Speaker 1: And and you should see what they do with some of
these cocow ceremonies. My niece, he's been doing these for
a while now, you know. And and she's she's making
good money. They're doing one hundred and twenty dollars for
these cocow ceremonies. They get you in there, they lay
you back in his seat. They just slap you around
with the hot towels, you know they do. And I
they they they got these rags, you know, they slap
you around with their the hot rags. They're they're like
like a warm uh lukewarm rag. You know. They slap
you around with these. They get the shaving brush out.
Phoam me up and stuff, you know, pop pop pop.
It's really it's some really you know, look it's luxuriant.
You know they do that. You slap you out with
the hot towels with the shaving brush out. Uh. They
they're pouring there, just throwing these dabs, you know, with
a little spoon or the hot cocoa on you, just
slapping your eyes, slapping it right on air and stuff.
Even get somebod they get some of the whipped creams
and stuff. I mean, it's just it's just something. You know,
they do some breathing stuff. You know, they got to
doing a nice warm breath. You know, there's someone ripping
farts in the back, you know, but it's okay because
everyone's comfortable. It's it's a really relaxed atmosphere in her
They got the you know, it's the same stuff they
do for the Yoni temples. They got the you know,
they got one of them bowls that they put the
you know, the wooden wind around. Then it makes a wow.
It's they get into some chanting and stuff. You know,
it's one hundred and twenty bucks and they do it
goes around for about forty minutes, and then they you know,
after they've done you know, hitting you around with the stuff,
they just you know, give you a little tap, gets
your ass out the door, and they sends you on
your way. It's really nice. The Cacaw ceremonies have really
been great for the rejuvenation you know, ancestral feelings and stuff.
You know, it just gets you get you really keyed
up and tuned in. Anyway, Welcome to another episode of
the Crime Past, But Bony doesn't podcast. My name's Brad.
Joey's dead and I'll be your host for today. Really
appreciate you listening. You're really doing a great job. Boy,
we got a deal for you. So today's episode is
sponsored by knuckle Boxer. It's kind of like a makeshift
a penis pump is what you's a spiritual penis pump.
It's kind of like a figurative thing, okay, to make
you feel more important than you really are. And that's
what we do here. And we're really anyway. Uh yeah,
so I'm just the welcome to the podcast. I don't know,
I was really on one today, as I have been lately.
You know, it's kind of it's a coping mechanism. Really.
I'm back in South Texas, bec in the death cult,
where there's very little native habitat left. It's just the
you know, I was looking at some landscaping today because
I was potentially gonna do a native planting job here,
and you know, it's just the fucking just wonder about
the logic. I mean, everywhere you go you see the
fundamental issue of human disconnection from the actual living war old.
What is the real world? You know that we evolved
out of that, we're still part of everywhere you see it.
You know, these weird ideas about what should belong in
a landscape, what a landscape should look like. Uh, deranged
ideas if you will, about what uh what what a plant?
What a plant? What a plant's place is in a
in a human landscape. It's crazy, Like we all get
these weird ideas about what a human landscape should look
like with plants in it, either from TV or from
the horticultural garbage that gets planted that's taken right out
of the fucking home home depot, big box store. You know,
like they plant palm trees in South Texas. There's only
one native palm tree to South Texas. That's not the
one that gets planted. They the people in power who
are making these decisions, and then the landscape companies who
are going for a contract often decide, uh, the palm
tree should be the non native ones that get really
tall and make it look like you know, Miami b
Each circa nineteen eighty seven, you give that kind of vibe,
you know, or they plant the fucking box woods. I mean,
just all this silly shit. So you end up getting
this landscape that looks like it's out of a fucking
video game. Like where everything's neatly hedged, evenly spaced, and
then planted in uniform lines. It looks like a fucking
Minecraft website. It looks it literally looks like something a
nine year old would design. If you told them, you know,
you gave them a set of a set of like
nine options, they could plant on a sixty four bit
graphic landscape, but it could only be planted in rows
and in you know, perfect little squares. It's fucking weird,
and then you wonder. Of course, while you don't wonder,
it's readily apparent to you why the living world is
dying around us, and you know, so much life is
continuing to disappear. Like I was talking to my daughter's
grandparents today here in South Texas, and I was showing
them a picture of a tarantula hawk. You know, a
really cool native wasp. It's got a really powerful sting.
They are like an iridescent blue with orange wings. Really
cool native wasp. They're not going to bother you unless
you're fucking with it and trying to eat it or something.
But it's really easy to just avoid it. You know,
they're not going to come at you, but they parasitize tarantulas,
and so, you know, her grandpa was talking about how
there used to be tarantula's everywhere, the cool native Texas tarantula.
What is it a fano palma. I forget the species name,
but anyway, it was they're all gone. They're like, oh yeah,
he was saying. When I when I was a kid,
we used see them all the time. They're all gone.
Same thing with the horned lizards. There used to be
horned lizards everywhere. They're all gone. You know, is the
is human civilization. The current human civilization spreads everything else
gets plowed to make way for it, rather than trying
to live with it and foster it and stewart it
and make space for it in our landscapes because it's
you know, the living world. There is this giant, well
oiled machine that you know, serves a number of purposes
like retaining soil, preventing flooding and erosion, enriching the soil,
cooling the landscape via evapotransporation of moisture from leaf stomata,
preventing the sun from baking the ground that alone, shading
the ground, providing a living cover over the ground so
that the sun doesn't just bake it, heating it up,
and then once the sun goes down, that ground, of course,
continues to emanate heat. Whether it's a giant asphalt parking
lot or even a lawn, it's still a giant battery
of heat. It's a giant heat radiator. All those and more,
all those services are provided by retaining the living fabric
around you, not having stupid shit like lawns or plants
that are not native to the ecosystem that comprises your
surrounding region. You know that evolved five thousand miles away.
That kind of shit. So we're dismantling this wonderful living
machine and garbage up in its place, and then wondering
why why everything around us is collapsing, Why weather systems
are fucked up, Why you know there's been record heat,
why there's been massive flooding. I mean, all it goes
on and goes I'm pretty to the choir here, I know,
but it still just blows my fucking mind. So, and
it's indicated to me every day when I look at
the things that we plant in our landscaping, and then
I talk to people in charge, Like the landscape bit
I was looking at and I would I don't care
about making money. I want to just see this shit
look nice. I mean, I care about being comfortable. I
want to see spots that I'm going to be exposed
to look nice. That's how I end up getting involved
in this. And at this point, I'm just gonna like
give them consulting. I don't even probably won't even end
up planting anything because I don't have time and I
don't have the resources, and I'm stretched pretty thin right now.
But I just don't want to see them rip out
what's their half of which is native at this particular site.
You know, you've got hummingbirds and all these cool butterflies
coming by to pollinate things like the Ruellia and the
Amelia patents which are there. They're native to this region,
but you know, they're kind of standard horticultural fair The
ones they've got are probably all the same clone, but regardless,
you know, instead of different phenotypes. But regardless, it's it's
benefiting the pollinators, it's providing life in this Like this,
one of the guys in charge decided he wanted to
put a desert scape in and I was like, okay,
well that's great for places like Phoenix and Tucson, but
like we're not really a desert we get twenty two
inches of rainy ear. If you rip this stuff out,
like putting in a desert scape when there's nothing there,
you could do that. That makes sense. But if you're
like ripping out native shrubs that are providing food for
all these cool pollinators, and then you're you're replanting it
with non native columnar cacti in a gaves, then you're
gonna have all this barren space. You're gonna lose all
those pollinators because they're those agaves are not you know,
they'll flower or very intermittently versus these things which are
flowering constantly. Then you can have all this barren space
in between that's just gonna get infiltrated with all the
fucking horrible non native grasses and h and quote weeds
that infiltrate any landscape. I know because I've tried to
do this. So you're gonna require maintenance. It's gonna look
like shit without maintenance. Why do you want to rip
this stuff? But anyway, the reasoning for wanting to rip
this stuff out was that it like the flowering plants,
the amelia and the ruellia ruellias. E can't they see?
For those of you that don't know, Amelia Pattens is
a coffee family rubiac. The reason for ripping it out
was that it grew over the sidewalk. That it grew
over the Sidewalkay, well, you get a fucking hedger and
you just cut the thing. It's not that hard. You
just go in there and you just just hedge it up.
It looks silly, it's not what I would do. But
if you're really that worried about it, you know, these
these ideas about like I don't want to plant that
tree because it's gonna drop stuff in the parking lot, Well, yeah,
it's what plants do. They drop seeds, how they reap.
You're not going to change four hundred and fifty million
years of land plant evolution because you don't like a
messy parking lot. Gets someone to fucking sweep the park,
or get someone to sweep the sidewalk or what. You know.
There's ways around this besides just removing these things. And
it's you know, I deal with this all the time too,
the way that we view plants as just they're esthetically
pleasing their background imagery for a shitty photo or or
someone's canned idea about how something should look. There's not
We're not integrating the life that surrounds us, the living
fabric that we're a part of. We're not integrating that
into our our lives. You know, the way to look
at this should not be just I'm going to plant
whatever I whimsically think is attractive, even though I have
no experience in ecology and natural sciences or and I'm
not even familiar with what this landscape looked like two
hundred years ago before my ass or my ancestors stilly
asses got here. You know, I'm going to I'm just
gonna plant for what what is attractive? Well, what's attractive?
Difference depends on who differs depending on who you talk to.
But what doesn't change depending on who you talk do
is how the things that you plant, the choices you make,
affect all the surrounding life around you. If you choose
to plant things, if you choose to plant things that
nurture and foster life and other life forms, that's not
a subjective opinion. That's a fact. That's what's going to happen.
