Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

 Ethan Tapper is a forester, author and ecologist out of Vermont, USA. He advocates for a practice called "Ecological Forestry", as opposed to the short-term-gain/long-term-loss management style that has seemingly dominated the lumber industry for decades (centuries). He is the author of a book called "How to Love a Forest", released on Broadleaf Press in September 2024. In this conversation we talk about the Northeast Woodlands, how climate change is affecting tick populations, and how changing the focus from "how to extract as much as possible" to instead "how to steward a living machine (an ecosystem) for the s...

*Rants about the fire-dependent sand scrub of Central Florida, some of the rarest, most unique and underappreciated plants of the world. The plant community here occurs in nutrient-poor, fire dependent sands that were the beachfront 2 million years ago. These plants evolved in a region that gets upwards of 60 in of rain of year but has a pronounced dry season between November and May. 

Even more astonishing is that so many of these plants are under immediate threat of extinction due to fire suppression, land clearance and an orgy of development tied to political corruption and the coziness with w...

A live show originally recorded at The Hideout in Chicago on September 13th 2025. First 4 minutes got cut off accidentally by the sound guy, who otherwise did a great job (the sd card f*cked up, it wasn't his fault). On that note, I mistakenly refer to Artemisia ludoviciana when I meant Artemisia vulgaris. 

full episodes of this podcast are available ad free on the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Rants about KILL YOUR LAWN tour in the Midwest, River Geography, Hemp Farms in Wisconsin, Prairies, Bison, upset affluent suburban ladies in St Paul, horticultural atrocities, Lincoln vs Omaha Nebraska, Feral Paht and more.

Thanks to the all the venues that put us up and thanks to everyone who came out for the shows/presentations in Milwaukee, St Paul, Omaha, Lincoln, Kansas City, Omaha, Lincoln and the Quad Cities.

As Always, Ad-Free Episodes of the podcast are available on the Patrol for 5 bucks a month at : https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Ad-Free episodes of the podcast are available on the Patreon at www.patreon/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

Why is there such a strong correlation between invasion biology denial, anthropocentrism, ecological illiteracy and permaculture? How can permaculture move forward while at the same time acknowledging the functionality of native plant ecosystems and why the designation of "native" is not some frivolous, arbitrary, or puritanical designation? In this 40 minute conversation between myself and Lilly Anderson-Messec we talk about what permaculture is, its focus on functionality (to humans) and why there tends to be such a predictable link between those who espouse staunch invasion biology denial and their holistic integrative biodynamic permaculture food forest.

In this episode (after a 30 minute societal rant) we talk about Dioon edule and cycads of the foothills of the Sierra Madre, why hemiparasitic members of the paintbrush family frequently have red leaves, Mexican Oak Diversity, Tillandsia usneoides in Oak woodlands, Calochortus marcellae, Malacomeles denticulata ecotypes, why Crotalus morulus (Tamaulipan Rock Rattlesnake) possibly one of the coolest members of the genus

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 FLORA OF NUEVO LEON CHECKLIST PDF : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ukTNSvThl65KUlKpm0wLzUTRklvZiBc_/view...

This episode is a conversation with Adam Haritan from the youtube channel Learn Your Land, which covres a diverse variety of topics related to the ecology of Eastern North American Forests - Fungi, Plants, Insects, & more. In this episode we talk about how fire suppression has caused an explosion in tick populations, along with a multitude of other factors. We also discuss medicinal mushrooms of Eastern North America, surviving stands of American Chestnuts, the importance of geology, and how Paw Paw trees might be neurotoxic. We also talk about how humans having a connection to (and knowledge of) the land t...

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Today's episode consists of rants about compensation point, idiotic spelling mistakes, C3 and C4 photosynthesis, why nighttime temperatures prevent growing some plants in some areas, public land grab in Florida by sleazebag developers embedded in state government, Kill Your Lawn Tour 2025,  calcareous shale exposures of Pueblo County, Colorado.

Rants about Green Tea, Lactose Intolerance, mycoheterotrophic plants in New Mexico, Colorado Springs Shale Exposures, Native Plant Takeovers of municipal landscaping greenhouses, Rock Sage, 300 million year old limestone, and more.

Ad-Free Episodes of the podcast are available for 5 bucks a month on the patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

To pre-order the book Concrete Botany, visit https://geni.us/ConcreteBotany

Disjointed Rants about New Mexico's Sacramento Mountains, Mormons, the origins of Ivermectin, Rat-Trap Pitcher plants and Nepenthes hybrids, and more.

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In this episode we rant about Neotropical High-elevation Oak forests of Central America, what the hell introgression is (swapping genes between two species through hybridization and back-crossing to potentially create a new species, though sometimes it just introduces adaptive traits into existing species), the checking of a racist Becky into a bush by a fed-up member of the populace, the neotropical parasitic plant Corynaea crass and how its monoecious and what that means, cloud forests extravaganzas with Solandra brachycalyx (Solanaceae), and more. 

To listen without any annoying ads (and IHEARTRADIO -our podcast hosting service - really lays the an...

Rants about Davis Mountains fungi, Ponderosa Pine Death from drought, torrential Texas rains, West Texas alcoholics, Mandevilla hypoleuca, Echeveria strictiflora, Growing Madrones, American Smoke Trees in Austin, Madrones in San Antonio, Dystopia and more....

Rants about Northern New Mexico, Gypsum endemics, Dwarf Milkweed, the Horseshoe Bend Motel Photo, Botany of Horseshoe Bend, Pediocactus in the high desert of Northern Arizona, Why telling people that eating Saguaro fruits isn't as bad as Caucasian liberals might want you to think is, How anthropocentric uses of plants might hook some people into the larger perspective of botany and ecology and reverence for the living world, and more. 

Episodes of the podcast are available for listening, ad-free, on the crime pays Patreon.

Rants about colonoscopies, plant life on the sandhills East of Carlsbad New Mexico, Eurytaenia hinckleyi (Apiaceae ), Pomaria jamesii (Fabaceae), the Sierra Madre and more

Ad-Free episodes of the podcast are available on the Patreon for $5 a month at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Rants about permaculture, holistic livestock snake oil, Southern New Mexico gypsum flats, the Guadalupe Mountains, the Schizandra population in Atlanta that's being overtaken by english ivy, the Alex Jones with boobs meme, naked old men at Nevada hot springs, and more.

All episodes of this podcast are available for $5 a month ad-free on the crime pays patreon stop whining about the ads you jadrool bastard.

Ad-Free versions of this podcast are available for $5 a month on the Crime Pays Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

In this episode we talk with Makenzie Mabry, PhD, about the order Brassicales and all the cool and bizarre plants and plant families within it. We talk about the trend of polyploidy, whole genome duplication, the affinity for deserts and arid habitats, the evolution of succulents and the particular phytochemistry known as glucosinolates. 

We start off talking about the octopus plant that was recently discovered in 2020 in the salt pan deserts of Namibia, Tiganophyton k...

In this episode we talk about the granite/gneiss knobs that surround the Atlanta, Georgia area and the cool plants that grow there, getting unintentionally shot at by morons at Arabia mountain, exploring limestone glades of Alabama with Kyle Lybarger, how much puke would it take to reach the confederate statue on the side of Stone Mountain if one were puking down from above, how important fire is to East Coast and Southeast ecosystems (especially for suppressing tick populations) and a ton more. 

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A 2 hour, unhinged livestream rant about ecological succession in lawn slaughter, book reviews, the deranged texas anti-plant bill (SB 1868), and more, all done while wearing a priest outfit.

Episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available Ad-Free on the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't Patreon at: www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

In this episode of the podcast we rant about a myriad of topics and also discuss 4 main habitat types of Costa Rica : 

Lowland dry forest, where you can get pissed on by spider monkeys and capuchins while photographing columnar cacti growing on karstic limestone dominated by Bursera simaruba. We also talk about the dry forest oak Quercus oleoides which tolerates a 6 month long dry season and doesn't even receive that much rain during the wet...

Rants about Mosquito Traps, Burrowing "toads" (Rhinophrynus dorsalis), Texas botanists' resistance to using scientific names, replacing windas, a new species of succulent bamboo from Laos, and more 

I recommend the hell outta the Biogents Mosquito Trap, which is a pleasant way to reduce mosquito populations in your area using a compound that mimics the smell of human sweat, attracting mosquitos, then sucking the little bastards into the netting. The netting can then be frozen for 20 minutes which kills the mosquitoes, then the mosquitos dumped out onto a sheet of paper and fed to your carnivorous plants (Dionaea, Pinguicula, D...

Dr. Michael Powell is the curator of the Sul Ross Herbarium in Alpine, Texas and a proverbial wizard of West Texas Botany and Plants of the Trans-Pecos. In this episode we discuss 
how the endangered species act influenced the wariness of Texas ranchers and land owners, the current drought that Texas is in, describing new species of plants, the rock-daisies and cliff-dwellers of the Perityle clade (Asteraceae), limestone endemism among Texas plants, how to propagate Texas Madrones, how chromosome-counting was done using immature buds before the advent of PCR, propagating rare native plants of the Trans Pecos, botanizing Mexico in...

Deb Manley is a naturalist and long-distance hiker who in March 2024 discovered a plant species that was entirely new to science: Ovicula biradiata (Sunflower Family - Asteraceae).

In this episode of Crime Pays we talk about the discovery, the unique flora of the Big Bend region, limestone deserts, the phenomenon of Sky Islands and more.

Episodes of the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon, where your membership helps support free botany education, filming, lawn-killing, native plant awareness and land preservation.

Episodes of this podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at :
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Dr. Lynn Clark studies neotropical bamboos - bamboos from the Americas - specifically the genus Chusquea, which is highly diverse in Central & South America, from the Pine-Oak Forests of Western Mexico all the way down to the temperate rainforests of Southern Chile. In this episode we talk about Chusquea, why it takes 30 years for some species to flower, why the woody bamboos are monocarpic (they flower once and then die, like Agave), how it can take decades for a clonal stand of C...

