Episodes

  • The Living World (Profanity-Laden Rant) & Orchid Pollination Biology

    The Living World (Profanity-Laden Rant) & Orchid Pollination Biology
    Mar 9 2025
    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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    2 hrs and 35 mins
  • Could Peyote Be An Endangered Species One Day?

    Could Peyote Be An Endangered Species One Day?
    Mar 7 2025
    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
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    1 hr and 56 mins
  • Chicago Museums, Welwitschia Diorama, Public Urination

    Chicago Museums, Welwitschia Diorama, Public Urination
    Mar 5 2025
    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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    1 hr and 51 mins
  • New Plant Discovered in West Texas, Neotropical Palms, & Panama Hats

    New Plant Discovered in West Texas, Neotropical Palms, & Panama Hats
    Feb 26 2025
    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.
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    2 hrs and 7 mins
  • Guayusa Rants

    Guayusa Rants
    Feb 20 2025
    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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    2 hrs and 10 mins
  • Upper Amazon Fungi w/ Alan Rockefeller in Ecuador

    Upper Amazon Fungi w/ Alan Rockefeller in Ecuador
    Feb 10 2025
    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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    1 hr and 32 mins
  • Atlas Nativa de Chile - Miquel Moya

    Atlas Nativa de Chile - Miquel Moya
    Jan 29 2025
    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 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 e see rly screenings of videos, photo dumps of rare plants, free literature, educational PDFs and more at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt
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    2 hrs and 10 mins
  • Alerce Forests, Bog Tarantulas, & Arachnitis uniflora

    Alerce Forests, Bog Tarantulas, & Arachnitis uniflora
    Jan 25 2025
    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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    2 hrs and 38 mins