You're gonna nurture and foster other life forms. You're gonna
get the cool hummingbirds and the cool fucking sulfur butterflies,
and the cool beetles and all the other stuff. And
you know what, the pest insects. You're gonna have less
of those two because you're gonna have the things that
eat them. Right, same shit. If you got like a
roach problem outside, we get these big non native African
cockroaches or German cockroaches, whatever the fuck they're called. The
common name's basically it's a big red roach, all right.
I have less of those now because I've got all
the cool lizards and toads that eat them, and so
I don't get any in my house because they can't survive.
I don't get them in my house. I don't even
see them outside that much because everything else eats them.
Why do I get Why do I have those things
that eat them there? Because I've got the diverse native
plant community that they want. There's places for them to hide,
for them to hang out in, for them to lurk in,
for them to make and reproduce in I mean, my yard.
This little parcel is an oasis of life in a
sea of shit, in a sea of human fucking garbage
of like modern human societal garbage. The lawns, the cordy
palm trees, the fucking the roads, the fucking parking lots,
the dumb you know, the fucking commercial shit. There's like
nine pawn shops, you know, five blocks away, nine fucking
pawn shops. That tells you about the quality of the culture,
right anyway, Uh, I really need some car dealerships. I
need some car dealerships. You could do a couple more. Uh,
you know, loan places, those are nice. Some pawn shops
and loan loan places are always nice. So like a
little loan storefront, you know, payday loans really increase the
intellectual rigor that's evident by just taking a walk in
the neighborhood. You know this that the the intellectual stimuli.
I don't know, man, you know what's the But what's
the what's the answer is because I'm not just complaining
to talk ship. The answer is to normalize talking about
this kind of shit. But knowing that there's a solution
for talk about this, make it a point. Throw in
those little fucking comments here and there. That's good. Don't
be a don't be a don't be a silent mouth,
be a squeaky fucking wheel, right, that's what That's what
makes this normal. But instead of just being a negative dick, though,
that does have its time and place. Okay, Uh, you know,
offer a mix up, a little bit of comedy or
a fucking cynical, cynically humorous statement, uh, and then offer
a solution. And you offer a solution by changing the
ship that we plant. Okay. It's not just the fucking
esthetic landscape, not just the way it looks. It's literally
the way we fucking live. It's this, it's the life
that we surround ourselves with. To demean it and just
say it's not it's just a pretty plant or whatever
the shit, it's not about that. It's about the way
that we live. It's about the way that we foster
and relate to the landscape around us, which a lot
of human societies have done in a positive manner for
thousands of years. All right, But this one, the one
that we're living, and the roots that this civilization came
from are all fucked up and painted, Okay, and they
can potentially, I mean, I still think we're on a
sinking shit, but at least we can maybe increase the
quality of the sink on the way down, you know,
increase the quality of the sinking. We're still going down,
but it might be a little bit more tolerable, you
know what I mean? By fostering a connection to the
living world, the world that we're part of, this well
oiled machine that takes care of all of us. You know,
that's the kind of mindset to have normalized. Talking about that,
you can change something by talking about that, By convincing
your neighbors to kill the law, by convincing your city people,
whatever the fucking city managers to put plant native plants
in the park. By being familiar and educated on what
native plants grow around you, and what things pollinate them,
and what things have an obligate host relationship with them,
what insects do you know? Pay attention to that stuff.
It really does. It really doesn't matter. I mean, really,
it can be as simple as just having a fucking
eigh naturalist account and paying attention to this. Collecting seeds,
sewing them in the cracks beneath a fence line. Fence
lines are good places to sew seeds because he can't
mow there because the fence is in a way, you know,
sowing seeds anywhere, keeping them in your pocket. You got
a couple of acorns off of fucking what you know
is the native oak, try go stash them somewhere. Be
like that little scrub jay, that little mischievous bastard scrub ja.
That's plant and acorns around. There's stuff you could do.
It's really it's not that fucking art. Don't don't be drolled,
don't be boring. Use your imagination that shit you could do,
but certainly make it a part of of your life
and just your daily life, and talk about it. Be
educated on it. If you're educated about it, that gives
you the opportunity to educate others, to share with them
how cool this stuff can be. A right because there's
obviously a reason you're into it. It's if you're listening
to this fucking podcast. Yeah, you get a little burst
of dopamine looking at this stuff. Share that with other
people that'll get turned onto it. Two anyway, uh man,
I've had a cool couple of days. I went and
saw Texas's rarest plant yesterday, well one of them. There
are so many now, so with all the developments, so
many plants are becoming rare all the bulldozing. It was
Perinikia congesta. It's carriophilesi, the carnation family, same order as Cacti,
spinach and beets caryophilelees. But Perinikia congesta, I know the
genus Perinikea. You get Perinikia james I. There was another
Perinickea species I've seen in Colorado. There's actually six. I've
seen about six Perinika species, as my eye naturalist account
is telling me right now. Perinika Virginica. So I think
I saw at the shale bearings out with that cool
ariagonum in Virginia, on those those shale slopes in Appalachia.
Perinikia erecta. Where'd I see that? Peraniki assess La flora
and Peranikia Wilkinsonia. Oh, that looks like a cool one, Wilkinsonia.
Where the fuck was that? Anyway? These are small, little,
often matted plants, tufts of plants six inches tall by
like ten inches wide. Oh that was in Marathon, No ship,
Oh that wasn't. Then evacuate Peraniki Wilkinsonia. It's cool. Their
flowers are tiny. They look like little stars. Maybe three
millimeters five millimeters wide, little five pedaled, often tapered to
a point each petal flowers. But you know it's once
you see a peranike, won't you see a parke? You've
seen them all. Uh No, once you've seen a peranickea,
you get a you get a feel for you get
a gist for it. They often like rocky areas. Uh
they're they don't get too tall, so they can get
they can get over, they can get out competed by
and smothered by taller growing stuff. So they like areas
where taller growing stuff can't grow, like shale, Baron's rocky outcrops,
cliff edges, cliff faces, et cetera. So it already tells
you this is gonna be a weird daphic situation. Remember
a daphic refers to soil. So certainly I got to
this fucking site. I was following old orbarium records because
it's only been collected from two sites in Texas, both
in Jim Hogg County. Who the fuck was Jim Hogg.
Let's figure this out. Now, let's get to the Jim Hog.
What the fuck tell me? That's a fucking oh yeah,
Jesus Christ. That guy looks like a Jim Hogg. My
name is Jim Hogg. Fucking born in eighteen fifty one,
croaked in nineteen oh six was an American lawyer and
statesman in the twentieth governor of Texas. I already don't
like him. Oh god, Yeah, he looks kind of like
an asshole. He got a funny little beard. You want
to tug on it. See if he was Scottish, she'd
probably be cool. But he was one of his old
school Texas bros. So might have been an asshole and
probably a racist though he was. Maybe Jim Hogg was
trying to decolonize his his you know, his local community
gardeners something I don't know. Maybe he's trying to decolonize
the farmer's market. You know, this could have been a
decolonizer anyway, Jim Hogg safe to say he was. Probably
he could probably dig up some dirt on him. Oh.
Hog was a follower of the conservative New South Creed.
Oh that doesn't sound good. The New South Creed, which
became popular following the US Civil War. It was also
associated with populism. Yeah, yeah, he was a fucking clansman.
Probably anyway. The New South, create New South democracy, or
New South creed is a slogan in the history of
the American South, first used after the American Civil War.
Reformers used it to call for a modernization of society
and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the United States
as the whole, reject the oh you know what, this
don't sound too bad, and integrate more fully with the
United States as a whole, reject the economy and traditions
of the Old South and the slavery based plantation system
of the pre warp. All right, well, I'm you know,
I'm maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe
Jim Hogg was indeed trying to decolonize anyway, whatever the fuck,
I don't know. The point is, Jim Hogg County is
now a mostly Hispanic county in South Texas. It's also
home to a large Payote population. Uh and I think
one of the only licensed payotero's yout Jim Hog Webb County,
Jim Hogg County, Webb County, and then Star County out
right there, and then Sapata County to the west. Those
are the four counties in South Texas that peyote grows in,
as well as a wealth of other cool cactus species
that few people, whether it's the native users of payote
or the drug bros, don't give a shit about at all,
generally speaking. But that can be changed. We can change
that just by talking about it more and getting people
into this stuff. You say, hey, come here, look at this.
Look at this cool shit. We got sniff on this.
A bunch of other nice stuff over here, A bunch
of cool plants like Perinikia congesta or that liatrous punk
tata variety mexicana. You just call it a fucking blazing
star if you don't want to remember all that. Though,
if you do get into botany or plants at all,
you should familiarize yourself with genus names. At least. Don't
need to learn the whole fucking binomia, but you could
learn the genus these topo chicos with a twist. The
lion is really weird. I'm gonna crack open my giant
forty of green tea now, you know, so you don't
get the ass cancer. You know, a come from the
line of Daego's always always get prone to the colon
cancer because they're eating a lot of nasty shit. All
that had mozzarella and the fucking you know, those meatballs
and shit. You know, it's really reeks havoc on your
colon if you're not leading an active life. But anyway,
so Jim Hogg County is mostly Hispanic. There's a large Hispanic.
The box you check on like a fucking job application
doesn't go into the depth of heritage. You know, generally
cole Tekan mixed with or lepan Apache mixed with Spanish.
But anyway, it's mostly Hispanic county and it is rife
with cool thorn scrub plants, thorn scrub plant communities, et cetera.
So anyway, I was a following an older baring record
to this spot and I look at it the satellite map.
I could tell this was gonna be a good good
spot because the satellite map indicated that the whole area
where it is reported to grow was I mean, you
could see it from this like I was saying, you
could see it was all this white soil, which turned
out to be calleche. I would assume in other other
places that maybe it was gypsum. I did not see
any selenite there. Selenites gypsum in crystal form that you'll
frequently see in gypsum areas. Remember, gypsum is a highly
soluble just like limestone sedimentary rock. That indicates deposition in
a marine environment. Generally when you see gypsum, though it's
not just ocean environment. It generally and iticates more like
near shore evaporate pools, like more estuarying, you know, like waters.
