1
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:12,080
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of The Crime Pays, but by

2
00:00:12,119 --> 00:00:14,439
a dozen podcasts. I'm a little winded. I'm not gonna

3
00:00:14,439 --> 00:00:18,160
lie as we as send through very wet tropical forest

4
00:00:18,239 --> 00:00:21,760
at an elevation of twenty one hundred feet, which you

5
00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:24,199
know you will go up to three thousand feet around,

6
00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:27,440
up to three thousand feet times three, move a decimal

7
00:00:27,480 --> 00:00:31,960
point over it's roughly nine hundred meters, and then we'll

8
00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:35,280
wear like eight hundred, eight hundred and twenty meters elevation.

9
00:00:36,039 --> 00:00:38,200
Got to use the metric always get disappointed of that,

10
00:00:38,479 --> 00:00:41,200
you know, then start paying attention to the metric system

11
00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:45,359
until the last few years. Anyway, spent the first few

12
00:00:45,439 --> 00:00:51,679
days of this little Ecuador work VAKA up in the paramo,

13
00:00:53,640 --> 00:00:56,679
getting mildly hypoxic. But then it's always nice when you

14
00:00:56,759 --> 00:00:59,439
come back down, you have like bursts of energy because

15
00:00:59,439 --> 00:01:02,079
you've been acting. Made it to the higher elevations. But uh,

16
00:01:02,520 --> 00:01:09,760
we were in parano paramo and montane cloud forest. Oh

17
00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:13,799
this is nice. The cyclant they see the Panama hat family.

18
00:01:13,840 --> 00:01:17,079
I'm looking at one climb climbing up a Uh if

19
00:01:17,079 --> 00:01:21,599
it's a dicranopigium or what made a little Excel spreadsheet

20
00:01:22,560 --> 00:01:26,319
with all the observations I had from last year, many

21
00:01:26,359 --> 00:01:30,000
of which had no species level identifications because they're just

22
00:01:30,159 --> 00:01:33,120
they are either undescribed species or there's I couldn't find

23
00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:37,920
anybody who specializes in the genus or family to correctly

24
00:01:37,959 --> 00:01:41,040
identify them, and there's so little information out there. But uh,

25
00:01:41,560 --> 00:01:44,400
I think this is a Dicranopigium, but cyclant. They see

26
00:01:44,680 --> 00:01:47,959
the panama hat family in the screw Pine order Pandinales

27
00:01:48,799 --> 00:01:54,760
entirely neotropical all New World, really weird in fluorescences, and

28
00:01:54,799 --> 00:01:58,319
they got that y shaped uh leaf? What is it

29
00:01:58,359 --> 00:01:59,920
a fucking snake? Shit? Or is it just plenty of

30
00:02:00,159 --> 00:02:04,640
is plastic? But spent the first few days up in

31
00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:09,719
the paramo in the cloud forest, became familiar with the

32
00:02:09,759 --> 00:02:14,240
genus dendro Forbium, which is in Asta Raci. It's like

33
00:02:14,360 --> 00:02:19,400
basically a small of those snoid sanioid E. No it's not,

34
00:02:19,520 --> 00:02:22,719
is it? Is it a subfamily or Sanicioni? I forget anyway,

35
00:02:23,719 --> 00:02:28,159
the snicios A clade in Asta Raci are all over

36
00:02:28,159 --> 00:02:30,960
the world. They do some wild shit, especially you know,

37
00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:35,159
think they turned succulent in Africa and then in here

38
00:02:35,199 --> 00:02:40,360
in the in central and South America. They can become trees,

39
00:02:41,319 --> 00:02:44,919
especially in Mexico's got quite a few members of the

40
00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:50,159
saneoid the Sinicio clade that turn into very large trees.

41
00:02:50,199 --> 00:02:55,240
But uh, this dendro Forbium was phenomenal. It was like

42
00:02:55,319 --> 00:03:03,520
ten meters tall, thirty feet tall, huge fucking panicle of flowers.

43
00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:09,000
What's that? It's Surrowia, I don't know, actinnitty ac kiwi femily,

44
00:03:09,240 --> 00:03:14,680
huge panicles of yellow flowers. Each plant probably had ten

45
00:03:14,759 --> 00:03:19,439
or twenty thousand floorts on it because remember it's astrac

46
00:03:19,599 --> 00:03:22,639
so there are floorrets inside a capitulum which looks like

47
00:03:22,680 --> 00:03:25,840
a single flower, so like ten or twenty thousand, if

48
00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:32,680
not more fluorits. So yeah, I took an herbarium cutting,

49
00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:34,599
but I can only take like a little section of

50
00:03:34,639 --> 00:03:36,919
because I'm fitting these things in tiny notebooks. That's how

51
00:03:36,919 --> 00:03:39,759
I do all my collections. Then I'll drop it off

52
00:03:39,759 --> 00:03:46,080
at the herbarium later before I leave, and so i'll

53
00:03:47,719 --> 00:03:49,439
you know, press it just in these little notebooks. It's

54
00:03:49,439 --> 00:03:51,400
the easiest way. So it kind of limits the amount

55
00:03:51,439 --> 00:03:55,159
of material you can take. But that's okay because I

56
00:03:55,199 --> 00:03:59,120
get a shit ton of good photos. But yeah, Dendrophobium

57
00:03:59,199 --> 00:04:02,439
was up there, and then there was a species of

58
00:04:03,919 --> 00:04:06,840
blacking them up in the Parmo. You go through this

59
00:04:06,960 --> 00:04:10,120
really wet forest and at lower elevations it's been turned

60
00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:12,120
into cattle pasture, of course, which is depressing a lot

61
00:04:12,120 --> 00:04:15,800
of blue gum eucalyptus, which is fucking mind blowing. If

62
00:04:15,879 --> 00:04:18,399
humanity goes extinct, which you know it's not too far

63
00:04:18,439 --> 00:04:22,920
fetched or has like a bottleneck event in the next

64
00:04:22,920 --> 00:04:25,959
one hundred and two hundred years, maybe not even that long,

65
00:04:26,519 --> 00:04:31,720
blue gum eucalyptus is gonna thrive. It's gonna speciate. I mean,

66
00:04:31,759 --> 00:04:34,920
it's on every fucking continent except that article. Now it's

67
00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:40,800
kind of amazing, you know, it's definitely definitely a winner

68
00:04:41,399 --> 00:04:44,959
in the anthropist scene or anthropos scene, however you pronounce that.

69
00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:50,839
But there's others blue gum eucalyptus everywhere and cattle pasture

70
00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:54,079
with little remnants of native vegetation on the margins. And

71
00:04:54,120 --> 00:04:58,399
then you get up to more thicker cloud forest and

72
00:04:58,480 --> 00:05:01,879
it's just wet and chilly. I was definitely wearing a

73
00:05:01,879 --> 00:05:05,879
beanie and uh. And then you walk through that. Some

74
00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:08,160
assholes took motorbikes up there to at some point. So

75
00:05:08,199 --> 00:05:10,439
there's like these trenches that like grutted out the mountain,

76
00:05:11,639 --> 00:05:13,600
and so you go through that and then end up

77
00:05:13,600 --> 00:05:16,360
in the parmo, which is dominated by tussock grasses, and

78
00:05:16,399 --> 00:05:20,319
you've got a couple of cordiderias and uh, and then

79
00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:23,439
this black numb fern is fucking everywhere and it's it's

80
00:05:23,639 --> 00:05:27,360
fucking beautiful. But anyway, the paramo has got to be

81
00:05:27,680 --> 00:05:32,480
one of the most bizarre and hard to recreate habitats

82
00:05:33,319 --> 00:05:35,720
plant habitats in the world. And if you're from the

83
00:05:35,759 --> 00:05:40,279
tempered latitudes and you've never heard of it or experienced that,

84
00:05:41,360 --> 00:05:43,160
it would blow your mind. You're at such a high

85
00:05:43,160 --> 00:05:45,920
elevation in the air is so thin, so you experience

86
00:05:46,040 --> 00:05:52,319
rapid cooling at night, but unless you're really high, it

87
00:05:52,399 --> 00:05:56,560
never quite freezes. It just gets to a few degrees

88
00:05:56,560 --> 00:06:02,800
of freezing. Everything's covered in fuzz, but everythings wet whereas sorry,

89
00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:04,839
I might have bred them going I'm carrying like forty

90
00:06:04,879 --> 00:06:08,879
puns of shit going up this slope and sweating like

91
00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:10,879
a horn church. So you know, if you're in the

92
00:06:10,879 --> 00:06:13,639
western half North America, you think of hairs and trichomes

93
00:06:14,279 --> 00:06:18,920
as being adaptive for dry habitats, okay, or if like

94
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:22,439
you know, the eastern United States, you're on a glade

95
00:06:23,199 --> 00:06:25,680
or a sand hill, then you might see some more hairs.

96
00:06:26,759 --> 00:06:29,120
But generally you're not gonna see hairs if you're in

97
00:06:29,160 --> 00:06:34,439
a proper ass humid environment and it's humid as hell

98
00:06:34,879 --> 00:06:37,399
up in the parmo, because that's where all the moisture

99
00:06:37,480 --> 00:06:41,319
goes with the rising warm air from the lower latitudes.

100
00:06:41,680 --> 00:06:46,079
But in this case, well so the hair is not

101
00:06:46,120 --> 00:06:49,160
for drying out. But in this case the hair is

102
00:06:49,199 --> 00:06:53,639
obviously it starts to dawn on you for the chilling

103
00:06:54,639 --> 00:06:57,279
effect that happens at night once the sun goes down. Also,

104
00:06:58,360 --> 00:07:01,279
and when the sun comes out, he gets you can

105
00:07:01,279 --> 00:07:05,360
get upwards to like seventy five degrees eighty degrees fahrenheit.

106
00:07:06,519 --> 00:07:11,839
It's not like twenty five celsius. But uh, but you

107
00:07:11,839 --> 00:07:14,399
know then when when the sun goes down, Oh, why

108
00:07:14,439 --> 00:07:17,639
this is that komalin ac thing I saw before? Just

109
00:07:17,680 --> 00:07:23,000
surrounded by plants. Smells incredible, everything's wet. It's like the

110
00:07:23,040 --> 00:07:27,839
conservatory in Lincoln Park, which is free, and they're gonna

111
00:07:27,839 --> 00:07:29,680
fucking not make that free at some point, I bet they, Well,

112
00:07:29,680 --> 00:07:32,199
they're gonna do with Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago too.

113
00:07:32,879 --> 00:07:35,720
Nothing free anymore. The fucking they gotta fucking milk you

114
00:07:35,759 --> 00:07:37,600
for everything is an amazing even in a wonderful place,

115
00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:43,439
I can still get mad about stuff that's good. Never change.

116
00:07:43,680 --> 00:07:46,800
But yeah, so so the tricombes in this case are

117
00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:50,759
frost goluth. They're acting is insulation, trapping a layer of air,

118
00:07:52,240 --> 00:07:55,920
which of course takes much longer to warm up or

119
00:07:55,920 --> 00:08:00,560
cool off, and so they're they're trapping that air of air,

120
00:08:00,759 --> 00:08:04,720
protecting the tissue against the cold temps and the occasional freeze.

121
00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:08,360
So yeah, everything's fuzzy. It's just so fucking weird because

122
00:08:08,360 --> 00:08:11,600
you're on the equator, but you're up so fucking high too.

123
00:08:11,720 --> 00:08:14,360
And then when we were leaving, we were looking at

124
00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:20,519
Tungaragua volcano, which is spelled like Tunga Rohua and uh,

125
00:08:21,839 --> 00:08:27,399
if you're a fucking you're a hockey. And and you

126
00:08:27,439 --> 00:08:29,000
could just see the head, I mean, it's like this

127
00:08:29,160 --> 00:08:31,639
massive volcano. We couldn't even tell it was there. And

128
00:08:31,639 --> 00:08:34,159
then once the clouds part, the water vapor parts a

129
00:08:34,159 --> 00:08:39,399
little bit, then you can see this massive volcano towering

130
00:08:39,440 --> 00:08:43,399
above you. Uh, and it's just fucking wild. You could

131
00:08:43,399 --> 00:08:45,639
see there's no plants way at the top. There's snow

132
00:08:45,679 --> 00:08:50,159
at the top sixteen thousand feet tall. You're already nine

133
00:08:50,159 --> 00:08:53,879
thousand feet up, twenty seven hundred meters up, and uh,

134
00:08:53,919 --> 00:08:56,799
but you can see plant habitat because basically see the

135
00:08:56,840 --> 00:09:01,039
Paramo and the lower elevations just fucking phenomenal. Man. I

136
00:09:01,120 --> 00:09:05,799
wish I want to go there so bad to some

137
00:09:05,919 --> 00:09:09,279
of that habitat. It's just as it's probably one of

138
00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:12,399
my favorite habitats. You go, I got deserts cloud for us

139
00:09:12,960 --> 00:09:17,080
and then Paramo, or maybe it's Paramo before cloud for us.

140
00:09:17,480 --> 00:09:19,080
But those are just the places that you see the

141
00:09:19,120 --> 00:09:25,159
wildest shit in terms of evolutionary adaptations because there's such

142
00:09:25,200 --> 00:09:27,279
bizarre environments. You know, you take a spot where it

143
00:09:27,320 --> 00:09:29,879
never rains, and then how there's fossils in the limestone here?

144
00:09:30,799 --> 00:09:35,039
How about that Saudi's last time? What is this cretaceous limestone?

145
00:09:35,120 --> 00:09:38,480
So weird to see limestone in the Andes because everything's

146
00:09:38,559 --> 00:09:44,360
volcanic here. So I don't know. I guess lava flows

147
00:09:44,440 --> 00:09:49,200
never reached this area where it was already up uplifted.

148
00:09:49,320 --> 00:09:54,320
I don't know. Anyway, Yeah, the fucking Paramo, there was

149
00:09:56,320 --> 00:10:02,320
tons of airicacious generic too. There was Nettia dyster Ygma.

150
00:10:03,399 --> 00:10:07,279
Vaccinium Flora bundum was up there. You can tell it's

151
00:10:07,320 --> 00:10:09,919
a Vaccinium as opposed to a Gutheria because the sepals

152
00:10:09,960 --> 00:10:13,320
are on the distal end of the fruit they think

153
00:10:13,360 --> 00:10:16,960
of like a blueberry, right, whereas on Gultheria the sepals

154
00:10:17,159 --> 00:10:19,480
are up towards the top. They're closer to the peduncle.

155
00:10:22,120 --> 00:10:28,519
It's a nice bird. Pellicoia fucking everywhere, Pellicouria aka Psychotria.

156
00:10:32,039 --> 00:10:36,120
There was Serato stema. Oh what was the Serato stem i?

157
00:10:36,159 --> 00:10:38,600
Forget the species name, with another species of eric casey

158
00:10:39,159 --> 00:10:42,240
with these pendent red flowers obviously going for hummingbird pollination.

159
00:10:42,960 --> 00:10:49,519
Serato stema a lot them elate them and uh god.

160
00:10:49,559 --> 00:10:52,440
There was tons of weird littlebilioids too, which you can

161
00:10:52,480 --> 00:10:54,960
always tell because they got that little fused anther tube

162
00:10:55,519 --> 00:10:59,240
that pokes out and then it's uh, you know, like

163
00:10:59,240 --> 00:11:01,240
a biffed Stega want us in the female phase their

164
00:11:01,279 --> 00:11:05,559
male first secondary pollen presentation, like so many members of

165
00:11:05,879 --> 00:11:10,440
aster Ales, like Stylidiace, the stylidiums in Australia, the trigger

166
00:11:10,440 --> 00:11:16,240
plants like Guthiniac like astace h and so on. A

167
00:11:16,240 --> 00:11:21,080
little beautiful heliconia right here, those long pink bracts, Oh shit,

168
00:11:22,360 --> 00:11:26,000
this is still a leaf's Basically, those pink bracts are

169
00:11:26,080 --> 00:11:31,879
just the swollen petioles, modified petioles of the leafs in Heliconia,

170
00:11:31,919 --> 00:11:35,279
which is in the ginger orders. In gibbereles, the big

171
00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:40,919
pink bracts for humming bird pollination, and the flowers are green,

172
00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:44,279
probably full of neck anyway, So they stuck a break

173
00:11:44,279 --> 00:11:46,360
for a second. Now I'm walking. There's just this giant

174
00:11:46,399 --> 00:11:50,519
county of Guadua and Gustafolia, this hundred foot tall bamboo

175
00:11:50,559 --> 00:11:55,000
species with the combs because it's a grass, remember is

176
00:11:55,919 --> 00:11:58,279
it's a hollow bamboo on like many of the New

177
00:11:58,320 --> 00:12:01,000
World bamboos like Chesca, which are solid all the way through,

178
00:12:01,240 --> 00:12:05,039
Guadua is hollow. Very important architecturally. I've seen a book,

179
00:12:06,120 --> 00:12:10,039
an entire monograph on Guadua, especially it's use in building

180
00:12:11,480 --> 00:12:15,519
and architecture because of how structurally, what an important structural

181
00:12:15,519 --> 00:12:18,639
tool it is for you know, for building houses. But uh,

182
00:12:19,200 --> 00:12:21,279
you know they get fucking massive, and that each calm

183
00:12:21,440 --> 00:12:24,960
is about how what is it? Let's see the only

184
00:12:25,080 --> 00:12:31,080
measured is twelve centimeters across. It's like five inches across,

185
00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:34,200
six inches across, and they just get fucking massive. And

186
00:12:34,240 --> 00:12:36,879
then they got these lateral branches that come off that

187
00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:39,679
don't get very big, that come off at the nodes

188
00:12:39,720 --> 00:12:43,519
that are just covered in uh you know. The nodes

189
00:12:43,519 --> 00:12:46,360
of those lateral branches then have these little half inch

190
00:12:46,440 --> 00:12:50,679
to inch long spines on them, thorns on them. And

191
00:12:50,679 --> 00:12:52,519
then I'm just looking at what looks like a giant

192
00:12:52,559 --> 00:12:54,720
asparagus shoot that's tar than I am. It's like six

193
00:12:54,759 --> 00:12:56,879
and a half feet tall, and it's got it's covered.

194
00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:01,840
Each sheath is covered in these tiny brown irritating heres.

195
00:13:01,879 --> 00:13:03,759
They don't really irritate that much, but they do stick

196
00:13:03,799 --> 00:13:07,039
in you. It's just the very man, what a wild

197
00:13:07,120 --> 00:13:09,320
fucking plan. I love. I'm so happy to see this

198
00:13:09,360 --> 00:13:11,960
thing again. I saw it last year. And they just

199
00:13:11,960 --> 00:13:16,799
from these massive colonies in these tropical forests at what's

200
00:13:16,799 --> 00:13:20,519
their elevation right now, thirty three hundred feet. So we

201
00:13:20,600 --> 00:13:22,240
came up a little bit. It was steeped there for

202
00:13:22,240 --> 00:13:26,000
a minute. We got Gionoma. She's a palm species with

203
00:13:26,080 --> 00:13:28,519
a forked leaf. It almost looks like cyclanth. They see

204
00:13:28,519 --> 00:13:30,960
the Panama half family. But it's you gotta look at

205
00:13:30,960 --> 00:13:37,000
the veins. The veins on Gionoma don't don't taper, they don't.

206
00:13:37,279 --> 00:13:40,200
They don't bow to a point. They don't like bend

207
00:13:40,919 --> 00:13:43,080
to the end point of the leaf. They just kind

208
00:13:43,080 --> 00:13:47,279
of they hit the margin. It looks like a fishtail

209
00:13:47,320 --> 00:13:54,039
palm anyway. Yeah, so the parmo's fucking wild. You first

210
00:13:54,080 --> 00:13:57,759
encounter parmos as as you're heading south from the United States.

211
00:13:57,759 --> 00:14:00,399
You first encountered them in Costa Rica, where you get

212
00:14:00,399 --> 00:14:01,919
a whole bunch of cool stuff, A bunch of cool

213
00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:06,320
pooya is that weird vermeiliad pooya deslaryoides. Tons of members

214
00:14:06,360 --> 00:14:11,679
of Eric Casey, tons of temperate northern hemisphere lineages get

215
00:14:11,720 --> 00:14:19,120
Loopinus gentiana. It's just fucking wild. Man. That's a hummingbird pollination.

216
00:14:19,240 --> 00:14:23,039
Hummingbirds and bumble bees, but no other bees. It's too cold.

217
00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:25,639
I guess you know. Bumble bees have a gimmick that

218
00:14:25,720 --> 00:14:31,240
can do moderately well at higher altitudes or higher elevations.

219
00:14:31,240 --> 00:14:35,759
Excuse me, altitudes is when you're in a plane. But oh,

220
00:14:35,799 --> 00:14:40,080
I just heard a giants cicadas, not that one that's

221
00:14:40,080 --> 00:14:43,399
buzzing in the background. But uh O caesatic gigis the

222
00:14:43,440 --> 00:14:46,240
one that sounds like a hand buzzer, much more obnoxious.

223
00:14:46,240 --> 00:14:52,600
Probably my favorite insect. Yeah, these forests are so lovely.

224
00:14:53,720 --> 00:14:57,159
You're spending time by yourself walking in the forest, digesting

225
00:14:57,200 --> 00:15:01,879
your thoughts, feeling the things you need to feel, do

226
00:15:02,039 --> 00:15:10,120
with some thinking aeroids everywhere. Philodendron pseudoviicosum incredible leaves that

227
00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:13,840
there's like a small erithrena species as well, and then

228
00:15:13,879 --> 00:15:20,559
Iriardia del toidia, which is the it's either Iriardia or Soacretea.

229
00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:24,759
Both have these stilt prop roots that they send out

230
00:15:25,879 --> 00:15:30,320
from higher up the uh we would be the trunk.

231
00:15:30,360 --> 00:15:32,240
But remember palms, I mean, I guess they're trees, but

232
00:15:32,279 --> 00:15:36,879
they're technically herbs. There's no woody tissue, there's no woody growth.

233
00:15:36,879 --> 00:15:40,200
They can have anomalist secondary growth, but tons of Aerardia,

234
00:15:40,320 --> 00:15:45,919
tons of these palms that also have these fishtail like leaflets.

235
00:15:45,960 --> 00:15:55,600
The main leaf is divided up into little h smaller leaflets. Yeah,

236
00:15:55,720 --> 00:16:00,360
got tons of melostone diversity to these these metal I

237
00:16:00,399 --> 00:16:02,960
guess he's more lowland forests. It's humid as hell, it's

238
00:16:02,960 --> 00:16:06,320
not that hot, but it's very very humid, very very wet.

