KILL YOUR LAWN, & replace it all with Blazing Star....
I stopped in the yard of @planoprairiegarden to see the Liatris forest he's planted in a yard that was - when he bought the house - just boring mowed turf grass. This is all the work of Michael McDowell, who began with only a few plants and then had the rest end up volunteering from s...
One of Texas' Rarest Plants - and one of my new favorites - is this guy, Paronychia congesta (Carnation Family - Caryophyllaceae), known only from 2 sites in Deep South Texas where it occurs on barren and harsh Caliche exposures.
Caliche is basically a natural cement. It's a product of dissolution of calcareous country rocks by rainwater ...
We talk about the three main types of tissue systems in plants :
Dermal (trichomes, guard cells)
Ground (Parenchyma, Collenchyma, Sclerenchyma) &
Vascular (xylem and phloem)
What the hell are these tissues? Whatta they mean? Whatta they do?
Christ Best is the State Botanist with US Fish and Wildlife Service for the state of Texas, a position he has held for 30 years. He has extensive knowledge of plants in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, specifically. He has worked with numerous rare and endangered plant species including Physaria thamnophila, Asclpeias prostrata, Thymop...
2024-10-10 18:44:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Dave Farina is the host of the "Proffesor Dave Explains" youtube channel, an educational youtube series exploring a wide variety of scientific topics and offering free eduational tutorials on subjects ranging from human evolution to organic chemistry to arthropod taxonomy. In recent years, he has published a number of videos debunking pseudo-sci...
2024-10-08 16:38:36 +0000 UTC View Post
It's that time of year when the living rock cactus goes off. Also photographed was some peyote and a thread wasp pollinating Sidneya tenuifolia (skeleton leaf).
2024-10-06 02:55:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Dave Keller is a historian and archaeologist in West Texas and in this episode we talk about the paucity of public land into the state, native American archaeological sites and more.
2024-10-06 02:53:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Yesterday in West Texas I found two lone Texas madrones, Arbutus xalapensis, growing in a dry wash in the Chihuahua Desert. These trees serve as a reminder that the region used to be milder and slightly wetter, more akin to the Edwards Plateau further East where they still occur.
For anybody who doesn't know Madrones, they are a remarkab...
Where by we get into apical meristems, root structure, shoot structure, xylem, phloem and what the shit ...
2024-10-03 00:31:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Accompanying PDF slide presentation :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vA_n1OWw2PpUJSqn3m5lbSOymH_aARB7/view?usp=drive_link
In this podcast we talk aboutapical meristems in shoots and roots, roo...
2024-10-02 19:45:00 +0000 UTC View PostThis mini-book has a ridiculous name but has a detailed description of all Lophophora species, their occurences, taxonomic and morphological differences, and some wonderful photos. 19 mb download.
Also, what did everybody think of the last lecture? Was it useful/confusing as shit/ do you see the point in learning the materi...
2024-09-27 15:47:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Yesterday's upload didn't have any sound, so I re-recorded the exact same presentation today.
Google drive folder with accompanying texts for this lecture, including the powerpoint presentation featured :
https...
In Texas we find one of the few remaining old growth specimens of this species, Lophophora williamsii, which is becoming increasingly endangered due mostly to habitat destruction and the inability of human beings to appreciate the plant community and habitat that it comes from, as well as the other plant species that grow with it. Though this pl...
2024-09-25 14:08:47 +0000 UTC View Post
a 45 minute presentation/crash course for beginners on Taxonomy and Flower Anatomy and how to identify plants by flower structure with examples of a few plant families.
Description of Video contains a link to a google drive folder to download pdf versions of the texts used in this presentation, such as botany in a day and plant syst...
2024-09-23 03:04:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Joven Riley is owner/operator of Big Bend Yucca Nursery, Specializing in selling large seed-grown Yucca rostrata, Yucca faxoniana and Yucca rigida. On this episode of Crime Pays we talk with him about how he got into Desert Plants and what it's like running a nursery in the dry cold winds of West Texas.
2024-09-21 01:39:55 +0000 UTC View Post
...and a few pics of Hibiscus coulteri, the yellow flowers Desert Hibiscus.
This specimen is probably one of Texas' Oldest Peyotes, located on private land and we'll acres for and guarded. It also displays the "cristate" or fasciated form, whichany cacti species do, creating a growth pattern that resembles an undulating, twisting wave.
2024-09-18 04:18:19 +0000 UTC
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I became fixated on lycophytes because of some of the cool desert-dwelling ones like Selaginella, but in this episode botanist Jeff Benca tells us about his work with relatives of the genus Isoetes ("Quillworts") and how their 250 million year old relatives might have been able to survive the biggest extinction in Earth's history, otherwise know...
2024-09-16 21:26:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Liatris carrizana and affiliates are the focus of this video, all plants endemic to a sandy substrate for the most part.
2024-09-13 23:14:39 +0000 UTC View Post
A rant about West Texas Pines and the sand blazing star. At the 40 minute mark we begin our dive into the convoluted, confusing but utterly cool phenomenon of Alternation of Generations we talk mostly about Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) and Lycophytes ("spikemosses" and "clubmosses"), and the ferns, but not gymnosperms or angiosperms). This...
2024-09-13 21:19:20 +0000 UTC View PostI created these bits as part of a crash course in a course I'm teaching and am posting them here in case anybody who's NOT ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH THEM (I assume most of you are) can get an idea on this process and why it's important. It will affect the way that you move through and interpret the world.
Remember........"Haploid" and ...
2024-09-11 18:24:45 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm attaching a link to a folder with a bunch of reading materials including Plant Systematics by my friend Michael Simpson, which is a textbook that you will reference for the next decade of your life and which I've been hyping for about 8 years now. It goes through plant identification and synapomorphies of various groups starting from the bot...
2024-09-09 14:39:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Plant Chemist, T xas History Expert, Native Plant Grower and Madman Dan Hosage.
2024-09-07 20:47:17 +0000 UTC View Post
The rare plant Zizia texana, Texas Wild Rice, is the feature of this hour long episode but there are many more. While trekking on the San Marcos River we discuss why aquatic plants don't have a cuticle (and what the hell a cuticle is in the first place), why many aquatic plants have two different kinds of leaves, and the pros and cons of living ...
2024-08-30 13:10:30 +0000 UTC View Post