Bruce Shoemaker is a researcher on natural resource conflicts and
author of the book "Dead in the Water", about hydropower projects and extractive predatory capitalism in Southeast Asia.

In this podcast we talk about turning monoculturres of pine plantations back into biodiverse forest in Northern California, the importance of fire in Northern California forests, as well as the completely disparate topic of forest clearance and exploitation in Southeast Asia, the family Dipterocarpaceae, 
the removal of the dams on the Klamath River in California, and more.

In this episode we talk about why the word "nature" sucks; how to use the living world to avoid focusing on doom and idiocracy; why aimlessly walking along power line easements, irrigation ditches and railroad tracks in order to look at "weeds" is good for your health; an Australian orchid (Rhizanthella gardneri) that doesn't photosynthesize and blooms underground, a Vanilla species (Vanilla barbellata) that grow in cactus forests; whether pollen grains are analogous to nut-sacks or sperm; why the Australian Acacias have flowers that don't produce nectar, and more. the last  90 minutes are a conversation with my friend the pollination bi...

Ad-Free episodes of the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't Podcast are available on the patreon at :
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In this episode we talk with Leo Mercado of Morningstar Conservancy, an Arizona-based peyote conservation and propagation organization formed by members of the Native American Church concerned with the increasingly diminishing wild popuations of Peyote, a cactus species native to South Texas and Northern Mexico.  We talk about the dwindling supplies of the plant available to members of the Native American Church (NAC) due to human threats to peyote's existence in Texas such as land c...

Rants about museums in Chicago, the hall of botany at the field museum, drop-in sinks, Euglossine bees, the genus Gnetum, getting the cops called on you at Chicago Botanical Gardens, the library at said institution, and more.

Episodes of the Crime Pays Podcast are available for Ad-Free listening on the Patreon.

Episodes of the Crime Pays Podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at : https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Rants about the New Asteraceae species discovered at Big Bend National Park, Ovicula biradiata, as well as an exploration of a few species of Neotropical Palms, potential musical choices for waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay and Divine Retribution against America in the form of audible torture, vandalizing crepe myrtles and Bradford Pears, and a thirty minute exposé on Beetle Pollination in the Panama Hat Family, Cyclanthaceae.

A 2 hour rant about the upper Amazon, the Paramo, ant symbiosis, Ilex guayusa, ethnobotany at the fruit market, giant neotropical bamboos, and much more. 

Ad-free episodes of the podcast are available on the Crime Pays Patreon at : https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Thumbnail is a photograph of Miconia inobsepta and its swollen petioles acting as ant domatia.

A conversation with mycologist Alan Rockefeller about fungal and plant biodiversity of the upper Amazon of Ecuador.

Episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Miguel Moya is a naturalist and designer who produces field guides and posters for native plants in Chile. In this episode we talk about the sclerophyll forest, the temperate rainforests of Chile Island, indigenous communities in the Southern region, Araucaria forests, Gomortega kuele, Ancient Gondwanan disjunctions, Citronella mucronata, rare plants of the Santiago area and more.

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In this episode we talk about Alerce Forests, Ocelot Tarantulas that live in bogs in Temperate Rainforests, Why the Rosulate Form Makes sense in Alpine Habitats, and the extremely weird mycoheterotroph, Arachnitis uniflora.

Ad-Free episodes of this podcast can be listened to on the Crime Pays Patreon at : www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

Rants about the Araucaria forests of Nahuelbuta and Conguillo, Chile : Towering, 1200 year-old Araucaria araucana trees with an understory of Nothofagus pumilio, dombeyi and obliqua; thigmonastic, moving stamens in Loasa acanthifolia; Chusquea and new world bamboos; Mutisioid composites, biogeographyband plant distributions that are a result of both Gondwanan Breakup and amphitropical bird migration patterns, and more.

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Nico Lavandero is a Chilean Botanist who has described 8 new species of plants in Chile and is in the proc of describing many more. In this podcast we talk about a diversity of subjects, from Chile's 1974 Forest Law that incentivized the destruction of native forest for pine plantations, why plants take on dwarfed rosulate growth forms at high altitude in the Andes, Alerce forests, a growing awareness of native plants in Chilean culture, the marvelous abundan of agua con gas, and much more.

Nico Lavandero & Ludovica Santilli :

IG : Botanica.chilensis

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Austin Miller runs Birdsong Landscapes, a native plant landscaping company and Natural History page based out of Southwest Ohio. In this episode we talk about continents as ecosystems, the natural history of Ohio, the Hopewell Culture and the Eastern Agirculture Complex, injecting native plant awareness into popular culture, lawn-killing, freshwater mussel diversity in Eastern North American rivers, vigilante-killing Bradford pears, hotricultural atrocities, feral pigs, the biosphere as a "living machine", and a lot more. 
Check him out on instagram @birdsonglandscapes

Ad-free versions of every episode are available on the Patreon at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

For some background on the developing story of creating a blight-resistant American chestnut, please check out the podcast episode a few episodes back with Erik Carlson.

