Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

2 hours of rants - recorded from a filthy motel room in Miami, Florida during an intermittend layover - about the route from Santa Cruz dela Sierra, Bolivia West into the dry Inter-Andean Valleys and up to the Altiplano, and the many plants encountered along the way :Onoseris acerifolia,Deuterocohnia meziana,Neoraimondia herzogiana,Schinus mollis,Puya glomerata,Schinopsis lorentzii,Cereus hankeanus,Harrisia tetracantha,Blossfeldia liliputana,Puya humilis,Trichocereus tunariensis,Trichocereus bridgesii,Zanthoxylum coco,Koeberlinia holacantha, and more.

In this episode we talk with Chuck Delwiche about the early evolution of land plants, photosynthetic bacteria, what Earth may have looked like 4 billion years ago, what some of the first land plants look like, why bioluminescent dinoflagellates (Pyrocystis) "light up", and the species of algae responsible for the reflecting pool disaster that nearly have the president an aneurysm over the summer. Chuck Delwiche is a professor of biology at University of Maryland who studies green algae, archaea, and the early evolution of plants.Reflecting Pool Video https://youtu.be/z3rExfzXYSw?is=RRys648nwoEze0dX

In this episode we rant about cacti that grow in ephemeral lagoons, 1500 year old Montezuma Cypresses, cryptic cacti that grow in salty mud basins, Mexican Jays dispersing weeping pinion pine seeds, a fern that grows out of marble, how the summer-wet/winter-dry habit affects some carnivorous plant forms, and more...Reminder that episodes of this podcast are available ad-free on the Crime Pays Patreon at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt