CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

PUBLIC LANDSCAPING...WITH NATIVE PLANTS

I was stoked to be contacted by the municipal landscaping greenhouses for the city of Colorado Springs and invited to come check out the work they are doing growing native plants for all of the public property around Colorado Springs. I haven't encountered a publicly-funded native plant greenhouse or grow operation anywhere in the United States before. This video is about how this project started and how two guys were able to slowly move the public landscaping of this city away from lame hort...

Colorado Springs Southwards Podcast and

Cliff Dwellers of New Mexico

In Otero County, New Mexico, near the bustling metropolis of Alamogordo, we encounter a number of cool Chihuahua Desert species that grow out of cracks in cliff faces and on the steep limestone slopes above a creek...

Some of the plants mentioned in this video are :

Salvia pinguifolia (Family Lamiaceae)

Celtis reticulata (Cannabaceae)

Laphamia staurophylla (Asteraceae)

Cyphomeris gypsophyloides (Family Nyctaginaceae)

Dasylirion wheele...

I-10 Ramblings to New Mexico Podcast

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

Neotropical Oak Forest & Bush-Checking Becky

In this podcast 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 fore...

Costa Rica Páramo &Oak Forest Photos

The high elevation tropics create one of my favorite plant habitats after deserts and thornscrub. Here are some photos from the Páramo and the oak forest that exists just beneath it. Elevations range between 9500'-10,300' at 9 ° latitude North. Most photos are captioned. If you have questions about an ID please comment.

Chilly Cloud Forests & Jurassic Conifers

In the chilly wet cloud forests of Costa Rica at 9200' (2800 m) elevation grows a massive, ancient conifer known as Pectinopotys (formerly Prumnopitys) standleyi, where it grows with Podocarpus costaricensis and massive oaks, with every tree covered in numerous species of orchids, bromeliads, ferns, mosses, liverworts and epiphytic blueberries.

Davis Mountains Sashay

Dead Ponderosa pines stand as a relict of the brutal Texas drought but the fungi and other plants like Mandevilla hypoleuca, Echeveria strictiflora, & Adolphia infesta are just waking up.

Concrete Botany Chapter 4 Sneak Peak : Embracing the Living World

A snapshot of the first 6 pages of Chapter 4 from my book Concrete Botany, available for pre-order in August and due for release in April of 2026. I'm excited as hell for this book, and it eloquently (and at times, not so eloquently) articulates things I've been feeling for years, as well as a brief history of some of the things that got me started down the path of understanding botany, ecosystems, and evolution.

Davis Mountains Sky Island Podcast

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....

How to Install Drip Irrigation in 30 minutes.

In this episode we show how to install drip irrigation on a native plant garden. This is only necessary if we are in a bad drought or since we are planting in the middle of the summer. Irrigation will be necessary to get these plants established but once they are established they won't need any since they are native, but I still like to keep it on so that everything grows faster and so that all the insects and hummingbirds that depend on these plants for food have something to eat.

I ...

Grand Canyon, Pediocactus, Utah Gypsum

Another 40 minute Four Corners Botany video highlighting some high-elevation habitats of Northern Arizona.

Four Corners Botany Podcast

Rants about the plant species encountered from New Mexico to Southern Utah to Northern Arizona....

Four Corners Botany

Hey everybody Sorry I haven't been posting much here lately I've got far too much to do and it's driving me nuts. I have to drive to Austin in 3 hours to give a presentation. Just finished this video I still have about 11 more to edit and a bunch of photos to upload. Thanks for your continuing support. Hope you enjoy this

Sand Trap Botany

The geology of Southern New Mexico is based around gently undulating sandals of red sand weathered out of 300 million year old rock. It is hot, dry, and windy, but tons of interesting stuff still manages to grow here, such as Acourtia nana, Monarda punctata var occidentalis, Dalea lanata, Phyllanthus abnormis, Abronia fragrans, Epixiphium wislizenii (Snapdragon Vine), Quercus havardii (dwarf oak) and a ton more sand endemics.

Sand Trap Botany of Southern New Mexico

The geology of Southern New Mexico is based around gently undulating sandals of red sand weathered out of 300 million year old rock. It is hot, dry, and windy, but tons of interesting stuff still manages to grow here, such as Acourtia nana, Monarda punctata var occidentalis, Dalea lanata, Phyllanthus abnormis, Abronia fragrans, Epixiphium wislizenii (Snapdragon Vine), Quercus havardii (dwarf oak) and a ton more sand endemics.

