus that are fifteen feet across, and I mean just
just wild again. This challenges is all notions about what
plants grow together, and what ecoregions and biomes are likely
to exist together, what plant communities are likely to exist
together if you're from the temperate latitude United States. So
I mean, for me, it's just thinking like a long
term of you know, a more long term idea about
how plants have been distributed across this continent and across
the last you know, the timescale of the last twenty
million years. It's really cool to think about it. And again,
I mean, if anything, philosophically, it just shrinks all the
dumb bullshit that humans are doing. It just shrinks it
so much you realize, like, we really don't have a
fucking clue. You know, we're so we are so limited
in our understanding, our day to day lives, are so
limited in our understanding of how these plants have existed.
And you know, their distributions have shifted back and forth
across the time you know, the geologic time scale and
according to how you know their district there the climate
is has changed, or mountain ranges you know, orogenes, how
mountain ranges have come and gone. So it's, uh, god,
it was just it's it's nuts to think about. But yeah,
we saw this massive lipia which is verbin acy. You know,
it's the frog fruit family. You know, most of Thelyppia's
we get here in the United States, they're almost all
you know, the relatives of lantana. They're mostly in the
southern United States, but they're you know, they get like
a meter tall. This thing was like twelve feet tall.
And I was able to get a good glimpse of
the flowers because it was on a very steep slope
next to a quarry, and the thing was just covered
in butterflies. So that yeah, they ended up being Lippya
mario cephala. And then you know, ferns all around, and
what was you know, the fungus that we saw that
looked like frog eggs ended up being Ecto micae rhyzol
with oaks. The name was Calistoma cinnabarinum c. A. L. O. S. T. O.
M A. It's probably one of the weirdest organisms I've
seen in a while. I mean, we saw fucking Fukiia
purpussii the next day. You know, the trio catillo, A
true doctor Sussian plant if there ever was one. But
this fungus, this ectomycorrhizal fungus. It's in the family Sclerodermatasi.
Maybe perhaps you know the genus Scleroderma. It's a basidio
mice fungus uh in uh It's in the class A
gerico mices. Oh no, ship it's in order bullet I
didn't know. I didn't know sclerodermatasi was in the bullied
order bullet ailes. But that makes sense because all the
Sclerodermo's are or I think almost all of them are
actough micro rhizol as well. But this thing just it
looked like a fucking eyeball. It looked like an eyeball
with you don't like that shit you squeeze out of,
like if you squeeze out like a passion fruit, and
the seeds come out and they're in that they're in
like a jelly, you know, or like if you get
you ever had like a chia drink, like you know,
you get like an overpriced gia drink. It did the
health food store. And you know chia seeds when you
when you uh, I'm driving, I'm swerving all over the
fucking road here. Sorry you uh, you know, when you
the gia seeds get that jelly around them. That's kind
of what this fungus seemed to be admitting. But it
looked like a Halloween eyeball, you know, like a squishy
gag eyeball size of an eyeball too. And then it
had this little sphincter in the middle of it that
if you squeeze, and if you squeeze the whole eyeball
it shoots out white sports. It was so fucking weird,
you know. I thought it was a parasitic plant at first,
and then when I got close to it, I realized
it's a fungus. But it was coming up on this
road cut next to Pinguicula more ensis, which is common
down there, I mean pingwicular more and its it's a
very very common carnivorous plant. I still don't understand why
it does so well on the substrate there, because the substrate,
I mean, this is like rich forest. It doesn't seem
to be hurting for nitrogen. There's got to be some
sort of something else going on there ecologically, I don't know,
but either way, that was cool to The Pinguiculas were
going into their winter leaves, you know, the winter leaf rosette,
the big broad floppy dog ear cocker spaniel ear leaves
fade away and rot and then you're left with this
kind of rosette leaf. Because the next few months in
Mexico it's December, are going to be very dry overall,
and then the rainy season picks back up in uh May.
