Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

Latest Episodes:

Mosquito Traps & Burrowing "Toads" Mar 30, 2025

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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

Trans-Pecos Botany with Dr Mike Powell Mar 26, 2025

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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.

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

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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.

Neotropical Bamboos : What the &@#$ is Gregarious Monocarpy? Mar 18, 2025

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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

Forest Restoration, Burning & Dam Removal Mar 16, 2025

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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.

"The Living World" Rant & Orchid Pollination Biology Mar 09, 2025

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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

Could Peyote Be An Endangered Species One Day? Mar 07, 2025

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Ad-Free episodes of the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't Podcast are available on the patreon at :
https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt
In 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.org
Sacramental Sponsorship Program (only available to NAC members with tribal cards : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Py8_vn9dHh7hGaZRKdwrsdXAtkfw0uGF/view?usp=drive_link

Chicago Museums, Welwitschia Diorama, Public Urination Mar 05, 2025

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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.

New Plant Discovered in West Texas, Neotropical Palms, & Panama Hats Feb 26, 2025

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Episodes of the Crime Pays Podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at : https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt
Rants 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.

Guayusa Rants Feb 20, 2025

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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/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt
Thumbnail is a photograph of Miconia inobsepta and its swollen petioles acting as ant domatia.

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