CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

KILL YOUR LAWN - Plano Prairie Garden

KILL YOUR LAWN, & replace it all with Blazing Star....
I stopped in the yard of @planoprairiegarden to see the Liatris forest he's planted in a yard that was - when he bought the house - just boring mowed turf grass. This is all the work of Michael McDowell, who began with only a few plants and then had the rest end up volunteering from seeds produced by the originals.

The monarchs just passed through en route to the cloud forests of Michoacán a week or two back and the whole ...

One of Texas' Rarest Plants - Paronychia congesta

One of Texas' Rarest Plants - and one of my new favorites - is this guy, Paronychia congesta (Carnation Family - Caryophyllaceae), known only from 2 sites in Deep South Texas where it occurs on barren and harsh Caliche exposures.

Caliche is basically a natural cement. It's a product of dissolution of calcareous country rocks by rainwater and subsequent precipitation of those weathered minerals later on, forming a natural cement-like material. For whatever reason, the caliche here is ex...

Plant Tissue Systems Lecture

We talk about the three main types of tissue systems in plants :

Dermal (trichomes, guard cells)
Ground (Parenchyma, Collenchyma, Sclerenchyma) &
Vascular (xylem and phloem)

What the hell are these tissues? Whatta they mean? Whatta they do?

Chris Best - State Botanist for Texas

Christ Best is the State Botanist with US Fish and Wildlife Service for the state of Texas, a position he has held for 30 years. He has extensive knowledge of plants in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, specifically. He has worked with numerous rare and endangered plant species including Physaria thamnophila, Asclpeias prostrata, Thymophylla tephroleuca and many more. He has also worked with mycorrhizae on cactus roots, propagating rare and endangered species, and navigating the some...

Debunking Charlatans & Posers w/ Professor Dave Explains

Dave Farina is the host of the "Proffesor Dave Explains" youtube channel, an educational youtube series exploring a wide variety of scientific topics and offering free eduational tutorials on subjects ranging from human evolution to organic chemistry to arthropod taxonomy. In recent years, he has published a number of videos debunking pseudo-science quacks, charlatans, creationists, and flat-earthers. 

West Texas Pinion Pine & Associated Species

Ariocarpus fissuratus blooming time

It's that time of year when the living rock cactus goes off. Also photographed was some peyote and a thread wasp pollinating Sidneya tenuifolia (skeleton leaf).

Ad-Free podcast : Texas Private Land Explained

Dave Keller is a historian and archaeologist in West Texas and in this episode we talk about the paucity of public land into the state, native American archaeological sites and more.

Relict Madrones, Monarch Migration & Seed Collection Video

Texas Madrones - Relicts of the Past

Yesterday in West Texas I found two lone Texas madrones, Arbutus xalapensis, growing in a dry wash in the Chihuahua Desert. These trees serve as a reminder that the region used to be milder and slightly wetter, more akin to the Edwards Plateau further East where they still occur.

For anybody who doesn't know Madrones, they are a remarkably cool tree. They associate with their own type of Mycorrhizae, the Arbutoid Mycorrhizae, like all members of their subfamily including manzanitas (g...

Shoots and Roots Lecture

Where by we get into apical meristems, root structure, shoot structure, xylem, phloem and what the shit ...

Da Tubes Lecture Podcast Ad-Free

Accompanying PDF slide presentation :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vA_n1OWw2PpUJSqn3m5lbSOymH_aARB7/view?usp=drive_link

In this podcast we talk aboutapical meristems in shoots and roots, root structure, xylem, phloem, and the components of each. Originally taught in a beginner botany class.

Lawn Kill 6 Months Later

Free Download "Kaktusy"

This mini-book has a ridiculous name but has a detailed description of all Lophophora species, their occurences, taxonomic and morphological differences, and some wonderful photos. 19 mb download.

Also, what did everybody think of the last lecture? Was it useful/confusing as shit/ do you see the point in learning the material?

Plant Identification, Phylogenetics, Monophyly, Cladograms Crash Course

Yesterday's upload didn't have any sound, so I re-recorded the exact same presentation today.