Jared Westbrook is a geneticist with the American Chestnut Foundation. In this episode we talk about what went wrong with the initial round of trials for blight-resistant chestnuts, how to combine targeted genetic approaches to hybridizing American and Chinese Chestnut trees for blight resistance, thousands of years of human selection in the chinese chestnut genome as an agricultural species, problems with inheritance for the oXo gene that breaks down oxalic acid, why...

In this episode we sit down with Kyle Elmore of the youtube channel @popmilk for a two hour talk about herping (lurking for reptiles and amphibians), creating habitat, passionately obsessing over milksnakes, why Indigo Snakes are so chill, self-education, embracing the living world as a side-hobby, coping with habitat loss, naming milk snakes,, the glory of tin, getting bit by copperheads, being attacked by africanized bees, teaching organic chemistry, and more. 

Check out Kyle's stuff at @popmilk_herping (instagram) and @popmilk (youtube).  

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Rants about ruining Christmas, disappointed family members, mixing and making soil recipes, Thornscrub Sanctuary update, maintaining a positive outlook despite the spiritually-poisonous effervescent fart of modern consumer society, feral pigs, ruderal plants, and more. 

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In this episode we talk with Crime Pays Field Correspondent WIll Doran about his traumatic experiences in the Car and Retail Slums of the American Sunbelt, possibly one of the ugliest and most soul-crushing landscapes in the first world. This is a landscape that exists as pure "anti-culture", and as many of you may know, is the only kind of landscape and infrastructure option offered to many people living in the lower-latitude United States. It leads to deteriorating mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health in myriad ways, and we here at Crime Pays are excited to lance the figurative boil...

Kerry Knudsen is a Lichen Biologist who originated outside of academia and worked in construction until becoming fascinated by the natural world and immersing himself in desert lichens.In this episode we talk about the modern human approach to the living world, why the study of natural sciences is becoming increasingly popular among people outside of academia, the biosphere as a living machine, self-education using the internet, and more.  

A lichen is the symbiosis between a fungus and algae or cyanobacteria, many of which can go dormant for extremely long periods of time and tolerate harsh winds, drying ou...

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What happened to the transgenic American Chestnut? In January of 2024 news broke out that a "lab error" had "compromised years of research" regarding the re-introduction of American Chestnuts into Eastern North American forests, this time with a simple 700 base-pair gene for blight-resistance inserted into the tree's genome. For those that don't know, an invasive fungus from Asia that was unintentionally introduced to North America devastated...

In this episode we talk about how we are explicitly NOT condoning it, how to harvest mycorrhizae from soil duff, what is "KNR" and what "IMO"s are, the paucity of study concerning mushroom diversity in the Davis Mountains and how some species there might be eventually extirpated due to the drying climate, the fungal genus Tarzetta, and more. The episode is polished off by a 40 question botany quiz.

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In this episode I sit down withAdam Black about planting fruit trees in the park, how to save the honeybees, why invasive species don't exist, and how to properly apply a glue-on moustache and select proper attire so as to "fit in" when botanizing in West Texas. /s

Adam Black is a field botanist and researcher with Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories and Arboretum who has traveled to numerous continents and countries researching oaks and conifers (he has nothing to do with permaculture, that is just a sick joke on my part).

Before you whine about...

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In this lecture we rant about Invasion Biology, Continents as Ecosystems, the concept of a "Living Machine", and David Bowie's package in The Labrynth.

PDF download for this rant : 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rL5WP8zI0-Oqh4DYkRFBpjk0tBrcP9Hl/view?usp=drivesdk

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This was a conversation I had with my friend Martin Grantham about how humans relate to the living world around them (or rather, how most of them don't) and the factors that influence it.

This podcast episode is available ad-free on the Patreon with a screenshare of the presentation that accompanies it at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

How do plants evolve? How do plants speciate? What is allopatric speciation? What is sympatric speciation? How do plants like the Hawaiian silverswords evolve to be such big weird bastards while their ancestors on the mainlaind (the tarweeds) are so small? What the hell happened with the genus Echium (Boraginaceae) when it got to the Canary Islands? Why were islands the big reveal for how natural selection might work when Darwin saw his finches and...

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Codi Lazar is a Professory of Geology at California State University San Bernardino and a passionate and utterly hilarious geologist. In this episode, we get into the weeds talking about a wide variety of topics such as how limestone forms, why some plants might be restricted to it, what "serpentinite" is, what's in story for the state of Nevada in the next few dozen million years, how related the granite...

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The genus Baccharis is one of the largest and most diverse in the Composite Family, Asteraceae. It originated in South America a few dozen million years ago and has diversified and spread throughout South and North America and adapted to a variety of different habitats due to a number of key innovations such as tufted trichomes that secrete sticky wax, the...

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Rants about scrub oaks in the sand dunes of West Texas, 500 million-year-old granite in Lawton Oklahoma and the obesity epidemic aflicting prairie dogs in nearby communities, plants that only grow on Limestone, arbutoid mycorrhizae and symbiosis between m...