239
00:16:06,399 --> 00:16:09,159
It's probably like, I don't know, eighty two degrees right now.

240
00:16:09,759 --> 00:16:12,960
It's got a little hint of breeze. I'm sure that

241
00:16:13,039 --> 00:16:17,200
humidity has a moderating effect as well. But anyway, back

242
00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:20,440
to the Parmo. So up at the Parmo, I think

243
00:16:20,480 --> 00:16:22,240
we only got I think we got like twelve five

244
00:16:22,279 --> 00:16:24,159
hundred feet, but I mean it goes a lot higher,

245
00:16:24,200 --> 00:16:27,080
and the higher you go you start encountering I guess

246
00:16:27,159 --> 00:16:30,919
chucki Arraga. There's a chucky Raga species, which is a

247
00:16:31,080 --> 00:16:33,960
crazy asta racy. It looks like, you know, conifers and

248
00:16:34,039 --> 00:16:38,039
sunflowers banged and then there's a pooh. There's a couple

249
00:16:38,039 --> 00:16:44,240
of PuYas up there as well, gunnera, lots of Gunnera

250
00:16:44,320 --> 00:16:48,720
as well, Magellanica. I'm convinced it's a different species, you know,

251
00:16:48,799 --> 00:16:54,519
gunnera gunner racy, those big shield like peltate leaves Chile

252
00:16:54,639 --> 00:16:58,799
and rub Barbit's commonly called no relation to rub Barbit's

253
00:16:59,200 --> 00:17:02,720
its own lonely branch on the angiosperm family tree. It's

254
00:17:02,759 --> 00:17:07,920
a gun are all lots of orchids, tiny orchids, terrestrial orchids,

255
00:17:07,960 --> 00:17:11,519
epiphytic orchids, but then it's oh yeah, and tons of

256
00:17:11,559 --> 00:17:15,880
aster ace diversity too, including this really cool genus called

257
00:17:15,960 --> 00:17:23,400
Lino Kylis, as well as diplo Stefium. Lino Kylas used

258
00:17:23,440 --> 00:17:26,880
to be in Diplostthium, but they're not that closely related.

259
00:17:27,279 --> 00:17:32,960
Lino Kylis is a related to coyote bush. It's got

260
00:17:33,160 --> 00:17:37,920
really cool looking leaves, lots of puvescents on them, and

261
00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:44,720
a pinkish or purple floorts. It's nice being here the

262
00:17:44,759 --> 00:17:47,119
second time because I got more of I'm more keyed

263
00:17:47,119 --> 00:17:50,559
into what I'm looking at, because especially you know, the

264
00:17:50,759 --> 00:17:52,880
fucking especially in the lowlands, you can really get thrown

265
00:17:52,920 --> 00:17:56,640
off because there's a lot of families you'll otherwise never encounter.

266
00:17:58,640 --> 00:18:04,799
Saw Siparuna, which is a weird one. Ciperunacy smelled really

267
00:18:05,559 --> 00:18:09,160
strongly like lemon, but it was so strong it was

268
00:18:09,200 --> 00:18:14,240
almost nauseating. It's ciperun Ace is in loreles, so it's

269
00:18:14,279 --> 00:18:16,599
one of the magnolids. It's one of those earlier branching

270
00:18:16,640 --> 00:18:22,519
angiosperm lineages. And then also another really fucking weird plant

271
00:18:22,640 --> 00:18:25,720
I saw was Hediosmum, which was also very fragrant, lots

272
00:18:25,759 --> 00:18:30,799
of lots of volatiles being emitted from the leaves opposite leaves.

273
00:18:32,079 --> 00:18:34,200
It was post flowers, so I couldn't see it. I

274
00:18:34,200 --> 00:18:39,839
think it's dioecious hediosmum in Chloranthas order Chlorinthales. If you

275
00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:44,160
look at the angiosperm phylogeny, it's on its own long,

276
00:18:44,200 --> 00:18:48,480
lonely branch, just like Gunnera, but it's more earlier branching.

277
00:18:48,519 --> 00:18:51,440
I think it comes. I think it's next to the magnoliods,

278
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:58,240
which is Loreles, pipe ales, Magnolilies, and Canalalies. I had

279
00:18:58,240 --> 00:19:00,920
the look that last one up because I don't encounter

280
00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:06,119
it so much. Canni Alies, which winter race is in

281
00:19:06,519 --> 00:19:10,279
just another all these pungent leaves, you know, just like

282
00:19:10,359 --> 00:19:15,400
bay leaf, bay leaf and sassafras, et cetera in the

283
00:19:15,440 --> 00:19:23,920
Magnolia lineage. Shit is that? I don't know if it's

284
00:19:23,960 --> 00:19:27,920
a birder is fucking weird Katie did? Or what you

285
00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:33,079
ever heard of an oropendula before? What a pleasant what

286
00:19:33,200 --> 00:19:38,400
a pleasant sounding bird? Sounds like a like a drop,

287
00:19:38,519 --> 00:19:41,799
like a drop of water falling into a pool. But

288
00:19:41,880 --> 00:19:43,680
if you were on acid, that's what it sounds like.

289
00:19:46,319 --> 00:19:50,079
This monster Bogonia there's like a remember this Bogonia, this

290
00:19:50,519 --> 00:19:58,559
twelve foot tall bogonia. Everything just perpetually humid. And what

291
00:19:58,720 --> 00:20:00,519
we've been lucky with the rant that we didn't get

292
00:20:00,559 --> 00:20:05,200
pissed on only a little bit, didn't have to put

293
00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:11,440
my uh vinyl burka on like I had to last

294
00:20:11,480 --> 00:20:14,960
time I did this walk. And it sucks. You can't

295
00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:18,799
take photos of shit because everything's getting fucking drenched. Where

296
00:20:18,839 --> 00:20:22,599
is Ailing? Speaking of photos, I think he's I think

297
00:20:22,599 --> 00:20:25,839
he's further back down the trail. I don't know. He

298
00:20:25,920 --> 00:20:33,319
and I are competing for you know, slowest walkers too.

299
00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:35,400
You know, you post up there, you take nine thousand photos.

300
00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:37,240
It go be there two hours in the same spot,

301
00:20:38,279 --> 00:20:42,599
half day goes by, you've moved like one hundred yards. Anyway,

302
00:20:42,640 --> 00:20:45,119
as we were coming out of the Paramo, there was

303
00:20:45,160 --> 00:20:48,599
another really weird plan as actually we were far below

304
00:20:48,640 --> 00:20:50,400
the apartment, were like three thousand people of the Parmo.

305
00:20:50,599 --> 00:20:53,000
But it was that same day and we were coming

306
00:20:53,039 --> 00:20:56,880
out of the cloud forest into where you know, the

307
00:20:56,920 --> 00:21:00,440
extent that human development is reached, where it's passed land

308
00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:04,720
with little margins of remnant native vegetation and a few invasives.

309
00:21:04,759 --> 00:21:08,920
And we saw this really fucking bizarre plant. I guess

310
00:21:08,960 --> 00:21:12,279
the common name was spider plant or something. But again,

311
00:21:12,319 --> 00:21:15,519
these common names, you get to avoid them. I'll fuck you up.

312
00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:20,200
They're stupid too. But it's called spider plant because the

313
00:21:20,319 --> 00:21:25,599
six stamens were prominently exerted out of the corolla. They

314
00:21:25,599 --> 00:21:29,319
were sticking out of the corolla as you encounter with

315
00:21:29,359 --> 00:21:31,440
a lot of hummingbird pollinated plants. I think were like

316
00:21:31,480 --> 00:21:36,480
eight thousand feet clouds everywhere, water vapor everywhere, the sun

317
00:21:36,559 --> 00:21:40,039
poking out through them. It's just everything smells incredible because

318
00:21:41,039 --> 00:21:43,880
of all the moisture and volatile compounds being emitted from

319
00:21:44,119 --> 00:21:47,200
the abundant plant life, even though you know there was

320
00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:50,960
a lot of clearing there for cattle and it ended

321
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:57,599
up being cleome or borea. I counted the sepals and petals,

322
00:21:57,599 --> 00:22:02,119
which were four, and then sick stamens, which you know

323
00:22:02,160 --> 00:22:06,519
you got four sepals and petals, it's six stamens automatically

324
00:22:06,519 --> 00:22:11,720
points to brassicles, I mean, namely brassic cac but this

325
00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:14,440
is not Brassic casing. And then it had that kind

326
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:19,400
of glucose scinilate secondary chemistry smell, that kind of mustardish

327
00:22:20,119 --> 00:22:25,119
kalish smell to it. It's covered in hair, is like

328
00:22:25,119 --> 00:22:29,039
a burgundy color, just a fucking weird plant had a

329
00:22:29,079 --> 00:22:32,799
distinct smell and then leaves that looked like castor being

330
00:22:32,880 --> 00:22:34,680
that looked like rice in this communis you know, which

331
00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:38,559
is invasive and waterways in Mexico and along the La

332
00:22:38,680 --> 00:22:42,200
River and shit, you know, riceness communists is the plant

333
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:46,279
that Walter White made the risin out of in breaking

334
00:22:46,319 --> 00:22:51,759
bed Anam. It's TV. You're good for you, buddy, Let

335
00:22:51,799 --> 00:22:57,640
me just settle down. They'll tell me about it. But anyway, Wow,

336
00:22:58,599 --> 00:23:00,759
every once in a while you just find these masses

337
00:23:00,799 --> 00:23:03,480
of epiphytes that fall out of the trees. It's like

338
00:23:03,519 --> 00:23:09,200
six different orchid species of Pileea, A Pepperomia and Tolanzier

339
00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:14,039
or something on this massive piece of epiphytic material a

340
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:16,839
lag that just fell in the middle of the trail.

341
00:23:17,319 --> 00:23:19,839
But uh so that was really exciting to see. Do

342
00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:26,359
cleomar Boia know anomala excuse me, Cleo Macy same family

343
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:31,440
as California bladder pod and PoTA androgony which you get here,

344
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:38,039
and number of Cleo Macy members in Texas and I

345
00:23:38,079 --> 00:23:41,440
think the southeastern United states too, that are mostly annuals

346
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:46,839
and ruteral plants, but it was this thing was massive,

347
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:52,279
was like eight feet tall and just huge, huge leaves

348
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:55,599
totally wouldn't you know. Obviously used a lot of humidity

349
00:23:56,839 --> 00:23:58,880
and cool temperatures. So the only place I think you

350
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:03,119
could grow out of the ship maybe some places in

351
00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:10,039
Florida in a glasshouse, or in like the coastal California,

352
00:24:10,079 --> 00:24:13,599
like Bay Area, but they're just I mean, so many

353
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:18,880
amazing plants. Just the parma was cool, but even just

354
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:21,200
the way up there was filled with tons of dope shit,

355
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:26,039
even just remnant growing on the margins of agriculture. Anyway,

356
00:24:26,079 --> 00:24:29,039
it took a while, but it finally started raining, and

357
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:35,240
I just saw a giant aeroid, terrestrial aeroid with leaves

358
00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:41,599
that were nearly a meter from top to bottom cord date.

359
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:45,240
And then it was flowering too, and the flower smelled

360
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,359
like winter green, and as they tend to do, it

361
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:51,119
had beetles inside of it, but I didn't get a

362
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:54,079
photo of the beetle. The beetle fell out, I put

363
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:57,640
him back on the little space and then he just

364
00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:01,440
fell right inside the cup down below, and I couldn't

365
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:03,079
see him anymore. I didn't I want to cut the

366
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:06,160
flower open because that's a horrible thing to do. You know,

367
00:25:06,519 --> 00:25:11,000
things finally getting a chance to bang, and uh, you're

368
00:25:11,039 --> 00:25:13,759
gonna go ruin it. You're gonna go cock block it

369
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:15,799
or box block it, or whatever you want to call it.

370
00:25:16,759 --> 00:25:19,920
You know it's not right. But the winter green smell

371
00:25:20,039 --> 00:25:24,359
is it's unique. I didn't I thought they had more

372
00:25:24,359 --> 00:25:28,640
of like a starchy smell. They did, many of them

373
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:32,480
did co evolve with beetles. But what's up with the

374
00:25:32,519 --> 00:25:36,799
winter green? You know suppos like tiger bomb. Anyway, h

375
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:42,640
got an uphill walk to the research station through thick mudd.

376
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:46,880
And you gotta wear these these boots, the serial killer boots.

377
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:51,640
You know, they're like little rubber buckets. Bought a pair

378
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:55,680
for eleven bucks here because I left mine at home.

379
00:25:57,319 --> 00:26:03,279
But uh, anything else is not sufficient. It's just too

380
00:26:03,319 --> 00:26:09,240
much mud, too much rain, too much mud. Oh there's

381
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:18,559
some memosoid thing that's not an inga a fuck toens

382
00:26:18,599 --> 00:26:20,480
of large ferns. Anyway, I don't really have much else

383
00:26:20,519 --> 00:26:23,839
to contribute here. It's too exciting. O. What is this

384
00:26:24,799 --> 00:26:31,240
as slainem? It's a nice slenum. Ah. We saw Blakey

385
00:26:31,319 --> 00:26:36,160
a subveginata. I put camillo on my shoulders. Then he

386
00:26:36,279 --> 00:26:38,440
used the pole cutter because it's like a fifty sixty

387
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,880
foot tall tree and he was able to snip a

388
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:46,000
branch off with a flower on it. We took an

389
00:26:46,039 --> 00:26:52,160
rbarium specimen, got some nice macro photographs of those bizarre

390
00:26:52,519 --> 00:26:59,079
melostomitaceous anthers. All the blaky flowers look cool, and I

391
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:04,559
think they're all bird donated, but I get fucking weird

392
00:27:04,599 --> 00:27:11,599
anther shapes. Man yellow anvils look like ten or however,

393
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:19,000
many little yellow anvils inside that five pedaled corolla. But

394
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:22,359
thank god, there's water up here. I forgot. Somebody took

395
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:27,039
a piece of guadua and stuck it in the mountain

396
00:27:27,039 --> 00:27:30,559
where there's a seep and then there's just a little rock,

397
00:27:30,599 --> 00:27:33,799
and there's always a whenever you go there, there's a piece.

398
00:27:33,839 --> 00:27:39,279
There's a little glass beneath it. You know, should you

399
00:27:39,319 --> 00:27:42,079
know for anybody if they want to they want to

400
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:44,759
take a sip the way up? Mean, this is probably

401
00:27:44,799 --> 00:27:51,119
annoying listening to me with this hyperventilating. You know, I

402
00:27:51,119 --> 00:27:53,759
don't know if i'd like to listen to it. What

403
00:27:53,799 --> 00:27:58,240
are you doing right now? Oh God, it's not that hot,

404
00:27:58,279 --> 00:28:02,920
but goddamn is it ball me. It's just you're really

405
00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:06,720
going for the Bickram yoga thing, except there's nobody farting.

406
00:28:06,759 --> 00:28:09,920
You know. The arison smell like like hydrogen sulfi and

407
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:13,880
methane gas, like I imagine it would in a Bickram studio,

408
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:17,759
because even if they're cleaning that, there's still a lot

409
00:28:17,759 --> 00:28:21,039
of people, you know, passing gas, and people just generally

410
00:28:21,079 --> 00:28:27,039
smell like hell, it's so humid, you know, guess is

411
00:28:27,039 --> 00:28:30,920
better than smelling hair care products and whatever toxic shit

412
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:36,240
they put in those toxic chemistry. You know, I wanted

413
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:39,359
to do a video that I've been doing these videos

414
00:28:39,359 --> 00:28:44,039
that sound like WG and Chicago Channel nine infomercials, you know,

415
00:28:44,079 --> 00:28:48,799
late night infomercials, really annoying voice. You know, it's kind

416
00:28:48,799 --> 00:28:52,039
of what makes it funny. But it'd be nice to

417
00:28:52,079 --> 00:28:56,400
do a rant instead where you're just you're just talking

418
00:28:56,400 --> 00:29:00,839
about the futility and a meaninglessness of human existing and

419
00:29:00,839 --> 00:29:03,759
then the fact that our species is still continuously governed

420
00:29:03,759 --> 00:29:08,880
by pigs and wolves, you know, and the hierarchies that

421
00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:11,160
our society creates kind of filters out, it kind of

422
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:15,240
selects for those personalities, because anyone who's actually got substance

423
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,640
doesn't want to go into business or politics. Probably at

424
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:21,680
least most people you know, or at least strive to

425
00:29:21,799 --> 00:29:23,920
have so much, you know, I think most people, if

426
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:25,480
they got any sense about them, they'd stop at a

427
00:29:25,519 --> 00:29:28,039
certain point, say I got enough to live comfortably, now

428
00:29:28,039 --> 00:29:32,319
I want to go accumulate experiences, passions, you know, creativity,

429
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,920
shit like that. What is this? You got a slime

430
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:37,599
mold coming off. I'm at the little founta where to

431
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:41,240
guadua the bamboo branches. I gotta take a where it's

432
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:42,799
coming out to sleep in a mountain. I gotta take

433
00:29:42,799 --> 00:29:46,079
a sip here. I thought it was nice, like a

434
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:49,359
hat towel from the dryer, if you got the drink

435
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:51,119
water all day. I gotta filter on me. But it's

436
00:29:51,119 --> 00:29:53,880
one of those Sawyer squeeze filters, and the fucking bag broke,

437
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,279
so it just when you squeeze it half goes through

438
00:29:56,319 --> 00:29:58,640
the filter and the other half just leaks out all

439
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:06,640
over your face. It's really nice. There's a big selassiby uh.

440
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:11,119
I think it's it's either muliercula or who higani. Those

441
00:30:11,119 --> 00:30:15,720
are the two common silassaby. That is the psychoactive mushroom

442
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:18,519
genus species. There's a big one just growing on the

443
00:30:18,559 --> 00:30:23,480
side of this trail up there, up to the research station.

444
00:30:25,559 --> 00:30:27,680
It smells some nice here. Fucking I can't do they

445
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:30,920
really planted some like I will eat a plant on

446
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:33,400
the side of this trail You're in, like this incredible forest,

447
00:30:34,079 --> 00:30:37,400
and they planted these what is this? What is it? Thing?

448
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:41,039
It's like a dressina or something. All clones the home

449
00:30:41,079 --> 00:30:44,599
Desperate Garden Center. God, the Home despert Garden Center bums

450
00:30:44,599 --> 00:30:47,319
me out? Does it? Bum you out? I see plants

451
00:30:47,359 --> 00:30:53,319
from there, and I'm just fucking set a sinking feeling everything,

452
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:58,160
you know, Modern horticulture needs that about everything, and so

453
00:30:58,319 --> 00:31:03,599
much of like modern First World or Second WARLD whatever

454
00:31:03,599 --> 00:31:07,319
the fuck horticulture just sucks. It's just so bleak. It's

455
00:31:07,319 --> 00:31:08,680
like the SAME's. I mean, it's the same if you

456
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:11,720
go if you shopping centers in the United States or

457
00:31:11,799 --> 00:31:14,119
like any of the socolos in Mexico. Though I do

458
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,599
appreciate the socolos the town plazas, they never have cool

459
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:23,160
plants there. It's always the fucking home Desperate garden center garbage.

460
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:30,160
Just more disconnection you know more, just once again, so

461
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:35,839
emblematic of modern sieves disconnections from the living world. Right,

462
00:31:36,039 --> 00:31:38,839
the only plants are just supposed to look good. Here

463
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:40,319
we fucking rant that before. You don't need to hear

464
00:31:40,319 --> 00:31:44,480
it again. You don't need to hear it again. Did

465
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:46,200
somebody pick that so it has to be? Oh, I

466
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:53,240
guess they did anyway, Oh lovely sandstone. Oh crapping, We're

467
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:58,160
almost there. Oh. I saw a lot of nice frogs

468
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:04,960
last night. Holy shit, frogs and snakes the genus priystamantis

469
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:11,440
of frog, especially Priystamantis, and then it's really cute little

470
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:16,400
tone and the genus Ranella. But uh, some of the

471
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:21,240
snakes we're next to selling three species like ribbon snakes.

472
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:23,599
One's called like a shoelace snake or something. I don't know.

473
00:32:24,039 --> 00:32:30,480
They were fucking adorable. They were all relatively harmless calubrids. Anyway,

474
00:32:30,519 --> 00:32:33,359
I'm gonna go sit my ass down, have more of

475
00:32:33,359 --> 00:32:38,200
a temper tantrum about my TTL cable fucking up, and uh,

476
00:32:38,559 --> 00:32:41,960
dry some specimens with a blow dryer and sip on

477
00:32:42,039 --> 00:32:43,640
some YU said, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Okay, have

478
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:46,160
a GIRs today for now, go by.

479
00:32:55,079 --> 00:32:58,279
Speaker 2: I'm trying to sleep. The research stations just open air.

480
00:32:58,559 --> 00:33:04,720
Everybody's fucking around in a laboratory. Everybody's messing around the

481
00:33:04,799 --> 00:33:08,200
laboratory looking at the microscopes. I was just hanging out there,

482
00:33:08,279 --> 00:33:13,200
drawing and going through some of the forestry books. But anyway,

483
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:14,839
I just wondered, I wanted you to hear the rain.

484
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:19,880
It sounds nice. A lot of thunder very close by. God,

485
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:22,440
we really lucked out today. We barely rained at all.

486
00:33:24,519 --> 00:33:27,119
Got a lot of nice got a lot of nice footage,

487
00:33:27,359 --> 00:33:32,599
a lot of nice photographs. So the fragment Pedium pierci

488
00:33:32,759 --> 00:33:36,559
again that's only pollinated by the single species of hoverfly

489
00:33:37,079 --> 00:33:42,599
and tricks them using pheromones that mimic the alert pheromones

490
00:33:42,599 --> 00:33:48,119
of aphids. And and then it's like Cranopigium species from

491
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:52,319
the Panama half family. Put the staminodes, you know, the

492
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:55,799
frilly staminodes that emit odor and also serve as visual

493
00:33:55,799 --> 00:33:57,200
attractions for pollinators.

494
00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:59,559
Speaker 1: But listen to the rain. Is that nice? No?

495
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:02,519
Speaker 2: I mean it's no windows, no glass, just you don't

496
00:34:02,559 --> 00:34:05,079
need them. It's open air. But then again, if you

497
00:34:05,079 --> 00:34:07,519
you know, if you're all you got is like these

498
00:34:07,559 --> 00:34:11,119
curtains hanging up, but it's just these It's like bay

499
00:34:11,159 --> 00:34:14,440
windows without the glass.

500
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:14,920
Speaker 1: Really nice.