A lot of the cool cacti in the lowland or
the lower elevation deserts. They're not lowlands, there's still like
thirty five hundred feet, but a lot of those flower
in March and April, I believe, and I think like
the pack is series, all the columnar cacti fruit is
generally ready in April May, like late April through June,
in anticipation of like the heavier rains that come in
the summer. Anyway, this fucking fungus, going back to the
fungus Calistoma cinnabarinum c. A. L O. S. T O
M A. You got to look this thing up. It's
by far one of the weirdest things. And I've been
in Mexico plenty of times before, especially with Alan kind
of just tagging along on his little mycological expeditions, you know,
when him and Alonzo or you know whoever whatever other
Mexican my colleges he'd be traveled with were down here,
and I had never seen this thing before. I should
ask him about it. I mean, I'm sure he's really
familiar with it. God damn, is it weird? Though? What
the fuck, and what are those like frog egg like things.
I don't understand the purpose for those or the adaptive
benefit for the the frog egg slash chia seed things.
It's I wonder if it's got to do with some
sort of dispersal maybe for some bird that it attracts.
It's it's got a vivid color to it as well.
I mean, the fact that this thing is so vividly colored,
it's a bright orange. That can't just be by chance either.
I mean, maybe it could, who knows, but in any case,
it's it's incredibly cool. So the next day we went
to go check out for Kyria purpussii, which I got
some really nice flower shots of, you know, and you
could tell so much from a very clear, in focus
with good depth of field macro photograph of a flower,
especially in the case of this species. I mean, it's
already I already had a feeling. I had a hunch,
a hunch that it was moth pollinated like Fukiria physiculata.
And the two species do look very different. They're completely
different growth forms, but they're both succulent bottle bottle trees,
except uh, you know, Fukiria physiculata looks like a kianti bottle,
and Fukiria purpussii. These are both, of course okatillo relatives,
same genus. Fukiria purpussii is more of a tree. It
looks more like an actual boo jump tree. Fukiria columnaris
the cereo from from ba, California. But the bark on
these things, that photosynthetic bark is remarkable. They've both got,
you know, the ability to store I think you know
they've got parentkama tissue. That does it. I read some
paper on the dad damn it, fucking cops. I just
got going so slow. I'm doing this because I when
I'm driving, because I'm so pressed for fucking time now
and I'm not gonna have I'm just not gonna have
time to record a podcast when I'm home, and I
want to get all this stuff down, Uh, all these
all these verbal notes down before I get back and
have a shit ton of work to do. But anyway,
I read a paper on the vasculature. You know it.
There were a bunch of cross sections of Fukia propussii, fisiculata,
and a few other species in the genus. We also
saw Fukia formosa there, which has red flowers. It basically
looks like a single stemmed Fukuria splendins with you know,
with like a main single trunk instead of you know,
like Fukia splend ins like typical octillo, has many many
shoots coming out, you know, making it look like some
sort of damn you know, underwater coral reef creature. Fukia
formosa has a single trunk upwards of you know, eight
inches across in some large specimens, and then bright red,
very obviously hummingbird pollinated flowers. I mean, these flowers have
a very large opening, probably perfect for fitting the shape
of a hummingbird. But they're I'm sure they're generalists as well.
I mean, fucking honey bees will go for anything. I
heard there are some wonderful killer bee colonies down there too.
Mark Olsen told me he had been chased a few
times in some of the barancas in Hindalgo. Gotta hate
honey bees. But anyway, but Fokiri purpussii, the flowers were white,
their moth pollinated, and the anthers had these really bizarre
you know, if you look at my photo on I'm naturalist,
you could see these really bizarre appendages on the end
that could possibly, I suppose, be osmophores, you know, scent
producing structures, or they could be some sort of appendage
that helps pollen get the you know, get the hissed
from those anthers. But then you know the in the
from looking at the photo, I could tell that the
flowers are Protanderus too. You know, there were a couple,
there's a bunch of flowers together in a cluster. They
were main open during the day. They're white. The anthers
have these weird white, you know, hairs that come off
that are probably two millimeters long. They're not hairs, but
their hair like appendages. And then you know, in a
cluster of flowers, you'd see some that were had just
opened and some that were, you know, on their second
day or whatever. And the ones that out were on
their second day the anthers had withered. They weren't. You
can clearly see they're not really putting much pollen out.
They don't look all turgid and turgid. They don't look
all turgid and swollen, and they've kind of relaxed horizontally
and in a style comes out of the middle. I
counted eight stamens, which is another interesting point to make.
