CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Costa Rica Tour is Happening

As of now the Costa Rica tour that I am planning with Alan Rockefeller and Mandie Quark is happening July 8th through the 16th. The total cost will be $2,500 and will include food transportation and lodging... all you have to do is fly your own ass down there into San Jose.

We will be spending the entire time in the high elevation Montane Oak Forest and Páramo Habitat, going out everyday to photograph and identify plants and mushrooms. The first day or two Alan and I will be giving p...

Montane Forests of Costa Rica Photo Album

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ou4XzxffKTK5h11fA

I'm still getting around to putting identifications on all the photos but if you're curious about any of the plants simply comment on the photo and I will ID it for you.

Restoring Alabama Glade Habitats with Kyle Lybarger

The thin-soiled limestone glade habitats of Northeastern Alabama are home to some of the coolest and rarest plants in the Southeast, but two centuries of fire suppression has put the continued existence of many of them in danger. In this episode we meet up with Kyle Lybarger of  @NativeHabitatProject  to talk about his work bringing fire back to restore some of them. The Southeastern ...

Getting Peed on by Monkeys in Tropical Dry Forests

In this episode we check out dry tropical forests as well as the karstic limestone outcroppings within them that are home to the drought tolerant plants like Euphorbia schlechtendalii, Marshallocereus aragonii, and Agave wercklei. 3 different species of monkeys appear in this video as well as a white nosed Coati.

Atlanta meet up tonight

If you're in Atlanta I'm here and I'll be at Stone Mountain tonight at 5 pm doing a plant walk/shoot-the-shit session in the parking lot.

Star Cactus & Old Growth Peyote

In this video we catch Star Cactus Blooming ( Astrophytum asterias) and see a massive old growth Peyote at Thornscrub Sanctuary.

Journey to the Páramo Part 2

In the second part to our ascent up the Talamanca Range of Costa Rica, we check out the plants growitat 10,000' in the mountains of Central America, culminating in the strange bromeliad and tree fern bogs where Puya dasylirioides grows...

Costa Rica's Long Lost Agave

Agave wercklei is endemic to Costa Rica, growing on calcareous shale In the northwest part of the country in the province of Guanacaste. The habitat here somewhat resembles similar habitat of the dry tropical forests of southern Mexico, and indeed many of the same species occur here, but this Agave only grows within the geopolitical boundaries of Costa Rica with Marshallocereus aragonii and Furcraea cabuya.

Journey to the Páramo Part 1 : Crime Pays Costa Rica

Part 1 in a two-part video featuring The climb from Mid elevations to high elevations in Costa Rican Cloud forest, and all the species and habitats in between...

Costa Rica Habitat Synopsis

Ad-Free episode of the podcast featuring a 2.5 hour podcast rant about plants in the neotropics, including the lowland dry forests, the montane oak forests, and the Páramo.

Drought Tolerant Maidenhair & Giant Lobelias

In Central Chile grows a giant species in a genus more well known in the United States for being small herbs or herbaceous perennials... this is Lobelia excelsa.

other species listed include
Retanilla trinervia (Rhamnaceae)
Baccharis paniculata
Baccharis linearis (Asteraceae)
Lithraea caustica (Anacardiaceae)
Maytenus boaria (Celastraceae)
Stachys albicaulis (Lamiaceae)
Senna candoleana (Fabaceae)
Ephedra chilensis (Ephedraceae)
Adiantum chilense var. sulph...

Pipevines : Flowers That Trap Their Pollinators

The genus Aristolochia contains over 500 species, most of which occur at tropical latitudes around the world. Thus episode focuses mainly on 4 species from the new world tropics, primarily:
Aristolochia ringens,
Aristolochia leuconeura,
Aristolochia gigantea,
& Aristolochia grandiflora.

All these flowers have their sexual parts fused into a columnar structure called a Gynostemium with male parts (anthers) below and female parts (stigma) up top and are protogynous: the...

Tabernanthe iboga at Ark Jardin Sagrado

Tabernanthe iboga is one of many ethnobotanically important plants I photographed today at the Ark Vivero in Costa Rica. It is an intense psychedelic for curing opiate Addiction and PTSD. If you've ever talked to someone who's done it it's common for them start tearing up a bit when they recount their experience. Like any healing and strong psychedelic, such is an indicator of how much it can alter a negative life trajectory and change people.

Mexican Burrowing Toad

Mosquito Traps & Borrowing Frogs Podcast March 28 2025

Trans-Pecos Botany with Dr Mike Powell

Mike Powell is curator of the Sul Ross Herbarium in Texas and has spent 60 years studying the plants of the region. In this conversation we talk about describing new species, gypsum endemics in the Chihuahua Desert, Chromosome counting, Sky Islands on the Chisos and Davis Mountains, Increasing Droughts, the importance of herbaria, and the new species discovered in Big Bend National Park, Ovicula biradiata

The New Plant Species Discovered in a US National Park

Deb Manley is a naturalist and long-distance hiker who in March 2024 discovered a plant species that was entirely new to science: Ovicula biradiata (Sunflower Family - Asteraceae).

In this episode of Crime Pays we talk about the discovery, the unique flora of the Big Bend region, limestone deserts, the phenomenon of Sky Islands and more.

Neotropical Bamboos : Biogeography & Gregarious Monocarpy

Dr. Lynn Clark studies neotropical bamboos - bamboos from the Americas - specifically the genus Chusquea, which is epically diverse in South America, from the Atlantic Forest of Brazil to the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, to Western Mexico, all the way down to the temperate rainforests of Southern Chile. In this episode we talk about Chusquea, how its monocarpic (it flowers once and then dies, like Agave), how it can take decades for a clonal stand of Chu...