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Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

Author: Tony Santore

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Why do some plants grow where they do? How can geology cause new plant species to evolve? Why are some plants pollinated by flies, some by bats, some by birds, and others by bees? How does a plant evolve to look like a rock? How can destroying lawns soothe the soul? This is a show about plants and plant habitat through the lens of natural selection and ecology, with a side of neurotic ranting, light humor, occasional profanity, & the perpetual search for the filthiest taqueria bathroom. 


260 Episodes
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In this episode (after a 30 minute societal rant) we talk about Dioon edule and cycads of the foothills of the Sierra Madre, why hemiparasitic members of the paintbrush family frequently have red leaves, Mexican Oak Diversity, Tillandsia usneoides in Oak woodlands, Calochortus marcellae, Malacomeles denticulata ecotypes, why Crotalus morulus (Tamaulipan Rock Rattlesnake) possibly one of the coolest members of the genusAd-Free Episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available on the Patreon at : https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt FLORA OF NUEVO LEON CHECKLIST PDF : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ukTNSvThl65KUlKpm0wLzUTRklvZiBc_/view?usp=drive_linkCONCRETE BOTANY (Out April 2026) PRE-ORDER : https://geni.us/ConcreteBotany
This episode is a conversation with Adam Haritan from the youtube channel Learn Your Land, which covres a diverse variety of topics related to the ecology of Eastern North American Forests - Fungi, Plants, Insects, & more. In this episode we talk about how fire suppression has caused an explosion in tick populations, along with a multitude of other factors. We also discuss medicinal mushrooms of Eastern North America, surviving stands of American Chestnuts, the importance of geology, and how Paw Paw trees might be neurotoxic. We also talk about how humans having a connection to (and knowledge of) the land that they live on is a matter of existential health, almost more so than anything else. Adam's been producing the Learn Your Land youtube channel for ten years and has an extensive library of videos about a diversity of topics, and unlike me, he doesn't curse like a madman so his videos are appropriate for all ages. Please check the youtube (especially the tick episode!) and go down a wormhole. Also check out www.learnyourland.com for more info on what he does, a link to his onlince courses, and a list of the videos he's done.All episodes of the Crime Pays But Botany Doesnt podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at :https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt
Ad-Free episodes of the CPBBD podcast are available on the patreon at https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntToday's episode consists of rants about compensation point, idiotic spelling mistakes, C3 and C4 photosynthesis, why nighttime temperatures prevent growing some plants in some areas, public land grab in Florida by sleazebag developers embedded in state government, Kill Your Lawn Tour 2025,  calcareous shale exposures of Pueblo County, Colorado.
Colorado Springs Southwards

Colorado Springs Southwards

2025-08-1201:39:31

Rants about Green Tea, Lactose Intolerance, mycoheterotrophic plants in New Mexico, Colorado Springs Shale Exposures, Native Plant Takeovers of municipal landscaping greenhouses, Rock Sage, 300 million year old limestone, and more.Ad-Free Episodes of the podcast are available for 5 bucks a month on the patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntTo pre-order the book Concrete Botany, visit https://geni.us/ConcreteBotany
Disjointed Rants about New Mexico's Sacramento Mountains, Mormons, the origins of Ivermectin, Rat-Trap Pitcher plants and Nepenthes hybrids, and more.All episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available ad-free on the crime pays patreon at : https://www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntFor merch, bonfire store is at : https://www.bonfire.com/store/crime-pays-but-botany-doesnt/
In this 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 forests extravaganzas with Solandra brachycalyx (Solanaceae), and more. To listen without any annoying ads (and IHEARTRADIO -our podcast hosting service - really lays the annoying ads on thick), check out the crimepays patreon at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt. To order stickers of CPBBD artwork visit : https://www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com/storestickersprints
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....
Four Corners Botany

Four Corners Botany

2025-06-1802:02:40

Rants about Northern New Mexico, Gypsum endemics, Dwarf Milkweed, the Horseshoe Bend Motel Photo, Botany of Horseshoe Bend, Pediocactus in the high desert of Northern Arizona, Why telling people that eating Saguaro fruits isn't as bad as Caucasian liberals might want you to think is, How anthropocentric uses of plants might hook some people into the larger perspective of botany and ecology and reverence for the living world, and more. Episodes of the podcast are available for listening, ad-free, on the crime pays Patreon.
Rants about colonoscopies, plant life on the sandhills East of Carlsbad New Mexico, Eurytaenia hinckleyi (Apiaceae ), Pomaria jamesii (Fabaceae), the Sierra Madre and moreAd-Free episodes of the podcast are available on the Patreon for $5 a month at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt
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.All episodes of this podcast are available for $5 a month ad-free on the crime pays patreon stop whining about the ads you jadrool bastard.
Ad-Free versions of this podcast are available for $5 a month on the Crime Pays Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntIn 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 karasense, and go through the entire phylogeny of the order, talking about little known families from disparate parts of the globe and why so many families only contain one species. 
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/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntPlants mentioned in this podcast: Schoenolirion croceum Cotinus obovatus Packera dubia Polymnia laevigata Diamorpha smallii Tradescantia hirsuticaulis Ribes curvatum Chionanthus virginicumKalmia latifolia Neviusia alabamensis 
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.
Episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available Ad-Free on the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't Patreon at: www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntIn 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. 
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.comPodcast 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
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.
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.
Episodes of this podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at :www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntDr. 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 DisjunctRaddiella vanessae - the world's smallest bamboo speciesicneumonid wasps - wasps that have an ovipositor that is able to penetrate the hard culms of the giant Amazonian bamboo Guadua angustifoliaThe strucutre and morphology of the buds at the nodes of bamboo are highly diagnostic for bamboos identification!Chusquea from Western Mexico : Chusquea septentrionalisLink to Guadua angustifolia video : https://youtu.be/7v6nmIatSx0
Bruce Shoemaker is a researcher on natural resource conflicts andauthor 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.
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
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Comments (9)

cvshealthsurveyblog

Feedback surveys always help a lot to get perfect results for both the public and private sectors in taking decisions. CVS Pharmacy also trying to get feedback from its customers through CVS Pharmacy Survey. Also, they announced a $1000 reward to the participants. To win the reward, you have to take part in CVS Survey at https://www.cvshealthsurvey.blog/.

Jul 26th
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Sandcastle •

Excuse me while I'll be extremely skeptical of a psycho therapy that has a pseudo religious zeal surrounding it.

Dec 4th
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lacharmeusedemerde

I love that part of your intro is just rating libraries.

Jun 2nd
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lost cause

good stuff, need a visuals to go with this, a pic of each the species named.....you should think about making vids Joey, i think youd do well 😉

Oct 28th
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lost cause

Joey: she sends me mean poetry... I sent her green eggs and ham Me: dies laughing, you asshole, I love it

Jan 25th
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Pedro Abreu

lots of algae in Antarctica :)!

Nov 30th
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Pedro Abreu

dont lose hope joe and all those reading this. Keep fighting :)

Nov 15th
Reply

Madeleine Lombard

I've listened to all the episodes of this real nice pod in the last week while working my side hustle, maintaining rich hippies' fancy gardens. I'm a listener coming over from In Defense of Plants, my other favorite plantcast. I'm glad I'm not the only botany nut who hates herbalism, preachy vegans, and yoga pants. Love the rants, love the geology, and most of all, love the botanical passion!

Apr 17th
Reply (1)