Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

In this episode we talk with Chris Pires, Chief Science Officer at the New York Botanic Garden, about the taxonomic clusterf*ck that is the order Asparagales - the order of the Iris Family, the Orchid Family, the Agave Family, the Onion/Amaryllis Family, and many more obscure families located on distant and disjunct parts of the world. We also talk about how analyzing DNA made it possible to sort out this mess as well as where the larger clade of Monocots themselves fits into the flowering plant tree of life. Disjointed ranting in this episode notably comes AFTER the podcast guess to make it easier for those who might just be interested primarily in the subject of today's episode.

Today's episode is inspired by the bRaVE individuals (all of us) who participated in the massive back-and-forth online shitposting last week regarding the inherent colonialism of using the binomial naming system of taxonomy, plant systematics and the study of evolutionary relationships among plant taxa.This episode sponsored by Decolonial Colon Cleanse, the at-home kit for decolonizing Colo-rectal and gastrointestinal issues. Order online at www.DecolonialRectum.com

In this episode we speak with Peter Raven, former director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, about our current understanding of the rise of angiosperms and what the floristic landscape may have looked like prior to their appearance in the fossil record.

A criminally underrated state for rare plants and plant ecology, Wyoming has a number of rare taxa and bizarre habitats. In this episode we talk with a botanist who spent twenty years in the state documenting, inventorying and becoming acquainted with the flora in the high deserts and alpine plant communities. We speak specifically about the Yellowstone Abronia, Abronia ammophila; the Blowout Penstemon, Penstemon haydenii; and the Desert Yellowhead, Yermo xanthocephalus, as well as about conservation, climate change and Western Botany in general.

Plants that grow on sinter (silica) and travertine (calcium carbonate) deposits of hot springs, a really bizarre  central Wyoming endemic known from only two locations (Yermo xanthocephalus) whose closest relatives occur in the prairies of the Midwest, and many other topics plus the usual 90 minutes of unattenuated disjointed ranting.

In this episode we have an hour long conversation with Matt Berger about a loop "trail" (there actually was no trail save for that created by wild horses) created through the mountain ranges of the Great Basin in Central Nevada and the plans seen along the way along with information on how anybody can do these long-distance hikes (especially when everything else in life has gone to shit).Follow Matt on Instagram @sheriff_woody_pct and on Inaturalist via username Sheriff_Woody_PCT

This episode begins with a 56 minute rant concerning the crime spree caused by the meeting of the Eriogonum Society in Elko, Nevada, followed by rants on the silica "sinter" deposits occurring throughout Nothern Nevada as a result of the intermittent series of hot springs and geothermal activity, which are in turn a result of the extensional tectonics and the fact that Reno and Salt Lake City are moving away from each other and the crust is stretching and thinning. The last seven minutes before our conversation with Ben Grady starts include a rant on illegal squatted gardens and how activists and anarchists tend to consistently be some of the cheapest people on the planet.

In this episode we speak with Bruce Baldwin about sequencing the DNA of plants to understand how closely we're distantly related they are and how they have evolved. At least an initial understanding, no matter how small, of how DNA is structured will help you understand this podcast but is not necessary. The first 40 minutes are just ranting anyway. Your contributions support this content. To support Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't, consider donating a few bucks to the venmo account "societyishell" or the PayPal account email crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt@gmail.com... Or consider becoming a patreon supporter @ : https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt Buy some CPBBD merch (shirts, hats, hoodies n' what the shit) available for sale at : https://www.bonfire.com/store/crime-pays-but-botany-doesnt/ To purchase stickers, venmo twelve bucks to "societyishell" and leave your address in the comments.  Plants ID questions or reading list suggestions can be sent to crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt@gmail.com  Thanks, GFY.

In this episode we speak with Darin Penneys, Ph.D about his work with an incredibly diverse plant family that few in the temperate zones are familiar with - Melastomataceae. I first fell in love with this family when seeing some of the incredible diversity that it showed in the cloud forest of the Dominican Republic, and upon further inspection became enormously enamored and fascinated with it, and you should too, you prick. From an ecological and evolutionary standpoint this family in the same order as guava and eucalyptus will blow your mind, so get into it.

In this episode of Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't we talk with Naomi Fraga about the devastation to be imposed on 90% of a rare plant's population and the mining company sleaze bags who are trying to greenwash it. We also talk about the BLM whistleblower who first brought attention to the mining company's attempts to circumvent environmental impact reports as well as the vandalism and subsequent rodent damage that occurred at this plant's population last year. Joey also rants about the first time he saw someone shoot heroin on the west side of Chicago in 1997. Within the first 20 minutes of the podcast Joey mentions the numerous arrests that have taken place at the Eriogonum Society's meetings due to its members' penchants for violence and street-fighting. We also discuss the first time that the Eriogonum Society was banned (for life) from Tejon Ranch for raising a gripe about their planned luxury housing development for the spiritually incompetent.