501
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,239
Speaker 2: I could live like this forever. They got a solar

502
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:20,880
panel set up. They got the interweb, I guess they

503
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:23,760
got satellite internet, so in a library full of books,

504
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:29,719
they got microscopes, flow hood, all this good shit. Anyway,

505
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:31,840
I'm gonna try to go to sleep, but try to

506
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:33,039
get some sleep right now.

507
00:34:35,679 --> 00:34:38,039
Speaker 1: You know what I'm wondering, Actually, if I can, if

508
00:34:38,079 --> 00:34:40,159
I can stand up the.

509
00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:42,400
Speaker 2: Piss, because we're on the second floor, If I can

510
00:34:42,519 --> 00:34:45,639
urinate out the window it's not really.

511
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:47,280
Speaker 1: Wind us an opening in a wall.

512
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 2: I can urinate out the this opening without falling out.

513
00:34:52,159 --> 00:34:54,360
You know, that would be nice. If I fill out,

514
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:56,039
that might be that might do hurt. I'd be and

515
00:34:56,079 --> 00:34:58,760
I'd do web. But I could probably piss out the window.

516
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,519
Say other words, I gotta go outn stairs. The whole

517
00:35:01,559 --> 00:35:04,960
building smells nice too. It's got this wonderful rustic smell.

518
00:35:05,519 --> 00:35:10,039
It's locally harvested wood from the surrounding forest, traded with

519
00:35:10,159 --> 00:35:12,639
diesels so that the termites and the insects don't get it.

520
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:15,960
They wash it down. A diesel makes a very nice smell.

521
00:35:16,039 --> 00:35:20,239
It's better than creosolt. Yeah, I hope I'm a foul thing.

522
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:21,880
I got a piss like cow man. I've been drinking

523
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:25,880
green tea, you know, real light green tea. But still, well,

524
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:27,920
hopefully it's not enough caffeine to keep me up.

525
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,239
Speaker 1: All right, that's all I got for tonight. I'll talk

526
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:35,679
to you tomorrow. Anyway. It's a few days later, and

527
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:39,039
now we're in the Amazon what could collectively be called

528
00:35:39,039 --> 00:35:42,559
the Amazon. There's not much to our east except except

529
00:35:42,559 --> 00:35:47,559
the vast expanses of tropical forest lower elevation, tropical forests

530
00:35:47,559 --> 00:35:51,719
worth two thousand feet. When's the last time you played

531
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:55,480
in a good pile of muck, or even just smell

532
00:35:55,559 --> 00:35:58,480
the good pile of muck. I just fell in one,

533
00:35:58,519 --> 00:36:02,480
and I wasn't wearing the fucking knee high boots were

534
00:36:02,519 --> 00:36:06,079
normally wearing we walk out here. I was just wearing

535
00:36:06,119 --> 00:36:11,239
my little steel toes, and uh, I'm just covered in mud.

536
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:14,400
It's got that smell to it too. There's heliconias everywhere

537
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:20,119
as well. Heliconia's aeroids and cyclanth They see the cyclanthus,

538
00:36:20,119 --> 00:36:23,519
the namesake of the cyclant. They see family the Panama

539
00:36:23,559 --> 00:36:30,760
half family Cyclanthus also have guadua and costafoya, the giant bamboo,

540
00:36:31,199 --> 00:36:36,559
and just saw a tree senna to like thirty feet tall,

541
00:36:37,119 --> 00:36:41,119
had kind of a scrambling habit, but not a lot

542
00:36:41,159 --> 00:36:47,480
of reproductive structures to see, you know, used to the

543
00:36:47,599 --> 00:36:51,639
fucking nice nice muck a nice big muck pile. Some

544
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:55,199
ferns too. Ooh, what is that? It's a large fern.

545
00:36:55,280 --> 00:37:01,960
Some psyathias as well. It's balmy as hell. The giant

546
00:37:02,039 --> 00:37:04,840
cicadas in Casata Gigas were out last night, which we

547
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:10,400
also get in South Texas where there's vegetation left where

548
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:14,599
it hasn't been turned into a car dealership or a

549
00:37:14,639 --> 00:37:20,280
parking lot or anyway. Trying to keep a positive mindset

550
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:22,079
here and not think about things that bumm me up.

551
00:37:22,639 --> 00:37:28,000
But yeah, God, damn though, man, it's it is. You know,

552
00:37:28,039 --> 00:37:30,639
it's sweaty. It's not even that hot, it's just sweaty.

553
00:37:32,119 --> 00:37:34,719
That this reminds me of where I live in the summertime.

554
00:37:35,079 --> 00:37:37,719
You know, it was already like ninety two where I live.

555
00:37:38,639 --> 00:37:41,199
I think it's that already. It's like it's already ninety

556
00:37:41,199 --> 00:37:44,559
two degrees. God, the palms here are just incredible, and

557
00:37:44,639 --> 00:37:47,159
a lot of them four or five of them have

558
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:50,679
independently evolved. Those stilt roots. Here, I am looking at

559
00:37:50,679 --> 00:37:58,039
Iriardia del Todia, fishtail like leaves, fishtail pinnate leaves, and

560
00:37:58,079 --> 00:38:02,400
then the dong roots. The root cap looks like the

561
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:04,719
the head of the cac, the head of the cac.

562
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:10,880
Can you say that on a podcast? Amazing species, though,

563
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:16,519
I'd love to see the flowers someday, hundreds of tiny

564
00:38:16,519 --> 00:38:25,039
white flowers arranged on spikes or panicles. But uh, yeah,

565
00:38:25,039 --> 00:38:26,840
we got here last night. We set up a mothlight

566
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:29,840
last night. God, the fucking insects that came through three

567
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:32,920
different species of cicada, a Dobson fly, which I've never

568
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:36,679
heard of before. And then the moth diversity was just insane.

569
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:38,840
It was just off the charts. It was fucking wild,

570
00:38:40,679 --> 00:38:44,239
incredible moth diversity, large moths. So what is that? Oh

571
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:48,400
it's a fycus? Is it a climbing fycus? I can't

572
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:52,519
even tell, man, But lots of heliconias. You know what

573
00:38:52,599 --> 00:38:56,360
was weird is so Heliconias are in the ginger orders

574
00:38:56,360 --> 00:39:02,519
in Gibbereles, along with the costace and moran taesi at

575
00:39:02,599 --> 00:39:05,880
least in the New World and an old world families.

576
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:10,320
You know, you got the gingers and Strelitzia family, et cetera.

577
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:17,280
But uh, but these heliconias can have erect inflorescences or

578
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:21,360
pendent inflorescences. And I saw them with a pendent inflorescence,

579
00:39:22,559 --> 00:39:29,000
bright red like zigzag inflorescence, and there were ants all

580
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:33,119
over like guarding it. They weren't moving, they were just

581
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:37,320
big ants like maybe an inch long, hanging out one

582
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:42,760
on each flower, you know, each breaking the zigzag is

583
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:46,679
a different flower like this pendent zigzag inflorescence, and the

584
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:49,159
ants are just hanging out there guarding it. Fucking bizarre.

585
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:52,079
And then if you touch it, they'll like come at you.

586
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,679
So I sat there and took photos of it for

587
00:39:55,679 --> 00:40:00,960
a while and then went to, uh touch it right

588
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:03,280
before I left, and they didn't come out anymore, like

589
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:04,960
they were just gotten used to me. It was really weird.

590
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:10,079
Oh here's a little micena, a little white micena. I

591
00:40:10,079 --> 00:40:13,199
guess there's a bunch of bioluminescent mushrooms in this forest.

592
00:40:13,679 --> 00:40:15,840
Forgive me. I'm a little out of breath. I'm sweating

593
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:20,519
like hell and walking up a hill. Can you hear them?

594
00:40:20,559 --> 00:40:24,440
Can you hear them? Going? Off. They're really going. Now, God,

595
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:28,159
I feel like everything everything at the lower elevations is

596
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:31,320
ruby ac. Everything in the lower elevations the tropical forest

597
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:33,440
is ruby ac. Not everything, of course, there's a lot

598
00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:39,239
of monocots here, but goddamn or inga. There's like twenty

599
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:44,400
different species of inga within like a square kilometer of

600
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:48,559
where I am. But I'm looking at this moth pollinated

601
00:40:48,719 --> 00:40:52,239
rubiaceous thing. You know, it's got the interpetiolar stipules. That's

602
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:57,320
the big giveaway for the coffee Family's those interpetiolar stipules,

603
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:00,639
and then petals, four or five petals in this case,

604
00:41:00,639 --> 00:41:07,000
they're fringed in liciniate laciniate. Uh, and then white tube flowers.

605
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:11,880
A lot of moth pollination, I presume, but uh, Jesus man,

606
00:41:12,159 --> 00:41:18,320
big fucking leaves, large leaves, probably nine inches, an interesting

607
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:20,440
flower structure. And this thing is a tree. This is

608
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:26,320
a tree, you like, goddamn fifty feet tall and lots

609
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:29,519
of drip tips too. Let us not forget the drip tips.

610
00:41:29,519 --> 00:41:32,440
Here's no what is this? This is rubyac too? Oh?

611
00:41:32,519 --> 00:41:35,199
You know what? Maybe not? Oh, this looks like it

612
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:40,000
might be different, and it's got exerted. It's got exerted stamens.

613
00:41:40,079 --> 00:41:42,360
What is this? Maybe this is a this might be

614
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:46,679
an eyelex, but all the leaves have drip tips in

615
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,440
the fucking insects. Or oh, there's that fifteen foot tall

616
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:51,719
bogonia too, Maybe I should give photos of that. I

617
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:55,519
probably should. Oh there's an orchid back there something. It's

618
00:41:55,559 --> 00:41:59,840
overwhelming and hot and balmy. But don't forget the drip tips.

619
00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:01,360
You know, you know when you got that the distal

620
00:42:01,559 --> 00:42:06,079
end of the leaf terminates in this uh moucrenate, well,

621
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:10,320
more like a cuminate point for a shedding water. I

622
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:13,199
gotta get a photo of this thing. Hold on, Well,

623
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:16,159
it's the next day, and I feel like dog shit,

624
00:42:17,079 --> 00:42:20,079
and uh we're just going lower into the Amazon. It's

625
00:42:20,159 --> 00:42:24,320
just balmy as all hell, just very high humidity index.

626
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:27,840
And I did have some loose stools the last couple

627
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:33,920
of days, which hopefully you can enjoy picturing net And uh,

628
00:42:34,119 --> 00:42:36,400
I feel that like food poisoning fatigue. But I didn't

629
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:39,000
get food poison. I don't know what it is, you know,

630
00:42:39,199 --> 00:42:41,000
I don't know if it was a yellow dragon fruit,

631
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:44,679
but it definitely feels amoeba like, you know, maybe I

632
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:48,519
got some damn produce. It's always the fucking protests. Oh

633
00:42:48,559 --> 00:42:50,800
it's this climbing fern. I didn't really want to go

634
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:56,760
on this hat his like today, but it got bad fomo,

635
00:42:56,960 --> 00:43:01,519
you know they. I guess everybody saw a viper last night,

636
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:07,840
one of those green both roped species. So uh anyway,

637
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:13,000
but oh, buttressed roots? What is this? A ficus? Just

638
00:43:13,039 --> 00:43:14,840
stopped to take a picture of some blaky as some

639
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:19,280
interesting vining mellowstone species, as well as some legume with

640
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:24,840
balhinia shaped leaves, which indicates the Bohinia and red bud

641
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:28,679
subfamily of Fabasia. That's a cool fern. Oh yeah, this

642
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:31,079
is nice. Whatever this is. Damn, this looks like a

643
00:43:31,119 --> 00:43:35,239
fucking fern. That looks like a psychicad. But uh, but

644
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:37,320
the fruits on that thing were wild. It was like

645
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:41,679
two carpoled I guess it was just a sing just

646
00:43:41,679 --> 00:43:44,079
just these beans that split open and dehess I couldn't

647
00:43:44,079 --> 00:43:45,360
really figure it out, but there were three of them

648
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:50,679
attached to a single pedicel or a peduncle or rather,

649
00:43:51,519 --> 00:43:57,039
and anyway, yeah, it was very interesting. But uh, and

650
00:43:57,079 --> 00:43:59,559
the seeds were out and already germanying, but we couldn't

651
00:43:59,559 --> 00:44:04,400
really see him or we couldn't see the tree that

652
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:05,960
they were coming from. It was too high up. It

653
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:08,880
was either a tree or a leana, a large vine.

654
00:44:09,559 --> 00:44:12,280
I'm sitting here, look at it. Some member of zim

655
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:16,039
zim Gibbereles, the ginger order in Kushi the dog, this

656
00:44:16,079 --> 00:44:20,480
little terrier, Alex's dog. You know, she comes with us everywhere.

657
00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:23,199
She just decided to come lay down next to me.

658
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:25,679
Thank you. You could tell them feeling like shit. Hopefully

659
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:29,800
I don't puke up my ass again. One thing I

660
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,800
did see that was pretty remarkable yesterday, I think I

661
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:35,599
don't think I mentioned was a member of the cannonball

662
00:44:35,639 --> 00:44:39,760
tree family lecythidesi, which is in the order Eric Hayley's

663
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:44,440
and has is califlorus. So it produced its you know

664
00:44:45,199 --> 00:44:50,760
call as in coallescent or et cetera stem referring to stem.

665
00:44:50,760 --> 00:44:54,800
It flowers from the stem directly and then has these fruits.

666
00:44:54,559 --> 00:44:59,360
The most famous member is the cannonball tree because it

667
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:01,880
produces which it looks like canniballs that come right off

668
00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:03,760
I think they come right off the stem as well.

669
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:06,480
But it's a it's a pantropical family. I think it's

670
00:45:06,519 --> 00:45:08,280
most diverse in the New World that's also in the

671
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:13,559
Old World Order is Eric Hayley's flowers are rather large,

672
00:45:13,639 --> 00:45:16,360
like baseball sized in some cases. I think the genus

673
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:19,400
I saw was Gria g R E A. I might

674
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:22,159
be spelling that wrong, but it's a remarkable family. The

675
00:45:22,159 --> 00:45:26,079
family is l E C y t h I D

676
00:45:26,119 --> 00:45:29,679
A C E A E and uh. I have little

677
00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:32,159
experience with it. I just know it from the Field

678
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:36,239
Museum Botany room, the Botany Hall, which I always fear.

679
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:40,519
That's where I got the Welwitchia Mirabolis diorama, and I

680
00:45:40,559 --> 00:45:44,239
always fear because plants are so disrespected in culture in general.

681
00:45:44,239 --> 00:45:46,480
It's some fucking administrator is gonna, you know, they're gonna

682
00:45:46,519 --> 00:45:49,360
hire some new administrator, some you know, higher up pencil

683
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:52,840
neck knob at the Field Museum, and they're gonna they're

684
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:54,360
gonna say, we got to get rid of the fucking

685
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:58,679
Hall of Botany. Why don't we put another you know, uh,

686
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:02,760
giant bug exhibit there, or you know, Hall of China

687
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:05,760
exhibit or something like that. You know, it's my worst

688
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:10,400
fear regarding me, well, I can't think of a lot

689
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:12,280
of worse things, you know, I can get really dark,

690
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:18,239
but regarding that museum, but that it's got a remarkable

691
00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:20,400
or barium. They being here does make me think of

692
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:22,760
the Field Museum. I was you know, it was instrumental

693
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:25,960
in my upbringing, that pee Wee's Big Adventure to movie,

694
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,719
as well as pee Wee's Playhouse and a few other things.

695
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:35,039
But the Field Museum, fucking that was it. You know,

696
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:37,239
if you've got kids, you live in the Midwest, you

697
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:39,119
got to bring them to the Field Museum, right like

698
00:46:39,159 --> 00:46:41,760
three times a year at least, right, hopefully they won't

699
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:44,239
turn out like jackasses. Right, it's better better at than

700
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:48,639
you know, other elements of culture that could poison their youth.

701
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:52,039
You know. But this this member of I'm not sure

702
00:46:52,039 --> 00:46:56,000
if it's morantasy or or cost thecy, but it's got

703
00:46:56,079 --> 00:47:00,519
these really it's got this this infratessence that's on ground

704
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:05,079
you know, ground level maybe eight inches max, so about

705
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:10,280
I don't know, sixteen centimeters tall, and it's got bright

706
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:12,639
orange I think that I think that's just the old

707
00:47:12,679 --> 00:47:16,079
corollas or the Yeah, I guess it's just the old Corollas.

708
00:47:16,679 --> 00:47:21,440
And then subtending that is the fruit, which is like

709
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:24,719
this little three carpled so like a berrier I'm wondering

710
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:29,280
what this thing evolved dispersing it? What the fuck is this?

711
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 2: Oh?

712
00:47:29,519 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 1: These are like, these are the little seeds covered in

713
00:47:32,519 --> 00:47:37,360
this powdery, gelatinous material. I should take somebody, so go

714
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:42,920
plant them up top. Really remarkable though, it's you know,

715
00:47:43,519 --> 00:47:48,880
it's obviously going for conspicuous. We're going for a tractive

716
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:52,320
you know, to attract something, possibly some ground bird or

717
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:56,599
some other small mammal. And the whole plant it's you know,

718
00:47:56,639 --> 00:48:01,000
it's a monocot. It's got alternate alternate leaves coming off

719
00:48:01,039 --> 00:48:06,159
of this shoot. Guess he wouldn't call them alternate leaves

720
00:48:06,159 --> 00:48:08,679
in that case, since the applical marastem is down below.

721
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:13,559
But it only gets about, I don't know, half a

722
00:48:13,559 --> 00:48:17,639
meter tall. What interesting set here? But again, it's all leaves.

723
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,280
I've never paid so much attention to leaf venation, and

724
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:24,719
I've been drawn drawing leaves a lot too. You really

725
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:28,519
pay attention to leaf venation when you're drawing them. Oh,

726
00:48:28,559 --> 00:48:32,519
here's this monstrous fucking palm. What was this genus? I forget.

727
00:48:33,559 --> 00:48:39,880
It's got leaves that are probably twenty feet long, very fibrous. Drunk, God,

728
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:44,119
I feel less like dog shit. Somebody gave me some mombie,

729
00:48:44,119 --> 00:48:49,039
which is like crushed coca leaf with sacropia ash, and

730
00:48:49,079 --> 00:48:53,920
it does it does help. God, damn, I just felt

731
00:48:53,960 --> 00:48:57,159
like dog shit. I don't know what it was, you know,

732
00:48:57,199 --> 00:49:00,199
you piss all your nutrients that I took some took

733
00:49:00,199 --> 00:49:05,480
some creatine vitamin. See it took a one of those

734
00:49:05,559 --> 00:49:08,440
you know, electrolyte packets. But I just feel fucking out

735
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:11,519
of it. Man. Probably not very fun to listen to

736
00:49:11,760 --> 00:49:14,880
right now because I'm you know, I feel like I'm

737
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:18,239
about to pass out. But uh, hopefully we can get

738
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:20,840
something out of this. Eh, what are you doing? Anyways?

739
00:49:21,079 --> 00:49:25,079
You're working? What are you doing? Working on something? I

740
00:49:25,159 --> 00:49:27,400
tend to listen to podcasts when I'm working on doing

741
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:31,800
some shit work or something. Fuck. Okay, Well, anyway, we're

742
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:35,840
gonna keep clambering on here, and I think we're dropping

743
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:38,519
an elevation. We're at like twenty four hundred feet now,

744
00:49:38,519 --> 00:49:42,360
probably twenty six. Goddamn it. We got a long way

745
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:48,239
to go for us. Sounds so nice though, the singing insects.

746
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:51,960
You appreciate singing insects, I hope. So, okay, we'll get back.

747
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:54,440
We'll get back with you a little bit. Can you

748
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:59,639
hear the waterfall over there. This is what it's gonna

749
00:49:59,639 --> 00:50:01,920
sound like later tonight. You know, when I'm pissing out

750
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:05,880
my ass. You know you got the really the auditory effects.

751
00:50:05,639 --> 00:50:09,440
You so so crisp. You can hear it, you can

752
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:13,480
picture it hitting the bowl. Ah, God leaves, leaves and

753
00:50:13,519 --> 00:50:17,480
more leaves. Only a guess as to what families some

754
00:50:17,519 --> 00:50:24,119
of these things might be more racy. Melostoma tasi. There's

755
00:50:24,159 --> 00:50:27,159
a cool vining celadjanella. This shit is this? This looks

756
00:50:27,159 --> 00:50:30,840
like a dan night as skullus. Lots of U four bac.

757
00:50:32,079 --> 00:50:36,400
What the fuck is this? There was a cool there's

758
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:39,400
a cool melostome, lots of milstone taty. There's a cool

759
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:44,239
melostone that gets maybe a meter tall that's got domatia.

760
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:48,199
That is little hotels for these tiny ants. Except the

761
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:52,199
ants aren't aggressive and you can reportedly eat them. I mean,

762
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:55,920
I know you can eat They taste like lemon. So

763
00:50:55,960 --> 00:50:58,159
if they're not doing what is it? Is it a dong?

764
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:01,880
What the fuck is this thing? It's like a Is

765
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:04,119
that a phallus? Is that a fungus? I don't know.

766
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:09,000
There's some cool members of Burmanniac, which is a monocop

767
00:51:09,079 --> 00:51:12,960
family that's micoheterotrophic, that is, at each eat fungus and

768
00:51:13,119 --> 00:51:16,440
some cool members of Bolano for ac, which is a

769
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:24,400
plant parasitizing fungus plant parasitizing plant family, So plants that

770
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:27,760
are parasites, some of the parasitized fungi and some of

771
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:32,079
the parasitize plants. And there's records on iinad from here,

772
00:51:32,119 --> 00:51:35,159
but the chance of them being out at this time

773
00:51:35,199 --> 00:51:42,280
and flowering seemed to be nil. But anyway, back to this,

774
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:47,440
these domatia, these little swollen leaf bases, swollen two locku

775
00:51:47,480 --> 00:51:52,719
oled leaf bases, two compartments that are formed at the

776
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:55,960
base of these melastome leaves that are very pubescent. They

777
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:59,800
house these tiny ants. So I'm guessing it's not for

778
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:03,159
detection because the ants are so fucking tiny and they're

779
00:52:03,199 --> 00:52:05,840
not very aggressive to begin with. So it might be

780
00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:09,119
maybe for some sort of nutrient acquisition, but it's some

781
00:52:09,159 --> 00:52:12,840
sort of mutualism because nothing the plant wouldn't evolve these

782
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:16,239
dumatia if there wasn't something selecting for it, some benefits

783
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:21,039
selected for it. So I realized last night that the

784
00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:24,320
UH three notebooks of herbarium specimens I've been collecting over

785
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:28,960
the past few days to a session at the herbarium

786
00:52:29,119 --> 00:52:33,360
for further study for anybody who might be interested. Half

787
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:39,199
the fucking specimens got moldy, as you could easily predict

788
00:52:39,199 --> 00:52:44,159
they would, But I was a dumbass, so I fucking

789
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:48,719
ruined that it's a nice philodendron, and you know, I

790
00:52:48,840 --> 00:52:52,280
promptly lost it and I tapped into this city is

791
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:54,920
not going to be a safe part of the podcast

792
00:52:55,039 --> 00:52:57,719
if you have younger viewers around, Okay, just a forewarning.

