Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

Intro ends at 15:03In this episode we interview Benny Villareal about his work with Peyote Conservation in South Texas and his history with the Native American Church, touching on the topics of Peyoteros, Land Clearance, Habitat Destruction as a result of sprawl, and obstacles conserving what is becoming a rapidly diminishing cactus species in the only place in the United States where it grows - the state of Texas.

Rants about Chonkosaurus, the Chicago River getting cleaned up, the bio-swales that UrbanRivers.org created along the river, Rooftop Graffiti Appreciation Committee, Redundant Praise for the Field Museum and the Plant Systematics Dungeon/Welwitschia mirabilis, How the smell of Cigarettes replaced the smell of piss in the Jackson St. CTA tunnel, etc.To purchase Chonkosaurus shirts go to www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.myshopify.com

In this episode we talk with Tom Croat of Missouri Botanical Garden, a world expert on Aroids and the family Araceae. Tom has been to over 130 countries studying this family and the immense amount of diversity in it, including their evolution, ecology, and pollination. We talk on all things Aroids, especially in the neotropics. The video accompanying this is available on the Patreon, www.Patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

Rants about overpriced museums, crook county, kill your lawn release, Missouri Botanical Garden Aroid Dungeon, getting banned from places of prestige, sweat ceremony, sand endemics of Florida, pissing off prestigious turds in academia, etc.

Lillium Byrd is a Botanist with the Florida Native Plant Society. This conversation took place in a Longleaf Pine Forest while watching fireflies light up the canopy of the trees.

Margaret Behan is an Arapahoe/Cheyenne member of the Native American Church, as well as one of the "13 Indigenous Grandmothers". In this episode we talk about Peyote Religion, people wanting a connection to plants and to the land they live on, hope for the young generations & the future of Lophophora williamsii and its connection to the Native people of North America.

Intro rant is about 25 minutes long."Paintbrushes", aka the genus Castilleja, are seemingly everywhere in the Americas, especially in the more arid and montane parts of these continents. Containing 200 species, the genus is highly diverse and broadly distributed, working on the them of being a partial parasites of other plants and producing wildly flamboyant and colorful inflorescences, due in large part to showy bracts that subtend each individual flower. Mark Egger is a specialist in this genus, and today we talk paintbrushes with him for over an hour - their often confusing flower morphology, their ecology, their diversity, and their pollinators. What are some of the rarest species? What are some of the weirdest? We answer a bunch more questions in this 80 minute long conversation about one of the coolest and most ubiquitous plant genera in North (and South!) America.

Intro is 11:00Anybody who's spent any time studying or even observing plants in desert or seasonally arid environments is familiar with soil crusts and how bizarre and unique they can be, as well as the role they must be playing in the ecosystem - from providing a nurse substrate for a variety of cactus seedlings to germinate in to stabilizing the soil to adding organic material to what is otherwise rocky terrain to nitrogen fixation. It's an exceptional thing to suddenly realize that the entire ground beneath your feet is actually ALIVE.In this episode we talk with microbiologist Dr. Corey Nelson about the living soil crusts in arid environments and what the hell is going on with the multiple species of bacteria, fungi, archae and protists involved in this complex community of organisms that thrives where few other things can.

In this episode we rant about pleistocene relict oaks growing on desert sky islands, paintbrush species in the desert, plant communities of the hill country West of Austin, how it's actually not that hard to grow 'Texas" Madrones, how silty sandy loams work great for cactus seedlings, doing CRIME PAYS plant ID classes on Patreon & much more.

Intro is 15:00 long.Jay LeSoleil is an activist, advocate and one of the two voices behind the F*CKING CANCELLED PODCAST. In this episode of Crime Pays we talk about "cancel culture", the bizarre and deranged ideological path that some elements of modern leftism have taken, 12-step programs, sobriety, identitarianism, how to actually create change, and the effect that social media has had on both left and right wing political movements.