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Did you know that the distal ends and tips of roots are the only parts doing any absorption? What the hell are cortical bundles and why did cacti evolve them? How can cactus roots grow so quickly after a rain and what do we mean by "root spurs"?  How does the South American parasitic plant Tristerix aphylla behave like a fungus when it grows inside its host plant? And if you still don't understand w...

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In this episode: 
We talk about the three main types of tissue systems in plants :

Dermal (trichomes, guard cells)
Ground (Parenchyma, Collenchyma, Sclerenchyma) & 
Vascular (xylem and phloem)

What the hell are these tissues? Whatta they mean? Whatta they do?

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Christ Best is the State Botanist with US Fish and Wildlife Service for the state of Texas, a position he has held for 30 years. He has extensive knowledge of plants in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, specifically. He has worked with numerous rare and endangered plant species including Physaria thamnophila, Asclpeias prostrata, Thymophylla tephroleuca and many more. He has also worked with mycorrhizae on cactus roots, propagating rare and endangered species, a...

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Dave Farina is the host of the "Professor Dave Explains" youtube channel, an educational youtube series exploring a wide variety of scientific topics and offering free eduational tutorials on subjects ranging from human evolution to organic chemistry to arthropod taxonomy. In recent years, he has published a number of videos debunking pseudo-science quacks, charlatans, creationists, and flat-earthers. 

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David Keller is a historian and archaeologist from West Texas who based out of Alpine, Texas.

Originally recorded as a class lecture, this podcast episode contains information on root structures and shoots and is accompanied by the PDF found at : 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vA_n1OWw2PpUJSqn3m5lbSOymH_aARB7/view?usp=drivesdk

as well as chapters 23,24,&25 of "Raven Biology of Plants" textbook which can be downloaded for free on libgen.is in PDF form and read on a tablet.

We cover : Apical Meristems, Lateral Meristems (and why monocots don't have any), root caps, cortex, endodermis, pericycle, , xylem, phloem and the components of each.

This is the spoken part of a lecture that was presented for patreon subscribers and students on the patreon. To see the accompanying PDF and hear ad-free podcast episodes sign up for the crime pays patreon at patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

We talk about the basic elements of plant identification, how it ties into plant evolution,  evolutionary trees aka cladograms, what "phylogeny" means and why monophyletic" and "synapomorphies" are such important terms.

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In this episode we talk about Paronychia congesta, one of Texas' Rarest Plants, which grows on Caliche barrens in Jim Hogg County, as well as Caliche blazing stars, the Crested Peyote of West Texas, planting native plant gardens at Amada's House in Mirando City,and plenty more.

I became fixated on lycophytes because of some of the cool desert-dwelling members of the genus Selaginella, not to mention the utterly weird "clubmosses" that thrive in places as disparate as Northern Wisconsin and the slopes of volcanoes in New Zealand, but in this episode botanist Jeff Benca tells us about his work with relatives of the genus Isoetes ("Quillworts") and how their 250 million year old relatives might have been able to survive the biggest extinction in Earth's history, otherwise known as the Permian Extinction or "The Great Dying".

Jeff's IG : @jeffbenca
FB : Jeff Benca

...

A rant about West Texas Pines and the sand blazing star. At the 40 minute mark we begin our dive into the convoluted, confusing but utterly cool phenomenon of Alternation of Generations we talk mostly about Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) and Lycophytes ("spikemosses" and "clubmosses"), and the ferns, but not gymnosperms or angiosperms). This turns into more of a "lesson" on the subject than a podcast episode. 

Key terms to remember : 

Gametophyte (haploid), Sporophyte (diploid)
Haploid - 1 set of chromosomes aka 1 copy of the genome
Diploid - 2 sets of chromosomes aka 2 copies of the genome (on...

A conversation with Chemist, Genius, Botanist,, Propagator, & Madman Dan Hosage about Texas Native Plants, Texas History, and more.

NON-BOTANY PODCAST! This week's podcast is a conversation with my friend Jay Lesoleil,  political anthropologist and half the means behind the "Fucking Cancelled" podcast about right-wing populism, the failures of the American left, identitarianism, and how to build a non-insane American working class left.

Andrew Hipp is the director of the herbarium and Senior Sciensist and Researcher in Plant Systematics at Morton Arboretum in Chicago. 

This is one of the most fun and inspiring conversations I've had in a while, and it's about one of the most ecologically important genera of plants in the Northern Hemisphere : THE OAKS (genus Quercus).

In this episode we talk about the 13,000 year old Palmer's Oak in the California Desert, what the hell "Delayed Fertilization" is (hint: it's not common but it's ubiquitous in all members of genus Quercus), Oak Evolution, we go in depth e...

Casey Williams is an botanist and plant ecologist specializing in aquatic plants - both plants that grow completely submerged and which can emerge above the water surface. In this episode, we discuss :

-the stresses facing plants that grow underwater, 
-being limited by CO2 availability instead of water availability, 
-the endangered Texas Wild Rice, 
-how limestone geology influences aquatic plant growth by making CO2 more abundant, 
-utilizing aquatic plants and the fungi that grow on them for bioremediation and treating sewage at the local shitplant 
-how some aquatic plants have adapted to a paucity of di...

