A Clusterf*ck of Mustards - The Order Brassicales

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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. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tanta, and so we're able to finally get material of
it from this like explorer that went to the island
and got it and found out it is nested within Cryptanta.
So we've been working on a paper to re characterize
it as a cryptantha from Neeso Carrion.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is this is Mike Simpson's popcorn flower thing. Yeah
seeah yeah, wait an island? How how far off the
coast of Chili?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Oh it's in the paper. It's hundreds of miles off
of the.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Way the fuck out there?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
God damn, yeah, it's really far.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
This is part of that God, what is that island?
There's where where is dendrosceris? You know that weird that
weird ask the that like giant chickory? Yeah, oh god,
I just forget the name of it. What is it?
That's what's the island off the coat? Let me look
this up.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
This one's on This one's on is Lesian Ambrosio. So
it's nine hundred kilometers.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oh my god, can you imagine the kinds of wild
ship that like if that's out there too? What else?

Speaker 1 (01:01):
I know, it's so crazy. It's it's a weird one,
but it's really cool that it that it's in Captantha,
so that's really exciting. Johnson was the one that originally
transferred it from helotropium to aneso carium in nineteen twenty seven,
So now we're answering it.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
To Captanthasla's ventures. What is I wonder if it's something?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, it's in there, Yeah it is. It's a group
of islands yet.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
God, also everything out there basically got probably got there
from bird or debris rift at some point since the
island's inception. How I wonder how old it is too.
It's probably volcanic, I assume, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
I think it is the same way I'm looking and
double checking. Yeah, just yeah, that's the same. It's a
the larger of the two that this one's on on.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
What's the island? Where then Droceros is from? God? Damn it?
You know this is I'm already like getting pre Senile.
I'm only in my early forties. Oh, Robinson Crusoe, That's right.
Wasn't Robinson Cruz? Wasn't that a book? Wasn't What is Robinson?
What is it?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
You know?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
If it's done in Chile, why is it named Robinson Crusoe?
I don't get Oh Wan Fernandez there you go. Yeah,
the Wan Fernandez Islands. That's another cool biogy. I guess
you can go out there. I want to go out
there anyway. Sorry, sorry, what are you gonna say? I'm sorry,
I'm so sorry for no.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
No, that day is less Ambroso I think it's really
hard to get out there. I'm not sure. I think
we'd get like special permission.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
I knew this God, I knew this guy, Frank Callahan.
I don't know if he's still alive. He was a
crazy old bastard, but in a cool way. He had
that kind of like Hunter S. Thompson vibe about him,
and he was obsessed with connifers. He lived in He
lived in gold something, Oregon, I forget the name of it,
but this tiny little cutty town in the Klamath Mountains

(02:57):
on the Oregon side where it's like super dry and
the summer, you know, and it's all serpentine around there.
And he hired some fucking Mexican fisherman to take him
out to Guadalaloupe Island, like in the seventies or eighties,
to collect seed of all this stuff. And he got
I think he got seed to that Guadalupe cypress and

(03:19):
a bunch of other side. I mean the goats were
still there, and then before they removed the goats, the
goats had destroyed everything and all it was left was
a soil sea bank. But he got a I guess
he got seed to that cypress where it was probably
growing on cliffs or something. He was a character, man.
I remember, yeah, God, I remember, like he took me
out to look at some baker cypress, or look for

(03:40):
some baker cypress that was near O'Brien, Oregon, some long
lost stand. We never found it, but it was. But
I spent the day with this guy and he was crazy.
He was like this old Haggard died in the wool,
you know. Fucking uh it's like southern Oregon plant dude.
And yeah it was. It was a fucking experience, this experience.

(04:00):
This was like twenty eleven or something. Anyway, I digress anyway,
So doctor Mackenzie Maybury, welcome to the Crime Pace Upton.
I'm recording, by the way too, I snucked in there.
That was a cool story about about Chile. But doctor
Mackenzie Maybray, who's studying brass of Kayley's and recently got
back from the Mibia where you got to see I'm

(04:23):
so jealous Tigano fighting. What is the species, Karra? What
is it?

Speaker 1 (04:29):
The car?

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Sense?