It'll be inundated with the ocean for a little bit,
then it'll evaporate like more estuary. You know. It just
indicates there was more evaporative precipitation going on there at
some point, generally speaking, but you'll frequently see gypsum with limestone.
Limestone is calcium carbonate. Gypsum is calcium sulfate. There's a
lot of cool plants that grow on gypsum. Gypsum is
one of those soils that those geologic settings that induces
speciation in plants. It causes new plant species to evolve
over long amounts of time, just like serpentine, just like
sand dunes. All right, It's not a straight soil set up.
It's a really weird mix both chemically and mechanically. The
way it behaves when it's wet versus when it's dry.
Just like clay soils, there's clay endemics, there's clay endemic plants,
plants that are only that are restricted growing on vertict
clay soils. In places like the California Coast Range Mountains,
which has a lot of clay sedimentary deposits full of clay.
Shout out the Ryan O'Dell who works for a BLM
out there, a cool botanist who knows a ship ton
about all of those what is it fucking region? It's
off Pinocchi Road, which is off the I five in
central California, and it's all this verdict clay. You get
these really cool plant species that germinate when the clay
is moist and are able to take the stresses induced
by the clay As it dries out and bakes, and
those molecules, well, not the molecules, but the clay itself
starts contracting, because that's what verdict means. It means it
expands and contracts regard in relation to how much moisture
it holds. So when it's wet, it expands and as
it dries out it shrinks. A right, you can see
the same shit in places where houses have been built
with a cement foundation in clay soils. That's why they'll
tell you sometimes in Texas like water the area around
the prime of your house, so that because you know,
as that soil contracts, it starts, it doesn't hold up
the foundation as well. In certain places it's not uniform throughout.
You know, there's where the cement foundation is laid, so
the foundation can then start the crack since there's an
uneven way balance since the ground has literally shifted beneath it.
But then when it gets wet again after a good rain,
it's the ground swells back up. It's pretty cool, but
it's obviously very stressful if your roots are and you're
a plant. Well, gypsum kind of does the same thing.
When it's wet, it will be very spongy and moist.
Then when it when it gets dry, it feels like,
you know, it feels like some Jersey gweedo mixed the
bad batch of concrete. Basically, it's what I'm saying here.
It's a fucked up harsh It's hard to kneel on.
It hurts your knees, you know, if you're kneeling on it, it
feels like like really shitty concrete, like uneven concrete, not
the mooth shit that Vinie did a good job on
when he was out there with the little trowel and shit,
you know, making it all smooth and nice. He could
run a hand alongside it, you know, you could lick
it when it's dry, and you wouldn't get any dust
in your in your mouth, you know, like that, and
not that kind of concrete, like the concrete that's all
gravelly and wardy and sucks and it's. Yeah, it's really
hard for a lot of plants to grow, and so
you get a lot of cool gypsm endemic plants in
places like Nuevo Leone and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and anywhere
in the Chihuahua Desert where there's gypsum. There's a lot
of gypsum in the Chihuahua Desert and apparently on down
into South Texas well. I could see this from the
satellite image that this was already going to be a cool,
uh setting for plants, because it looks remarkably different from
the surrounding thorn scrub and it's bright white and whatever.
So anyway, I got there and I'm already. Fucking I'm
seeing a bunch of cool, cool plants. Already. It's generally sparse.
There's it's you know, sparse ground and between. It wasn't
super thick. There's like sparse ground in between these islands
of vegetation. Caliandra conferta. Was it conferta or confert to floor?
I always fucked this up? On let me look it up. Okay,
there we go. It was Caleandra conferta Calliandra areophyla. Where
is that? These are the feather dusters they call them.
I saw a bunch of cool calanders in Brazil and
in Mexico that are hummer pollen eate of their bright
red all those long all those stamens get super long,
the petals and sepals are reduced, and it just looks
like a dust, like literally like a fucking duster, you know.
And that's just again the stamens and a couple styles
many stamens releasing pollen, and a few styles receiving pollen.
But it's a floral form that seems to work. But
that Calandra conferta is cool. It's got this kind of
divaricate branching, it's got you know, those mimosa like pinnate leaves,
and it's forming this mat all over this not mat.
It gets like ten inches tall. A beautiful butterfly outside
hitting the amelia. I got a amelia in my fucking yard.
Oh shit, that's a swallow fuck yeah, nice zebra swallow tail. Yeah,
you fucking know what that is. It's good looking and
so uh the caliander conferd to me as an indicator plant.
That Okay, this is gonna be a reduced shrub community.
It's not very tall, it doesn't like competition, it needs
full sun. That's been another fucking plant I'd love to
see in cultivation. There are so many I would love
to see in cultivation. Lucophylum minus is another plant I'd
love to see in cultivation. Little leaf saniso with those
chalky mint green leaves, like so many of the plants
in West Texas. This is in South Texas. This is
a West Texas plant. We're talking about South Texas. I'm
just going on a diet tribe here because this is
a wonderful species and I want to make sure I
don't forget to mention it. But Lucophylum minus is a
West Texas plant. That's going. It's going off right now.
It's like a late summer, early fall bloomer purple flowers.
It's little leaf siniso. Lucophylum minus is opposed to Lucophylum protestens,
which you get in the Edwards Southern Edwards Plateau and
the Paloti gardens of South Texas. Lucophiling for testants has
pink flowers and larger leaves. But again, as you're moving
west in the continent, it dries out, and so you
start seeing the trademarks of more drought adapted plants, like
smaller leaves, thinner leaves, more hair, et cetera. But lucophile
and minus is fucking going off. God, it looks good.
The whole fucking landscape is lighting up with purple and
I don't know anyone growing it, and that to me
is a fucking travesty. Home despot's not gonna grow it.
These shitty you know, wholesale nurseries aren't going to grow it.
There's no wholesale native plant nurseries in Texas yet. There
should be. I'm hoping there will be at some point.
They got them in California, where the native plant movement
is much bigger, but they don't have them out here.
Someone needs to start. Man, someone could start a wholesale
native plant nursery in Texas and make a fucking killing.
That is that is a fucking gold mine nobody's sitting
on yet. I'll do your promos for you. You maybe
don't want to be associated with me. I can't blame it,
but I will mention you. Okay, we'll do an unauthorized
sponsorship because I just want more people knowing about this stuff. Oh,
by the way, James Lovegren is gonna have prudace Texaan already.
I gave him a bunch of seed. The radicals are
starting to sprout and so he's gonna sew them. Uh.
He's in South Texas. He's in uh what is it,
the home of Freddy Fender? You know, you know, Freddy Fender?
Right home of Freddy Fender. Beautiful Sam Benito, Texas. That's
where James love Grin is located. And he's got prunus
text Ayanna, damn. Look at a frow on that guy.
Look at Freddy he's got a fro. Fuck. Yeah, that's nice.
Like at you fro it's a daygo fro. Yeah, Look
at he's got that mustache till Okay, I'm going I'm
really getting distracted now. But anyway, James love Gren, located
in beautiful San Benito, Texas, is gonna have Prunas Texana.
So I'm gonna try to do some promo for him
to sell him because I don't think there's enough people
in South Texas that want it. You never know, but
people have been asking me about that. I've been getting
emails left the right. You got any pruce text on
a seeds you get? No, you slept on that, buddy,
It's gone. I'm sorry it doesn't keep well. I tried
to do a hot stratification on some because I thought
that's what they wanted, so I left it in a
bag and let it get to the point that it
smelled like vomit, like literally like Ginko fruits. And then
it turns out they had just rotten. Doesn't need hot stratification.
The seed just needs removal of that seed coat, which
bacteria and fungal organisms do in the soil when it's
sitting there throughout the hot summer waiting to germinate. But
I got some that germinated already. But remember when those
seeds germinate and they'll be more available next June. That's
when the seed is ready. They flower in early spring
and then which in South Texas is like February, and
then the seed is ready. The fruits are ready by June,
and they're fucking delicious. You go out there, you pick
a bucket, you eat all of them. You spit the
seeds out. That's how you harvest those things. They're so
fucking good. But yeah, that then you'll sew them and
then they germinate in late summer early fall, so they
sit out that hot summer. But I wasn't sure if
it was a chemical or mechanical inhibitor on those seeds,
But anyway, they're popping now. I got a couple. When
that seed germinates, you got to get them in a
ten inch pot, if not straight in the ground, because
they send seeds, they send roots down super deep as
fast as they can because they're trying to get you know,
they grow in really hot places that are prone to
you know, you could have a fucking eighty degree day
on Christmas, you know, throughout the year, so the heat
can come whenever. So you want to get that root established.
And then once that roots established, and then start growing.
Someone sent me a photo of one they had germinated.