Vernonia lettermannii and other cool plants of Western Arkansas Novaculite, Ouachita Mountain Orogeny, Chert Glades of Western Missouri, the most obnoxious cicada species in the world, Detroit Rustic, Pittsburgh Museums, Shared Mountain Ranges of Appalachia and Morocco from the times of Pangaea, Northern Pennsylvania Glaciation, and more.

Alan Rockefeller is a mycologist and educator who has been studying mushrooms all over the world for the past 20 years and recently helped described two new species of Psilocybin mushroom from South Africa. He has helped numerous "citizen scientists" learn to DNA barcode fungi and led hundreds of free mushroom identification walks throughout North America. Alan encourages community science, free education and in addition is one of the kindest human beings I know. Also, one time in Mexico we almost both got trapped on top of a freezing mesa together.

Website on Alan's DNA Barcoding Basics:

...

Dr. Daniela Cristina Zappi is a Brazilian botanist, plant collector, and research scientist at the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew noted for studying and describing Neotropical flora, Rubiaceae, and Cactaceae. She has described over 90 species, most recently a new species in the cactus genus Uebelmannia (U.nuda). 

In this episode of Crime Pays, we discuss the different biomes and plant communities of Brazil, what "ecological islands" are, the biogeography of the cactus family, bat pollination in Pilosocereus, edaphic endemism in "ironstone" habitats of Northern Brazil and how iron-rich soils affect the evolution of the plants that g...

Zoe Schlanger is the author of newly released book "The Light Eaters", which shines a new light on researchers studying plant "intelligence" and behavior.

The state of Texas is one of the most diverse states for plants (and geology) in the US, and contains a large number of plant species that can't be found anywhere else in the United States, yet at the same time an enormous amount of land and plant habitat is being destroyed every day (240,000 acres a year) ,pushing more than a few plant species towards population decline.

This episode is a conversation with botanist and author Michael Eason from San Antonio Botanic Garden about plant conservation in Texas, why the Edwards Plateau is so special, walking the sometimes...

In this we talk with Andrew Conboy about street trees, urban forestry, habitat restoration, getting stoked on native plant life and how it's practical more than puritanical, Philly, botanic gardens, and more.

Two hours of rants about wonderful plants in Central Mexico. A follow-up to the previous episode and a description of plant species, taxonomic affinities and habitats encountered in the mountains of Querétaro and Guanajuato States, Mexico. Also a brief gear list and explanation of the various tools used when botanizing desert mountains.

Why the genus Garrya (the silktassels) is so cool,
A new Astrolepis sp. (Undescribed)
Stevia pyrolifolia (Asteraceae) - it's waxy-as$ leaves at 10,000 feet
Dyscritothamnus filifolius (Asteraceae) and the limestone cliffs and sketchy roads it inhabits

Vallesia glabra (Apocynaceae)
Spondias p...

This episode sponsored by Fiberpad, where you can glue duct-taped wheatgrass and fiberglass to your face in order to clear up any blemishes nice. What can limestone do for you and how does it form?

A long, winding rant through the mountains of Querétaro about habitats and species encountered at elevations between 6,000' and 10,000' including:
Karwinskia humboldtiana (Rhamnaceae)
Baccharis conferta (Asteraceae)
Penstemon campanulatus (Plantaginaceae)
 Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus (Cactaceae)
Kadenicarpus pseudomacrochele (Cactaceae)
Isolatocereus dumortieri (Cactaceae)
Opuntia stenopetala (Cactaceae)
Pinguicula moranensis (Lentibulariaceae)
Quercus crassipes (Fagaceae)
Agave salmiana subsp. crassispina (As...

Jeff Ollerton is a pollination biologist and researcher based out of the EU and currently working in KunMing, Yunnan Province, China. He has written two excellent books - one entitled "Pollinators and Pollination" and another entitled "Birds and Flowers" about birds as pollinators. In this nearly two hour long conversation we talk about a variety of taxa as well as ecological phenomena. I am still kicking myself for forgetting to bring up the topic of the South African monocot genus Strelitzia (Order Zingiberales) which has a weighted-lever-mechanism that allows only birds to access the stamens.

In this episode we talk with field botanist Ernest Herrera about the rich floristic diversity of the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas and Northern Mexico. We talk about a variety of cool plant species as well as the cultural history and cultural repression of this unique region, how it will adapt to climate change, how to change culture in order to get people to start appreciating their native flora more, how to convince people to kill their lawns, what happened to horned lizards, what's up with Texas Tortoises, and a sh*t ton more.

Ernest Herrera...

In this episode we talk about why plant "rescue" is a bullshit term, how Epipactis is probably pollinated hoverflies that it dupes, whats up with this new species of Asteraceae discovered in the Chihuahua desert, why people who don't know much about botany or ecology initially prefer non-native plants orver native ones, best place to get a Texas toast waffle machine, stealing a bus bin from Olive Garden, etc

Note : I mistakenly say Deb "described" this new species of composite. I meant to say "discovered". Blame my sleep deficit gfy

In this episode we talk with Botanist Matt Berger about Death Valley Plants, discovering new species, Limestone endemic plants, Dune Beetles, Desert Shrimp, specifist.ecology and more.