793
00:52:59,880 --> 00:53:01,840
I realized I had to tap in at that point

794
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:07,679
to my vocabulary bank of turetts like curse words, and

795
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:12,599
just fucking let it out, you know, shit cock, cunt,

796
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:16,400
shit on my tits, fuck you mother, you know, just

797
00:53:16,679 --> 00:53:19,039
just really going. Do you have one of those? It's

798
00:53:19,119 --> 00:53:23,679
important to have a you know, a word bank, which

799
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:25,480
you know, this is probably more of a male thing,

800
00:53:25,519 --> 00:53:30,119
I suppose, though I do know some salty women who

801
00:53:30,199 --> 00:53:33,159
might engage in this kind of behavior, but it's really

802
00:53:34,199 --> 00:53:37,119
I realized the fucking sip of rune I collected was

803
00:53:37,199 --> 00:53:40,639
all moldy and just fucked. And the blow dryer I

804
00:53:40,719 --> 00:53:44,199
brought what is that red flower? The blow dryer I

805
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:49,239
brought to dry things was not enough, and so I

806
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:53,559
looked up on Google scholar methods for drying or barium

807
00:53:53,599 --> 00:53:58,840
specimens in the tropics, and wouldn't you know, some cunning

808
00:53:58,920 --> 00:54:03,440
slippery shit had already thought of it, and there was

809
00:54:03,519 --> 00:54:06,440
a paper described me. It was from two thousand and six,

810
00:54:06,599 --> 00:54:11,079
using a Lakewood model space heater that stood about ten

811
00:54:11,239 --> 00:54:14,800
maybe eight inches tall, and then using the rack that's

812
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:18,119
used to hang files in a file cain, which you know,

813
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:20,360
a good three quarters of people listening to this podcast

814
00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:22,079
probably don't even know what it is. I didn't know

815
00:54:22,159 --> 00:54:25,000
what it was, but a metal rack that can screen.

816
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,559
It's basically they were using. The rack is like a

817
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:31,639
frame to prop up the herbarium press, the plant press,

818
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:35,039
the corrugated cardboard is instrumental to and the corrugations, the

819
00:54:35,119 --> 00:54:39,000
open parts of the corrugations have to go perpendicular to

820
00:54:39,079 --> 00:54:44,280
the ground to facilitate airflow. Vertical airflow through them. Wonderful

821
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:46,199
buttress trunk over there by the way. I'm really looking

822
00:54:46,199 --> 00:54:50,239
at it. I'm urinating into the forest right now. Next

823
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:52,280
to some member of Cyclant. They say, wow, look at

824
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:58,719
that inflorescence. What the fuck? So anyway, uh, and then

825
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:02,000
you drape a cloth with this seems kind of sketchy.

826
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:05,800
You drape a cloth over the plant press and then

827
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:09,599
over so that it's like funneling kind of. It looks

828
00:55:09,639 --> 00:55:12,400
like one of those sheets from like those old style uh,

829
00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:17,199
you know, silver plate cameras from like the mid eighteen hundreds.

830
00:55:17,239 --> 00:55:19,360
You drape that cloth over the space heater two space

831
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:21,079
heaters on the ground. Frame is on the ground, plant

832
00:55:21,119 --> 00:55:23,920
presses on the frame, and then it channels the heat

833
00:55:24,119 --> 00:55:28,280
and you want like one hundred and five degrees fahrenheit max, right,

834
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:31,320
which is what is that? Like thirty five to forty

835
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:34,719
degrees celsius, no hotter and just airflow through it. And

836
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:38,119
supposedly eight hours of that works. But of course you've

837
00:55:38,119 --> 00:55:39,400
got a hip. What am I? What is it? What

838
00:55:39,519 --> 00:55:41,519
the fuck is this? This is like a little crabspider.

839
00:55:41,519 --> 00:55:44,320
I just fucked up. You're a web I'm sorry. I

840
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:47,159
can already feel you can feel the sugers is they're

841
00:55:47,159 --> 00:55:49,679
gonna come. There's been little sweat bees coming in to

842
00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:51,400
tap me too for sweat, but they don't you know,

843
00:55:51,440 --> 00:55:53,960
they're not really a nuisance. But anyway, so that's what

844
00:55:53,960 --> 00:55:55,800
I'm gonna do, or you could do the blow driver,

845
00:55:55,960 --> 00:55:58,159
but you know the blow drivers, even these little travel ones,

846
00:55:58,199 --> 00:55:59,679
you put it on low. You don't want high heat,

847
00:55:59,679 --> 00:56:02,280
put on low heat. They're not meant They're not meant

848
00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:05,440
to fucking run for five hours. I'm such a dumb ass.

849
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:07,360
I can't. But I just wasted so much fucking time

850
00:56:07,440 --> 00:56:09,639
and specimens. And also I forgot to label these, so,

851
00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:11,199
I mean, I can remember what they were, but I

852
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:14,320
had to go back and fucking label them with in

853
00:56:14,519 --> 00:56:16,400
at numbers and goddamn sit to pain in the ass.

854
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:19,920
I just can't believe I fucking waste me fuck, you know,

855
00:56:20,079 --> 00:56:21,800
I just it's still just thinking about it. It's like

856
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:24,480
whatever dopamine is the opposite of that, whatever you call that,

857
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:28,519
that feeling, that's what I'm feeling right whenever I think

858
00:56:28,559 --> 00:56:32,519
about it. So avoidable. Right Normally, if I'm like collecting

859
00:56:32,559 --> 00:56:33,920
and we've got a rental car, I just put it

860
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:37,039
on the dash. Blow the fucking defrosters. That's fine, that

861
00:56:37,119 --> 00:56:39,800
works like a charm. Maybe take some Q tips, insert

862
00:56:39,840 --> 00:56:42,800
them in between the pages to facilitate airflow through the pages.

863
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:45,880
But god damn it, just I can't believe I didn't,

864
00:56:45,960 --> 00:56:48,639
you know, I dried these things half fast and then

865
00:56:48,639 --> 00:56:51,000
put them in a suitcase. Then then just the suitcase

866
00:56:51,079 --> 00:56:54,440
was closed in the fucking uh the other place we

867
00:56:54,519 --> 00:56:56,239
were gonna go for like three days, and they just

868
00:56:56,400 --> 00:56:58,360
molded the shit. Such a dummies. I could have seen

869
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:03,320
it coming, you know. I feel remarkably better though in

870
00:57:03,599 --> 00:57:08,199
just an hour. Still sweating like hell, but it's become overcast.

871
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:10,760
Now we're just bathing in vapor. It's so humid you

872
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:13,480
gotta spoon the air into your lungs. But it's amazing

873
00:57:13,599 --> 00:57:18,800
what an electro like packet can do. Holy hell. Yeah,

874
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:25,199
I feel tons tons better still just taking pictures of leaves,

875
00:57:25,239 --> 00:57:29,679
though very few reproductive structures. Okay, it's a couple of

876
00:57:29,760 --> 00:57:32,599
days later, don't worry. He's I've been talking to this

877
00:57:32,719 --> 00:57:34,800
in a lot of ops. So I'm in a town

878
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:39,440
of bonios at my friend Crazy MIC's house. Crazy Mic,

879
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:43,159
the bee guy. He's not crazy, he's just eccentric. Spent

880
00:57:43,239 --> 00:57:45,960
all day with him, I said, a wonderful man. He's

881
00:57:46,119 --> 00:57:51,119
uh seventy two. He inhales a lot of naphthaline. You know,

882
00:57:51,239 --> 00:57:53,920
his whole office just smells like mothballs because he's got

883
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:56,679
these insect cabinets. He's you know, he's an entomologist. He

884
00:57:56,719 --> 00:58:00,000
studies him an out there are wasps and bees, especially,

885
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:04,159
oh the sweet volcanic soil. This climate where it never

886
00:58:04,239 --> 00:58:07,239
gets hotter than eighty degrees, where it's sixty two hundred

887
00:58:07,280 --> 00:58:12,280
feet in the town of Banos, which literally means baths.

888
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:14,760
I think it's some religious shit. We didn that makes sense.

889
00:58:15,519 --> 00:58:18,360
It's all religious shit. It's all Catholic. You know, a

890
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:21,119
lot of Catholic guilt. The Spanish went hard when they

891
00:58:21,159 --> 00:58:25,079
were doing the whole genocide thing. They really infused it

892
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:34,360
with Catholic Catholicism, Catholic punishment, Catholic erotic never mind, that's

893
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:37,639
a that's a horrible thought. Anyway. So anyway, Mike spends

894
00:58:37,679 --> 00:58:40,639
a lot of time breathing in annapoli, in vagers, vapors

895
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:44,599
because he studies insects. He's pining insects for the last

896
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:49,480
sixty years of his life. So, but he's got a

897
00:58:49,679 --> 00:58:52,000
wonderful house, very kind enough to let me stay there,

898
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:58,280
and then took me out yesterday like a fucking sweet man.

899
00:58:58,639 --> 00:59:03,000
And so I bought him dinner, and uh, anyway, he

900
00:59:03,079 --> 00:59:06,000
took me some really nice spots. It's crazy that it's

901
00:59:06,119 --> 00:59:09,920
so fucking steep here, because the mountains are still uplifting.

902
00:59:10,280 --> 00:59:13,000
There's still a out of earthquakes. See an every earthquake

903
00:59:13,079 --> 00:59:16,920
you get a couple of feet right, Probably have a

904
00:59:17,000 --> 00:59:21,039
large earthquake every thirty or forty years, maybe less. But

905
00:59:21,119 --> 00:59:23,039
I'm just right now. I'm just looking at these mountains

906
00:59:23,119 --> 00:59:28,440
just bathed in water vapor and covered in either pasture

907
00:59:28,559 --> 00:59:31,000
or eucalyptus trees. It is crazy how little of the

908
00:59:31,079 --> 00:59:34,199
native vegetation here is left. And you see the same

909
00:59:34,280 --> 00:59:38,239
horticultural atrocities. They got scotch broom. You want scotch broom,

910
00:59:38,320 --> 00:59:41,199
We got scotch broom. They got fucking Himalayan blackberries. It's

911
00:59:41,280 --> 00:59:43,440
like all the shit you'd see in the Pacific Northwest.

912
00:59:44,159 --> 00:59:47,440
It's the climbing of the Pacific Northwest. And we're only

913
00:59:47,960 --> 00:59:51,440
an hour two hours west of the Amazon where we

914
00:59:51,519 --> 00:59:55,800
were before. We were all sweating balls, and uh, you know,

915
00:59:55,880 --> 00:59:58,280
when they booked this tour and invited me to come

916
00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:00,400
on and help it, they told me to we were

917
01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:06,320
gonna stay at our friend's place in the Amazon, and

918
01:00:06,440 --> 01:00:09,199
it was nice, but this guy was like needlessly extravagant.

919
01:00:09,199 --> 01:00:11,199
It was kind of like a phrase of joy. It

920
01:00:11,320 --> 01:00:14,159
was uncomfortably extravagant, the kind of place I'm normally getting

921
01:00:14,239 --> 01:00:17,199
kicked out of. And so we stayed there for three nights,

922
01:00:17,719 --> 01:00:20,719
and I think and his staff was all really sweet,

923
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:23,840
the cooks and shit, they were fucking you know, they

924
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:26,800
were really wonderful people. They wanted to take a picture

925
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:29,039
with me afterwards, which kind of weirded me out, but

926
01:00:29,119 --> 01:00:34,800
that's all right whatever. But uh, but everybody got sick.

927
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:37,840
Camilo was pissing out his ass, everyone got diarrhea. Ever

928
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:40,960
was fucking you know. I thought maybe it was like

929
01:00:41,039 --> 01:00:44,440
a neuro virus, because that happens sometimes you get neumal

930
01:00:44,519 --> 01:00:48,440
viruses sweeping through. But it wasn't as violent as a

931
01:00:48,519 --> 01:00:51,599
neuro virus, you know. It was just it was just

932
01:00:51,679 --> 01:00:55,239
mild food poisoning. I don't know, you know, maybe he

933
01:00:55,400 --> 01:00:57,679
ate some maybe didn't. Maybe no fruit didn't get washed

934
01:00:57,760 --> 01:00:59,599
and there was some turred on it somewhere. I don't

935
01:00:59,599 --> 01:01:04,119
know a way. Uh, that day, that day I was recording,

936
01:01:04,199 --> 01:01:07,639
I just felt fucking destroyed, just like the fatigue you

937
01:01:07,679 --> 01:01:11,920
feel after you do get food poisoning. And uh, but

938
01:01:12,039 --> 01:01:14,280
then you know, they gave me some electrolyte packets. Alex

939
01:01:14,360 --> 01:01:17,880
gave me some et cetera, and so then I kind

940
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:22,320
of came back and uh some mambe the coca powder

941
01:01:22,480 --> 01:01:25,119
and put a little bit in your cheek. Coca powder

942
01:01:25,159 --> 01:01:30,159
and soacropia ash. That always helps you don't feel high,

943
01:01:30,199 --> 01:01:31,679
but it just like gives you a little bit. I

944
01:01:31,719 --> 01:01:34,960
don't know, it's it's a it's nice. It's a nice plant.

945
01:01:37,119 --> 01:01:41,119
So anyway, so then uh, we came after that, we

946
01:01:41,199 --> 01:01:43,320
went back up to Mara after three We spent three

947
01:01:43,400 --> 01:01:46,079
nights there. We didn't need to spend three nights there. Right,

948
01:01:46,199 --> 01:01:50,440
needlessly extravagant it was. It was not the most diverse.

949
01:01:50,480 --> 01:01:52,480
It was hot as a nutsack wrapped in a vinyl

950
01:01:52,599 --> 01:01:56,599
fucking sack next to a space heater, right like it

951
01:01:56,719 --> 01:01:58,519
was hot does a nutsack and a sun. It was

952
01:01:58,639 --> 01:02:03,280
just fucking not. But the it wasn't pleasant, you know.

953
01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:05,199
And he says things like that. He really alienates a

954
01:02:05,199 --> 01:02:07,760
lot of his viewers. I just don't, you know. I mean,

955
01:02:07,800 --> 01:02:11,840
I really appreciate what he does for the plant science community,

956
01:02:11,920 --> 01:02:13,639
but I just he's just not my cup of tea.

957
01:02:13,719 --> 01:02:17,599
I just can't get it. I'm just I just imagine

958
01:02:17,639 --> 01:02:21,360
these conversations I've overheard or been exposed to. You know,

959
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:25,599
the squares always think it's for them. It wasn't for you, buddy.

960
01:02:25,679 --> 01:02:29,719
It's very obviously not. But anyway, so, but the thing

961
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:31,199
I did liked on it, there was a lot of

962
01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:34,719
members of Costs. They see the family which is in Zingibarele's.

963
01:02:35,199 --> 01:02:39,960
They have this spiral stem, this spiraling stem uh. And

964
01:02:40,039 --> 01:02:43,719
then these really bizarre flowers with one stamen that's fused

965
01:02:43,800 --> 01:02:48,239
to a stigma. And then they have pedaloid stamens. Right,

966
01:02:49,400 --> 01:02:51,960
so these like they look like petals, but they're essentially

967
01:02:52,079 --> 01:02:56,559
sterile stamens. They're pedaloid staminodes. Excuse me. So that was

968
01:02:56,639 --> 01:02:58,679
cool to see some of those because that family always

969
01:02:58,719 --> 01:03:01,079
blows my mind. Then you have marin Tasty, which is

970
01:03:01,159 --> 01:03:03,800
also in the ginger order, but those that's this Maritasy

971
01:03:03,920 --> 01:03:07,719
is more like your typical uh, you know, office plant,

972
01:03:08,039 --> 01:03:10,840
like you buy him at Ikea or shop lift them

973
01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:14,880
at Ikea and then put them on a desk somewhere. Right,

974
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:17,840
It's just it's like, you know, they label it tropical folders.

975
01:03:17,880 --> 01:03:20,679
It's kind of marinthasty. Don't get too big. They got

976
01:03:20,719 --> 01:03:23,360
pretty leaves, they got different colors and patterns on the

977
01:03:23,480 --> 01:03:26,199
leaves right to make it interesting for the people who

978
01:03:26,239 --> 01:03:28,960
think there's nothing else worth paying attention to about plants.

979
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:34,719
But I saw on Acarpus battoir b A T A

980
01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:37,320
u A pronounce however the fuck you want, that's a

981
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:44,039
freebie right there, batulua. But how will and that it's

982
01:03:44,199 --> 01:03:48,199
it's this palm that's got these fucking thirty foot long leaves,

983
01:03:48,280 --> 01:03:53,440
like a single frond from pettiole to where it turns

984
01:03:53,480 --> 01:03:55,519
to racus, the racers is where it's got the leaflets

985
01:03:55,559 --> 01:03:59,599
on either side. It can be thirty feet fucking long. Insane.

986
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:02,519
It's absolutely insane. And then the base of these leaf sheaths,

987
01:04:03,119 --> 01:04:04,840
there's this hair that peels off of them, so you

988
01:04:04,920 --> 01:04:09,559
get these mats of hair beneath it. Absolutely fascinating and cool.

989
01:04:09,639 --> 01:04:12,960
Plant ethnobotanically very important. They start in the forest. You'll

990
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:15,960
be walking through this dense rainforest and then there's just

991
01:04:16,039 --> 01:04:19,960
this giant fucking palm. You know, before they get a stem,

992
01:04:20,079 --> 01:04:23,400
before they become coalescent, they become colessenant, like age thirty

993
01:04:23,519 --> 01:04:25,360
or something. I think they probably grow slow as fuck.

994
01:04:25,360 --> 01:04:27,320
They probably lived two hundred years. I don't know. Maybe longer,

995
01:04:27,760 --> 01:04:29,519
but it's if eventually they get a stem and they

996
01:04:29,599 --> 01:04:33,320
keep growing up and they eventually emerge through from the

997
01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:38,000
canopy saw Siba pentandra, which you know, you get siba

998
01:04:38,199 --> 01:04:41,239
grown as garden plants where I live. But the Siba pentandra,

999
01:04:41,360 --> 01:04:43,679
the ones when they form that giant buttress trunk that

1000
01:04:43,760 --> 01:04:46,079
looks like a ficus, and a number of plants do that,

1001
01:04:46,119 --> 01:04:50,119
I should. That's a convergent evolutionary trait. The form buttress trunks.

1002
01:04:50,199 --> 01:04:54,199
The fucking palms, the dong palms, the walking palms, they

1003
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:56,400
form buttress trunks as well. That's what they're doing with

1004
01:04:56,480 --> 01:04:59,119
those roots that emerge, you know, a meter or two

1005
01:04:59,199 --> 01:05:03,199
meters up the trunk and then root themselves into the ground. Right.

1006
01:05:03,239 --> 01:05:05,920
It's for stabilization. The pumps don't actually fucking walk. They

1007
01:05:06,000 --> 01:05:07,960
might move, they might lean a little bit, they might

1008
01:05:08,079 --> 01:05:10,840
shift their growing access a little bit as they if

1009
01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:12,559
they're growing on the hillside and they lean over and

1010
01:05:12,599 --> 01:05:15,360
their proper roots prop them up. But it's all just

1011
01:05:15,679 --> 01:05:20,079
you know, it's all just buttressed trunks. It's stabilization and support.

1012
01:05:20,280 --> 01:05:22,719
That in drip tips, the drip tips on the leaves

1013
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:27,159
where the the leaf turns into this would it be

1014
01:05:27,360 --> 01:05:32,119
mocrinate point or aerostates, I don't know, you know, when

1015
01:05:32,159 --> 01:05:35,320
it's basically trying to channel water off the leaf. Those

1016
01:05:35,360 --> 01:05:38,760
are two things that the two traits, two of the

1017
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:41,960
traits that the many plants and related plant lineages converge

1018
01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:45,920
on evolutionarily when they're growing in such a wet, vapor

1019
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:48,760
bathed environment. And it was great because we were on

1020
01:05:48,880 --> 01:05:51,440
this hill and you could look out over and there's Onocarpus,

1021
01:05:51,800 --> 01:05:54,800
that giant palm popping up here and there throughout the forest,

1022
01:05:54,880 --> 01:05:58,119
and you can just see the fucking vaporizing off of it,

1023
01:05:58,840 --> 01:06:01,320
you know. And there'll be a lot horizon line of trees,

1024
01:06:01,360 --> 01:06:03,360
and then another horizon line of trees behind that, and

1025
01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:05,960
then another horizon line of trees behind that, all different couts.

1026
01:06:05,960 --> 01:06:11,280
It's fucking incredible beautiful. There was this guy Marley who

1027
01:06:11,320 --> 01:06:16,519
brought uh water colors and he uses a little refillable

1028
01:06:16,719 --> 01:06:19,079
brush pen that he fills with water and he'll just

1029
01:06:19,159 --> 01:06:21,360
dip the tip into colors and then when he needs

1030
01:06:21,400 --> 01:06:23,280
to change color, he just squeezes water out of it,

1031
01:06:23,360 --> 01:06:25,679
which like flushes the inking and they can put a

1032
01:06:25,800 --> 01:06:29,280
new a new water color and color in there and

1033
01:06:29,400 --> 01:06:32,360
he was doing these sketches of of all the uh

1034
01:06:33,159 --> 01:06:35,320
landscapes we went to. Is really nice, but that Siba

1035
01:06:35,480 --> 01:06:38,400
was fucking dope. And everything's covered in mosses and brow

1036
01:06:38,480 --> 01:06:42,079
fights and ferns and incredible shit. It was really incredible shit.

1037
01:06:42,800 --> 01:06:46,199
Saw a member of the genus Teculia that had these fruits,

1038
01:06:46,280 --> 01:06:49,440
these woody fruits that opened and then were covered in

1039
01:06:49,519 --> 01:06:52,679
these little irdicating hairs that kind of stuck in you.