Whoever did that, thank you, By the way, I forget
who it was because my mind is overloaded. But they
sent me a picture of when they had germinated. The
vegetative parts above ground were two inches tall and the
roots were like eleven inches deep into the ground. Fucking
cool strategy. It works for him. But uh, anyway, I'm
picking Manfreda. I'm opening the manfred to lunge of flora
fruits from my yard as I talk to you. So anyway,
the point is there's not enough cool native plants uh
uh in cultivation. So it's up to you figure out
when this stuff flowers, when it fruits and sets seed
and then grows. Shit done of it, and collect more
seed than you think you'll need. Scatter some as you're
collecting it. That's what the plant wants and you're helping
it out. But scatter more seed than you think you'll need,
because you can always give it to someone who will
grow it, or give it to a native plant nursery
that'll grow it or whatever. But get I've been given
see to James Peace, I've been given seeded bart and
springs nursery up in Austin. I just want to see
more of this shit and cultivation. Why because the habitat
where's where it grows is dying and being undervalued, underappreciated,
and destroyed. So anyway back to Perinikia, Congesta and those
cool caliche soils that it grows on. Collich is just
kind of a natural cement. It's basically what happens when
you take calcareous rock and calcarious soils, introduce a little
bit of rain water, well sometimes a lot of rain
water in a very hot place where it evaporates really quickly,
and so that water reacts with the limestone because it's
calcium carbonate, and the calcareous soils, even if it's just
like you know, the limestone that weathered long ago, it's
still you know, still builds a calcarious soil. The weather
reacts with it, picks up figuratively speaking, well actually quite literally,
picks up, dissolves that those calcium carbonate minerals and then
carries them aways. And then because it's so hot, that
water evaporates, leaving them behind, and so you get this
kind of natural cement forming. And this cement will cement
rocks together. You'll see like road cuts with all these
conglomerate rocks and pebbles in it, cemented together by caliche
where kalechi, as Christy David says, those kalechi soils, you
gotta say it loves those kalechi soils. Joey gotta love
that woman. So anyway, I could see the collechi was
fucking everywhere. Plant community changed, and it's so hard to
not get distracted when I'm looking at I mean, it's
so hard to not get distracted on this fucking podcast,
as you can clearly tell. But it's so hard to
not get distracted when I'm out looking for a plant
because in any of these areas, because there's so much
other cool stuff that's growing there and it's so underdocumented,
you're not getting a lot of people going out to
Jim Hogg County, Texas to document the native plants there.
As you might have guessed, we need more people doing it,
even if it just means parking your car and walking
along a roadside, which is what you got to do
in Texas most of the time because ninety six percent
of the land is fucking private here. You can still
learn a lot of cool shit and see a lot
of cool shit just by parking your fucking car and
walking with your dog along a fence line for a mile,
all right, because those areas between the fence and the
road there can still be a lot of cool shit
growing there. Sucks, that's what it's come to. It sucks.
You can't go out on like an actual hiking trailer,
hike off in some blm land looking for stuff like
me and sheriff. What do you used to do? But
it beats It beats nothing, you know, beats not doing anything.
It beats sitting on your sitting at your home with
your thumb and your ass, complaining about shit on social media.
Fucking god forbid. Playing video games no offense if you
played the video games. But you got to at least
reduce them, all right, You should get them out of
your life and go enjoy the real world. But I
get I get it. The real world's depressing. But at
least cut them down a little bit. Do something, you know,
Go build some shit, go fucking whatever. I don't know,
Go do some kettle bell swings, you know, so the
coleaches everywhere I park It already looks good. I was
surprised to see this fucking blew my mind. Liatris punk Hata,
the Blazing Star growing in South Texas in jim Hogg County,
and it was now you never see Liatrius growing in
thorn scrub's mostly thorn scrub. It's dense, but it only
it only gets six feet eight feet tall. This type
of plant community the time of leaping thorn scrub, but
it gets super fucking dense. And my actress is a
sun needy plant, and there was so much of it
growing here. I did dig some. I fucking dug some,
you bet your ass I did. I would never do
that in California or another state where that actually values
its native flora and protects it. But I've seen too
many places in Texas where you're out there looking for
cool plants and uh, you know, you decide I'm not
gonna dig or whatever, and then you come back six
months later and it's destroyed. It's been mowed, it's been sprayed,
or the landowner it just decided to bulldoze it because
he's trying to sell the plot. And cleared land is
more valuable than land with living skin on it than
land with plants on it. So I dug a couple
of iatriss. The population was robust. I'm gonna try to
get them going, and once I do, I'm either gonna,
I don't know, try to get them the one of
the botanic gardens here, or basically the idea is to
dig them and then get a seed source going, get
two plants, get a seed source going, so you can
get seed of this. I also collected an erbarium specimen
because I don't even know if this population has been documented,
but apparently this liatrius. One of the only reasons it
was growing here is because it was this open white
landscape of Colichi Calichi's soil, but it was I'm so
surprised to see Liatris punk tata growing down. I've seen
it out by Terlingua on some of those you know
barren desert areas, but of course that's a different landscape
that's not as humid. You get cooler night temperatures where
you don't have humidity. The temperature is cool off at night.
That affects the plant metabolism, you know, over evolutionary time,
so there are plants that have evolved to take those
cool nights. But then you bring them to a hot
humid environment and they can't take the warm nights. And
again the air doesn't cool off because it's got water
vapor in it. Water vapor holds onto heat. It's got
a high heat capacity, so anyway, the water molecules hold
on to heat. But I fuck, it was so cool
to see. I was so stoked. I'm like, God, damn,
this is a liatris growing in South Texas, growing in
the fucking payote gardens. Like there's peyote, you know, five
minutes away from here, and there's liatris growing with it.
So a blazing star that grows simpatrick with payoti, which
is crazy. Like, you know, people in the Midwest that
are familiar with liatris and love it and plant that
in their native plant gardens. Whatever the shit, would be
amazed to learn that there's a liatris species that co
occurs with payoti. So cool, you know, or grows within
a breadth of it. What else was here? That Callandra Conferda,
Like I said, there was a weird Oh god, what
was that plant? There was a weird member of malt
piggy ac that I had never seen before. Let's see
this aspect. Karfa was that what it was. Normally when
you see malpiggy ac, you think it's gelfimia. What is
it in gusta foia which you get in the Edwards
plateau to it builds a big root like many of
these plants do, you know, from a dry area they
build a big root that they can dive back to.
You know, cut their cut up, close up shop, cut
off vasculature to their to their leaves. When it gets
too hot, you know, basically just close it up. Tissue
dies and they just die back to the root, go dormant. Yeah.
Aspacarpa Hysopatholia malpiggy a ce malpiggy ac, for which the
order malpiggy Alies is named, which you know rubber is
in points setis are in U four B A C.
The family is in as well as willows too or
in this order malpiggy Alies male piggy ac the family.
Remember orders and an alies families and an ac mal
piggy ac is all the male piggy is I see
have this general flower shape, five petals. The petals look
like a padal, so they're they're much broader at the
distal ends, and then they have this tiny little looks
like an ore, you know, like, ah, they've got this
tiny little it's called being a clawed pedal, I believe.
So it looks like a spatula shaped petal, an oor
shaped petal, or like a spoon shaped petal. And then
they've got these little nectar glands, not nectar, excuse me,
lipid glands at the base of the flower that produce
fats I believe for bees that collect oils. Is that correct,
I don't know, but there are these weird glands. They
look like little buttons or little knobs. It's pretty cool.
But this aspacarp I had never seen before, And because
all Malepigia flowers generally look the same, having the same
flower structure, it's really easy to see it and just
be like, oh, yeah, that's a uh, that's just the galfimia.
You know, you always you assume it's what you already know,
but it was not. It was a whole different species.
Really cool And anyway, so what else did I see? Oh?
You Ploca torri i Uploca is barrage and acy. So
the inflorescence has that kind of scorpion, the way that
it curves, you know that scorpioid cyme structure very slightly
not as big as like in a facilia, but you
could still see it. But it's got these yellow flowers
that are somewhat tube shaped. They look like they're probably
pollinated by a small moth or a small fly, something
that's got a long proboscis that can get in there.
And I saw that uploka and I thought that was
this perinikea at first, because I just was ahead of
my mind, tiny yellow flowers. I didn't I didn't look
close enough. And then I looked at them more and
I was like, oh wait, this is not a perinike
at all. Whatever. And then a little bit further along
at this site I was looking at the liatrus. I'm like, okay,
this thing isn't going to be easy to find. It's
a small plant anyway, but it's surely going to be there.
So I just walked a little bit further out into
a more barren area, and sure enough there was Perinikia congesta,
which I just, I guess just got in dangered species
status because it's so rare. It's only known from two places.
But of course Texas is so ass backwards too. I mean,
the conservation is here can be's ass backwards. So now
it's since it's in danger, it's illegal to grow or
they don't want you to grow it. Some of the
state bondists might harass you for growing it. I guess,
I don't know. At the same time, they're not actively
engaging in any X city conservation or trying to propagate it.
Oh god, it's so weird, man, It's so silly to me.
If I'm wrong, correct me, and I will gladly, you know,
put it in the next podcast that I'm giving you
out giving out bad dope. This is bad, you know,
bad info. But I'm pretty sure. I mean, I know
people who've been harassed for growing endangered plants before, which
is fucking madness. It's insane. California, with all the stupid
shit they can do out there, sometimes doesn't do that.
Like California doesn't have policy where it's illegal. Three are
plenty of plants that are endangered in the wild in
California are actively in abundantly grown and cultivation. It's our
best hope for a lot of the stuff, you know,
in a state where there's no protections for a lot
of these plants, growing things in cultivation is the best hope.
Why would you make it harder to do that. That's
crazy to me, because it's gonna be incentivizing poaching. No,
it's not gonna be incentivizing poaching. It's gonna be incentivizing
if a plant is endangered, it's gonna be incentivizing growing
it more. People want to have that. It's no one's
gonna come out and try to poach a fucking little
this little turd of a plant that no one probably
cares about, just because it's rare, come on flood the market.
That's how the thinking goes. Like when the same thing,
when the Dudley appoaching was going on in California, they
didn't outlaw growing Dudley. They fucking growers just grew a
shit ton more. They're really easy to grow from seed.
Dudley is a cool little succulent plant that's got a
rosette that a lot of people love. They do grading gardens.
So anyway, Yeah, I was stoked to see this plant.
I was stoked to get good photos of it. Put
them on a naturalist, put them up in a database,
and make them available to the public. Under creative common ZEUS.