This conversation will make you want to buy a microscope and will make you rethink the way you envision the Tree of Life, where animals, plants and fungi are just a tiny speck on the overall tree of life.

Dr. Julia Van Etten (of the @Couch Microscopy Instagram page) talks about what the hell a Protist is and where you can find them (everywhere). We reveal how Protists are the fine particles that weave within and throughout our world."The Tree of Life is Really a Web".

The paper that the thumbnail is from can be...

In this episode we take a break from botany-related content to talk with my friend and fellow former locomotive engineer and railroader Lance Jenkins about railroading, sobriety, sad male archetypes in the US, stealing overtime, precision scheduled railroading and how it's responsible for the wreck in East Palestine Ohio,  "The Sun Train", and a whole lot more.

South Texas Sandsheet, Uvalde County Botany, Using a Leafblower & Diatomaceous Earth to rid yourself of crabs, what the sh*t is a Heterokont aka Stramenophile, Texas Men Will Be Able to Admit Having Feelings in 2028, and more

In this episode we talk with Hunter Martinez of the Cactus Quest YouTube Channel about how he got into growing cacti from seed and lurking on them in habitat. We discuss the spirituality of loving plants and deserts, the pros and cons of the collector habit common among this family of plants, why so many cacti grow on limestone geology, and the benefits of growing from seed over purchasing full-grown plants.

A series of extended rants about "F*ck the Honeybees", trying to settle beefs between friends, Male Primate Rivalry, Riding Trains in Mexico in 2005 & Brakemen with gold fronts, spreading the cult of native plant gardening via demonstration by example and killing lawns.

A long-winded rant about the social media phenomenon known as Instagram Drug Bros™️ and trying to encourage them to seek spiritual refuge (como se dice nice) in education about plant ecology and evolution rather than just the hoarding and collecting of plants that may have been sourced through somewhat unethical means. Why is plant habitat just as, if not more important than the plant itself? How is the ecological context in which a plant evolves inseparable from the plant itself? Can we get Instagram Drug Bros ™️  to start studying and collecting data on things like native solitary bees? What are...

This is a science-heavy episode with Dr. Michael Windham, specialist in Cheilanthoid Ferns curator at Duke Herbarium. Even if you're not interested in this group, they're a great case study in numerous fascinating phenomena including convergent evolution, biogeography (dispersal vs. vicariance), why DNA sequencing is important to taxonomy, self-cloning to escape the limitations of being a fern in a desert, etc. 


"Cheilanthoid Ferns" are a remarkable group of ferns - they grow in habitats where ferns seemingly shouldn't be able to grow - out of cracks in rocks and cliff faces in regions that are both usually v...

This episode consists of a rant about code-switching and friendship/cordiality through friction and being a pain in the ass, along with why dissecting flowers (and not just taking them at face value) with a razorblade or knife is important for understanding evolution, plant breeding systems and pollination ecology, what being "protogynous" is and why so many early-braching angiosperms do it, trying to offend advertisers, helping cacti bang in order to produce seed, and how an undescribed Gymnopilus species found growing on a shrubby Ambrosia species in the Baja California Desert  (thumbnail photo for this episode on spotify) actually contains t...

A conversation with Tony Figueroa, Senior Manager for the Invasive Plant Program at the Tucson Audubon Society (no affiliation with the National Org) about preventing Buffelgrass and Stinknet from smothering fragile Desert Ecosystems in Arizona. We also discuss why some in the "online permaculture community" (oh gahd) have such an aversion to any and all glyphosate use due to a misunderstanding about how it's used. Other topics include using an electric chainsaw to vandalizeCallery Pears and Crepe Myrtles and other hotricultural atrocity street trees, Why Texas is so uptight, how an invasive arugula-like plant is invading the desert near Gila...

A conversation with Dr. Kathleen Pryer (Director, Duke University Herbarium) and Dr. Michael Windham, (Curator of Vascular Plants, Duke University Herbarium) about the University's Decision to cut costs by closing the herbarium as well as the general trend in modern US Academia of failing to recognize the importance of Botany in society as a whole as well as other attempts to defund it.

We also touch on the cheilanthoid fern genus Gaga, named after both Lady Gaga and a section of the roughly 1500 base-pair-long MatK plastid gene region and why cheilanthoid ferns (aka desert ferns) are so damn...

Rants about encountering a cool new legume species in the fog deserts and giant cactus landscapes of Baja California, the diversity of perennial raaaaagweeds in the deserts, Gabbro soils, a buckwheat that produces flowers along the ground, Arugula acting invasive as hell in the Arizona Desert, escaping the cultural disease of Southern California, the oils and secondary metabolites of Eriodictyon sessilifolium, a Gymnopilus species that likely contains psilocybin and eats dead Ambrosia chenopodiifolia, etc.