Google drive folder with accompanying texts for this lecture, including the powerpoint presentation featured :

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-6FPwYZ-llF6v08gJX0WTkRbdx0Z9tF8

Texts used in this presentation: Chapter 4 of "Evolution: Making Sense ...

Beautiful Old Growth Peyote

In Texas we find one of the few remaining old growth specimens of this species, Lophophora williamsii, which is becoming increasingly endangered due mostly to habitat destruction and the inability of human beings to appreciate the plant community and habitat that it comes from, as well as the other plant species that grow with it. Though this plant is considered sacred to some, the habitat is sadly consider sacred to very few, and every plant in this habitat needs protection, reverence and re...

Taxonomy & Plant Identification/Flower Morphology Lecture

a 45 minute presentation/crash course for beginners on Taxonomy and Flower Anatomy and how to identify plants by flower structure with examples of a few plant families.

Description of Video contains a link to a google drive folder to download pdf versions of the texts used in this presentation, such as botany in a day and plant systematics.

Livestream 9/21

Big Bend Yucca Nursery

Joven Riley is owner/operator of Big Bend Yucca Nursery, Specializing in selling large seed-grown Yucca rostrata, Yucca faxoniana and Yucca rigida. On this episode of Crime Pays we talk with him about how he got into Desert Plants and what it's like running a nursery in the dry cold winds of West Texas.

Texas' Rarest Plant & Caliche Gardens podcast Ad-Free

One of Texas' Oldest Peyotes

...and a few pics of Hibiscus coulteri, the yellow flowers Desert Hibiscus.

This specimen is probably one of Texas' Oldest Peyotes, located on private land and we'll acres for and guarded. It also displays the "cristate" or fasciated form, whichany cacti species do, creating a growth pattern that resembles an undulating, twisting wave.

Lycophytes and The Permian Extinction podcast ad-free

I became fixated on lycophytes because of some of the cool desert-dwelling ones like Selaginella, but in this episode botanist Jeff Benca tells us about his work with relatives of the genus Isoetes ("Quillworts") and how their 250 million year old relatives might have been able to survive the biggest extinction in Earth's history, otherwise known as the Permian Extinction or "The Great Dying".

Sandsheet Blazing Star Video

Liatris carrizana and affiliates are the focus of this video, all plants endemic to a sandy substrate for the most part.

Ad-Free West Texas and AOG podcast

A rant about West Texas Pines and the sand blazing star. At the 40 minute mark we begin our dive into the convoluted, confusing but utterly cool phenomenon of Alternation of Generations we talk mostly about Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) and Lycophytes ("spikemosses" and "clubmosses"), and the ferns, but not gymnosperms or angiosperms). This turns into more of a "lesson" on the subject than a podcast episode. 

Key terms to remember : 

Gametophyte (haploid), Sporoph...

What the Shit Is "Alternation of Generations"

I created these bits as part of a crash course in a course I'm teaching and am posting them here in case anybody who's NOT ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH THEM (I assume most of you are) can get an idea on this process and why it's important. It will affect the way that you move through and interpret the world.

Remember........"Haploid" and "Diploid" are the main things to focus on when trying to understand "Alternation of Generations (AOG)", which ALL PLANTS partake in. It's weird and t...

Some Course Materials/Plant Systematics

I'm attaching a link to a folder with a bunch of reading materials including Plant Systematics by my friend Michael Simpson, which is a textbook that you will reference for the next decade of your life and which I've been hyping for about 8 years now. It goes through plant identification and synapomorphies of various groups starting from the bottom of the EMBRYOPHYTE (land plant) family tree starting with bryophytes, up through lycophytes, up through ferns to conifer, angiosperms, etc.

A Conversation with Dan Hosage

Plant Chemist, T xas History Expert, Native Plant Grower and Madman Dan Hosage.

Texas' Toughest Oak

Texas Wild Rice and the San Marcos River

The rare plant Zizia texana, Texas Wild Rice, is the feature of this hour long episode but there are many more. While trekking on the San Marcos River we discuss why aquatic plants don't have a cuticle (and what the hell a cuticle is in the first place), why many aquatic plants have two different kinds of leaves, and the pros and cons of living an "aquatic lifestyle".

Gas Station Bathroom Botany