Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

If the ads are a bummer, then join the Patreon, where you'll have early access to videos, exclusive access to learning material, and Ad-Free episodes of this podcast.This was a conversation I had with my friend Martin Grantham about how humans relate to the living world around them (or rather, how most of them don't) and the factors that influence it.

This podcast episode is available ad-free on the Patreon with a screenshare of the presentation that accompanies it at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntHow do plants evolve? How do plants speciate? What is allopatric speciation? What is sympatric speciation? How do plants like the Hawaiian silverswords evolve to be such big weird bastards while their ancestors on the mainlaind (the tarweeds) are so small? What the hell happened with the genus Echium (Boraginaceae) when it got to the Canary Islands? Why were islands the big reveal for how natural selection might work when Darwin saw his finches and what the shit? How can geology cause a new plant species to evolve? We cover all that and more in this here episode. Textbooks recommended in this podcast if you wanna be less of a dummy : Ecology of Plants by Gurevitch (3rd Edition) Evolution : Making Sense of Life by Carl Zimmer (the edition with the bunny on the cover). Both downloadable in PDF form from www.libgen.is

If the ads are a bummer, keep in mind all episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at : www.patreon.com/c/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntCodi Lazar is a Professory of Geology at California State University San Bernardino and a passionate and utterly hilarious geologist. In this episode, we get into the weeds talking about a wide variety of topics such as how limestone forms, why some plants might be restricted to it, what "serpentinite" is, what's in story for the state of Nevada in the next few dozen million years, how related the granite that's beneath Joshua Tree National Park might be to the granite in the Sierra Nevadas (very), the former love affair between the African continent, Scottland, Newfoundland and Appalachia, and much more. 

Ads are terrible, Ads are hell, and if they bother you, here's a reminder that you can avoid them altogether by listening to this podcast Ad-Free on the Crime Pays Patreon at :www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntThe genus Baccharis is one of the largest and most diverse in the Composite Family, Asteraceae. It originated in South America a few dozen million years ago and has diversified and spread throughout South and North America and adapted to a variety of different habitats due to a number of key innovations such as tufted trichomes that secrete sticky wax, the abundant production of wind-dispersed seeds, and rapid growth, among other traits. When I was working for the railroad and frequently visiting abandoned industrial corridors in California, the genus Baccharis was one of the only native plants that was able to hold its own amidst the concrete, pollution and toxic soil of former industrial sites.Today we talk with Baccharis researcher Gustavo Heiden from Southern Brazil about his research and study of this tough and remarkable genus, where it originated and what makes it so successful.