Episodes

  • Atlanta, Granitic Knobs, Limestone Glades, Native Habitat Project, Etc.

    Atlanta, Granitic Knobs, Limestone Glades, Native Habitat Project, Etc.
    May 9 2025
    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 more.

    If you're annoyed by the ads, stop complaining and sign up for the Crime Pays Patreon at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt
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    2 hrs and 18 mins
  • Easter Brunch With Father Santore Livestream

    Easter Brunch With Father Santore Livestream
    Apr 20 2025
    A 2 hour, unhinged livestream rant about ecological succession in lawn slaughter, book reviews, the deranged texas anti-plant bill (SB 1868), and more, all done while wearing a priest outfit.
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    2 hrs and 2 mins
  • Costa Rica Habitat Synopsis Rants

    Costa Rica Habitat Synopsis Rants
    Apr 11 2025
    Episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available Ad-Free on the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't Patreon at: www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

    In this episode of the podcast we rant about a myriad of topics and also discuss 4 main habitat types of Costa Rica :

    Lowland dry forest, where you can get pissed on by spider monkeys and capuchins while photographing columnar cacti growing on karstic limestone dominated by Bursera simaruba. We also talk about the dry forest oak Quercus oleoides which tolerates a 6 month long dry season and doesn't even receive that much rain during the wet season since it tends to grow on thin-soiled limestone.

    Montane Wet Forest dominated by oaks like Quercus insignis, which produces acorns the size of baseballs and grows with epiphytic orchids and bat pollinated Bromeliads.

    Cloud Forest dominated by ectomycorrhizal trees such Quercus costricensis and Comarostaphylis arbutoides (Ericaceae), a kind of habitat which also contains tropical variations of plant genera that are generally more associated with temperate latitudes.

    Páramo habitat, where it's summer every day and winter every night due to the thin air at high elevations above 10,000' (3300 m) and plants produce layerings of hairs not to protect against drought but to protect against frost and increased Ultraviolet intensity.



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    2 hrs and 32 mins
  • Mosquito Traps & Burrowing "Toads"

    Mosquito Traps & Burrowing "Toads"
    Mar 30 2025
    Rants about Mosquito Traps, Burrowing "toads" (Rhinophrynus dorsalis), Texas botanists' resistance to using scientific names, replacing windas, a new species of succulent bamboo from Laos, and more

    I recommend the hell outta the Biogents Mosquito Trap, which is a pleasant way to reduce mosquito populations in your area using a compound that mimics the smell of human sweat, attracting mosquitos, then sucking the little bastards into the netting. The netting can then be frozen for 20 minutes which kills the mosquitoes, then the mosquitos dumped out onto a sheet of paper and fed to your carnivorous plants (Dionaea, Pinguicula, Drosera, etc). For 20% off the trap use code botany20 at www.biogents.com

    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 see early screenings of videos, photo dumps of rare plants, free literature, educational PDFs and more at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt
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    1 hr and 32 mins
  • Trans-Pecos Botany with Dr Mike Powell

    Trans-Pecos Botany with Dr Mike Powell
    Mar 26 2025
    Dr. Michael Powell is the curator of the Sul Ross Herbarium in Alpine, Texas and a proverbial wizard of West Texas Botany and Plants of the Trans-Pecos. In this episode we discuss
    how the endangered species act influenced the wariness of Texas ranchers and land owners, the current drought that Texas is in, describing new species of plants, the rock-daisies and cliff-dwellers of the Perityle clade (Asteraceae), limestone endemism among Texas plants, how to propagate Texas Madrones, how chromosome-counting was done using immature buds before the advent of PCR, propagating rare native plants of the Trans Pecos, botanizing Mexico in the 1960s and 70s, gypsophile plants, and how a single teacher inspired him to ditch baseball for Botany in the early 1960s.

    Episodes of the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon.
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    1 hr and 51 mins
  • The New Plant Species Discovered in a National Park

    The New Plant Species Discovered in a National Park
    Mar 20 2025
    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.

    Episodes of the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon, where your membership helps support free botany education, filming, lawn-killing, native plant awareness and land preservation.
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    1 hr and 35 mins
  • Neotropical Bamboos : What the &@#$ is Gregarious Monocarpy?

    Neotropical Bamboos : What the &@#$ is Gregarious Monocarpy?
    Mar 18 2025
    Episodes of this podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at :
    www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

    Dr. 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 Disjunct

    Raddiella vanessae -     the world's smallest bamboo species

    icneumonid wasps -     wasps that have an ovipositor that is able to penetrate the hard culms of the giant Amazonian bamboo Guadua angustifolia

    The strucutre and morphology of the buds at the nodes of bamboo are highly diagnostic for bamboos identification!

    Chusquea from Western Mexico : Chusquea septentrionalis

    Link to Guadua angustifolia video :
    https://youtu.be/7v6nmIatSx0
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    1 hr and 55 mins
  • Forest Restoration, Burning & Dam Removal

    Forest Restoration, Burning & Dam Removal
    Mar 16 2025
    Bruce Shoemaker is a researcher on natural resource conflicts and
    author 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.
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    1 hr and 56 mins