Gypsum Habitats in New Mexico

Gypsum Mountain "Laurel", Feral Horses, Gypsum flats, Gaillardia multiceps, Pseudoclappia, etc.

Holistic Healing Colon Cleanse in Gypsum Habitats

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.

Concrete Botany_BLAD_1L clean.pdf

Here's a sneak peek at the book, coming out April 2026

The Dunes of El Paso

Tons of interesting plant life on the red dunes East of El Paso, dominated by Artemisia filifolia (Chihuahua Desert Sagebrush) and Poliomintha incana (El Paso Bushmint), as well as Rhus microphylla and more.

This video was filmed in May of 2025

Podcast: A Clusterf*ck of Mustards

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 karasen...

Poor Man's Lawn Kill

POOR MAN'S LAWN-KILL

I put this together the other day and haven't polished it up yet but this is a preliminary way to kill your lawn and get a "meadow" (I kind of hate that word tbh) of native pioneer species going.

Pioneer species, of course, are the plants that show up first after any kind of ecological disturbance and can thrive in full sun and less-than-ideal conditions. They are usually annuals or short-lived perennials, but they make way for the slower-growing, less-tole...

Southeastern Gonzo Botany Tour

in Northeast Alabama and Northwest Georgia.

Species featured:

Xanthorhiza simplicissima
Trillium catesbaei
Pyrularia pubera
Cypripedium acaule
Castanea dentata
Bigelowia nuttallii
Sarracenia oreophila
Osmundastrum cinnamomeum
Magnolia tripetala
Liatris microcephala
Nyssa sylvatica
Quercus boyntonii

What Do You Want to See?

For everybody on Patreon :
What would you want to see on here from Crime Pays? What do you want to learn? What kind of topics would you like me to cover? What do you feel like would enrich your life, your brain, and make your time and money on here feel more well spent? Let me know in the comments. As always, thanks for the support.

J

PODCAST : Atlanta, Granitic Knobs, Limestone Glades, Native Habitat Project, Etc.

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 mo...

Sunny Balls and Granite Outcrops

In this episode we take a stroll on a big ol' polished granite knob Southeast of Atlanta, Georgia to see some of the plants of the Southeastern United States that thrive on the thin soils of granite knobs and limestone glades.

Schoenolirium croceum (Asparagaceae)
Bignonia capreolata (Bignoniaceae)
Packera dubia (Asteraceae)
Sedum smallii (Crassulaceae)
Mononeuria uniflora (Caryophyllaceae)
Isoetes mela
Chionanthus virginicus (Oleaceae)
Rubus pensilvanicus (Rosaceae...

The Long Lost, Gland-Rkdden Sand Pea

This was a cool find...the extremely rare Pomaria austrotexana, a sand-endemic from the hot-as-hell South Texas plains. It's covered in little red glands which smell something like a cross between almonds and cough syrup.

What really caught my eye though was the shape of the flowers, and the fact that all the stamens are nestled together in the keel petal. It implies pollination by some kind of bumblebee, probably one of those big-ass black Xylocopas, but who knows? I don't think anyo...

Costa Rica Cloud Forest Foray tickets available now at link :

Milkweed Pollination, Up Close and Personal

In milkweed flowers, the central column is called the gynostegium. The gynostegium is topped by five white hoods, in between the hoods on the vertical sides of the gynostegium are the stigmatic slits. inside each stigmatic slit is a stigma as well as a pollinarium, which resembles a boomerang. each leg of the boomerang has nodules of aggregated pollen, singularly referred to as a pollinium.

In this video we use the rare milkweed Asclepias prostrata as a model for milkweed pollination.<...

Plants, Mushrooms & Cave Creatures of Ecuador

This episode features a trip to Limestone cave in the middle of the upper Amazon in Eastern Ecuador and all the plants and mushrooms along the way, including but not limited to :

Ilex guayusa
Chrysoclamys sp.
Miconia symphyandra (Melastomataceae)
Cyclanthus bipartitus
Begonia glabra (Begoniaceae)
Guadua angustifolia (Bambusoideae)
Heliconia aemygdiana (Heliconiaceae)
Whip Scorpion (Phrynidae)
Ophiocordyceps curculionum
Rigidoporus microporus (Rigidoporacea...