Show Notes
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In 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.
More from 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.
Originally recorded June of 2026 in Los Angeles California.
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.
Laiken Jordahl is the national public lands advocate for the center for biological diversity. In this episode he tells us about the destruction of Big bend National Park for a pointless and unnecessary border wall and what efforts have been made to stop it.
Rants about Taos, Garden Design in the sba to j aisle, how to tell if a plant has massive tuberous roots, Peteria scoparia, a new species of Paronychia leucochthonicola, Texas Madrone in Denver, US intervention in Latin America, and more.