You know all my photos. If you're not trying to
make money off of it, fucking use it. I don't
care credit me, but use it. This zebra swallowtails really
hanging out. What is he hanging out? He's hanging out
in the set the excellem. I think he's just pollinating
or yeah, getting some necktar off of it. So yeah,
it was a fucking cool site. I spent a few
I spent a couple hours there. There was a physaria
I think it was Phisaria Fendler I little mustard, So
that means four petals and six stamens, synapomorphies of the
mustard family. Shared traits of the mustard family, you know,
shared traits that are shared due to shared ancestry, to
the fact that they're inherited. It's how we grew up
families and orders. And then earlier that day, I had
been at this woman's land who owns god thousands of
acres and she's really cool, she's really friendly, she's down
for native plant people. She lives, I believe, what is it,
Webb County, And I was exploring her land. She's got
this cool red sand, which is another soil type here,
and I saw Kamachrista texana growing there. This little they
call the partridge piece Kamachrista texana. But the same thing
mimosa flowers, same thing as that callander. Mimosa like flowers,
so they're pinnate, they're not flowers, leaves, Mimosa like leaves,
so those pinnate leaves. But then it's got that safe
elpinioid flower sace. Elpinioid is a subfamily of the pea family, Fabasi.
Senna is in that family, Erythrostemin is in that family.
They're generally pretty cool. They almost look like a pea flower,
but they're five big petals. They don't have that banner
wings and keel flower morphology banner petal, wing pedals, keel
petals and this, and they've got porcytal anthers to most
of them. Hoffman segi A glacca is another great one,
which it's another cool plant I saw in West Texas
busting up through the asphalt near the Prairie dog Town
north of Marathon. Another great, fucking underutilized plant would make
an awesome plant in a native garden. Dope looking flowers,
super cool flowers. Glaucus foliage hoffman Segia is a genus
I know from the deserts of Baja to the deserts
of Chile. The whole fucking genus is dope. They all
look cool. There's some blood red ones in Chile. That's
our native one hoffman Segia glacca. Why the fuck is
nobody growing it? Once again I ask into the void,
into the ether. I get no answer. But Cama Crista
flexuosa variety text aina or just camachrista textena. Uh, you
get Chama Crista flexuosa on the sand sheet. It's got
multiple stems, comes up from another tuberous root. Those cool
yellow flowers mimosa like foliage mimosa like leaves. This one
was a nantios stylist, which I've been ranting about a
lot lately because I've seen it in Solaina moro stratum
and Heterantherra mexicana, that cool aquatic plant I did a
video on last month. A nantiostyli aka mirror image flowers
is a way to ensure outcrossing right and avoid self pole.
Why do we want to avoid self pollination because that
lowers genetic diversity. It's a great tactic to avoid going extinct.
If there's only one or two individuals in an area
and the rest of the population has been wiped out.
If you can self pollinate and still make seeds, you know,
different phenotypes of seeds, not just seeds that are the
same clone as the parent plant. It's the whole point
of making fucking seeds, of reproduction. Then if you can
do that, then you're not going to go extinct. You're
going to have a larger population. It's a good way
to hedge your bets against extinction if you can self pollinate.
But again, you do that enough, you do it over. However,
many generations, like many of the salvias, can do, and
stages can do. They can self pollinate. A lot of
members of MALVESI can self pollinate, so like if you
only have one plant, you'll still get good seed. Caranthodendron,
which is a really cool tree, the monkey hand tree,
the devil hand tree from Wahaka, from the cloud Forest
of Wahaka. I grew then in Kell, California, there was
only only one of them. I would still get good
set off of it, so I could grow more and
then share them with people. Great fucking tree, super cool.
The birds love the shit out of it like Jay's
would come and drink out of the flowers because the
flowers are the size of a baseball and produce so
much fucking nectar. And to see him in habitat in
the cloud forest of Wahaka growing at nine thousand feet
elevation is a fucking tree. Really cool. They grow in
those those places where they do the mushroom tourism, you
know where you get like you fucking white shamans with
rich parents going to do psychedelic mushroom tourism. You know,
it was spiritual experience. I'm just kidding. It's good. I like,
I like that they have those places down there, and
I think it's cool that a lot of those indigenous
communities can capitalize on it. But you know, it's always
a fine line between gross commercialization and actual ethical practices
that respect heritage anyway. You know, self pollinating obviously is
a way to head your bets, but outcrossing is the
most beneficial because if you're outcrossing, you're not going to
be stacking up recessive alleles. Allel is a copy of
a gene, right, so humans are diployd. They've got two
sets of chromosomes, one from your parent, one from your
one from your mother, one from your father to you know,
one step from each parent, you get a bad gene.
You get a bad copy on one set of chromosomes,
while you've still got that other backup copy of chromosomes
to make sure that you get a good copy. And
I was just teaching this, you know, it's haploid diploid.
That's just elementary biology. And that's why you know humans
are diploid and spermanegg are haploid. Sperm meat sagg forms
a new zygote, a diploid zygot anyway, so you get
those recessive alleles stacking up if you self pollinate or inbreed.
Eventually you will if you're self pooninating. So outcrossing is
always more beneficial. So something in the environment was selecting
for outcrossing with these enantiostylist flowers, these mirror image flowers.
And so how is a flower mirror image do we
mean by that? Well, normally in a flower, you've got
say five stamens and a stigma, five male parts and
a single female part. The stigma will be in the
center and the stamens will be surrounding it. And so
if a bee gets in there, it's dancing around the flower,
hitting each stamen, the inside of the flower, hitting each stamen.
It's going to get pollin on that style no matter what.
But the ideally it's from another flower, but it could
be from the from another plant, but it could be
from the same plant. Okay, with mirror image flowers, most
of them, the entire plant will only produce one type
of flower, a style that swings to the left or
to the right. So the style on a mere image
flower is not going to be in the center. It's
going to be to the left or the right. And
generally speaking, the anthers will be on the other side.
So the anthers swing left, the style swings right. An
stamens same thing. The stamens swing to the left, the
style swings to the right. The whole plant will be
like that. Every flower on that plant will be like that.
And then another plant will have a style that swings
to the left and the stamens that swing to the right.
So if a flower, if a plant is producing flowers
that only swing to the left, that means it's going
to have to That means the pollen is only going
to be on the left side of the pollinator's body.
If it hit an entirely separate plant where the stamens
and the anthers were on the left side of the flower.
So it's it's a way to ensure that no self
pollination is going on, because every flower on a plant
that produces flowers with a style that swings to the
left is not gonna it's not going to produce stamens
that do the same thing. So there's the pollen is
only going to be on one side of the bee's body,
not on the other side. In order for the pollen
again on the other side, it's got to hit entirely
different plants, so boom from out its outcrossing. It's pretty cool.
You see it in Wachendorfia in South Africa, really cool
member of the hamodo ace, the blood roof family, the
kangaroo puff family in South Africa. You'll see it in
Solanum rostratum, which is a species of night shade, the
same genuses tomatoes and potatoes and eggplant that we get
in Central Texas. And you'll see it apparently in this
Cama crista. I don't know if all camachrista are like that.
A lot of them are, but maybe not all. I
don't know, but yeah, Cama Crista is pea family. It's
a sayesyl pineoid flower. So that was cool to see.
And I've never seen this species before. I saw it
and I was like, why the fuck? This thing is
growing kind of prostrate, multiple stems coming up from a
tuberous root, and apparently it's probably restricted to that red sand.
So again we see these plants that are generally restricted
to a certain kind of geology. They don't need that
kind of geology. That might just be the setting, the
geologic setting, the soil setting that they evolved on. Like
plenty of serpentine plants you can grow on non serpentine soil.
They just don't like competition. That serpentine soil is the
reason they don't have any competition. It's toxic, like serpentine
soil you get out in California, it's really colm out
There'd be the same thing with some of this coliche
stuff probably or whatever. You know, Like obviously like in
the Calichi, it wasn't getting it wasn't tall thorn scrub
because that stuff can't grow out there. It's just this
soil is too fucked up. But that means what can
grow there is stuff that can tolerate it, like that periniki.
You canest out of the liatrists, et cetera. So you know,
but you could just grow that liatris in normal soil too,
just to make sure it doesn't get smothered by surrounding vegetation.
Really cool, it was really really fucking nice setting both
of these places, the red sand area and this this
this Colleche soil area where the paraniki was growing. And
the night before, since I'm frequently going back and forth
between South and West Texas so much, the night before
I had stopped at a at a place near Sanderson,
beautiful Sanderson. Did you don't know Country Frilled Men was
supposed to to be Sanderson. It takes place in Sanderson,
like the Dude's trailer Park was in Sanderson, Texas. I
didn't know that. It's nice. You know what was that song?
Oh God, what's that guy's name? Wayne Hancock? Thunderstorms and
Neon Signs. I think that's a song about Sanderson too.
If it's not, it should be. But the night before
I had stopped on my way back towards South Texas
at this spot where I know Salvia White House, the
eye grows. This is a moth pollinated stage. There's very
few moth pollinated sages, moth pollinated salvias. It doesn't get
that tall in situ. In cultivation, it can probably get
a foot and a half tall, two feet tall. The
flowers are fucking epic though. They're like four inches long,
three to four inches long, white, kind of like a violet,
a violet pinkish white. And they they've got a long tube.