I don't think I've ever actually counted the stamens on
Fukyria flowers before, but yet, you know, and I saw
honeybe hitting these two, and then Gabrielle sent me a
photo of a American snout or maybe it was some
sort of skipper or something butterfly hitting one during the day.
It might have been a month. I have to look
at the video again. But you know, I'm really interested
in the pollination of both these species, faciculata and Purpussia.
Either's so weird. The white flowers are really notable, something
obviously selected for that. Looking at Fakura faciculata flowers, I
wonder if they are protandrous as well. Protandrius is opposed
to protogynas or protogenists. Protandris meaning you know, they're male first,
then they become female a day later, you know, whereas
protogenists is, the proto gynus is the opposite. And that's
just of course, to avoid self pollination, to avoid them
fucking themselves. You know, it promotes outcrossing, better genetic diversity.
You're not stacking up recessive alleles and the gene pool
you know, like the Spanish monarchy was during the same
time they were colonizing and destroying, you know, the indigenous
population and in North America. It's got to put that
in there, just you know, keep it real. Maybe that's
where it came from. You know, they were just they
were these these these fucking you know, kings and queens
had been fucking each other's you know, fucking their sisters
and brothers for so long that maybe you got a
couple of recessive alleles stacked up. That's when you get
the lead poisoning too. They're all you know, who knows
what they were smelting back then, you know, eating with
pewter or some shit. I don't think Pewter has letten it.
Do Pewter ha let in it. I'm just pulling out
of my asks. Anyway, it made them hyper aggressive and psychotic,
I don't know. But then the Anstecs had their whole
death cult thing too. You know, humans are just fucking nuts, right,
The Spanish are fucking nuts. The the or back then,
you know, the colonial system. I sure it's very lovely now.
Hear wonderful things about mcdred. I've never been there, but
you know, here. It's wonderful air in the spring. I
wanted to go to to see Drosophylum. Right, they do
it a whole run through the streets thing. But humans
just it's you know, we're a crazy fucking species, right,
Chimps and bonobos. He definitely got more of the chimp.
But I heard there was a study done where the
bonobo's actually or there was research done on a bonobo population.
A bunch of female bonobos ripped this male bonobo's balls
off and kicked his ass. I guess he he had
when it came out later though he had threatened an infant.
So the bonobos are again. He just he got a
lot of very impressive, very impressive species. Anyway, Where was
I faciculata Fukia faciculata in this very narrow canyon that
felt like a funhouse because the the bedding planes of
the sedimentary rock had been flipped up at like sixty
to sixty gree angles. Looking at the fukyria there, I
noticed going back to my photographs because I take really
nice I gotta get my money shots. It's so much again,
so much info you can get from macro photos. It's
not about beauty at all fuck that. I don't care
about that. I take some landscape photos whatever if you
need like some you know, good nature porn or something.
It's in some feel good photos. The macro photos are
so it's it's like it's like a compounding microscope or sorry,
a stereo microscope. There's so much you can tell from them.
And I'll reference them later, you know, as a record.
It's got especially if you can get pollinators on flowers.
Holy shit, you got to do that. Upload those to einatros,
especially because those detailed ecological relationships. But going back to
the Bukia Physiculta flowers, I noticed that most of the
flowers were not open. On the cluster. I had a
cluster of like an inflorescence of twenty twenty flowers. Probably
if you were withered, they had been opened the night
before one uh, none of them were open yet, but
they had that look like onnather flowers have you know,
the evening primrose when they're about And it was just
before dusk when we were there, when they look like
ripe and full and ready to open. So I'm wondering
if they open at night. Fuck, we should have stuck
around too. I don't know, why we didn't. But if
we did, then we wouldn't have seen Salvia at augaenstis,
which is a really rare yellow salvia at a gross
in the southern Sierra Madre anyway, But the yeah, man,
I don't, I don't know. We gotta go back. We're
gonna go back next year in December when they flower
and probably do a pollination study or something. Yeah, just
hang out for two or three days and just photograph
the shit out of flowers and the you know, visitors
probably hit a few different populations of each species and
and compare you know, the poll the I guess the
pollinators between fisiculada and Purpussi. I might guess right now,
and I might be totally wrong, But I'm wondering if
Fukyria is more fasciculata is more of a moth specialist
and the flowers close during the day like they're primarily nocturnal,
and if Fukiia purpussii, on the other hand, is more
of a generalist like it's evolved with moth pollination. Uh,
they remain open at night for moths to come hit
them too, but then they stood there open during the
day as well. You know, we didn't stay there that
late though, we were only there till like noon or one.