1040
01:06:53,519 --> 01:06:55,880
Camillo picked one up and got these hair stuck in it. Yeah,

1041
01:06:55,880 --> 01:06:57,760
it was. It was a fucking dope trip. The Amazon

1042
01:06:57,880 --> 01:06:59,800
was cool. It's the fucking Amazon, man. I mean, you know,

1043
01:07:00,239 --> 01:07:02,000
to look on the map and you see everything east

1044
01:07:02,039 --> 01:07:05,639
to you and there's nothing there. It's just green. There's

1045
01:07:05,840 --> 01:07:09,880
maybe a couple settlements here and there in a busted road.

1046
01:07:09,960 --> 01:07:10,119
Speaker 2: You know.

1047
01:07:11,400 --> 01:07:12,960
Speaker 1: It was cool, man, It was fucking cool. And then

1048
01:07:12,960 --> 01:07:14,440
I was out at one point, I was out taking

1049
01:07:14,480 --> 01:07:17,800
pictures of plants on the road, Lots of ruder uls,

1050
01:07:17,880 --> 01:07:21,280
lots of you know, invasive bullshit, you know, gingers from

1051
01:07:21,320 --> 01:07:24,199
Asia or whatever, just you know, some native plants to

1052
01:07:24,280 --> 01:07:27,239
a lot of pine, just native pioneer species. Fucking every

1053
01:07:27,280 --> 01:07:30,320
bus that goes by just fill with indigenous people, right,

1054
01:07:30,320 --> 01:07:32,159
because the only people who live east of there in

1055
01:07:32,199 --> 01:07:38,039
the Amazon are mostly indigenous people. It's uh, I really

1056
01:07:38,119 --> 01:07:39,599
love that though. Just looking on a map and you

1057
01:07:39,719 --> 01:07:42,920
just see everything east it's just fucking dark green with

1058
01:07:43,199 --> 01:07:48,159
very few human settlements poking up. Pretty incredible. But but yeah,

1059
01:07:48,159 --> 01:07:50,360
after three nights of that, you know, you're like Jesus man,

1060
01:07:50,440 --> 01:07:54,639
it's just vapor on everything. Shit molds so quick. So

1061
01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:56,920
after that I went back to the Marah and then

1062
01:07:57,000 --> 01:07:58,400
now I came up here because there was a bunch

1063
01:07:58,440 --> 01:08:01,320
of shit I wanted to see, and I wanted to

1064
01:08:01,360 --> 01:08:03,960
see this stuff in Banios for a while because it's

1065
01:08:04,079 --> 01:08:07,880
you've got these, you know, large lava flows, columnar basalt,

1066
01:08:08,440 --> 01:08:12,760
epic road cuts covered in puya's puya, glomarifhra. It's a

1067
01:08:13,000 --> 01:08:15,599
it's a bermelia that looks like in a gave, with

1068
01:08:15,719 --> 01:08:19,600
these incredible torch like inflorescences that emerge from them, tons

1069
01:08:19,640 --> 01:08:22,279
of orchids, all all the shit I love. You know.

1070
01:08:22,439 --> 01:08:27,119
It's like this weird mix between chilly, foggy vegetation mixed

1071
01:08:27,199 --> 01:08:31,760
with more xeric stuff, more drought tolerant stuff growing on

1072
01:08:31,880 --> 01:08:35,640
these rocks, on these like these rocky outcroppings and microsites,

1073
01:08:35,680 --> 01:08:37,680
like on the west side of Banios yesterday we saw

1074
01:08:38,359 --> 01:08:40,800
borzicact this which was a it used to be in

1075
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:44,680
Kleisto cactus. It's a hummingbird pollinated cactus. You know, forms

1076
01:08:44,720 --> 01:08:47,359
these stems that get maybe three four feet tall. But

1077
01:08:47,439 --> 01:08:49,960
then they'll like fall over, you know, is the rocks

1078
01:08:49,960 --> 01:08:53,079
they're on shift or part of the wall, the rock

1079
01:08:53,159 --> 01:08:55,000
wall they're going on the roads, and then it'll form

1080
01:08:55,079 --> 01:09:00,079
this little curve, you know, this little curving stem and

1081
01:09:00,159 --> 01:09:02,520
they end up looking all it just looks fucking wild.

1082
01:09:03,039 --> 01:09:08,199
Tons of cool orchids. I saw fragment Pedium lyndle lie

1083
01:09:08,239 --> 01:09:13,800
ainum or lindinii. Excuse me, fragment Pedium lindinii growing in

1084
01:09:13,880 --> 01:09:16,079
this really interesting spot Mike took me to. I guess

1085
01:09:16,079 --> 01:09:18,720
he was collecting wasps there a couple decades, a decade

1086
01:09:18,720 --> 01:09:22,159
ago or something, and uh, this fragmentedium, you know, fragment

1087
01:09:22,199 --> 01:09:24,960
Pedium is an orchid. They're in the Lady slipper stupid

1088
01:09:25,039 --> 01:09:28,640
common name Lady slipper subfamily, the sipper pedoid, which has

1089
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:33,560
two statemens and a staminode. Most orchids only have one stamen,

1090
01:09:34,039 --> 01:09:38,720
especially the epidendrods, one stamen, one anther, you know, and

1091
01:09:38,800 --> 01:09:42,479
then each side of the anther, each each each of

1092
01:09:42,560 --> 01:09:47,920
the theka is a theka releases pollen. So it's just

1093
01:09:48,000 --> 01:09:51,239
one stamen producing pollinia, but person of pollen nodules, because

1094
01:09:51,239 --> 01:09:53,359
you know, epidendrods produced two polyin nodules, but it'll be

1095
01:09:53,399 --> 01:09:55,960
one on either side. And that's on either side of

1096
01:09:55,960 --> 01:10:00,720
the stamen, the theka, which are the yellow anther lobes.

1097
01:10:02,199 --> 01:10:06,039
But so this this uh, this sip. The super pedioids

1098
01:10:06,079 --> 01:10:08,520
are cool. They're not as species rich as the epith androids.

1099
01:10:09,039 --> 01:10:12,359
But this what was interesting is that this I assumed

1100
01:10:12,439 --> 01:10:15,199
all the super pedioids had a bag, right, that they

1101
01:10:15,279 --> 01:10:18,560
had a uh, you know, a labellum that had been

1102
01:10:18,600 --> 01:10:20,439
morphed into a bag and for the fly to go

1103
01:10:20,560 --> 01:10:23,199
in and then to fly out the back whatever. But

1104
01:10:23,359 --> 01:10:27,279
this didn't have that. This just had these really long teeples,

1105
01:10:27,760 --> 01:10:30,800
probably four times as long as the flower had itself,

1106
01:10:31,920 --> 01:10:34,640
the mass of the flower itself, the parient itself. And uh,

1107
01:10:35,880 --> 01:10:37,239
I mean the peoples are of parents, but you know

1108
01:10:37,279 --> 01:10:40,039
what I'm saying, right, they're fucking long peoples, right, long

1109
01:10:40,119 --> 01:10:43,359
dong peoples and it just had a really bizarre morphology.

1110
01:10:43,359 --> 01:10:45,520
And then you look inside at the column and it

1111
01:10:45,600 --> 01:10:48,680
had these red hairs like it was mimicking rotting meat

1112
01:10:48,800 --> 01:10:52,439
or something, you know, like it was mimicking dead animal flesh.

1113
01:10:53,239 --> 01:10:56,319
And then it had this this other statement in the back.

1114
01:10:56,399 --> 01:10:58,800
It was so fucking weird. And I sent it to

1115
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:03,840
some other orchid or nerves that I know, and yeah,

1116
01:11:03,920 --> 01:11:05,359
it was just God, it was bizarre. But there were

1117
01:11:05,399 --> 01:11:07,840
tons of orchids there, you know, terrestrial orchids, and this

1118
01:11:07,960 --> 01:11:10,279
thing was growing terrestrially just out of the ground. And

1119
01:11:10,359 --> 01:11:12,000
the ground at this site we were at like sixty

1120
01:11:12,039 --> 01:11:14,600
five hundred feet, it was remnant vegetation because everything around

1121
01:11:14,600 --> 01:11:17,880
here is agriculture, or its pines or its fucking blue

1122
01:11:17,920 --> 01:11:20,600
gum eucalyptus. There's more blue gum eucalyptus here than I've

1123
01:11:20,600 --> 01:11:22,640
seen in Australia. I'm looking at a hillside that's been

1124
01:11:22,680 --> 01:11:27,720
denudative native vegetation and is mostly pines now right. It's

1125
01:11:27,880 --> 01:11:31,079
crazy to see. It makes me really wonder what was

1126
01:11:31,159 --> 01:11:33,359
here before, because there's so little record of it. Like

1127
01:11:33,760 --> 01:11:37,399
normally on agriculture you'll find and it's incredibly steep slopes.

1128
01:11:37,399 --> 01:11:41,439
We saw greenhouses on the thirty degree slope yesterday. I mean,

1129
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:43,640
it's just it's so steep because these mountains are still

1130
01:11:43,680 --> 01:11:46,720
being uplifted, right, it's the fucking andes, right, You've got

1131
01:11:47,560 --> 01:11:51,039
the Nasca plates causing all this uplift that's subducting Naska

1132
01:11:51,119 --> 01:11:53,680
plate is causing these mountains and these volcanoes. I'm looking

1133
01:11:53,720 --> 01:11:57,439
at a volcano right now, Tungaragua volcano, bathed in vapor

1134
01:11:59,079 --> 01:12:01,319
right like towering above you. It's really cool at night

1135
01:12:01,359 --> 01:12:02,960
when like lights come on, because you know, it's like

1136
01:12:03,039 --> 01:12:05,359
they got the Catholic dungeon everywhere. They got these shrines

1137
01:12:05,359 --> 01:12:07,279
and shit, and you see these they're all lit up

1138
01:12:07,319 --> 01:12:08,960
and it's like they look like they're in the sky.

1139
01:12:09,039 --> 01:12:11,920
They're so high up there, you think that they're you forget,

1140
01:12:11,960 --> 01:12:15,920
mountains can be that tall, right, taller than skyscrapers. So

1141
01:12:18,399 --> 01:12:20,760
in a relatively short amount of time, like the slope

1142
01:12:20,840 --> 01:12:24,159
is really steep, you know, like they're they're right there.

1143
01:12:24,439 --> 01:12:26,760
It's like comb peak and uh you know they're big

1144
01:12:26,920 --> 01:12:30,279
sur that's sir with the s U R, not big sir.

1145
01:12:30,479 --> 01:12:37,520
You know, like you call you deity. Uh but anyway, yeah,

1146
01:12:37,600 --> 01:12:39,920
so uh this but this area that we had like

1147
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:44,359
this peat soil, it felt like subparramo vegetation. There was

1148
01:12:44,399 --> 01:12:47,000
a cool back wrist there I'd never seen before, cool

1149
01:12:47,079 --> 01:12:50,039
coyote bush, tons of orchids. There was like six or

1150
01:12:50,079 --> 01:12:52,960
seven different orchid species, probably more. There was that wine

1151
01:12:53,039 --> 01:12:56,319
Mannias species qunony A c. Which you can always tell

1152
01:12:56,399 --> 01:12:59,920
is keunony ac because it denoted by those two uh

1153
01:13:00,039 --> 01:13:04,239
uh half circle uh stipules that you get at the

1154
01:13:04,279 --> 01:13:07,279
appical marastem of every shoot, you know, before the new

1155
01:13:07,319 --> 01:13:12,920
growth emerges. Relatively uninspiring flowers. But whatever, But that was

1156
01:13:12,960 --> 01:13:14,600
a that wye manny I've seen before. It was a

1157
01:13:14,640 --> 01:13:20,399
pioneer species winged the winged stems too, or winged racus,

1158
01:13:20,520 --> 01:13:23,319
the winged rackus where the leaves leap, the pinnate leaves are,

1159
01:13:23,920 --> 01:13:25,960
the odd pinnate leaves are. God damn, I got fucking

1160
01:13:26,039 --> 01:13:29,359
chiger bites on my ass. I got really taken apart

1161
01:13:29,399 --> 01:13:33,199
by the chickers. What else did I see there? Yeah?

1162
01:13:33,319 --> 01:13:37,640
I mean just just wild, really cool ferns. Uh. That

1163
01:13:37,800 --> 01:13:41,000
epiphytic red liver wart that looks like a Spanish moss

1164
01:13:41,840 --> 01:13:44,800
was everywhere. I mean, it's just it's a spot you see,

1165
01:13:44,880 --> 01:13:47,000
and you just want to stop and check it out.

1166
01:13:47,039 --> 01:13:52,239
There there was a oh yeah, and ruepalla rupala monosperma proteace.

1167
01:13:53,239 --> 01:13:56,359
I saw this thing, this little this small tree, small

1168
01:13:56,439 --> 01:13:59,600
shrub and a large shrub, small tree, and with these

1169
01:13:59,800 --> 01:14:02,680
these giant, ovate, serrated leaves that felt like they were

1170
01:14:02,720 --> 01:14:06,319
made out of plastic, very coreaceous. They felt like stiff leather,

1171
01:14:07,079 --> 01:14:08,880
like a like a leather glove had been left to

1172
01:14:08,960 --> 01:14:11,560
dry out in the sun, you know. And that's always

1173
01:14:11,720 --> 01:14:14,199
for me, that's always a giveaway of prote ace, the

1174
01:14:14,520 --> 01:14:19,520
bizarre Southern hemisphere plant family with woody fruits. It always

1175
01:14:19,560 --> 01:14:21,720
has woody fruits. And you get the banksias in Australia,

1176
01:14:21,760 --> 01:14:24,880
you got the fucking proteas used in the floral arrangements.

1177
01:14:24,880 --> 01:14:28,239
And ship from South Africa got a South African accent.

1178
01:14:28,439 --> 01:14:31,880
Is so punishing, man, there's just no offense, you know

1179
01:14:31,920 --> 01:14:34,800
what I mean? That Dutch Afrikaans like, okay, never mind,

1180
01:14:34,840 --> 01:14:39,119
I'm gonna I'm already of finding people again, but I

1181
01:14:39,520 --> 01:14:53,199
just can't take the fucking accent. Oh It's like, I

1182
01:14:53,279 --> 01:14:54,720
don't know what it is. I don't know what you

1183
01:14:54,760 --> 01:14:56,359
know what. I'm sorry I'm just gonna stop before I

1184
01:14:56,439 --> 01:15:00,840
get myself out of trouble. But anyway, but the the

1185
01:15:01,039 --> 01:15:03,159
soil was it was pretty dry. It had and rained

1186
01:15:03,199 --> 01:15:07,239
in like in like two months. And uh, and the

1187
01:15:07,439 --> 01:15:10,439
soil was like this, this black carbon rich pea, probably

1188
01:15:10,520 --> 01:15:13,439
very acidic, which was enabling these things to grow here.

1189
01:15:13,920 --> 01:15:16,479
Lots of cabin dishes too. Speaking of acid soils, we

1190
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:20,880
got eric acy cavin dishy is a prominent genus with

1191
01:15:21,000 --> 01:15:26,840
those wonderful tube flowers for hummingbird pollination. But just tons

1192
01:15:26,960 --> 01:15:30,439
and tons of interesting shit and uh and yeah, Rupaula

1193
01:15:30,560 --> 01:15:33,319
monosperma was a cool one. Rupaula. I've seen that genus

1194
01:15:33,399 --> 01:15:36,920
in Brazil. It's proteac again given away by those the

1195
01:15:37,039 --> 01:15:40,479
texture and feeling of those relatively large leaves. I couldn't

1196
01:15:40,520 --> 01:15:43,720
find influorescences on any and then I found an inflorescence

1197
01:15:43,760 --> 01:15:46,560
full of the woody fruits. I would love to see

1198
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:49,560
it when it flowers. It's gotta be fucking wild. Uh.

1199
01:15:49,760 --> 01:15:54,000
There was a cool Corsettia which is fabasi. This is

1200
01:15:54,079 --> 01:15:55,319
more in the dry site. So we were at this

1201
01:15:55,439 --> 01:15:57,800
this like Subparmo vegetation spot with all the orchids, and

1202
01:15:57,840 --> 01:16:00,840
we drove to the drier site where there's native Apuntias

1203
01:16:00,880 --> 01:16:06,079
species and Borza cactus with a little red you know,

1204
01:16:06,199 --> 01:16:09,039
hummingbird pollinated flower coming out. You gotta look up Borza

1205
01:16:09,079 --> 01:16:11,399
cactus and Cleisto cactus if you've never heard of them before.

1206
01:16:12,000 --> 01:16:16,000
Very interesting. The whole genus Kleisto Cactus is hummingbird pollinated.

1207
01:16:16,560 --> 01:16:20,600
Uc Berkeley Botanic Garden, probably the best botanic garden in

1208
01:16:20,640 --> 01:16:24,800
the country, had a huge Cleisto cactus collection, and so

1209
01:16:25,039 --> 01:16:28,880
all the different species. Right, This like adaptive radiation of

1210
01:16:29,000 --> 01:16:36,199
these hummingbird pollinated high andian cacti really cool to see, right,

1211
01:16:36,239 --> 01:16:40,319
but they all have that red flower. The hummingbird pollination

1212
01:16:40,439 --> 01:16:43,640
thing is so fucking prominent in the andes. Of course,

1213
01:16:43,800 --> 01:16:45,399
is this dog shit I'm walking on and it's just

1214
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:49,079
like horseshit. Okay, I feel better. I saw this dog

1215
01:16:49,199 --> 01:16:51,279
as day. It looked like Rick James. It was like

1216
01:16:51,359 --> 01:16:53,239
a white loss of apso. I don't know it was

1217
01:16:53,279 --> 01:16:55,079
a muth, but it looked like Rick James because the

1218
01:16:55,159 --> 01:16:58,359
hair had it was all like stringing shit and it

1219
01:16:58,479 --> 01:17:02,920
was like hanging down the fucking doghead bangs it was.

1220
01:17:03,520 --> 01:17:05,640
It was made all the more funny because it was

1221
01:17:05,720 --> 01:17:08,159
talking ship to me. It was really upset that I

1222
01:17:08,319 --> 01:17:15,119
was where it was. It was fucked I was fucked up.

1223
01:17:17,239 --> 01:17:18,920
But the so then after that we went to the

1224
01:17:19,000 --> 01:17:21,279
dry site, and we saw the dryer site on this

1225
01:17:21,439 --> 01:17:23,880
like kind of like this rain shadow area of Bono's

1226
01:17:24,359 --> 01:17:26,399
once all the rain's been squeezed up as the air

1227
01:17:26,479 --> 01:17:31,159
ascends westward from the Amazon. And and that's where we

1228
01:17:31,199 --> 01:17:33,960
saw the Borzicctus growing on these rock out croppings. There's

1229
01:17:33,960 --> 01:17:35,960
a gave everywhere too, but I'm pretty sure it's not

1230
01:17:36,279 --> 01:17:39,600
it's just naturalized, it's not native. Lots of interesting stuff.

1231
01:17:39,680 --> 01:17:44,000
This whole area was so floristically diverse. Uh yeah, man,

1232
01:17:44,000 --> 01:17:48,359
I made a ton of collections pressings, uh and uh.

1233
01:17:48,560 --> 01:17:51,239
But that corsetti was fucking weird too. That corsetti was

1234
01:17:51,279 --> 01:17:54,479
really was was a Corsetti at Dubia I think, which

1235
01:17:54,680 --> 01:18:01,880
you know is a pink Papoleonaceous faboid subfamily flower. Yeah.

1236
01:18:01,920 --> 01:18:05,319
Camillo's got he's got permits from the the Anabio at

1237
01:18:05,399 --> 01:18:08,279
the Keto, the Rbariamaketo. So we're collecting stuff for there.

1238
01:18:09,079 --> 01:18:14,000
So I collected all I collected all that shit. The uh,

1239
01:18:15,720 --> 01:18:19,159
the other interesting thing that I saw there too was crotons.

1240
01:18:19,159 --> 01:18:21,800
There was so much croton diversity. There was this one

1241
01:18:21,880 --> 01:18:26,359
croton that looked like California flannel bush, the genus Fromontodendron

1242
01:18:27,279 --> 01:18:29,920
because it god damn man, which it was covered in

1243
01:18:30,000 --> 01:18:33,479
this like this orange rusty scale, like pubescent, and it

1244
01:18:33,600 --> 01:18:37,600
had kind of malvoid like malevasy looking leaves. Just a

1245
01:18:37,720 --> 01:18:42,159
really fascinating plant, really interesting. You know, crotons up four bac.

1246
01:18:42,319 --> 01:18:46,000
They have flowers, you know, spikes of male flowers subtended

1247
01:18:46,079 --> 01:18:49,640
by female flowers. The mature at the ovaries and the

1248
01:18:49,720 --> 01:18:54,880
female flower. The female ovary has three carpals, so three sections,

1249
01:18:55,359 --> 01:18:59,439
and each section has a two branched style and stigma

1250
01:18:59,520 --> 01:19:02,479
that comes off of it, so it's it almost looks

1251
01:19:02,560 --> 01:19:04,840
like a stam and if you know, if you're not

1252
01:19:04,880 --> 01:19:07,800
paying attention to the fact, there's this jar large ovary

1253
01:19:08,039 --> 01:19:10,600
down there, because there's all these appendages coming off, you know,

1254
01:19:10,720 --> 01:19:14,560
so numerous they look like stamens. But there was this

1255
01:19:15,439 --> 01:19:21,720
what was a croton mentadora, and then croton I forget

1256
01:19:21,760 --> 01:19:23,399
the other one you got. I gotta look in the

1257
01:19:23,479 --> 01:19:28,239
Ecuador a catalog of ascular plants, or at the INET

1258
01:19:28,680 --> 01:19:31,680
observations I made. But just the diversity was just fucking nuts.

1259
01:19:31,720 --> 01:19:33,600
There was so, you know, you see one thing. That's

1260
01:19:33,640 --> 01:19:35,920
how it always works. You go looking for one interesting thing,

1261
01:19:36,399 --> 01:19:39,680
and you see six other things that are interesting, or

1262
01:19:39,760 --> 01:19:41,680
ten other things that are interesting, you know, and then

1263
01:19:41,760 --> 01:19:43,840
now you've got an interest in this, right, So you

1264
01:19:43,880 --> 01:19:45,319
always just got to get your ass out there. You

1265
01:19:45,359 --> 01:19:46,720
just got to get your ass out and look for

1266
01:19:46,840 --> 01:19:49,000
this stuff. Right, get out of the fucking house, Get

1267
01:19:49,039 --> 01:19:51,479
off the phone. Definitely, get off the fucking video games

1268
01:19:52,039 --> 01:19:56,000
if that's what you're doing. No offense the fucking video games. Right,

1269
01:19:56,199 --> 01:19:58,399
get out the social media stuff, comparing yourself to others.

