Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

Episodes of this podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at :www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntDr. 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 Chusquea to flower, what the hell "gregarious monocarpy" is, how a stand of individuals "know" when to all flower at the same time, and more. We also talk about the enormous bamboo species Guadua angustifolia, which can reach heights of 30 meters (90 feet), forms massive stands in the upper Amazon, and creates its own canopy ecosytem much like a redwood tree does. Later in the podcast we discuss the 4 species of bamboo native to the United States, the genus Arundinaria , and how a dispersal event from Asia 25 million years ago may have originally introduced bamboos to the Americas.Vocab words from this episode : Arm Cells : the leaf blades of bamboos possess arm cells in the mesophyll, a character trait that sets them apart from grasses.  Gregarious Flowering or Gregarious Monocarpy : synchronous flowering. extremely cool and mysterious stuff.Buergersiochloa bambusoides - New Guinea DisjunctRaddiella vanessae - the world's smallest bamboo speciesicneumonid wasps - wasps that have an ovipositor that is able to penetrate the hard culms of the giant Amazonian bamboo Guadua angustifoliaThe strucutre and morphology of the buds at the nodes of bamboo are highly diagnostic for bamboos identification!Chusquea from Western Mexico : Chusquea septentrionalisLink to Guadua angustifolia video : https://youtu.be/7v6nmIatSx0

Bruce Shoemaker is a researcher on natural resource conflicts andauthor 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 biologist and author Dr. Peter Bernhardt.Episodes of the Crime Pays Podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon so please join it instead of complaining here about the ads : https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Ad-Free episodes of the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't Podcast are available on the patreon at :https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntIn 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 clearance, feral pigs, invasive grasses (like buffel grass) and habitat loss.We also explore why some members of the NAC want to keep peyote illegal as a means of "protecting" the species from use by outsiders. A well-intentioned stance that may actually further imperil wild populations of this plant due to the extent in which it makes propagation and habitat restoration, and salvaging peyote plants from land clearance for things like solar fields or the border wall impossible, even by those individuals that are Native American and permitted to use peyote in religious ceremony.To learn more about the Sacramental Sponsorship Program or Morningstar Conservancy, visit www.morningstarconservancy.orgSacramental Sponsorship Program (only available to NAC members with tribal cards : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Py8_vn9dHh7hGaZRKdwrsdXAtkfw0uGF/view?usp=drive_link

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/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntRants 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/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntThumbnail 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.Ad-Free episodes of the crime pays Podcast are available on the Patreon for a measly five bucks a month, so quit your whinin about the awful ads (as if you don't have fingers you can use to press buttons to skip through them) and sign up, where you'll have access to e see rly screenings of videos, photo dumps of rare plants, free literature, educational PDFs and more at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

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