The thing to do is go there at five pm
and see if Fukyia purpussi flowers are still open at
at five or six. I don't know, but it's really
it's really fascinating because then that what kind of gives
you a hint as to what over the over the
last however many millions of years, has been selecting for
pollination in these species. And I'm really curious how long
they have each been species for. You know, the species
is always changing, it doesn't really even exist. It's a
human attempt to put hard boundaries around you know, constantly
evolving life forms. But you know that said something's been
selecting for something is these things have been interacting with
every other living thing in their environment, and it makes
me really curious to see how they've been doing it
and what's been selecting for them. You know, I didn't know,
I should have, but I didn't know if for Carriece
is sister to the fhlox family, the pol amoniac. They're
right next to each other on the cladogram right there.
And a reminder, I'll put a link to the a
drive file with the Mexico checklist on this podcast. I
gotta get fluent in Spanish, you know, And if I can't,
then I'll just type some shit out, have it translated
to fluent Spanish, and then do a video basically encouraging
people in Mexico to use a Naturalists and focus on
flowers and reproductive structures and fruits, et cetera. For plant
I d you know, and if you really gotta do
is just explain to people you can learn to identify
plants not by looking first at leaves. But it struck.
I mean, of course you first look at leaves, but
the most important thing is always reproductive structures for any plant,
for flowering plants, for fucking ferns. You find that spor fill,
flip it over, look at the sports on the other side,
get a photo of cones if you're looking at a
conifer or other gymnosperm. But I think that you know,
not a lot of people use I Naturalists in Mexico,
at least compared to the US. And if more people
used it, I mean, just the sheer amount of data
that can be collected by a handful of people who
actively use their free time to go out and photograph
nature and go into the hill and the matal and
the fucking barancas and whatever. The sheer amount of info
that can be collected for science is amazing. It's astounding.
And so you know, that was a thing in Brazil
that drove me fucking us too. Well. First off, there's
no you know, appreciation, there's very little appreciation of the
native plants in popular Brazilian culture most. I mean, there's
some excellent fucking botanists there, but they're all in academia,
like just you know, random schmucks like myself or whoever else.
There's very like there's I went, I remember going into
a book store. There were no guide books, Like you
got the most some of the most diverse uh flora
in the world, and there's no guide books for it.
And like all the plant books were like cornyass gardening
horticulture books. By the way, you know, I got these
stickers made it said horticulture needs and I'm a please
hit me up for some all right, I prefer you
buy a pack, you know, a fucking nine different sticks
for twenty bucks via the Venmo. Just leave your address,
don't use purchase protection unless you're a sucker. But if
you see me at a show or something and I
got those horticulture needs in they just take one. You
could just take one. I said, it's fine, right, but
take a fucking handf of but take one. Get the
message out there, because horticulture does need an anima. There's
a lot of corny shit there. There's they're planting. Gabrielle
told me that because he does landscaping ship for people
in Guanajuato. But he was telling me to use Melanis rappins,
not all grass is an invasive or as a horticultural
plant down there. Again, it's it's just like the bare
bottom dollar or bare bottom of the brain stem, fucking
lowest kind of denominator mindset everywhere with plants. It's like,
oh are they pretty? They're a thing for rich people
for landscaping. Maybe you get some extra money, you're gonna
put some fucking with you know, there's no other And
I'm not I'm not I'm shitting on this mindset, but
I'm not shitting on people. It just again, this is
just what's putting on the plate of us. This is
what we're given in a society where all the habitats
been destroyed and is discarded and not cared about. And uh,
you know, we put we just have this purely anthropocentric
lens as a society, right, and so people are just
products of the society that they live in by and
large for the most part, unless they make a conscious
choice to be different. But that, of course takes a
lot of education and self awareness. Most people don't have
that no matter where in the world you are, and
so they just you know, they end up doing shit
like planting the book and fees and all this corny
shit and whatever, you know, because it's pretty. So I
don't want what's pretty. I want the full picture. I
want to restore this beautiful living machine that's been dismantled
by this unenlightened species of primates. Anyway, Uh so we
got to get if you speak Spanish, if you're you know,
if you're in Mexico, whatever, please encourage people to use
our natural was to use this shit out of it.
