Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

Rants about Fighting with City Hall over Native Plant Gardens & Tree Planting, Creepy New Age "Healers", mortality in Star Cactus (Astrophytum asterias) from the recent drought and heat, Loving-Kindness-Meditations-and-what-the-sh*t, Nasally Belched Vowels in the Chicago Dialect and much more.

Rants about New Age Massage Parlors, Philosophically coping with "the human tumor" & habitat destruction, acid abstinence & 40 year old virgins, black nectar in the genus Melianthus, etc.

Listen to this podcast ad-free on the Patreon at : https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntJared Margulies is the author of the upcoming book "The Cactus Hunters", a book focusing on cactus and succulent poaching around the world using a number of case studies from different regions and species. His book is available for pre-order in September, 2023.

In this episode we catch up with Kyle Lybarger of the wildly popular Native Habitat Project and talk about seed-collecting, lawn-killing, burn regimes, the benefits and necessity of hunting and much more.

Intro ends at 8:00. Reminder all episodes can be listened to ad-free by subscribing to the Crime Pays Patreon at : https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntThis 1 hour and 40 minute episode covers the ethnobotany, pharmacology, & phylogeny of this psychoactive, potentially-therapeutic member of the Apocynaceae which has recently gained attention for its efficacy treating addiction & PTSD.

First 30 minutes occur on a winded, 900 meter elevation-gain hike. A more thorough, less distracted rant starts at 30:00.Rants about Brazilian Atlantic Forests and Cerrado (Seh-Haddo) vegetation, seasonal dryness caused by the ITCZ and Earth's Axis of rotation, converge traits of sclerophyll leaves among unrelated plants families, bizarre members of Asteraceae, Tree Vernonias, Xeric Aroids and Bromeliads, and much more.

Intro ends at 6:30Nick Zentner is a professor of geology at Central Washington University and host of a in-the-field geology YouTube Channel. He has numerous lectures available online at www.NickZentner.com and is based out of Ellensberg Washington.

This episode is basically a 90 minute rambling rant about New Zealand plants & plant ecology, where by a repeated fascination and fixation is expressed with the evolutionary selection pressures produced by a flora that co-evolved with 9 species of giant, flightless now-extinct birds called Moas. We also touch on new Zealand's tectonic forces, the predominant habitat type (Podocarp - Broadleaf Temperate Rainforest) as well as a bit of the volcanic alpine plants like Raoulia. We talk about Psilocybe diversity, the secotioid mushroom habit,and other fungal diversity to be found in these forests.

A conversation with my mycologist friend Alan Rockefeller about fungal diversity in New Zealand/Aotearoa, fungi with caps that don't open (which may be an adaptation to bird dispersal) and some of the weird complexity in the genus Psilocybe.

In this episode we have a 3 person conversation about the Flora of New Zealand, touching on such notable ecological and evolutionary characteristics among the plants here like leaf heteroblasty, leaf divarication, co-evolution with the now-extinct Moas, plate tectonics and vulcanism, how tropical plants have evolved for a chilly temperate rainforest, Jurassic lineages of conifers, the genus Pseudopanax, and all kind of other wild, cool sh*t.An interesting paper to read about heteroblasty and divaricating branch patterns : Howard, Jarden. "New Zealand divaricate plant species: Tensile strength and Remote Island occurrence." Journal of Austral Ecology. 2022