Includes a select reading from an old book of railroad stories I wrote ten years ago starting around 1:05:00

A long, disjointed rant about using and writing Dichotomous Keys and why it's sometimes a process of grasping for straws or throwing a bunch of stuff to a wall to see what sticks, what an ideal floral key might look like if it were written by a neurotic, rambling schmuck fixated on ecology and biogeography. Other subjects include the gradation between ecotypes and species in Fremontodendron as well as the mycorrhizal associations found with Ornithostaphylos oppositifolia (Ericaceae, Arbutoideae) in the chaparral of Baja California, Mexico.

More Deranged Rants, this time about Javelina Management, Getting City Approval for Cactus Restoration and Street Trees, growing endangered plants from seed, Eocene Sandstone, growing xeric ferns from spore, working the Ozol Local and running freight trains along San Francisco Bay and much more

Rants about Montezuma Cypress on the Rio Grande, Cool Desert Ferns in West Texas and the Subfamily Cheilanthoideae of the fern family Pteridaceae, DEA permits for Peyote, Mountain Lions vs. Auodads, kind Caucasian Birders behaving at the Mexican border, funding the research station in South Texas with the nice bathroom, and more.

Rants about South Texas Geology, Geologic Timeline Apps for your D@mn phone, why its better to water before a freeze, being dragged by a freight train leaving Ft. Worth Texas, how much self-hate someone must have in order to lower themselves to the point of patronizing Subway Sandwich shops, and more.

Rants about freezing while trying to sleep in the back of a truck in Lordsburg, New Mexico, why Agaves are monocarpic, the importance of having a "target list" should you ever get diagnosed with a terminal illness, fruit dispersal in Frankenia johnstonii, how rhyolite is just like Satan's play-doh, the biogeography of peyote gourds (Lagenaria sp.), microdosing LSD in the arboretum, and more

Thumbnail pic is Pellaea truncata (Pteridaceae)

A roughly 77 minute rant about how an Australian plant in the legume Family named Crotalaria cunninghamii "looks a like a bird" but only to humans who have smoked copious amounts of weed and certainly not as a product of natural selection, how glyphosate works and why it's the lesser of two evils when used for restoration and invasive plant management, and how dwarf ponies dressed in Hawaiian shirts could be used for the eradication of invasive grasses in desert habitats.

Michelle Cloud-Hughes is a Cactus researcher, botanist and Desert Rat who specializes in one of my favorite cactus genera - Cylindropuntia: the genus of the dreaded Chollas. She has described a new species of Cholla, Cylindropuntia chuckwallensis, and spent 2 decades trudging up mountains and rockscapes of the Mojave, Sonoran and Baja Desert. In this podcast we talk about how Chollas bang, why deserts are some of the best places to study plant evolution, and why the sh*t they can't put solar panels on top of the parking lots of any of America's vast and expansive shopping and automobile culture...

Jim Mauseth is a wizard with a microscope and a retired professor of plant anatomy at UT Austin, where he taught for 30+ years. Jim is an expert in Plant Anatomy with an emphasis on Cacti. In this podcast we talk about anatomical adaptations of cacti and why palms are not true trees.

Dr. Peter Breslin is a Botanist out of Tucson Arizona specializing in Cacti, and recently did time in Brewster County Jail for "trespassing" to photograph some rare endemics that only grow on Novaculite (ancient biogenic silica) soils in West Texas. He also helped elucidate some of the evolutionary relationships between species that were formerly classified in the genus Mammilaria but are actually more closely related to the Baja genus Cochemiea, which specializes in hummingbird pollination.

This conversation was fun as hell, and we talk about why nomenclatural change-ups and classifications of this sort are important, and how they...

A discussion about Peyote conservation being done by Morningstar Conservancy in Tucson, Arizona and the ethnobotany of the Peyote Meeting, as well as what it means to "listen to the plant".

In this episode we rant about :

Rescuing and digging thin-soiled limestone prairie plants from a soon-to-be-destroyed site in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area weeks before the bulldozers come by to erect a data center or some other obscenity.

Moth pollination in deserts, the chemistry and familiar smell of moth-pollinated flowers.

West Texas sand dunes

Limestome endemic plants like Encelia scaposa and Echinocactus horizonthalonius

Limestone cacti in Southern Arizona, which is a landscape composed almost entirely of volcanics or intrusive igneous rock

Jeremy Spath (owner of Hidden Agave nursery @hiddenagave) and Kevin Krucher (@crazy4cactus) talk about a recent trip through the states of Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and Coahuila to document and explore desert plants and their ecology, including tons of rare species like Lophophora williamsii, Stenocactus phyllacanthus, Astrophytum asterias, Obregonia denigrii, Ariocarpus scaphirostris, Agave Montana, Agave albopilosa and more.

This entire podcast is about the Poison Ivy & Mango Family, Anacardiaceae. Susan Pell , Executive Director of the U.S. Botanic Garden & John Mitchell from the New York Botanic Garden both specialize in the systematics and phytochemistry of this incredible family of plants.

In this episode we talk about the active compound in Poison Ivy, Urushiol, as well as some of the cool adaptations that dryland and desert-adapted members of the family have evolved to cope with their unique environments. We mention a ton of cool plants species you've never heard of before, some edible and some toxic, and...