You know, from that app, you can learn taxonomy, you
can see what family something's in, you can see a
map showing its distribution. There's so much information there, and
you know, the more people use it, the more information
is available. So please, It's got to get out there.
You know, you teach people to give a shit about
this stuff and have interest in it as a way
to conserve it. I'm getting back home. I have to
fight with this fucking idiot at city hall. He's not
listening to this podcast. If he is, I'm sorry. Don't
take it personally. You know, I call myself a fucking
idiot some things too, But I gotta fight with this
fucking idiot at city hall and do it in that
Texas way where you smile at someone you know and
you're all polite and shit, but you've got to beat anyway.
This guy, he looks like a fucking jim Bro. You know,
here's like the intellect of a door knop, and he's
he won't let me plant. I'm trying to plant street
trees around my neighborhood and this fucking guy, what kind
of what kind of fucking city doesn't want street trees.
It's it's insane to me. But that's the Rio Grande Valley.
I mean, that's what you're gonna encounter down here. You know,
they think they're messy. I don't. I don't get it
like it's I remember, I fly a drone. I remember
when I was flying a drone over my neighborhood in
the summer, and it's just patches. You could see people
are trying to have a lawn, but it doesn't work
because you know, it's one hundred and five degrees uh,
for eight months out of the year, the fucking Rio Grande.
It doesn't produce water anymore, and if it does, it's
totally brackish or at least very mineral rich, you know,
six hundred ppms. I think we're at the water out
of the tap six hundred parts promelion. But uh, anyway,
you fly a drone over and you could just see
people are trying to have lawns, and it's just instead
of it being green, it's just these dead patches of
like brown berm udigrass, and it's in calcareous soil, like
the barren patches of that calcareous fine silt that's been
brought here by the Rio grand over the last five
million years. And then there's some dude you know, who's,
of course, like three hundred pounds in a riding mower,
just you know, doing donuts in a vacant lot, you know,
landscapers whatever, doing donuts in a vacant lot and a
riding mower is kicking up clouds of dust, probably fucking
with you know, bizarre fungal spores. You don't think you
get cockcitio my coasis down here, but you never know, right,
It just makes no sense. Like the whole concept of
a heat island to people down here is it doesn't
hit home. It's it's crazy, like you've created a fucking
giant heat mat made of asphalt and concrete. And then
it's just more reason to just be stuck in your car,
coming down with metabolic diseases, getting fatter because you don't
ever move anywhere. And then you think that like going
to the gy for an hour is gonna it's gonna, like,
you know, make up for that, like going to the
gym for an hour, breathing in off gassing plastic and
hanging out with a bunch of meatheads grunting while they
dropped their weights and and flex in front of each other. No, homo, bro,
you think that that's gonna make up for spending the
other twenty three hours of your day either sleeping or
sitting in a car. It's just it's fucked. So I've
been trying to plant street trees because there's plenty of
room for them. And I you know, I told them
I'll plant these things for free, I'll stake them, I'll
maintain them, I'll prune them. And this this fucking idiot,
just the dude looks like a contractor who basically got
a job at city Hall. And you know he's just
again super polite, but just fucking ignores you, totally dismissive.
I hate that shit. It's just like that Southern stuff,
like tell me to go fuck myself. At least I
can work with that, you know, Chicago or New York
style up front. And then you know, some of the
closest friendships I've had, uh, you know, almost began his
fistfights or you know, telling people to go fuck themselves,
like my my attorney right now, you know, great guy.
Well we first met, you know, I told him to
go fuck himself and eat a dick. I forgot, I
said to him. But and uh, and then we made
up like a day later and kind of laughed it off,
and now we're buddies. A great guy, really great guy.
You know, only attorney I trust. Attorneys are real shit bags.
No offense actually maybe there's one other guy. Maybe there's
one or two other guys. But you know, I think
to work in that job as an attorney, though, because
it's so soul killing and makes you feel so fucking
dead on the inside, and the subject matter that you
have to learn is so god just fucking incorrigibly boring
and soul deadening. Like there's no like, there can't be
any passionate. I I'm sure there's people who would argue
with me, like now I like to argue. I like
it maybe, but the content you're studying is so fucking boring.