1270
01:19:58,479 --> 01:20:00,680
Realize what you're doing, your bad habits. It's sick, it's

1271
01:20:00,720 --> 01:20:02,479
bad for you, it's bullshit. Don't do it. You're being

1272
01:20:02,520 --> 01:20:05,199
fucking indoctrinated. Get out there, go look for some nice ship.

1273
01:20:06,720 --> 01:20:08,600
So I think today, I don't know, we're gonna go.

1274
01:20:08,720 --> 01:20:11,760
Maybe we'll go to Ambato. I gotta take the bus

1275
01:20:11,920 --> 01:20:15,439
back down the hill eastward towards the Amazon to go

1276
01:20:15,920 --> 01:20:20,960
rejoin my party. I don't know if you can hear this,

1277
01:20:21,119 --> 01:20:24,039
but this is an Andy and J fucking weird bird

1278
01:20:24,680 --> 01:20:27,640
stand out on a cliff looking at some tiny patch

1279
01:20:27,680 --> 01:20:30,199
of remnant forest in the Banios area. Most of it's

1280
01:20:30,239 --> 01:20:40,720
been cleared. You heard it. That's a violacious j The

1281
01:20:40,840 --> 01:20:43,520
Andy and j flew up, but we got a violacious Jane.

1282
01:20:43,520 --> 01:20:47,680
Now you gonna look those things up, like violacious, like

1283
01:20:47,800 --> 01:20:53,039
a lush, like a luscious, luscious violet, luscious violet. J

1284
01:20:53,840 --> 01:20:59,000
What are these fucking corvids? Man? All these fucking corvids. God,

1285
01:20:59,039 --> 01:21:05,039
they're amazing. Ah made of Corvid's inherit the earth. Once

1286
01:21:05,119 --> 01:21:10,319
we've fucked everything, I don't think there's any hope. I

1287
01:21:10,359 --> 01:21:12,600
shouldn't be saying that out loud. There's no hope. I'm

1288
01:21:12,640 --> 01:21:16,600
a catastrophist. Right. It's like any any alcoholic They any

1289
01:21:16,640 --> 01:21:19,399
alcoholic ratic, they don't stop until they're forced through. Right.

1290
01:21:19,479 --> 01:21:21,640
We're not gonna stop until we're forced to from our

1291
01:21:21,640 --> 01:21:25,640
own bad behavior. Were there. We're forced to make room

1292
01:21:25,720 --> 01:21:28,920
for the sacred within our society and have a place

1293
01:21:29,000 --> 01:21:35,600
for the living world. It's a cool bird though, Oh

1294
01:21:35,720 --> 01:21:37,720
this is you gotta listen to this stone. It's a

1295
01:21:37,800 --> 01:21:39,920
couple of days later, it's a day later. Listen to

1296
01:21:40,000 --> 01:21:50,199
this stone, isn't it nice? That's Jillian Welch. See suddenly

1297
01:21:50,279 --> 01:21:52,359
I pick on a persona of like a sixty five

1298
01:21:52,439 --> 01:21:55,479
year old lesbian that lives by yourself with like five

1299
01:21:55,600 --> 01:21:57,720
cats in New Mexico or something. But it's a fucking

1300
01:21:57,720 --> 01:21:59,960
beautiful song and there's nothing wrong with me. And it's

1301
01:22:00,000 --> 01:22:01,960
sixty five year old lesbian that lives alone with five

1302
01:22:02,079 --> 01:22:05,119
cats in the middle of a desert in Mexico. It's

1303
01:22:05,159 --> 01:22:07,319
actually that's a that's not a bad you know, if

1304
01:22:07,359 --> 01:22:08,960
you come out like that, that's not a bad way

1305
01:22:09,000 --> 01:22:11,199
to end up, you know, if you've made it through

1306
01:22:11,239 --> 01:22:14,439
sixty five fucking years of this life anyway. At Jillian

1307
01:22:14,479 --> 01:22:16,800
Welch is great. She's liked some of my stuff before

1308
01:22:16,880 --> 01:22:19,439
on Instagram, but she don't follow me, probably because I

1309
01:22:19,479 --> 01:22:21,399
fucking annoyed her. You know. See, I think it happens

1310
01:22:21,439 --> 01:22:24,439
with a lot of people. They they see a video

1311
01:22:24,520 --> 01:22:27,760
I did or something, and then they look closer and

1312
01:22:27,840 --> 01:22:29,720
they're like, yeah, that's you know what. This guy's kind

1313
01:22:29,720 --> 01:22:32,359
of crass and and and obnoxious, and maybe I just

1314
01:22:32,439 --> 01:22:34,680
won't And that's fine with me. That's pleasant. That's the

1315
01:22:34,720 --> 01:22:38,079
way I've lived my life anyway. So I'm fucking back,

1316
01:22:38,159 --> 01:22:41,560
I'm chilling at hobbies. He's gone, I'm putting together a

1317
01:22:41,640 --> 01:22:45,319
burium labels. It is remarkable how fucking long it takes

1318
01:22:45,399 --> 01:22:48,600
for some of this plant material to dry out. You know,

1319
01:22:48,800 --> 01:22:50,560
when you come from a climate like that of Bono

1320
01:22:50,680 --> 01:22:55,359
Sekwood or in Tungaragua Province. Uh, you know the shit

1321
01:22:55,439 --> 01:22:58,640
swear it's it never gets hotter than eighty degrees and

1322
01:22:58,800 --> 01:23:01,279
everything's just bathed in raper all the time. It's very

1323
01:23:01,359 --> 01:23:05,399
hard to dry out. The last couple of days, yeah,

1324
01:23:05,439 --> 01:23:08,039
I was hanging out with the crazy entomologist. He's an

1325
01:23:08,079 --> 01:23:13,039
eccentric and uh, and just going through some really notable habitat.

1326
01:23:13,079 --> 01:23:16,199
It is wild how much of the fucking habitat Again,

1327
01:23:16,239 --> 01:23:18,239
I know I just said it, but it's wild how

1328
01:23:18,319 --> 01:23:22,720
much of a habitat has been destroyed like we we

1329
01:23:22,920 --> 01:23:26,720
And I went out with this wife the next day, Alina,

1330
01:23:26,840 --> 01:23:31,159
who studies the genus Monina, which is in polygalaci And

1331
01:23:31,239 --> 01:23:35,279
there's like eighty different Monina species. They look like pea flowers.

1332
01:23:35,399 --> 01:23:38,319
They're always purple and with like maybe a hint of yellow,

1333
01:23:38,520 --> 01:23:40,159
and they can be shrubs. You see them in Parma

1334
01:23:40,239 --> 01:23:43,079
vegetation a lot, generally at higher elevations. Sometimes you'll see

1335
01:23:43,159 --> 01:23:47,920
him in lower elevation tropical forests. They kind of look alike.

1336
01:23:47,920 --> 01:23:50,760
They're cool, but they kind of look alike. And anyway,

1337
01:23:50,800 --> 01:23:53,840
so we were driving around, like the other side of

1338
01:23:53,880 --> 01:23:57,800
the mountain and Bonios, going past these fucking incredibly sketchy

1339
01:23:57,840 --> 01:24:01,079
cliffs where you know, like maybe I said this already.

1340
01:24:01,119 --> 01:24:03,359
The road used to be two lanes, but now it's

1341
01:24:03,439 --> 01:24:04,960
like one and a half because the other half of

1342
01:24:05,000 --> 01:24:09,359
the lane fell off the cliff. And so it's it's

1343
01:24:09,520 --> 01:24:11,920
terrifying territory. It's like, you know, the type of shit

1344
01:24:11,960 --> 01:24:13,640
where you're like, fuck it, I'll just get out and walk.

1345
01:24:13,680 --> 01:24:15,319
I feel safe for walking than being in a car.

1346
01:24:16,319 --> 01:24:17,960
And we were driving past all this, you know, and

1347
01:24:18,039 --> 01:24:19,680
it's it's a lot of blue gum you can lit

1348
01:24:19,720 --> 01:24:24,199
this and pine probably I guess it's radiota pine. And

1349
01:24:24,479 --> 01:24:29,199
there's just nothing in the original vegetation left. Supposedly indigenous

1350
01:24:29,239 --> 01:24:31,319
cultures that lived there before had cleared most of the

1351
01:24:31,439 --> 01:24:34,479
forest or set fire to it so they could graze

1352
01:24:36,159 --> 01:24:38,359
el pacas, I guess, and lamas. You know that the

1353
01:24:38,560 --> 01:24:40,760
fuckers had spit on you, you know, with the fucked

1354
01:24:40,800 --> 01:24:42,479
up teeth I had. I got spin on by a

1355
01:24:42,560 --> 01:24:44,600
lama two years ago. I never really shook it off.

1356
01:24:45,640 --> 01:24:47,359
There was some church I went. Is this church the

1357
01:24:47,359 --> 01:24:49,319
near where I lived? They kept lamas upsid. I don't know.

1358
01:24:49,359 --> 01:24:52,159
The fucking priest is that he loves he loves the animals,

1359
01:24:53,159 --> 01:24:54,840
and it's lama. I went to go pettit and it'd

1360
01:24:54,880 --> 01:24:56,760
spit on me, and then my daughter started laughing at me,

1361
01:24:56,800 --> 01:24:58,800
and it was, you know, it was the lama was

1362
01:24:59,279 --> 01:25:01,119
the thing was a to be honest, all right, I

1363
01:25:01,199 --> 01:25:02,279
know I can be a pain of the ass too,

1364
01:25:02,279 --> 01:25:04,840
but the fucking lama was an asshole. And that's just

1365
01:25:04,880 --> 01:25:06,319
the way it goes. Sometimes you meet a lot of

1366
01:25:06,359 --> 01:25:08,840
these fucking lamas that are are and camel lid, you know,

1367
01:25:08,960 --> 01:25:12,039
these South America, South American camel lid bastards that are

1368
01:25:12,119 --> 01:25:14,720
just assholes. Have you ever met a nice one? Have

1369
01:25:14,840 --> 01:25:17,760
you ever met one that was kind and soft? Right?

1370
01:25:17,880 --> 01:25:19,239
It's not like that. It's not like if you meet

1371
01:25:19,279 --> 01:25:24,439
a donkey. I've met plenty of nice donkeys and uh, horses,

1372
01:25:24,479 --> 01:25:26,920
and shit, I've never met a nice lama. They're kind

1373
01:25:26,960 --> 01:25:30,279
of assholes, you know. And if you're gonna be species,

1374
01:25:30,319 --> 01:25:33,840
just you know, it's just call it what it call

1375
01:25:33,880 --> 01:25:37,079
a spade a spade, right, what is it? What does

1376
01:25:37,119 --> 01:25:39,239
it fucking saying mean? Hopefully I didn't just say some

1377
01:25:39,399 --> 01:25:41,760
racist shit? What does it mean to say call a

1378
01:25:41,880 --> 01:25:46,600
spade a spade? I don't know what is a fucking spain?

1379
01:25:46,760 --> 01:25:48,319
Is that a fucking racist term? Did I just say

1380
01:25:48,319 --> 01:25:53,239
some racist shit? Fuck? Anyway, So we were looking for

1381
01:25:53,319 --> 01:25:58,199
remnant patches of forest and uh fuck the lamas. We

1382
01:25:58,319 --> 01:26:00,479
were looking for remnant patches of forest. We finally found some,

1383
01:26:00,720 --> 01:26:06,039
and there was a Heliocarpus americanus, which is malvesi, and

1384
01:26:06,119 --> 01:26:10,039
it's got these really like kind of cool tiny white flowers. Big.

1385
01:26:10,159 --> 01:26:12,319
I mean, the leaves look malvacious. They look like that

1386
01:26:12,479 --> 01:26:16,960
kind of single lobed quasi maple leaf, look large tree.

1387
01:26:17,159 --> 01:26:20,079
There was lots of members of Qunoniace. You know, they

1388
01:26:20,159 --> 01:26:22,319
got the resin. Keunoni Has always have the resin. They're

1389
01:26:22,359 --> 01:26:24,079
kind of a boring plant genus, but they can be

1390
01:26:24,199 --> 01:26:26,920
really cool. I just don't know enough about them. And

1391
01:26:27,000 --> 01:26:29,039
the leaves all look the same. They got opposite leaves,

1392
01:26:29,079 --> 01:26:34,079
segmented stemins. They're generally very glabrous. We saw some of those,

1393
01:26:34,279 --> 01:26:37,960
but again very steep vegetation. Puya's on everything. Piccarnia. What

1394
01:26:38,199 --> 01:26:41,920
was it Pickearnia pungens or I figured this red flowered Piccarnia.

1395
01:26:41,960 --> 01:26:44,960
It looks fucking wild. It doesn't. It almost doesn't look

1396
01:26:45,079 --> 01:26:49,079
like Jesus Christ. Yeah, I've tried to come outside to

1397
01:26:49,119 --> 01:26:53,359
get peace. There's fucking I gotta stock. I'm dropping too

1398
01:26:53,399 --> 01:26:57,600
many f bombs from cursing, you know a lot. But uh,

1399
01:26:58,199 --> 01:27:01,760
this Piccarni is really unique. It looks like kind of

1400
01:27:01,800 --> 01:27:04,520
like a geophytic member of asparagacy, and it's got the

1401
01:27:04,600 --> 01:27:06,880
monoca thing going on. It's got these bright red flowers

1402
01:27:06,960 --> 01:27:11,319
coming off of eighteen twenty inch tall scapes or race seams,

1403
01:27:14,479 --> 01:27:17,239
but the leaves don't look bromeliad like it all. And

1404
01:27:17,319 --> 01:27:20,560
it is a bromeliad, and it was dominating these rocky

1405
01:27:21,560 --> 01:27:25,239
outcroppings of basalt. It's got the fucking rocks. They were amazing.

1406
01:27:25,319 --> 01:27:27,720
Just you'll see you'll find like a fifty foot tall

1407
01:27:27,920 --> 01:27:32,920
layer of columnar jointed rock with a sketchy road, winding road,

1408
01:27:33,520 --> 01:27:35,239
you know, at the base of it. The whole thing

1409
01:27:35,359 --> 01:27:40,399
is covered in orchids and PuYas and uh puya glamariphra.

1410
01:27:41,479 --> 01:27:44,800
Everything's bathed in water vapor. It's just like gray all

1411
01:27:44,880 --> 01:27:49,760
the time, and then you'll just see these these cliffs

1412
01:27:49,840 --> 01:27:53,600
of basaltic magma that cool these lava flows that probably

1413
01:27:53,600 --> 01:27:56,359
happen I don't know, ten million years ago, maybe maybe

1414
01:27:56,439 --> 01:28:00,439
more recently. But you know, the whole the whole mountain

1415
01:28:00,479 --> 01:28:02,960
chain is consistently being uplifted, and so that's why it's

1416
01:28:03,000 --> 01:28:06,119
so steep. It's because the mountains are still growing, and

1417
01:28:06,279 --> 01:28:10,399
so they're kind of growing. They're growing faster than they're

1418
01:28:10,439 --> 01:28:15,159
being weathered and eroded. But we found some patches of

1419
01:28:15,199 --> 01:28:19,399
remnant vegetation what the forest looked like. Because everything around

1420
01:28:19,439 --> 01:28:22,399
a town of Bonios, which I guess they're claimed the

1421
01:28:22,439 --> 01:28:25,520
fame with sugar. There's all these like you know, gross

1422
01:28:25,720 --> 01:28:31,880
like little sugar tiendas everywhere, candy tiendas and shit for sugarcane.

1423
01:28:31,920 --> 01:28:36,720
But uh, but we found some patches of native vegetation

1424
01:28:36,880 --> 01:28:39,600
and you know, got like a minute to get into it,

1425
01:28:39,680 --> 01:28:43,600
but it's again very steep. There was wine Mania spruciana,

1426
01:28:43,720 --> 01:28:48,600
another member of Keunoniac. There was Cunonia. There was heliocarpus.

1427
01:28:48,760 --> 01:28:53,680
There was Trema micranto, which is cannaba. See it basically

1428
01:28:53,760 --> 01:28:57,399
looks like a hackberry. It's like a pioneer species, edible

1429
01:28:57,439 --> 01:29:01,159
little berries in it. Kids up in all this stuff.

1430
01:29:01,279 --> 01:29:04,119
Romelia is up in all this stuff. Everything's covered in mosses.

1431
01:29:04,199 --> 01:29:08,039
It's basically a cloud for us. But uh, and thank

1432
01:29:08,119 --> 01:29:10,119
god there was these little bits left because there's so

1433
01:29:10,319 --> 01:29:14,560
little again, like I said, the hills on everywhere it's dominated,

1434
01:29:15,239 --> 01:29:19,960
it's all cleared. There's grasses, the odds, shrub here and there,

1435
01:29:20,199 --> 01:29:25,119
maybe a monina, and then pines and eucalyptus everywhere. The

1436
01:29:25,239 --> 01:29:28,640
fucking eucalypus. I've seen more eucalyptus there than I've seen

1437
01:29:28,680 --> 01:29:32,000
the Tasmania. And we work. We went the Keto yesterday

1438
01:29:32,079 --> 01:29:35,119
to Cruises. I guess my buddy Cruise got an apartment.

1439
01:29:35,319 --> 01:29:37,640
Cruise is kind of an eccentric. He's always walking around

1440
01:29:37,680 --> 01:29:40,560
his sandals with one of those little you know bags.

1441
01:29:41,159 --> 01:29:44,279
He looks like he's just perpetually on some vision vision quests,

1442
01:29:44,279 --> 01:29:45,920
like if you're gonna meet someone who's gonna give you

1443
01:29:45,960 --> 01:29:48,880
acid in public, you know, just because like so you

1444
01:29:48,960 --> 01:29:52,159
bump into him at a fucking, you know, burrito spot

1445
01:29:52,239 --> 01:29:54,319
or something. If there's gonna if there's someone who's gonna

1446
01:29:54,359 --> 01:29:57,159
do that, they would be Cruise. And he got this

1447
01:29:57,239 --> 01:30:00,560
little so he got an apartment. He's got this goofy

1448
01:30:00,640 --> 01:30:02,920
mustache too, which I say and endearingly. He's a friend

1449
01:30:02,960 --> 01:30:04,720
of mine, but it looks hilarious. It's like a fucking

1450
01:30:04,760 --> 01:30:08,439
Hulk Hogan mustache. But then he's like this neo shaman

1451
01:30:08,560 --> 01:30:11,359
fucking I don't know. He's an eccentric. He's an eccentric.

1452
01:30:11,920 --> 01:30:15,199
So we went and crashed it at his apartment get

1453
01:30:15,279 --> 01:30:17,840
our shit together. After sitting on his bus smelling like ass,

1454
01:30:18,640 --> 01:30:21,560
you know, maybe not ass, smelling like you know, we'd

1455
01:30:21,600 --> 01:30:23,640
been we'd been out in the field, you know, and

1456
01:30:23,960 --> 01:30:26,199
half the crew got fucking diarrhea. I don't know what

1457
01:30:26,319 --> 01:30:30,920
they ate, right, And so and Camillo's been staying at

1458
01:30:31,560 --> 01:30:34,319
Cruise's spots, so we went there to go collect ourselves.

1459
01:30:34,960 --> 01:30:36,840
And he lives next to this park, in this kind

1460
01:30:36,880 --> 01:30:39,840
of Fraser area, like a more fancy area of Keto.

1461
01:30:40,279 --> 01:30:42,520
I went to the park. The park's all eucalyptus. It

1462
01:30:42,640 --> 01:30:46,159
reminds me of Oakland Hills. It's all eucalyptus. And then

1463
01:30:46,199 --> 01:30:49,319
in the Understey there's these little patches of native remnant vegetation.

1464
01:30:49,960 --> 01:30:52,600
There was a cool dahlia like a beautiful shrub dahlia.

1465
01:30:52,720 --> 01:30:55,399
The flowers and all the native vegetation are super bright

1466
01:30:55,479 --> 01:30:59,079
and vivid, probably because of hummingbirds. This is at nine

1467
01:30:59,119 --> 01:31:01,239
thousand foot eleve. There's not a lot of bees. The

1468
01:31:01,319 --> 01:31:05,199
only bees you'll see are the occasional bumblebee and that.

1469
01:31:05,359 --> 01:31:08,800
But moths, of course can get by at those elevations

1470
01:31:08,840 --> 01:31:12,000
and the chili temperatures. I guess they got some insolation

1471
01:31:12,119 --> 01:31:14,840
and they can vibrate their wings too to drum up

1472
01:31:16,079 --> 01:31:18,920
some heat. And then uh, and then lots of hummingbirds

1473
01:31:19,159 --> 01:31:20,920
like this, what was it? Discover? What is it? The

1474
01:31:21,000 --> 01:31:25,239
fucking scarlet violators? I forget something violetator. There's so many

1475
01:31:25,399 --> 01:31:29,840
hummingbird species. But again it's just like it's again, it's

1476
01:31:29,920 --> 01:31:33,319
it's just like it's like the bay. It's all eucalyptus

1477
01:31:34,399 --> 01:31:37,760
and then horticultural atrocities. There was a catoniaster. What do

1478
01:31:37,800 --> 01:31:39,680
you You don't want to see a Katonia aster in

1479
01:31:39,760 --> 01:31:43,960
the cloud force of Central America. That's that's like disgusting

1480
01:31:44,760 --> 01:31:48,239
and insulting, you know, to it's it hurt me, It

1481
01:31:48,359 --> 01:31:53,079
hurt my spirit inside. Right, It's like I would rather

1482
01:31:53,199 --> 01:31:56,039
turn a corner and see, you know, a fat homeless

1483
01:31:56,119 --> 01:31:58,479
lady taking a ship, and no offense to fat homeless women,

1484
01:31:58,760 --> 01:32:02,479
but I'd rather see that then a katoni aster, whether

1485
01:32:02,520 --> 01:32:05,560
it's in someone's landscaping or just naturalized on a landscape. Right,

1486
01:32:06,319 --> 01:32:08,680
there's something almost charming you see, like like a fat

1487
01:32:08,720 --> 01:32:10,760
homeless lady taking a ship. Maybe she flips you off

1488
01:32:10,760 --> 01:32:12,800
and get you know, tells you to go fuck yourself

1489
01:32:12,880 --> 01:32:15,039
or something that's kind of funny. That's like a charming thing.

1490
01:32:15,079 --> 01:32:18,840
I'd say, Aha, you know, that's that's a nice urban

1491
01:32:18,960 --> 01:32:24,920
experience seeing a katoni aster, right, This fucking horrible horticultural atrocity.