They've got a long floral tube and a moth pollinated scent,
which is a good indicator for I mean, when you
once you know what a moth pollinated floral scent is,
you know that thing is polinated by moths, especially if
it's white. That tera righty I eminates that scent. Uh Mandavilla,
Macrosciphon mandavilla, and Nu genosa. Other cool native members, other
cool native moth polinated plants that are members of apossan
ace to oleander family produce that scent. Jasmine kind of
produces that scent. Jasmine is a great example. Jasmine's a
moth pollinated You know, if you're in a spot where
jasmine grows, either a fucking you know, botanic garden or
glasshouse in the US or Florida anyway. So that's the
moth polinate scent. I think it's smellst fucking great. It's
very pleasant, almost kind of intoxicating, especially if it's like
that that giant that ura flower or Brigmanzia flower. Really
easy to confuse it to. Brigmanzia is are pendent flowering,
and uh that ura produce erect flowers, and Brigmanzias are
often like small trees. Anyway, The savvy white house the
eye is a great, great fucking plant. I've grown up
from seed before from seed someone had sent me, thank
you whoever that was. I forget who it was, like
five years ago. But it's another plant because it's got
such kanescent leaves. They're so covered in hair and they're
kind of white. They've got that chalky mint green color
again due to the hairs, which you know, mitigate the
amount of moisture loss through the leaves. Hairs are always
a good indication that a plant is growing or is
adapted to growing in either a hot and it can
be comparatively hot for a region, like if it's a
Dolomite prairie in northern Illinois, that can be a very
hot place. The hairs are a good indication for either
a hot a planet's adapted to hot and dry areas,
even like West Texas. Like West Texas doesn't get as
hot as South Texas, but it gets very windy, and
that air is very dry, and so you got airflow
across the leaf and the air is already really dry.
It's got a high it's got more potential to suck
up moisture. Okay, because it's not holding very much, it's
not very humid. It's gonna suck up moisture like a
dry sponge through those themata. Those hairs prevent that, right,
same thing, well, they prevent it by increasing the boundary
layer of humidity. But again, the fuck does that mean?
If you're a late person, that doesn't mean anything. What
that does is it stops the airflow from hitting the
leaf surface, the same way that like a line of
Lombardy poplars or other trees actually as a windbreak for
a farmhouse on a prairie and prevents the air from
knocking the shit out of the farmhouse if you got
cold blush three windy days. So this salvia doesn't I
think I let it get too overgrown or who knows
what happened. Anyway, I lost the one I had in
my my little garden set up. So I was going
to get cuttings and collect some seed, and I still
got the cuttings in the fridge. You can keep cuttings,
I gotta travel with a cooler. Keep them in a
fucking big gallon ziploc bag once and so they're sealed
off from the atmosphere, so they're not gonna wilt even
though they don't have any roots. And then you just
put rooting hormone on them, keep them in that. You
just got to keep that humidity up. You got to
keep them, keep that air trapped. But again, now they're
susceptible to rotting, so you got to control for that too.
Use a hy perlite mix, a high pummice mix, whatever.
So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take them
out in a minute. So I went to go collect
some seed. But all the kalises the Klyx singular on
most of these plants, the aggregation of sepals was already empty.
The sea's already fallen out. So that's why I took
cuttings instead. But I was out there fucking around on
these nothing more like somewhat barren, low growing limestone in
the West Texas Desert. Fucking beautiful spot. And I saw
Menadora longe of Flora, another moth pollinated plants. There is
so much moth pollination going on in this region. It
blows my fucking mind. It's crazy, like it's it's probably
just so windy and dry, and there's so much moth
diversity that they've become the primary pollinator in a lot
of these areas. You will see more moths at night,
then you will see bees during the day. And there's
so many, and it's evident in the flora there because
there's so many These fucking plants are moth pollinated. The
Onatha species, the evening Primroses ootha hertwaggy eye, it's like
a bush Onathra. There's plenty of other Onathra species, Mandavilla macrosciphon,
Menodora lounge of flora, Salvia white house ci. You know,
anytime again, anytime you see that long tube flower and
all the stamens, and you know, sexy parts of the
flower are included in the tube. They're not popping out.
That's for a moth proboscis. Moths have those that little
rolled up proboscis that can unfurl just like a fucking
red carpet and tap into that. So in moth and butterfly,
but it seems like there's way more moths because it's
just so hot and windy during the day. So anyway,
this was fucking cool to see. I wasn't familiar with
this species of Menadora before. Menadora is in the olive
family Olace just like ash trees, and its anapomorphic for
the isle of family is only having two stamens, which
I didn't realize that either until I looked up close
and look what the fuck they got two stamens, and
I was looking it up in floor of North America.
I figured it where else. It was like, oh yeah,
this is a trait for the islive family. It was like,
fuck Jesus, how do I know this? How did I'm
not looking at enough members of Olace? Apparently forest di
era uh and Gustafolia another cool desert shrub with tiny leaves.
It's in the olive family, you know. I was looking
at it just now and I was like, those flowers
don't have fucking two stamens each. But then I looked
at them and what looks like one single flower is
actually on forest the era I'm talking about, which is
another olace member. What looks like one single stamen, how
many stamens are there or what looks like one single
flower is actually multiple flowers coming out of a fascicled
like involacar. That's axile on the stem, so it just
comes out right out the stem. That's crazy. I can't
really see, but it does look like there's what is it,
two to four stamens or maybe three, Yeah, I don't know.
Maybe had forest the era, which was not usual for
the family. Maybe forest the Era has four. I don't
fucking know. Anyway, the point is olive family, like olive
flowers only have two stamens the same thing, and that's
odd for a lot of angiosperms to only have two stamens.
I guess Salvia only has two stamens, which is in
the same order as olive and ash trees lamey aleis,
but regardless, it's still kind of weird. I wasn't prepared
for that, Like, for some reason, I thought a menadora
flower had more, but I apparently have never looked at
a flower up clothes. But this thing again, it had
that moth ponated smell. It was long and tubular, and
it was growing on just right out of it was
a small shrub like two feet tall, growing out of
these cracks in the limestone. Really cool fucking plant. And
Menadora is cool. This is a first off. This is
a genus. I don't have any species or any but
there's quite a few. There was one I remember seeing
in Nevada that was like a shrubby Menadora. They all
smell pretty good. They've got seeds that are really easy
to collect. The fruit looks like a little ball that
matures inside the kalyx, like a little bead that matures
inside the klyx. Went, you know, a month or two
after the flowers are done being pollinated. Yeah, it was
Mendora spinessens that I remember seeing in Nevada. Photosynthetic stems,
green stems. Just another crucifixion thrown looking plant. Oh well,
there's Menaedora africana. Too. Where is that? Because there's twenty species,
So there's probably twenty species on inin at there's probably
more Menadora heterophla is another cool one you'll see in
South Texas. Uh, Menadora scabro you'll see in West Texas.
I saw that out at the when I was looking
at this giant crested peyote in West Texas. That's gonna
look really go to the tub at the collection. Those
cactus nerds love those faciated plants anyway. Uh, God, protect
that one at all costs. I saw like this, like
gotta be easily three hundred year old peyote with a
big crest, the big fasci faciation in it, which is
just a mutation of the growing point. You know, there's
all kinds like saguaros do that. Sometimes it ends up
producing like a weird fan shape, like a squiggly fan,
so that the lobes on the stem as the stem
is growing, because that's all any cactus is is just
a photosynthetic stem. The growing tip gets mutated so that
it's instead of producing a single growing point and then
tubercles and areoles and that kind of thing, it just
produces these weird twisted almost looks like a brain, really
cool twisted with lobes in it. But yeah, there was
Menadora scabra all over there. Menadora flowers are generally yellow,
and so this Menadora lounge of flora that was moth polinated.
It was the same way yellow flowers, except they had
a moth polinated smell and they had that long tube.
So this thing obviously adapted via natural selection of moth pollination,
the moths selecting for it. This thing obviously evolved with
the you know, it was selected for by moths. They
selected for longer floral tube and that scent. And it's
just so cool how that same shit evolves. Great example
of convergent evolution. The same thing evolves in unrelated plants
that grow in the same habitat that's subject to the
same stresses. Really cool. Another thing I was noticing out
in this habitat is that there's so many plants. When
I was in West Texas, there's so many plants that
occur both in South and West Texas. Sydney Attenua, foliajotrophidioeca,
what is it, the Hamado cactus hamatacanthus, there's easily like
a dozen more. There's so many plants that have a
distribution that is in both places. But the West Texas
ecotypes are an entirely different thing like, to the point
that it almost looks like a different species. I was
looking at Sydney Attenuafolia aka skeleton leaf really cool shrubs,
dirty shrub down here in the in the cactus gardens,
and also out in West Texas. You know, widespread grows
in northern Mexico produces a little daisy like flour and
a ten inch long scape dope fucking plant in the
West Texas variety looks so different at first glance you
almost think it's a different species. You're like, what the fuck.
The leaves are way thinner. They've got a thicker like
epidermal wax on the underside on the West Texas plants.
So you see more adaptation for drier, not necessarily hotter,
but drier climate in West Texas. South Texas is certainly hotter.
We get more cumulative heat, but it's close to the Gulf,
so it's somewhat humid. The West Texas you get more
wind and you get much less humidity, and so it's
much more stressful for plants in that way, even though
it doesn't get as hot and the nights are cooler.
Jo Trophi dioheca the leather stem as they call it.
Same thing. The South Texas plants have big, broad leaves.
The West Texas plants have very narrow ones. They all
behave the same way. They get a big tuber in
the ground. It's supposed to be good for toothaches as well.
You got a big tuber in the ground, and they
form colonies. They spread rhizominously. Dope fucking plant. But the
West Texas ciccat type is different. Same thing with Hamato
cactus Hamato cactus hamatacanthus. The Rio Grand Valley barrel cactus
looks way different. It's darker green, it's not as blue.
The spines, the hooked spines aren't as mean quote unquote,
aren't as long and as hooked as they are in
the West Texas plant and in a drier place, the
Hamato cactus hamatacanthus out there can actually like snag you.
It sucks. It's like it sucks to touch. Whereas you know,
the ones down here in the Rio Grand Valley are
a little bit easier to handle. I know from planting them.