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah, the Taigano fighting car and sunsay. I think I.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Would think, oh God, what is this? You know? Thank
God for the Internet. Yeah, Cara sense k A R
A s E N s e. Oh there's my photo
from the Namibia the wind hook herbarium. How do you
pronounce wind hook?

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Is that like a be ben hook?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Wind hook? Oh, it's like a German huh.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, that's from.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
When the Crouch colonized Namibia and then they got thrown out.
Later you could say crowd. It's fine, it's it's like
it's an Anglo anyways. But okay, that aside. So when
Namibia was really cool, it seemed a lot more chill
to me than South Africa, which still has you know,
I mean apartheid. Maybe I got its independence before apartheid

(05:24):
was ended, which was in it. That's when na maybe
I got its independence.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, oh wow, I.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Thought it was earlier than that, but they had a revolution.
I mean I noticed it was a little more chill.
It felt a little more chill when I was there,
Like it was like it was more equitable. They had
gotten like more equitable than South Africa, which is not
saying much because South Africa, I mean, apartheid was so
fucking crazy. But I know I enjoyed Namibia. I still

(05:52):
met some crazy racist old white woman though, oh yeah
they're out there.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Everyone I met was super nice.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool. Okay, anyway, sorry, sorry, we
won't get into that. But but we got the same
shit here in the US, of course. But but the
plants there are fucking incredible and and you were you
were going out to see so tell eybody about Titanofy tasty.
This is a this is a not just a genus,
not just a species, not just a genus, but an
entire family that was only described in like twenty fourteen,

(06:21):
right twenty twenty. Wow, I didn't realize it was that recent.
Holy hell.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah. So it's just a really interesting and we're looking.
I always say, it looks more like an octopus than
a plant. Has like these little short shoots that kind
of resemble like suckers, like from an octopus. But it
is just does not look like any other But you
commonly think of when you think of Brassic casey or

(06:47):
brass achilles, but it does. It has very minute, tiny
little flowers that then kind of start to look a
little more grassic caseish, but it is. It was a
surprise for see. So I first went to Namibia in
twenty twenty four really kind of for fun, but I

(07:09):
was teaching a workshop in South Africa. So then we
went over to Namibia to work at Goba Bad. This
is a research facility in the in the desert, and
then we went out to find Wowichia, of course, because
you can't leave Namibia without seeing Wowichia. And then we
kind of got to talking and they had mentioned that

(07:30):
there was this, you know, one plant that had been
described using just herbarium material. So people going through the
collections and noticing that this one species it was first
lifted as self Sola, I believe, did not kind of
fit the expectations, and so these researchers went through and

(07:53):
then went to look at it in the field and
then discovered it was not even in the same family.
It was actually in the bracket case. And so they
named it. And there's only really three known populations that
are listed in that original description in twenty twenty and
so with the director of gob Abub and the head scientist.

(08:14):
So this is Jillian and Eugene. We drove out there.
It was like ten hours south from the Kubabab Research
Facility to try to find his plant. It was quite
the journey. We did a lot of eye naturalist documentation
along the way.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Thank you, thank you. I tell it man, there's people
there's like, you know, friends of mine who are in
academia who are scientists whatever studying really cool stuff, and
I tell them, can you put that on IAT so
other people can learn about it? And they're like, I
don't really use on it. I'm like waw why, But yeah,
so thank you for doing that. That's amazing because your
photos on IAD are incredible. If anybody wants to look

(08:48):
at him t I G A N O p H
y t O N. This thing is fucking bizarre, though,
what would and no plant is anything without its habitat,
So describe for us what the habitat here was like
where these three populations are.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, so they're on salt pans, are kind of on
the really like the outside edges of salt pans, so
super dry and pretty in some populations pretty sandy. But yeah,
they do not get much water. There's parts of Namabia
that don't get water for years, and if they do

(09:24):
it's just millimeters, so just super super dry, extreme environment,
all sun, pretty short like scrubby spaces. It's not too
many like tall plants for shading or anything, but these
like edges of salt pans is where they seem to be.
And we were able to find a fourth population once

(09:46):
we got a good search image for it, so we
put that on I naturalists as well, But it was
they're so surprising. It was like I thought from the
photos that they were gonna be like my height, so
I'm like five but a little bit tall, like I
thought there would be around like a tall shrub size,
and they are much smaller. In some areas they were