1492
01:32:24,960 --> 01:32:26,479
It's not something you want to It's not it's not

1493
01:32:26,600 --> 01:32:28,479
a nice it's not a nice experience. There's no way

1494
01:32:28,520 --> 01:32:31,720
to romanticize that, you know what I mean. This reminds

1495
01:32:31,800 --> 01:32:37,520
you of suburbs. It's like spiritual death. And so anyway,

1496
01:32:39,239 --> 01:32:42,399
oh yeah, there was a spartium junsium Spanish broom that

1497
01:32:42,560 --> 01:32:46,640
was naturalized too. But then again, coming up amidst this

1498
01:32:46,920 --> 01:32:50,439
was just whatever remnant native vegetation had been able to

1499
01:32:50,520 --> 01:32:53,279
survive the first donslaught of bulldozers and the planting of

1500
01:32:53,319 --> 01:32:57,640
horticultural atrocities. There was a Bomara, that cool dahlia. There

1501
01:32:57,720 --> 01:33:00,920
was a native clematis that the cloud forests are so

1502
01:33:01,119 --> 01:33:03,960
cool because you're at these at these elevations where the

1503
01:33:04,039 --> 01:33:06,800
climate never quite freezes, it gets damned close to it

1504
01:33:07,359 --> 01:33:13,239
never quite freezes, and so you're getting all these lineages

1505
01:33:13,319 --> 01:33:18,840
that are generally from North America, but unlike North American lineages,

1506
01:33:18,880 --> 01:33:21,279
they've all got these vivid ass colored flowers. Like the

1507
01:33:21,399 --> 01:33:24,159
dahlia had these vivid purple flowers. The bo Maria had

1508
01:33:24,239 --> 01:33:27,000
vivid red flowers. The clematis it was a fucking clamatus.

1509
01:33:27,000 --> 01:33:29,039
I don't wanna care for them too much, but had

1510
01:33:29,119 --> 01:33:33,399
big leaves right, because it's super humid. It's a cool temperature,

1511
01:33:33,439 --> 01:33:37,159
but it doesn't really freeze and it rarely ever gets

1512
01:33:37,199 --> 01:33:41,159
over eighty And then everything's been selected for by hummingbird pollination,

1513
01:33:41,239 --> 01:33:45,199
and hummingbirds like very vivid flowers. It's what they're attracted to.

1514
01:33:46,560 --> 01:33:50,159
Saw Kevin Dishy up there too, in the eucalyptus hell

1515
01:33:50,279 --> 01:33:53,760
and the eucalyptus dungeon. I shouldn't even say dungeon because

1516
01:33:53,840 --> 01:33:55,520
the dungeon could be nice, like if I was in

1517
01:33:55,560 --> 01:33:58,119
an orchid dungeon two days before in Bonios looking at

1518
01:33:58,159 --> 01:34:01,039
this this slope of columb A basalt that was covered

1519
01:34:01,039 --> 01:34:04,319
in terrestrial orchids. Right, But if if you're gonna see

1520
01:34:04,319 --> 01:34:08,039
if Eucalyptus, I mean Euculudse globulus, the forests where their

1521
01:34:08,119 --> 01:34:11,199
native are great, they're you know where they're they're not

1522
01:34:11,640 --> 01:34:13,800
a monoculture, and there's all kinds of cool shit there.

1523
01:34:13,800 --> 01:34:16,199
They've evolved therever millions of years. When you see a

1524
01:34:16,319 --> 01:34:21,720
planted eucalyptus, hell, it's it's too miserable to even be

1525
01:34:21,840 --> 01:34:25,000
called a dungeon. It's worse than that. It's like a

1526
01:34:25,079 --> 01:34:28,640
fucking I don't know, it's like an office park. So

1527
01:34:28,760 --> 01:34:32,439
that that's what it u. That's what that's what that

1528
01:34:32,600 --> 01:34:35,479
was the background setting forever there's like ninety percent eucalyptus.

1529
01:34:35,520 --> 01:34:38,479
And then they had a Cacia melonoxalon too, which is

1530
01:34:39,159 --> 01:34:43,159
invasive as hell throughout the bear as well. Very similar

1531
01:34:43,239 --> 01:34:47,800
climate to coastal California, like a lot of the same

1532
01:34:47,880 --> 01:34:52,239
horticultural garbage, horticultural atrocities. But there was a cavin this

1533
01:34:52,399 --> 01:34:55,560
year there was a Govinia orchid which has that little

1534
01:34:55,680 --> 01:35:01,520
like uh sickle shaped Labellum I guess or is there

1535
01:35:01,520 --> 01:35:05,079
a soupin eight flower in their two sickle shaped dorsal sepals.

1536
01:35:05,079 --> 01:35:06,640
I don't know either way, it's a once you see

1537
01:35:06,640 --> 01:35:10,079
a govigna. They all kind of have the same gestalt

1538
01:35:10,680 --> 01:35:13,479
and their flowers. So it was cool to see that

1539
01:35:13,479 --> 01:35:15,359
there was still some stuff coming back, but overall it

1540
01:35:15,520 --> 01:35:17,560
was you know, Oh, and there was a there was

1541
01:35:17,640 --> 01:35:22,439
two Mimosa species, one with this orange, rusty pubescence, which

1542
01:35:22,439 --> 01:35:24,479
I've seen in a lot of cloud forest stuff, which

1543
01:35:24,520 --> 01:35:27,720
is remarkable. I wonder what selects for that, Like, we

1544
01:35:27,800 --> 01:35:30,279
were seeing these cloud forest ingas you know, the genus

1545
01:35:30,319 --> 01:35:32,840
of ice cream bean Fabasi, the leggum family, and they

1546
01:35:32,880 --> 01:35:35,960
had this same thing, this orange pubescence. So what selects

1547
01:35:36,000 --> 01:35:38,159
for that orange pubescence. It can't be the heat because

1548
01:35:38,199 --> 01:35:41,760
it's not. It's never really hot there. Maybe it's a

1549
01:35:41,800 --> 01:35:45,479
little dry, but it's a it's a bizarre habit, but

1550
01:35:45,560 --> 01:35:48,199
it's it's really cool too. It gives the plants these

1551
01:35:48,680 --> 01:35:57,560
really cool looks to them, right, like orange orange tiny hairs. Anyway,

1552
01:35:57,560 --> 01:35:59,840
I'm getting carried away talking about Keto. That was just

1553
01:36:00,319 --> 01:36:02,640
let's go back to the fifty foot layer of columnar

1554
01:36:02,760 --> 01:36:05,239
jointed basalt, which is then topped by a three hundred

1555
01:36:05,279 --> 01:36:09,720
foot layer of black more like a blackish ryolt. I

1556
01:36:09,720 --> 01:36:12,039
guess it could be basalt. It looks it doesn't quite

1557
01:36:12,119 --> 01:36:17,079
have the texture of basalt. It looks like it might

1558
01:36:17,119 --> 01:36:20,439
be more intermediate like a true andesite, like a darker andesite.

1559
01:36:20,760 --> 01:36:22,640
And then above that you'll have one hundred foot so,

1560
01:36:22,840 --> 01:36:25,039
you know, one hundred foot of more volcanic rocks. So

1561
01:36:25,119 --> 01:36:28,000
the whole All in all, you've got these six hundred

1562
01:36:28,000 --> 01:36:31,239
and seven hundred foot tall cliffs of volcanic rock, all

1563
01:36:31,359 --> 01:36:34,359
completely covered in orchids. There was Spanish monster, there was

1564
01:36:34,399 --> 01:36:37,840
Telansia oostennioides there, which was wild. Must be a very

1565
01:36:37,880 --> 01:36:40,880
different eco type. Well maybe not. Maybe it's just I'd

1566
01:36:40,920 --> 01:36:43,880
love to do a study on that. Because Telansia oostenuoides

1567
01:36:43,960 --> 01:36:47,119
can occur in New Orleans, or in the pine and

1568
01:36:47,199 --> 01:36:49,800
oak forest of Nuevo Leone at six thousand feet or

1569
01:36:49,920 --> 01:36:57,600
here in these chilly, scrubby habitats. It's like scrub where

1570
01:36:57,600 --> 01:37:00,479
it's thinner soils and on rock and a dry site,

1571
01:37:00,600 --> 01:37:06,079
and then like forest where it's you know, like you know, shielded.

1572
01:37:06,079 --> 01:37:07,800
I don't. That's a good question too, because these habitats

1573
01:37:07,840 --> 01:37:11,079
were weird. It's I mean, there was the Borza cactus

1574
01:37:11,199 --> 01:37:13,920
area where the bores of cactus was growing. Borzic cactus

1575
01:37:15,119 --> 01:37:17,720
was on like the west side of Banos. But meanwhile,

1576
01:37:17,760 --> 01:37:21,960
the cloud forest is like five miles away, you know.

1577
01:37:22,119 --> 01:37:25,960
And it's just it's like this micro climate, tons of

1578
01:37:26,039 --> 01:37:32,960
micro climates, right, like lots of diversity of climatic setting

1579
01:37:33,640 --> 01:37:36,119
in a in a very close area and like a

1580
01:37:36,319 --> 01:37:40,039
small geographic area. And that's where the cool crotons were.

1581
01:37:40,199 --> 01:37:43,600
There were like three different species of these, these shrubby crotons. One,

1582
01:37:43,720 --> 01:37:46,760
like I said, looked like Framancia, looked like California flannel bush.

1583
01:37:47,199 --> 01:37:50,680
The other croton meant the doris. All these shrub crotons

1584
01:37:50,720 --> 01:37:55,000
were amazing. They were fucking beautiful. Man. It's the leaves,

1585
01:37:55,159 --> 01:37:57,039
not the flowers, because the flowers on No one talks

1586
01:37:57,079 --> 01:38:01,359
about the flowers on crotons right times. Can be large trees,

1587
01:38:01,920 --> 01:38:05,439
they can be shrubs, they can be herbs, annual herbs.

1588
01:38:06,079 --> 01:38:08,439
It's a it's a big ass genus in euphoury ace.

1589
01:38:09,359 --> 01:38:11,960
But these were just again the orange pubescents. There was

1590
01:38:12,000 --> 01:38:15,279
another there was a white one growing on this rock

1591
01:38:15,479 --> 01:38:18,600
outcropping next to this sketchy road. Fucking roads are terrifying.

1592
01:38:18,640 --> 01:38:22,159
No one slows down and you but you have to

1593
01:38:22,199 --> 01:38:23,880
go to the rock outcroppings because that's where all the

1594
01:38:23,920 --> 01:38:27,000
cool xerophytic shit is, you know, even though you're technically

1595
01:38:27,000 --> 01:38:29,119
in a cloud forest setting. Yeah, really really cool. There

1596
01:38:29,159 --> 01:38:31,880
was an a punthia there as well. Uh, there was

1597
01:38:32,319 --> 01:38:37,560
what appeared to be Tacoma stands, but it looked slightly different.

1598
01:38:37,640 --> 01:38:41,840
It looked like a tree. I'm not even convinced it

1599
01:38:42,000 --> 01:38:44,159
was Tacoma stands. I don't know what the fuck I saw.

1600
01:38:44,840 --> 01:38:48,560
It looked like Tacoma stands, big noniac catalpa family, the

1601
01:38:48,640 --> 01:38:52,239
odd pinnate leaves, the yellow tube flowers. But it doesn't

1602
01:38:52,279 --> 01:38:55,560
look like that Tacoma stands you're gonna see in Nuevo

1603
01:38:55,640 --> 01:38:58,239
Leone or that especially the Tacoma stands you're gonna see,

1604
01:38:59,359 --> 01:39:01,800
you know, in city of County, West Texas, where it's

1605
01:39:01,880 --> 01:39:06,039
dry as hell, which never forms a tree. It was

1606
01:39:06,199 --> 01:39:10,279
just it was such a bizarre Again, the more I

1607
01:39:10,520 --> 01:39:14,079
travel and the more I see, the more I just

1608
01:39:14,399 --> 01:39:16,920
start to give up on the idea of species. It's

1609
01:39:17,039 --> 01:39:24,319
just this fluid, constantly shifting orb there's no boundary around it.

1610
01:39:26,479 --> 01:39:28,479
But again it was what was really cool about this

1611
01:39:28,640 --> 01:39:31,960
site was just, I mean, really interesting vegetation. Tons of

1612
01:39:32,199 --> 01:39:35,560
tons of cool orchids, you know, these these scrubby habitats,

1613
01:39:35,960 --> 01:39:38,560
and then you'd have these more forested settings on the

1614
01:39:38,680 --> 01:39:42,520
slopes in you know, where there was any forest left,

1615
01:39:42,600 --> 01:39:45,520
you know, consisting of clusia. There was a Serawias species

1616
01:39:45,560 --> 01:39:50,640
actinidyac And then they were cultivating citrus. They were fucking

1617
01:39:50,720 --> 01:39:53,840
cultivating citrus on these slopes, even though it never gets

1618
01:39:54,119 --> 01:39:57,319
warmer than eighty degrees fahrenheit, so that it makes you

1619
01:39:57,399 --> 01:40:00,640
wonder what the shit they're doing, and you know, Florida

1620
01:40:00,880 --> 01:40:03,520
or South Texas, because citrus doesn't really seem to like

1621
01:40:03,600 --> 01:40:07,399
it that hot, you know, one hundred degrees especially. They

1622
01:40:07,439 --> 01:40:10,039
were growing citrus cat to see be on Lake Whale's Ridge,

1623
01:40:10,640 --> 01:40:14,159
which is an extremely dry site in central Florida, and

1624
01:40:14,279 --> 01:40:16,680
see that they were demolishing so much of that that

1625
01:40:16,760 --> 01:40:21,079
built these shitty orange gropes, and that oranges somehow became

1626
01:40:21,159 --> 01:40:24,880
the state logo of Florida, that god forsaken state, rather

1627
01:40:24,920 --> 01:40:27,079
than any of the cool native vegetation they have there,

1628
01:40:27,520 --> 01:40:29,600
tons of which I've still got to make videos about

1629
01:40:29,600 --> 01:40:33,760
because I never got around to it. But but yeah,

1630
01:40:33,960 --> 01:40:36,039
you know, so what I would do is I would

1631
01:40:36,079 --> 01:40:37,800
get things down to g I could always get things

1632
01:40:37,840 --> 01:40:40,399
down to genus if not family, and then I would

1633
01:40:40,439 --> 01:40:43,680
have to go on different websites. If you go to

1634
01:40:43,760 --> 01:40:47,359
Symbiota dot org and go to portals, you'll get a

1635
01:40:47,399 --> 01:40:52,720
list of all these different herbaria orbarium collection websites like

1636
01:40:52,920 --> 01:40:56,439
Consortium of California or Baria or Sinat you know Southwest

1637
01:40:56,960 --> 01:41:01,399
sw Biodiversity dot org, or in a BA which is

1638
01:41:01,920 --> 01:41:06,640
the Ecuador site, or Red Day or Barrios Meicanos which

1639
01:41:06,680 --> 01:41:08,159
is the Mexican side I was using when I was

1640
01:41:08,199 --> 01:41:11,640
in Hidalgo. Super helpful. And then you would type in

1641
01:41:11,800 --> 01:41:13,359
you could go to the map. You can draw a

1642
01:41:13,399 --> 01:41:15,560
polygon around the area war you can type in a

1643
01:41:15,640 --> 01:41:18,479
family or a genus, see everything that comes up, and

1644
01:41:18,600 --> 01:41:22,279
then get that name and then go to uh, where

1645
01:41:22,319 --> 01:41:24,319
would I what? What was the other website? Then I

1646
01:41:24,439 --> 01:41:28,119
have to go to another website to look at orbarium

1647
01:41:28,720 --> 01:41:34,159
digitize their barium specimens, the Neotropical Flora portal Neotropical dot

1648
01:41:34,279 --> 01:41:37,720
Symbiota dot org. I'll put this stuff in a I'll

1649
01:41:37,720 --> 01:41:41,800
put all this shit in the in the website description.

1650
01:41:41,960 --> 01:41:43,600
If I don't, you could write me and remind me.

1651
01:41:44,439 --> 01:41:48,119
But this is the way that I do everything because

1652
01:41:48,159 --> 01:41:50,560
I don't use fucking I don't use flora's, I don't

1653
01:41:50,640 --> 01:41:53,479
use get the key stuff out. That's nerd shit. I'll

1654
01:41:53,520 --> 01:41:57,199
do that, you know, sometimes if I'm really unsure of

1655
01:41:57,319 --> 01:42:01,359
the discrepancies between two species. But again, there's so much fluidity.

1656
01:42:01,880 --> 01:42:04,800
Often the people who are writing these floras are people

1657
01:42:04,880 --> 01:42:07,960
that don't get out much. They couldn't describe the gestalt

1658
01:42:08,600 --> 01:42:12,039
of these different species or the different habitats. Right, They're

1659
01:42:12,119 --> 01:42:15,439
just fucking nerds, no fence. They're just fucking nerds who

1660
01:42:15,520 --> 01:42:19,359
aren't feel botanists like they're internbarium looking for whatever micro

1661
01:42:19,560 --> 01:42:23,079
characters they can to try and differentiate between two sets

1662
01:42:23,119 --> 01:42:26,079
of pressed plants. Right Whereas if you were to talk

1663
01:42:26,159 --> 01:42:28,319
to someone on difference between this species and this species,

1664
01:42:28,359 --> 01:42:31,760
someone might say, well, this is more of a zerophytic plant.

1665
01:42:31,840 --> 01:42:34,199
This is a plant this is whereas this plant's one

1666
01:42:34,199 --> 01:42:36,239
you're gonna see in more in cloud forest and this

1667
01:42:36,399 --> 01:42:39,079
one they can look a lot alike. But the you

1668
01:42:39,159 --> 01:42:43,159
know this the petiole often as this orangeesh pubescent senta

1669
01:42:43,199 --> 01:42:45,800
where the petiole on this one's glabrous. You gotta look closely.

1670
01:42:46,760 --> 01:42:49,720
They often, you know, one is prescribed to a different

1671
01:42:49,760 --> 01:42:52,520
habitat that you'll frequently see growing with a suite of

1672
01:42:52,640 --> 01:42:57,239
other plant species versus this is more of this kind

1673
01:42:57,319 --> 01:43:03,079
of habitat or habit like it'll you know, like soacritiax

1674
01:43:03,159 --> 01:43:06,399
horiza and Iriardia del tody the two species of walking

1675
01:43:06,479 --> 01:43:09,720
pums that don't walk. Iriardia, they both send out prop

1676
01:43:09,840 --> 01:43:13,359
roots right. Iriardia looks much more like a dong, it's

1677
01:43:13,399 --> 01:43:19,039
more phallic. Socritea has these little pins that come off

1678
01:43:19,079 --> 01:43:24,000
of the roots that are sharper. Socritilla sends out adventitious

1679
01:43:24,039 --> 01:43:27,760
root bud six feet up, whereas Iriardia rarely ever sends

1680
01:43:27,880 --> 01:43:30,279
roots out from more than a meter high up. It's

1681
01:43:30,920 --> 01:43:36,399
it's it's stem right. But both are palm quote trees,

1682
01:43:36,560 --> 01:43:38,479
not real trees. They don't produce secondary but but you

1683
01:43:38,520 --> 01:43:42,359
know what I mean, you know, so I don't use

1684
01:43:42,439 --> 01:43:45,000
I don't use the flora's that much because there they're

1685
01:43:45,039 --> 01:43:48,479
not helpful. They're not fucking helpful, and they're not it depends.

1686
01:43:48,560 --> 01:43:54,359
Some can be really helpful Powell's trans pecos h Flora,

1687
01:43:54,640 --> 01:43:56,560
you know, or flora. The trans Paco's helpful because he

1688
01:43:56,600 --> 01:43:58,920
actually goes into describing the habitat, and he took the

1689
01:43:59,000 --> 01:44:02,880
time to write, you know, descriptions as if you were

1690
01:44:02,920 --> 01:44:04,920
talking to him and he was described and he knows

1691
01:44:05,039 --> 01:44:07,920
the plants, he knows the habitat, he's seen them, he's

1692
01:44:08,000 --> 01:44:11,560
been out. You know. There's nothing I can't stand more

1693
01:44:11,640 --> 01:44:14,359
than fucking armshair boon. It's no fence. I have people

1694
01:44:14,399 --> 01:44:16,600
who talk a lot of shit and act all cocky,

1695
01:44:16,680 --> 01:44:18,359
but have never been out into the field. They have

1696
01:44:18,520 --> 01:44:20,840
never seen these things. They've never eaten shit, they've never

1697
01:44:21,000 --> 01:44:26,640
sweat and fallen off cliffs nearly and cut themselves or

1698
01:44:26,760 --> 01:44:32,600
gotten stung or bit or you know anyway. So that's

1699
01:44:32,640 --> 01:44:35,079
what I'm doing. I'm going through all these press plants

1700
01:44:35,119 --> 01:44:38,720
trying to figure out what the fuck species you know,

1701
01:44:38,880 --> 01:44:42,119
and put labels, and then I'll go in later and

1702
01:44:42,239 --> 01:44:44,920
describe the habitats best I can. There's nothing worse than

1703
01:44:45,000 --> 01:44:48,640
just the dry, bare bones are buried. Label. You really

1704
01:44:48,680 --> 01:44:50,479
got to you want to describe things. You want to

1705
01:44:51,039 --> 01:44:53,439
make sure if someone's reading that fifty years from now,

1706
01:44:53,479 --> 01:44:56,760
when you're dead that they're going to be able to

1707
01:44:56,800 --> 01:44:59,159
get a good, good you know, idea of what the

1708
01:44:59,239 --> 01:45:02,439
habitat was like if it's still there, and it probably

1709
01:45:03,399 --> 01:45:05,399
it probably won't be because you know, the whole human

1710
01:45:05,439 --> 01:45:09,880
tumor thing. Right, Oh guy, here we go back to

1711
01:45:10,039 --> 01:45:13,039
South Texas. Back on the way to South. They spent

1712
01:45:13,079 --> 01:45:15,159
the night in San Antonio last night, flew into the

1713
01:45:15,239 --> 01:45:18,760
hobbies in Austin. Spent the night in San Antonio. WHI,

1714
01:45:18,760 --> 01:45:20,960
there's a nice town. They got a lot of old warehouses,

1715
01:45:21,000 --> 01:45:26,079
old infrastructure, their train tracks. Uh and uh. And then

1716
01:45:26,159 --> 01:45:28,760
now I'm back to set back to South Texas, towards

1717
01:45:28,880 --> 01:45:33,520
the Rio Grande Valley heat island of billboards and car

1718
01:45:33,680 --> 01:45:41,079
dealerships and asphalt where people hate the street trees because

1719
01:45:41,119 --> 01:45:44,800
the concrete is so clean. It's so clean. It's all

1720
01:45:44,920 --> 01:45:48,800
it's not messy, it's clean. Oh god. Anyway, it was

1721
01:45:48,880 --> 01:45:53,239
funny talking or when I got on a plane out

1722
01:45:53,279 --> 01:45:57,199
of Keto, there was an astonishing amount of culturally of

1723
01:45:57,279 --> 01:46:00,479
the whites, the cultural whites, people who are culture really white.

