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PODCAST

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t

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.

science natural sciences

All Episodes

115:06

Neotropical Bamboos : What the &@#$ is Gregarious...

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/03/18

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

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115:52

Forest Restoration, Burning & Dam Removal

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/03/16

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

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155:10

"The Living World" Rant & Orchid Pollination Biology

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/03/09

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

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116:24

Could Peyote Be An Endangered Species One Day?

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/03/07

Ad-Free episodes of the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't Podcast are available on the patreon at :https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntIn 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

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110:41

Chicago Museums, Welwitschia Diorama, Public Urination

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/03/05

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.

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127:03

New Plant Discovered in West Texas, Neotropical...

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/02/26

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

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130:12

Guayusa Rants

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/02/20

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

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92:27

Upper Amazon Fungi w/ Alan Rockefeller in Ecuador

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/02/10

A conversation with mycologist Alan Rockefeller about fungal and plant biodiversity of the upper Amazon of Ecuador.Episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

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130:04

Atlas Nativa de Chile - Miquel Moya

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/01/29

Miguel Moya is a naturalist and designer who produces field guides and posters for native plants in Chile. In this episode we talk about the sclerophyll forest, the temperate rainforests of Chile Island, indigenous communities in the Southern region, Araucaria forests, Gomortega kuele, Ancient Gondwanan disjunctions, Citronella mucronata, rare plants of the Santiago area and more.Ad-Free episodes of the crime pays Podcast are available on the Patreon for a measly five bucks a month, so quit your

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157:50

Alerce Forests, Bog Tarantulas, & Arachnitis uniflora

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/01/25

In this episode we talk about Alerce Forests, Ocelot Tarantulas that live in bogs in Temperate Rainforests, Why the Rosulate Form Makes sense in Alpine Habitats, and the extremely weird mycoheterotroph, Arachnitis uniflora.Ad-Free episodes of this podcast can be listened to on the Crime Pays Patreon at : www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

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87:19

Araucaria Forests of Chile

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/01/24

Rants about the Araucaria forests of Nahuelbuta and Conguillo, Chile : Towering, 1200 year-old Araucaria araucana trees with an understory of Nothofagus pumilio, dombeyi and obliqua; thigmonastic, moving stamens in Loasa acanthifolia; Chusquea and new world bamboos; Mutisioid composites, biogeographyband plant distributions that are a result of both Gondwanan Breakup and amphitropical bird migration patterns, and more.If the ads are bummin you out than stop whining and join the Patreon at

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112:53

Chilean Flora w/ Botanist Nico Lavandero

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/01/21

Nico Lavandero is a Chilean Botanist who has described 8 new species of plants in Chile and is in the proc of describing many more. In this podcast we talk about a diversity of subjects, from Chile's 1974 Forest Law that incentivized the destruction of native forest for pine plantations, why plants take on dwarfed rosulate growth forms at high altitude in the Andes, Alerce forests, a growing awareness of native plants in Chilean culture, the marvelous abundan of agua con gas, and much more.Nico

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157:19

Birdsong Landscapes

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/01/11

Austin Miller runs Birdsong Landscapes, a native plant landscaping company and Natural History page based out of Southwest Ohio. In this episode we talk about continents as ecosystems, the natural history of Ohio, the Hopewell Culture and the Eastern Agirculture Complex, injecting native plant awareness into popular culture, lawn-killing, freshwater mussel diversity in Eastern North American rivers, vigilante-killing Bradford pears, hotricultural atrocities, feral pigs, the biosphere as a "living

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84:51

Potential Problems with Blight-Resistant Chestnuts

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/01/06

For some background on the developing story of creating a blight-resistant American chestnut, please check out the podcast episode a few episodes back with Erik Carlson.Jared Westbrook is a geneticist with the American Chestnut Federation. In this episode we talk about what went wrong with the initial round of trials for blight-resistant chestnuts, how to combine targeted genetic approaches to hybridizing American and Chinese Chestnut trees for blight resistance, thousands of years of human

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139:21

Better Living Through Reptiles

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2025/01/02

In this episode we sit down with Kyle Elmore of the youtube channel @popmilk for a two hour talk about herping (lurking for reptiles and amphibians), creating habitat, passionately obsessing over milksnakes, why Indigo Snakes are so chill, self-education, embracing the living world as a side-hobby, coping with habitat loss, naming milk snakes,, the glory of tin, getting bit by copperheads, being attacked by africanized bees, teaching organic chemistry, and more. Check out Kyle's stuff at

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113:50

The Ruined Christmas Podcast

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2024/12/31

Rants about ruining Christmas, disappointed family members, mixing and making soil recipes, Thornscrub Sanctuary update, maintaining a positive outlook despite the spiritually-poisonous effervescent fart of modern consumer society, feral pigs, ruderal plants, and more. Before you whine about the ads, keep in mind all episodes of the podcast are available Ad-Free on the Crime Pays Patreon.

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59:25

Dissecting the American Retail Slum

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2024/12/30

In this episode we talk with Crime Pays Field Correspondent WIll Doran about his traumatic experiences in the Car and Retail Slums of the American Sunbelt, possibly one of the ugliest and most soul-crushing landscapes in the first world. This is a landscape that exists as pure "anti-culture", and as many of you may know, is the only kind of landscape and infrastructure option offered to many people living in the lower-latitude United States. It leads to deteriorating mental, emotional, spiritual and

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112:58

Talking Philosophy with Kerry Knudsen

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2024/12/16

Kerry Knudsen is a Lichen Biologist who originated outside of academia and worked in construction until becoming fascinated by the natural world and immersing himself in desert lichens.In this episode we talk about the modern human approach to the living world, why the study of natural sciences is becoming increasingly popular among people outside of academia, the biosphere as a living machine, self-education using the internet, and more. A lichen is the symbiosis between a fungus and algae or

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109:36

What Happened to the Transgenic American Chestnut?

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2024/12/11

Here's your reminder that all episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available ad-free (because ads are the equivalent of cold sores) on the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt.What happened to the transgenic American Chestnut? In January of 2024 news broke out that a "lab error" had "compromised years of research" regarding the re-introduction of American Chestnuts into Eastern North American forests, this time with a simple 700 base-pair gene for blight-resistance

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82:45

Mycorrhizal Harvesting, Sky Island Extirpations

Crime Pays But Botany Doesn"t ·

2024/12/10

In this episode we talk about how we are explicitly NOT condoning it, how to harvest mycorrhizae from soil duff, what is "KNR" and what "IMO"s are, the paucity of study concerning mushroom diversity in the Davis Mountains and how some species there might be eventually extirpated due to the drying climate, the fungal genus Tarzetta, and more. The episode is polished off by a 40 question botany quiz.If the ads are bumming you out, then stop whining about having to hit the fast forward button and join

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