They're really easy to grow from fucking seed too. They
grow fast. I've got a bunch like they're one of
those cacti that you grow from seed. You end up
having to repot at every fucking, I don't know, six
months because they get so big, especially if you can
put them in the ground, and they'll in South Texas,
the South Texas ecotype will literally grow in mud like
they'll grow in very somewhat wet areas. You know, but
it's so hot again that they're metabolizing and their quote,
you know, their physiology is moving so fast they can
use it. The hotter it is, the more you can
water a cactus, the cooler it is, the more you
should hold off. You should never water any cactus if
the soil is still wet. Let the surface of the
soil dry out at first. So anyway, I was surprised
that nobody has written about that phenomenon, that there's no
papers published on that phenomena of the South and West
Texas ecotypes and how it literally because southern West Texas
that region in between straddles the one hundredth meridian, which
is where the continent dries out, and you can begins
to dry out as you move west, and you can
see this on a satellite map. It's such a cool phenomenon.
I should really be comprising a list of all the
plants that grow in both places and how the the
ecotypes differ. God, it's so fucking cool to see it.
It's really remarkable. But anyway, and then I was in
Alpine at a site there, this mountain that I've been
to many times that was super dry. It's always super
dry when you go there. The oaks up top are
slowly dying. Their quirkis grissia. They are these like oaks
that probably in cultivation could get you twenty five foot
tall tree, but on this hill they're topping out at
like ten feet if that. They're blue. The leaves have
tiny hairs on them, no surprise again, adaptation to the
dry air and the drought and the wind where the
bouts of drought in the wind. But I want to
get acorns off of them, and they weren't. They were
not putting out. The trees are slowly dying. They had
just gotten juiced up from a recent rain. But there
was a lot of dead branches on most of the trees.
And it's sat to see. Man, it's again, it's like
that shifting baselines thing, Like if you don't mention this
and write about it and photograph it and document that
future generations won't know how much things have changed since
they were born. You know that you don't know that
you're kind of inheriting this this this landscape that's been
looted and somewhat destroyed. You know, you think that the
way that what you're growing up with is normal, and
it's not. You know, you have no idea, it's crazy
so this stuff. You know, having that perspective helps people
zoom out a little bit, which again is something I'm
always always advocating figuratively zooming out. Don't be a dummy,
don't live in your own small little world, don't assume
that what you know is the way that everything is.
Zoom out and gain a variety of different perspectives and
actually think about things. That's something I've been trying to
talk about as I teach too. It's like, because so
much of school is just fucking memorizing things, which is useless,
that's garbage. It's not It shouldn't be about memorized seeing
things to good good test scores. It should be about
understanding things and critically thinking about them and asking questions
and then thinking about what is the logical answer with anything,
without the pressure of a fucking test score or whatever
the fuck, just logically thinking about the world in front
of you, so you're not a fucking idiot. But again,
being an idiot is good for the economy, it really is,
you know, whether you're like poisoning yourself with shitty food
and lack of exercise, or you're or in many cases,
people are just trapped. And let's be honest, it's not
even choice. And people are often just trapped in the
infrastructure that's provided for them, especially if it's like the
vehicle slum strip mall landscape and there's no opportunity for
walking unless you go to the gym. You can go
to the gym. You could drive your Dutch charger to
the gym and take sophies of your six pick and
you're you you fucking weightlifted, juiced up shoulders in the mirror. Anyway,
you know, don't just don't just be a dummy, you know,
think about the world around you. That's what really makes
life rich too. This is the whole thing though too.
It's like co occurring with this stupidity, is this culture
of wealth worship and fucking wealth idolization. Is if that's
going to bring you some sort of happiness. Like, it's
good to have money and be comfortable, but at a
certain point you don't fucking need anymore, and certainly don't
spend it on dumb shit that you don't need. Like
I totally judge people on it. I'm sorry you're buying
fucking eighty thousand dollars cars that you don't you know
that are just status symbols or because it's a brand identitything.
I think you're a fucking moron. Sorry, no offense, And
it's fine, you could be a moral I'll still treat
you with respect and be kind to you, but I'm
gonna be wondering about your potential, you know. But anyway,
you've got this culture of wealth worship, and that's like
this fucking carrot on a stick that leads people away
from like a really rich life, which is creativity intellect,
you know, being able to look at the world around
you and know what you're looking at and have a
context for it and share that with others and make
cool art and study things and learn more. Like that's
what leads to an enriched life. You could spend your
whole life accumulating shit you don't need, and you're still
gonna feel fucking empty on your deathbed and realize that
you wasted the best seventy or eighty or ninety years.
I don't know. That's way. You got a dosum dosum
the same way that booze makes you a numb moron.
Just one psychedelic trip in your life will wake you
up out of your slumber and get you questioning things.
But not everybody wants that. That's why people have bad trips.
You know, they realize they've been living a lie. Sometimes
they're just clinically insane too, or prone to a sociopathic
tendencies or or you know, psychosis, which in that case
definitely stay away. But uh, fucking a man, you know
there's a weird I see this shit all around me.
I don't know the lack of intellect, the wealth, worship,
but all goes hand in hand. That's not what makes
for a well lived human life. Be smart about shit, man,
Do better, that's what they say. What they say, do better,
Just do better anyway. I saw Ayenya pylosa on this
hill too. Aena is a cool genus, a y e
n i a. It's a member of malvesi, the cotton
and the chocolate family, and this was I've seen some
really cool ones in Puebla and Wahaka. Weird fucking mallows
they've got. I think they're polinated by gnats or some
sort of fucking I don't know. They got some weird ecology,
some weird relationship with a unusual pinator. Not all of them,
but some of them. But this thing was a tiny ayena.
It's cool to see that this genus made it this
far north as well, because this is normally a lower latitude,
dry land subtropical genus, at least the ones that I'm
familiar with. You also get. There's a rare ayena from
the Rio Grande Valley as well. That one is a limitaris.
I think I've got that in my yard. I don't
know if I kind of lost track of it. I
don't know. It was growing beneath one of the papyas.
I don't know if it's still alive. I hope so
it was a cutting anyway, But that, yeah, man, there
there's so much good shit up there. I saw that,
like actress punk Tata up there as well, beautiful western
diamondback rattlesnake as well. That was so kind to warn
me because I didn't see him. It was so kind
to warn me that we were nearby. And Louis, you know,
one of my two dogs, knows not to fuck with them.
She listens really well, so you know, I was nice
to see she still got it in her and knows
to avoid things that can kill her. So I just
hung out there and took some photos and lurked on
this thing. I was so happy to see it, too, Like,
I'm so happy these little things you see sometimes, whether
it's a fucking horned lizard or a snake or whatever,
you're like, oh my god, all life hasn't been wiped
out from this area that you know has a somewhat
large human population. It's so nice to see, God, damn.
I just in conversely, it's so depressing to realize what's
been lost. You know that you're looking at a paucity
of life that was once there, as is the case
with the tarantulas and the Rio Grande Valley or the
horned lizards throughout all of Texas, et cetera. Lastly, a
few days ago, I was contacted by someone who's the
caretaker for what's her last name, Amada Cardenas. I think, yeah,
Amada Cardenas, the first licensed paote dealer from the first
of the federally licensed payote dealers from South Texas. There's
a book out called Amada's Blessings from the Payote Gardens
of South Texas by Stacy B. Schaeffer. It says Amada Cardenas,
a Mexican American woman from the borderlands of South Texas,
played a pivotal role in the little known history of
the payote trade. She and her husband were the first
federally licensed payote dealers. They began harvesting and selling the
Sacramento plant the followers of Native American Church in the
nineteen thirties, and after her husband's death in the late
nineteen sixties, missus Cardanis continued to befriend and help generations
of Native American Church members until her death in two
thousand and five, just short of her one hundred and
first birthday. Wow, that's amazing. She was born in nineteen
oh four, nineteen oh five. Excuse me, she didn't make
it to one oh one, but anyway. Author Stacy B. Shaeffer,
a close friend of Amada, spent thirteen years doing field
work with this remarkable woman. Her book weeps together the geography, biology, history, cultures,
and religions that created a unique life of Missus Cardenis
and the people she knew. Shaefer includes their words to
help the story of how Mexican Americans, Deehano's Gringos, Native Americans,
and others were touched and inspired by Amada Cardanis's embodiment
in the core. NAC values faith, hope, love and charity,
and that's what the well did. Sign above her house says.
It says faith, hope, love and charity. Really cool sight.
And her house is beautiful in this really uh cathartic way.
I guess. This old old greenhouse made out of wood.
It's on peer and beam floor kind of slants slightly
in one end. You go inside, there's all this NAC
paraphernalia everywhere. I mean, just old photos of Native American
church members, photo of Quanta Parker, Quanta Parker, excuse me,
above this little stand. It's just a cool house. And
it's I mean, man, it's it's in the site. You know.
There's beautiful Miski trees. There was a guyacn there, like
a really old one guyacum angusta folium, and there's a
little peyoti garden right there, like a prayer garden that
people aren't supposed to take from, but apparently they do,
which I hope they need to get a camera on that.
You know, anybody who takes from that, it's kind of
a disrespectful Jesus man, you know, really, you get really,
but you know, Native people when they're coming to get
medicine from the dealer in the region, we'll stop by
Amada's house and pray at at the place, and pray
at the garden and say hello to the caretaker whatever.
And I was looking over letters that were written to
this woman from like the seventies and eighties, back from
people all over the United States, from Native Americans all
over the United States, writing her about, you know, purchasing
medicine or just to say hi, or Christmas cards or whatever.
It was really beautiful and it was so weird and
a really cool way to be able to sit there
in her house and read these things. Anyway, the whole
reason I was there was to help plant some other
native plants in their payote garden and their prayer garden.
And so I suggested to the caretaker, why don't you
go to Mike Heap's nursery and pick up a guahio,
you know, Senegalia borlandi orry, why don't you pick up
why don't you pick up some blackbrush spiny plant which
smells beautiful when it blooms, really important, tough, sturdy legume
and uh with the zigzag branching when it's young. And
why don't you pick up some leather stems, some jo
Trophi diaheka and Euphorbia anti cyphialitica, the one that's native
down here. Pick up some of those, and you know,
and the plant those around the garden because the paote
will need a little bit of shade, it'll need a
nurse plant, even if they're full grown plants. And this
climate down here in South Texas just gets too hot.
And so in the DA they've I think they've got
the license or they're permitted. The DA knows about this
Payota garden. It's permitted to be there, so it's all good.
And so we just went and planted some things around it,
and it looked, it looks great, it looks really good.
But there was there was a really man Nobody had
been weeding the grass there, which is insane. The two
invasive well there's three invasive grass species. But there was buffalo. No,
it wasn't buffalo, it was guinea grass is everywhere, which
needs to be just weed whacked. And then there was
bermuda grass like popping up through some of the plants,
like sending blades of grass that had punctured the bottom
of the peyote plant and come out the top. I mean,
just crazy. It was like, why is nobody taking care
of this? Like they just not know, Like no one
knew to weed this stuff. Like this is really bad.
You're creating basically a canker in the center of the
cactus that can now be infected by fung guy whenever
it rains and stays you know, wet for for a
few days. You know, you got to get this out
of there, you know, weed that bermuda man, That bermuda
grass is fucking terrible. So anyway, so we planted some
stuff and they got rid of some of the grass
that's gonna come back. They're gonna have to go in
there with either a hoary hory, a little the garden
knife or whatever. But it looks a lot better already,
and there's like stones around this prayer garden. It's maybe
like twelve feet wide by six feet wide, but beautiful
little site. But I was so impressed with the guya
con next to it. I have not seen guyacum and Gustafolium,
which is in the kreosol family Zygopalesi and produces little,
you know, bright red fruits and probably obviously bird dispersed.
I have not seen that in that big like since
Nuevo Leone, like the Sierra Madre has some large individuals,
you know, and a plant that's this big. I mean
it was probably like fifteen feet wide twelve feet tall,
trunk diameter at the base of like sixteen inches. And
then there was there was one of those in Brownsville too,
but I think I got destroyed to build a hideous McMansion,
which is sounds about right for South Texas, for the
developed areas of South Texas. I was so fucking impressed.
And then they had a guahio there too, which is
that multi branched shrub also a legume of the mimosa
subfamily Senegalia berlandi array, which is such a great plant.
It's so cool and you'll know when you see it
because it's got again multiple stems, it's got this mimosa
like leaves. It gets about twelve feet tall, and it
retains the fruits, the fruits which are these woody legumes
that split open, you know, like a v and drop
all the seeds, the woody fruits, the legume part. The
pod tends to stay on the plant after it's dropped seeds.
But it was really fucking cool to be there, and
it was a it's a nice site. They've got a
little shade house to sit under, and uh yeah, I
don't know, so hopefully the guinea grass is really bad
in some areas. But I was telling them. I was like, man,
why don't you you guys should get some like fiddle wood,
ice and hardiat text saying, now you get all those
cool plants, this place will be lit up with cool butterflies.
You have hummingbirds coming by, you know, because wildlife sees this,
these spots remembers them and their migratory paths. They'll remember,
you know where, they'll see them from far away as
they're flying high above, and they'll remember. Okay, they use
them like stepping stones, you know, to move across the landscape.
It's really important versus just having a giant cleared agricultural
field or a parking lot or something. So hopefully they'll
do that, and you know, I'll happily volunteer my time
to plant stuff. I'm really good at digging holes, especially
if you've got a sharpshoot, one of those narrow shovels.
But if you're interested in that, I would definitely stop by.
Her house is in Miranda City, Texas, and I would
definitely stop buy it, and I would check out that book.
I guess you can get it on Scamazon. It's only
thirty books paperback. Amada's Blessings from the Payote Gardens of
South Texas a lot of cool Texas history. They're a
lot of cool Native American history and a lot of
ethnobotanically very interesting history about the payote plant, which again,
the fact that's psychoactive is the least interesting thing to me.
The ethnobotany is really cool to me. I like that,
but just being another psychoactive plant whatever, it doesn't matter
to me, which is what I would I was thinking
when I was looking at this massive crested individual of
l'afafro Williamzi, the peyote in West Texas on a private
ranch where I've done many surveys and where there's mountain
lions and it's fucking such a cool area, so rich.
There's Aerocarpus are just about to start blooming. Aerocarpus phisseratus,
the living rock cacked. I will be standing on top
of one and not know it's there, and then they
all flower in October and you'll just see these little
pink flags, these little pink flowers sticking up from that
limestone soil that they grow in. Again, Aerocarpus is the
thickest cuticle, that waxy layer, that lipid layer that all
land plants had to evolve when they evolved out of
green algae four hundred and fifty million years ago. It's
basically which seals them off from the atmosphere. And I
think in most plants it's only like nine nanometers thick.
But in the filmy fernstance, I don't have barely of
any there's nothing there, there's no cuticles. They grow in
very wet areas, like temperate rainforest, but in in Aerocarpus,
it's like I think that cuticle is something like two
hundred and fifteen nanimeters thick or something. Don't know. There
was a paper on it. I might be completely full
of shit, but I remember reading a paper on Aerocarpus
has the thickest cuticle of any plant, which makes sense,
especially when you see them dead and all that's left
the tissue inside has dissolved, and all that's left is
that really thick, waxy, yellow cuticle. There's such an incredible area, man,
And yeah, the leucophile of minus was lit up. Menadora
scabra was there. Remember olive family oliac But this was
not the moth polinated one. This is. It might be
polinated by moths, but probably not as well. No, it's
got an open flower, it doesn't have that narrow tube
opening at the end. Menadora scabra was there. There was
so much good shit in this area. And I was
out there looking for this crest and found Oh yeah,
Forbia anti cyphialitica was going off too. The green straw Euphorbia,
which you actually do see in a lot of native
plant landscaping. I see it used in fucking Tucson, of
all places. It's more common in landscaping in the places
where it's not even native than it is in West
in Texas. Texas is dropping a ball, man. People gotta
make people got to get into this, start growing everything.
Fuck it, you know. I just picked up some nice
horse cripplers from my friend Zech, some nice Homocephala Texana.
He got a bunch. He was growing stuff and doing
native landscaping for a while and then just kind of
life caught up with him. He got a bunch of
shitt he had to do, and these things were just
slowly not dying because they're cactive, but some of the
other plants were starting to root themselves through the pot
into the ground, and he ended up he just gave
him away. He was like, fucking I'm just I'm you know,
I'm torturing these things. So it was, you know, anyway, Yeah,
so I'm gonna do. I think I'm gonna take those
horse cripplers. Man, these butterflies are just going nuts, these
fucking zebra swallowtails. I'm gonna plant these horse cripplers out
in West Texas. You know, normally, I don't care about
the ecotype thing. If a native plant is a native plant,
that's what works for me. But obviously with the West
Texas South Texas, how different they are, how different the
habitats are and how much it dries out. There's a
difference in temperature and there's a difference in humidity. I think,
definitely think it makes more sense to use West Texas ecotypes.
But of course horse cripplers are pretty widespread. God, the
Zinnia anomala is fucking dope too. It's a really cool
plant that's also by the Prairie Dog Town north of Marathon,
little orange flowered zinia that's got vestigial ray floor. It's
vestigial lgules. So it's like a daisy that only produces
like well, it's a tiny orange daisy. Because remember with
as racy, I got disc florets and you got ray floor.
Its ray aka legulate flor It's ray is illegal, A
ray is illegal, and so anyway, this thing, you know,
would be like a daisy that produces rays those petals
but only has they're not really petals, but daisy that
produces rays but only produces like a quarter of the
normal amount of rays and they come out kind of weird.
It's I don't know genetically what codes for that or
why that's happening. I've seen it with a species of Lasthenia,
which is a genus of aster Racy. I saw that
and actually at the I think it was at the
one of the serpentine sites in the Coast Ranges. I
think it was with Ryan O'Dell when I saw that.
But yeah, but it's a cool phenomenon. It's a cool
plant that's only known from a few places northern Mexico
and West Texas. But that's like, all the cool plants
in West Texas are also distributed in Mexico, you know.
In fact, and for many of them, most of the
population is in Mexico. Most of the distributions in Mexico,
I know, you get a handful of sites in Texas.
It just proves to you how silly the geopolitical boundaries
that the humans makeup can be. I'm not saying silly,
but just that they are fucking made up, you know.
Oh God, But immigration works as a political tool when
you're trying to get elected, even if you don't really
care about the issue. It's a great way to work
people up. Anyway. Uh, we disagree on that, that's fine,
we don't need to agree. I don't give a shit.
It doesn't matter. Let's just talk about plants. Just keep it,
you know, let's talk more rock or let's talk more
incoherent rambling disjointed rambling about plants. And with that, I
will cut it short here. Thanks for listening. Email me
if you want Crime pays a bound he doesn't at
gmail dot com. Allow me four to six weeks to
respond because I'm busy as fuck, and keep it short.
And I got giving tree stickers to giving the finger
tree stickers, you know, shel Silverstein's famous book, and my
my twist on it, my drawing, and I'm gonna be
presenting give it a presentation on cacti at San Antonio
Botanic Garden on the twenty sixth. And I'll be in
Oklahoma City at the Oklahoma City Fungus Fair in October twelfth,
and then I'll be at be in the Bay Area
in early November for the Antheogen Expo. And then I
can't wait to fucking just be done with everything in
December and then start traveling again. So that's all I got.
Have a grocery day, Go fuck us up by grow
more natives should be collecting seed right now, by the way,
all right, go fuck us up by