It's all made up. It's made up bullshit. It's laws,
it's completely subjective, it's made up by a bunch of
fucking suits. It's it's these nonsensical dictates most of the time.
And then all the bullshit you have to learn the
formalities of learning that legal speak and how to write
those documents has got to just fucking kill you. So
the only thing left at the end of the day is, uh,
you know, chasing shiny bullshit and hoarding money. There's no
I mean, am I wrong? It seems like it's a
pretty deadening fuck. I got into another fucking attorney out
of Houston. Where's too much eyeliner? And I'm not even
gonna get into it. She threatened me with a defamation lawsuit.
I said, nothing I'm saying is untrue. You are you know,
you are restricting access to researchers to your father's land.
So that's you know, go ahead, go ahead, Missy. Got
a lot of eyeline, really a lot of island. You
like the Fox News anchors like that, remember you, so
we see you see that shit with a Christy Gnome.
She does the same thing too, all the all the
fucking eyeliner. It's like, hey, why are you doing that?
You don't need to do it. You're trying to look
like a raccoon. Huh, like a raccoon with a facelift.
What are we doing here? Anyway? I'm getting riled up,
you know, almost back home. So uh but yeah, I
gotta convince this fucking I don't know what to do.
I'm gonna be polite, but I'm gonna go probably just
show up at city hall and track his ass down
and then just politely inform him like let me plant trees.
I'm gonna do a video making fun of this entire
town and how they hate They hate street trees, which
is insane. You know, like, I'm trying to like do
something that's gonna better the quality of my own life
and the quality of people who live in my neighborhood,
and you're saying no, for no, there's no reason for it.
You just think trees are messy. This is the same guy.
You know, there's an irrigation canal nearby. He used to
have a grove of sable Mexicana on at the native
sable palm down here. Them all cut down and then
he ensures that a back hole goes into the irrigation canal,
which is like a fifteen foot drop off on a
very steep slope. It would really help to have some
roots holding that slope, holding that wall, in that wall
of mud. But you know, he cut the trees down,
then he has abacco go in there and scraped the sides,
thinking he's cleaning it out. I mean, this guy's just
dumb as a fucking brick. I don't know how. I
don't like, where does it come from? Where does it
come from? You know, where does the how do you
what the fuck? But you could see where the sides
the slope has has sunk it in and then actively
he thinks he's cleaning out the canal, but then it
actually leads to more landslides and more debris falling into
this canal. And I mean, you can see where it's
happened already. I just I don't get it. I mean,
what fucking community doesn't want street trees? You know it's wild.
They just want They think bermuda grass that's cut the
two inches is clean and trees are messy again. But
this all this can change, you know, by just being
a Surely I'm ranting about this kind of pocket, but
I would be nice to him in person, you know nice.
I love it when these cars are belching out clouds
of black smoke that smells like sulfur and nitrogen dioxide
Jesus background out of billboards and car dealer ships. All right,
I've gotta just you go. You gotta just put your
blinders on that. You know, the shit that makes you
want to puke, a lot of stuff done. It makes
you want to puke. But anyway, all right, we'll cut
this short. That's been an hour fifteen minutes. I'll you
got some out of that. I'm gonna be speaking in
Austin next week Friday. What is it the nineteenth? Is
it the nineteenth? And uh, I'm doing a Kill your
Launch show up there, and then we'll be going on tour.
I'll be doing book tour this spring as well as
probably kill your Lawn tour in the Southwest and maybe
even in Florida. Though Florida scares me, it does. They
just see there's all kinds of weirdos over there. You know,
it's a very bizarre sting. I saw, man. I saw
a fucking video as some uh this guy that looked
like a cross between Gallum and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
He was some old Caucasian guy yelling at someone for
being in his neighborhood. And of course it was it
was Florida. You know, it's unfair. There's some wonderful people
in Florida too, but it does scare me. It's just
a weird it's a weird culture we've made here in
certain parts of the United States gets real weird, you know,
real goofy, real weird shit going on. Anyway, that's I
got heavy gus day, Go fuck yourself by and get
some of those horticulture needs an animus stickers for me
and convince other people to using it right. That's all right,
Go go, go fund yourself. Have a gret to day
by