1724
01:46:00,760 --> 01:46:03,520
You could be Mexican and you can be culturally white.

1725
01:46:03,600 --> 01:46:06,960
You can be any any quote race. Remember, race doesn't

1726
01:46:07,000 --> 01:46:09,439
really exist it's just human phenotype as a result of

1727
01:46:10,079 --> 01:46:13,199
natural selection from a population being at a certain latitude

1728
01:46:13,199 --> 01:46:15,520
and the vitamin D and vitamin BAT deficiencies that afflict

1729
01:46:15,600 --> 01:46:20,520
human populations at both high and low latitudes, respectively. But

1730
01:46:20,880 --> 01:46:22,520
but you could be any color, and you can be

1731
01:46:22,720 --> 01:46:25,239
culturally white. And there were a lot of people that

1732
01:46:25,279 --> 01:46:28,439
were culturally white. They were also you know, phenotypically white

1733
01:46:28,520 --> 01:46:32,399
Caucasian on the plane, but they were culturally white, and

1734
01:46:32,439 --> 01:46:35,359
they were all they were in first class. And it

1735
01:46:35,479 --> 01:46:37,159
was like, I think maybe because the plane was going

1736
01:46:37,199 --> 01:46:39,239
to Atlanta. It was like a Keto to Atlanta flight,

1737
01:46:40,119 --> 01:46:42,560
and so you know, it's a bunch of rich cunts

1738
01:46:42,640 --> 01:46:44,840
like in a first class it's and it's funny that

1739
01:46:44,920 --> 01:46:46,520
they put them in first class so that all the

1740
01:46:46,600 --> 01:46:49,880
peons have to walk by and judge them, like I

1741
01:46:50,159 --> 01:46:53,560
like I did. I was very I was very obviously

1742
01:46:53,720 --> 01:46:55,439
judging them. You know, I don't know why you would

1743
01:46:55,479 --> 01:46:58,119
want to fly first class. You're gonna pay an ass

1744
01:46:58,199 --> 01:47:02,520
load of money for five hours of comfort. Really, you're

1745
01:47:02,560 --> 01:47:06,039
that much of a fucking pussy You can't take being uncomfortable,

1746
01:47:06,640 --> 01:47:09,720
and you know, being stuck up right in a seat

1747
01:47:09,800 --> 01:47:12,840
that doesn't recline sniffing someone's ass in front of you

1748
01:47:13,359 --> 01:47:15,399
for five hours, because that's what it is. I mean,

1749
01:47:15,439 --> 01:47:17,880
it's face to ask on these airlines today, right the

1750
01:47:17,960 --> 01:47:20,640
way they packed people in there. You can't you can't

1751
01:47:20,720 --> 01:47:23,319
tolerate that. You're so much of a fucking princess you

1752
01:47:23,399 --> 01:47:26,520
need to fly first class. But it was it was

1753
01:47:27,319 --> 01:47:30,039
it was like it was a very culturally white setting

1754
01:47:30,479 --> 01:47:32,720
and it felt I mean, it was so culturally white.

1755
01:47:32,760 --> 01:47:34,279
Maybe it's just because it was going into the South

1756
01:47:34,399 --> 01:47:36,720
or something. I don't know. Look, I'm being regionally racist

1757
01:47:36,800 --> 01:47:40,920
here that it felt like, you know, a plantation cosplay,

1758
01:47:41,159 --> 01:47:43,319
like in a Civil War reenactment. You know, that's what

1759
01:47:43,439 --> 01:47:45,479
it felt like, you know what I mean, like the

1760
01:47:45,600 --> 01:47:53,520
primpt and proper puckering, puckering crackers. Oh, I can't believe

1761
01:47:53,520 --> 01:47:56,319
they letting the Negroes vote now, Like it's that kind

1762
01:47:56,359 --> 01:47:59,000
of shit you'd expect to hear from this demographic, all

1763
01:47:59,119 --> 01:48:03,439
fucking buttered asses, you know, all primped and fucking pampered.

1764
01:48:04,359 --> 01:48:09,359
It was funny, man. I uh, I don't know what

1765
01:48:09,439 --> 01:48:11,000
it's gonna be like to grow up in the South.

1766
01:48:11,159 --> 01:48:12,720
Should ask some of my friend, you know, what was

1767
01:48:12,760 --> 01:48:14,680
it like? Growing up there. It's a fucking weird place.

1768
01:48:14,720 --> 01:48:16,760
I'm sure there's I'm sure there's charm about it. I'm

1769
01:48:16,760 --> 01:48:19,239
sure there's a lot of weird shit too. It's like anywhere,

1770
01:48:19,359 --> 01:48:22,760
it's just different flavor, right, what is the flavor like there?

1771
01:48:22,800 --> 01:48:24,600
But it was fucking where. There was some guy reading

1772
01:48:24,640 --> 01:48:26,680
that he had a break. He was clutching a brand

1773
01:48:26,720 --> 01:48:30,399
new copy of Bill O'Reilly's new book. You know. It

1774
01:48:30,600 --> 01:48:33,279
was It's like, it's just hard for me to be

1775
01:48:33,479 --> 01:48:35,760
you know, it's hard. It's hard. I judge not. I'll

1776
01:48:35,760 --> 01:48:38,239
be nice to anybody, but I'm just saying, you know,

1777
01:48:38,439 --> 01:48:41,319
the ship you could made, expect to hear some of

1778
01:48:41,359 --> 01:48:45,439
those anyway. Whatever, Okay, moving right along. It was odd

1779
01:48:45,479 --> 01:48:47,119
for me, guy, I guess because I hadn't I hadn't

1780
01:48:47,159 --> 01:48:51,720
been around culturally white people in quite some time, you know,

1781
01:48:51,840 --> 01:48:54,359
especially where I live. I mean, the only time you

1782
01:48:54,479 --> 01:48:57,079
see Anglos where I live in general, not even culturally

1783
01:48:57,159 --> 01:49:01,720
white anglos. Uh. You know, when the Mormons are coming

1784
01:49:01,760 --> 01:49:04,079
to Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses are coming to pray on

1785
01:49:04,279 --> 01:49:06,239
you know, poor Hispanics where I live, which is that's

1786
01:49:06,279 --> 01:49:07,680
what they do. They come and they prey on them.

1787
01:49:07,680 --> 01:49:10,840
You know, you take advantage of someone's low economic status

1788
01:49:10,920 --> 01:49:13,119
and the fact they might be more willing to believe

1789
01:49:13,159 --> 01:49:17,760
bullshit than you know, your average schmuck who might be

1790
01:49:18,000 --> 01:49:20,840
better educated and have you know, more of an economic

1791
01:49:20,880 --> 01:49:22,760
footing to stand on, and you pray on them. That's

1792
01:49:22,800 --> 01:49:27,319
how you get them to join your cult. So but anyway, okay, listen.

1793
01:49:28,039 --> 01:49:31,560
Uh So I went into fucking I went into Atlanta,

1794
01:49:31,640 --> 01:49:33,439
and I didn't even get a chance to declare my

1795
01:49:33,680 --> 01:49:36,880
barium specimens because they just take a photo of this dude,

1796
01:49:37,880 --> 01:49:40,199
this surly dude who looked like he was very unhappy.

1797
01:49:40,640 --> 01:49:42,800
He was working for Customs and Border Patrol, so that

1798
01:49:42,920 --> 01:49:46,199
might be the case. He told me to stand in

1799
01:49:46,239 --> 01:49:48,359
front of a camera, and a camera takes my photo,

1800
01:49:48,560 --> 01:49:52,159
you know, presumably using the face recognition software. You don't

1801
01:49:52,199 --> 01:49:55,800
even get asked if you can declare anything, because I

1802
01:49:55,840 --> 01:49:59,920
always declare my specimens. And then and then they fuck

1803
01:50:00,079 --> 01:50:03,920
can they just shuff with They spitch you out and

1804
01:50:04,039 --> 01:50:06,600
you go get your bag and that's it. So it was,

1805
01:50:07,399 --> 01:50:10,079
you know, it was surprising. It was the technology is

1806
01:50:10,159 --> 01:50:13,520
replacing the Uh, I guess it's just gonna be the

1807
01:50:13,600 --> 01:50:16,640
norm now. They take a picture all the face recognition. Shit,

1808
01:50:17,039 --> 01:50:19,800
what how if you get if you get like lip

1809
01:50:19,880 --> 01:50:23,319
injections and the facelift, how does that affect the face recognition?

1810
01:50:23,800 --> 01:50:27,319
Can face recognition take that into account, like for mar

1811
01:50:27,359 --> 01:50:30,920
A Lago face and shit, wouldn't it be funny? I

1812
01:50:31,079 --> 01:50:32,800
like to do one of those face tune apps where

1813
01:50:32,840 --> 01:50:36,000
I inject my own face with lip filler and it

1814
01:50:36,079 --> 01:50:38,359
looks like I'm just making duck lip selfies all the time,

1815
01:50:38,399 --> 01:50:41,520
Like what is it like? Bezos his wife? Have you

1816
01:50:41,600 --> 01:50:46,199
seen her? She's hilarious, you know, she got the whole

1817
01:50:46,640 --> 01:50:49,079
It looks like a fucking wax mannequin like it that

1818
01:50:49,279 --> 01:50:52,720
like partially melted. It's amazing though, It's really hilarious. So

1819
01:50:52,800 --> 01:50:55,239
I'd like to I do that occasionally. Sometimes you can

1820
01:50:55,279 --> 01:50:57,279
download the face tune app and do that to yourself

1821
01:50:57,319 --> 01:50:59,279
to see what you look like. Anyway, Okay, I think

1822
01:50:59,319 --> 01:51:06,039
we're almost here. I will say the Amazon was really nice.

1823
01:51:06,119 --> 01:51:08,479
I you know, you have to be in a mindset

1824
01:51:08,640 --> 01:51:12,000
to be in that kind of setting just because of

1825
01:51:12,199 --> 01:51:16,279
the high amount of swamp ass and schiggers that one

1826
01:51:16,479 --> 01:51:21,079
encounters there. And but and it's remarkable, but you know,

1827
01:51:21,159 --> 01:51:23,439
and also I mean, tropical plants, a lot of them

1828
01:51:24,760 --> 01:51:28,800
look very much alike if you don't have reproductive structure,

1829
01:51:28,920 --> 01:51:31,279
so it kind of forces you to focus more on

1830
01:51:32,560 --> 01:51:36,439
very subtle leaf characteristics like is it petiolet, how long

1831
01:51:36,560 --> 01:51:39,960
is the petiole? What's the margin? Like, of course opposite

1832
01:51:40,000 --> 01:51:44,239
are alternate leaves, but that's a given anyway, Venation I

1833
01:51:44,439 --> 01:51:46,319
was doing a lot of I was paying a lot

1834
01:51:46,359 --> 01:51:53,039
of attention to leave venation because you know that you

1835
01:51:53,079 --> 01:51:54,439
don't have much to go on. You don't have much

1836
01:51:54,479 --> 01:51:57,880
else to go on it because the s A lot

1837
01:51:57,920 --> 01:52:01,359
of shit's not flowering because it's on the understory, there's

1838
01:52:01,439 --> 01:52:05,520
not much light, or the reproductive structures are way high

1839
01:52:05,600 --> 01:52:08,520
up if it's you know, a leana, a robust mine,

1840
01:52:08,680 --> 01:52:13,199
or if it's a tree, so you know it's it's

1841
01:52:13,279 --> 01:52:15,600
a whole different mindset. And then yeah, there's chiggers on everything.

1842
01:52:15,600 --> 01:52:17,239
You've gotta get chiggers. You go to the Amazon, you're

1843
01:52:17,239 --> 01:52:20,239
gonna get schigers. But I can see falling into that

1844
01:52:20,439 --> 01:52:23,680
mindset of like lowland tropical botany, because not all tropical

1845
01:52:23,720 --> 01:52:28,039
botanies alike. Obviously, there's a range of elevations that dictate

1846
01:52:28,800 --> 01:52:36,359
the different different environmental pressures in different settings. You know that.

1847
01:52:36,439 --> 01:52:39,039
I'm definitely like the higher elevation stuff more. It's more

1848
01:52:39,319 --> 01:52:42,119
more of a temperate setting, you know, climates that rarely

1849
01:52:42,359 --> 01:52:47,039
exceed eighty degrees fahrenheit, and the thin air causes more.

1850
01:52:47,279 --> 01:52:51,680
You know, that thin air too causes a wider it

1851
01:52:51,760 --> 01:52:54,560
means the you know, obviously, the the air can't hold

1852
01:52:54,640 --> 01:52:59,000
onto as much heat at night, so it cools off

1853
01:52:59,439 --> 01:53:03,199
wider fl sluctuations between temperature, which is when you've got

1854
01:53:03,279 --> 01:53:06,880
day and night temperatures, you know, varying so much. That's

1855
01:53:06,920 --> 01:53:10,600
a unique suite of environmental pressures that then select for

1856
01:53:10,720 --> 01:53:14,199
different traits right where you get the fuzzy leaves, you know,

1857
01:53:14,399 --> 01:53:17,760
increased UV because there's less atmosphere. I like all that stuff.

1858
01:53:17,800 --> 01:53:21,359
It's it's a it's something that people who have only

1859
01:53:21,479 --> 01:53:25,760
ever practiced botany or you know, paid attention to plants

1860
01:53:26,159 --> 01:53:32,119
in the temperate latitudes. It's a suite of traits that

1861
01:53:32,239 --> 01:53:34,560
they may not be used to and that they you know,

1862
01:53:34,920 --> 01:53:37,760
wouldn't foresee. It's a whole different fucking ball game. But

1863
01:53:37,840 --> 01:53:40,319
I like that the higher elevation stuff you'd have to

1864
01:53:40,359 --> 01:53:43,520
get in a whole different mindset to do to do

1865
01:53:43,640 --> 01:53:46,039
lowland tropical botany, and maybe one day I'll be in

1866
01:53:46,079 --> 01:53:48,199
air for it. You know, maybe one day I won't

1867
01:53:48,279 --> 01:53:51,279
care if my ass has twenty chigger bytes on it

1868
01:53:51,680 --> 01:53:54,520
all the time. You know, you'll like one heels and

1869
01:53:54,560 --> 01:53:56,640
stop stitching and you just get another one. That doesn't

1870
01:53:56,640 --> 01:53:58,399
mean you know, you just you always have chigger bytes

1871
01:53:58,439 --> 01:54:03,319
on your ass, or you're you're you know balls, or

1872
01:54:04,439 --> 01:54:07,359
could you get chigger pikes in your laby? I hope

1873
01:54:07,399 --> 01:54:10,520
not that you know. See, we asked the important questions

1874
01:54:10,560 --> 01:54:16,640
here at crime pace. Guy, what a fucking chiggers are horrible, man, horrible?

1875
01:54:18,119 --> 01:54:19,800
And I still haven't found a way to get rid

1876
01:54:19,800 --> 01:54:22,840
of them? If anybody knows of a way to prevent them.

1877
01:54:23,159 --> 01:54:26,039
That's not just permethrin. We all know about permethrin. What

1878
01:54:26,119 --> 01:54:28,520
do do you take vaciline? Can you make a concoction

1879
01:54:28,680 --> 01:54:31,720
of vaciline and sulfur and slather it on? What do

1880
01:54:31,760 --> 01:54:34,600
you do? Because they crawl up your pants and then

1881
01:54:34,640 --> 01:54:36,960
they'll go in your fucking waistband and your shirt and everything.

1882
01:54:37,000 --> 01:54:40,119
You can't even see the little fuckers. And then what

1883
01:54:40,199 --> 01:54:42,960
are they doing when there's no people around? They're mostly eating?

1884
01:54:43,359 --> 01:54:47,279
What are they what are they parasitizing little rodents and

1885
01:54:47,359 --> 01:54:51,119
reptiles and shit? I don't know. Keep thinking back to

1886
01:54:52,239 --> 01:54:55,439
that pristamanthus frog we've seen with the tadpoles on its

1887
01:54:55,479 --> 01:54:58,079
back because it's so cute, or excuse me, it was

1888
01:54:58,079 --> 01:55:01,159
an ecuador a poison frog. It was different genus, I believe,

1889
01:55:02,319 --> 01:55:04,600
but I had the little tadpoles on its back. She

1890
01:55:04,800 --> 01:55:07,159
was carrying her tadpoles on her back. Isn't it cute?

1891
01:55:09,000 --> 01:55:10,279
Or is it the males that do that? I don't

1892
01:55:10,279 --> 01:55:16,720
fucking know anyway, But you know, the the lowlands, that's

1893
01:55:16,760 --> 01:55:19,359
a whole other world. You gotta prep yourself. It's hard

1894
01:55:19,399 --> 01:55:21,600
to go back and forth between the different mindsets of

1895
01:55:22,520 --> 01:55:25,560
mid to high elevation tropical botany and then true low

1896
01:55:25,960 --> 01:55:32,520
lowland rainforest tropical botany. I'm here for it, though, man.

1897
01:55:32,960 --> 01:55:37,359
The amount of fucking Leanna's so many, so many leanis

1898
01:55:37,439 --> 01:55:45,439
down their roebust vines, right climbable vines. So anyway, I

1899
01:55:45,479 --> 01:55:47,479
gotta go to thorn Scrub. The bobcat was at thorn

1900
01:55:47,520 --> 01:55:49,640
Scrub last night. We've had a pig. We've been trying

1901
01:55:49,720 --> 01:55:53,159
to kill it as as well. That comes through, but

1902
01:55:53,840 --> 01:55:56,560
good luck because they are. The pigs are so good

1903
01:55:56,600 --> 01:56:00,760
at avoiding being detected. I think Javier said that when

1904
01:56:00,840 --> 01:56:02,279
him and his friend were down there, they had luck

1905
01:56:02,359 --> 01:56:05,560
doing a call like mimicking an injured animal, and that

1906
01:56:05,680 --> 01:56:08,119
actually helped bring the pigs in. Because the pigs are

1907
01:56:08,159 --> 01:56:10,199
looking for shit to eat. They think they can eat

1908
01:56:10,199 --> 01:56:14,920
an injured animal. They're gonna go for it, so that

1909
01:56:15,199 --> 01:56:17,000
that might work, But then you would need some sort

1910
01:56:17,000 --> 01:56:19,239
of normal scope or something too. I just can't wait

1911
01:56:19,279 --> 01:56:21,399
to shoot one of these motherfuckers. I hate the fucking

1912
01:56:21,560 --> 01:56:25,520
I hate feral pigs. They're just they're so damaging, so

1913
01:56:25,840 --> 01:56:31,560
fucking damaging, way more so than Havelinus could ever be,

1914
01:56:32,199 --> 01:56:34,600
and way bigger than Haveleena could ever be as well.

1915
01:56:35,239 --> 01:56:37,479
Hopefully that bobcat was eating some of the rabbits, though,

1916
01:56:37,479 --> 01:56:40,159
we get the little desert cottontails. You know, there's a

1917
01:56:41,399 --> 01:56:44,359
relative of wolverines that lives in the rainforest as well,

1918
01:56:44,520 --> 01:56:47,560
like a lowland tropical wolverine relative. What is that? I

1919
01:56:47,600 --> 01:56:49,880
don't know what that is. Anyway, we'll end it there.

1920
01:56:50,159 --> 01:56:52,640
Thanks for listening. Hopefully you know the background noise. I

1921
01:56:52,760 --> 01:56:55,399
wasn't sitting at home in my office with the nice

1922
01:56:55,479 --> 01:56:57,840
mic you know, I'm just recording the shit on my phone,

1923
01:56:57,880 --> 01:57:00,319
so hopefully the background noise was okay. Were you okay

1924
01:57:00,399 --> 01:57:06,119
with it? Are you gonna be okay? Huh? I still

1925
01:57:06,159 --> 01:57:08,039
hope you got something out of this. I'll be in

1926
01:57:08,159 --> 01:57:12,520
Saint Louis. I'm giving some presentation on the twenty eighth

1927
01:57:12,560 --> 01:57:14,800
of February or March first. I forget what date is.

1928
01:57:14,840 --> 01:57:17,279
I don't know. I gotta look at my calendar. I'm

1929
01:57:17,399 --> 01:57:20,439
doing a number I'm going. I'll be at the Carnivorous

1930
01:57:20,479 --> 01:57:22,920
Plant Society in May. I'll be at the Aeroid Society

1931
01:57:23,000 --> 01:57:27,560
presentation in September. I'll be where else am I going?

1932
01:57:27,680 --> 01:57:27,800
Speaker 2: Oh?

1933
01:57:27,800 --> 01:57:30,159
Speaker 1: I'm doing some book thing at the end of April.

1934
01:57:30,239 --> 01:57:33,399
I'm supposed to speak on April eleventh at the San

1935
01:57:33,439 --> 01:57:35,520
Antonio Book Fair, but I'm probably gonna go to the

1936
01:57:35,600 --> 01:57:39,239
Philippines instead because I got invited to go and out

1937
01:57:39,279 --> 01:57:41,079
of San Antonio book for it. They're not paying me

1938
01:57:41,239 --> 01:57:43,159
enough for my time up there, you know, let's say,

1939
01:57:43,399 --> 01:57:47,520
because I got to drive and everything, you know, and

1940
01:57:48,520 --> 01:57:50,640
I forget what else. I'm gonna be doing a bunch

1941
01:57:50,640 --> 01:57:52,319
of other things too, but I forget, who gives a

1942
01:57:52,359 --> 01:57:54,800
shit whatever? You'll catch me around sometime sooner or later.

1943
01:57:54,800 --> 01:57:56,800
I hope you're having a good day. I hope you're

1944
01:57:56,800 --> 01:57:58,840
having a real nice time, and I mean that genuinely,

1945
01:57:58,840 --> 01:58:00,880
even though it sounds like I'm being so casting. Have

1946
01:58:01,039 --> 01:58:04,560
a rest of your day, and again, I'll put some

1947
01:58:04,760 --> 01:58:08,279
resources in the description here for Ecuador Botany, as well

1948
01:58:08,319 --> 01:58:09,840
as the course materials folder. That's all I got. Go

1949
01:58:09,920 --> 01:58:10,479
buck yourself by