(10:07):
like really really tiny, just like maybe I don't know,
twelve to fourteen inches. And then there were some that
we found another population that like got to be maybe
like thirty inches and like kind of wide and more
like a shrubby plant than like a smaller kind of
populations the different ages, and then I think, but I'm

(10:30):
not sure that some they kind of send these shoots
straight up and I again have no way to prove it.
We wouldn't interested in is just to see if like
it's because they get covered in the sand. That there
was one that I took a photo of that it
was almost all covered in sand, but then the little
shoots were sticking up, just like these tiny little green
shoots just sticking out of the sand. But the main

(10:53):
part of the plant was all covered in sand, possibly
kind of to help with these like sandstorms that come through.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
I don't know, can you tell what was the was
the sand like an igneous derived sand or was it
like a limestone? Could you tell?

Speaker 1 (11:07):
I don't know those types of sands. I'm that about
soil types, but I can see if they.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
I mean, I guess it doesn't matter it was it's
probably like a quartzite, because I think most of that
most of this stuff down there is metamorphous, like very
old metamorphous granite.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
But could it as it is expected to be in
like somewhat saline soils. And then cal pllicicle, you know
that type calic calicle.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
No, how do you see a L C?

Speaker 1 (11:42):
I see oh p A L see C A L
C I see C L C.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
A Oh probably uh, let's see, yeah, Colich so maybe
it is calcium based, so maybe it's like a limestone.
I don't know, but either way, super salty because it's
super salty, which we expect to see in desert areas
because you get high evaporation rates and lots of water

(12:09):
running into valleys that heads weathered the rock around it.
So I guess it's not surprising. But these things they
probably grow incredibly slowly too.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah, I think they they must. We did see
it seem like some different like generations are They're like
the smaller ones and then the larger ones. So I
hope we don't know about the age though, but we
took some samples back and going to collaborate with a expert,

(12:41):
Mark Olsen, you know that is going to try to
look at the wood of it to see if we
can learn anything from that part of it.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
God, that's going to be cool. Probably see if there's
the growth rings or something or what.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah. Yeah, he I sent him some photos that. Yeah,
once we get permits and everything, he will send I'll
ship it to him to.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Let me see. What do you know, what latitude that
was it? What latitude is na Maybia? Probably like upper
twenties or early early thirties. I don't know. Let's see,
got you man, you got some nice photos up there. Yeah,
thank you for putting those up. It's so cool to
see that. Yeah. Negative. It's twenty five south. Yeah, so

(13:24):
that's cool. So there is like very cool, So there
would be yeah, there definitely would be a season. It's
it's far enough south, so there would probably be good
growth rings. Yeah, man, what what is up with that?
So it's got like these little rosettes of leaves, like
attenuated branch It's heavily branched, but the branches are also
heavily attenuated, so that they just basically look like scales

(13:48):
that spiral around the plant, and uh like like scales
of leaf rosettes.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
I guess, right, Yeah, that's like the kind of the
best guess. But they're they're working, I said. The last
author of the original description of the paper is doing
some anatomy on the plant right now, so hopefully that
kind of information can be a little bit more understood

(14:17):
for this group. But I think we just really don't
know very much.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
It's one of the most bizarre looking plants I've ever seen,
probably oh weird.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Do you think it looks like an octopus. I think it's.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Totally Oh yeah, totally yeah. I mean those little those
leaf rosettes look like the suckers. Yeah, they look like
the the oct Yeah. I was obsessed with this plant, man,
I had it. I was down there with my friend
Russell and and he was he was studying Miss Sims
and I was like, we gotta go see tiganaphyting and
and then I had to leave Lamibia, Namibia, but I

(14:51):
had to cut the trip short. But uh yeah, that's man, God,
it's such a weird place. So but this this is
a great segue in to your work with the Order itself,
press of Kaylee's, which is also fucking weird. I mean
it's the Mustard Order. Got a lot of weird members
in there, and a lot of weird monotypic members like COBERLINEA,
which I don't know what the common name is all theigners,

(15:14):
who gives a shit, I don't know. COBERLINEA is is
so unique, it's it's it's basically like another one of
those crucifixion thorn desert style plant, you know, leafless photosynthetic stems,
just looks like a brand, like a big you know,
sometimes colony twelve feet wide by ten feet tall of
spines with no leaves, just green spines with no leaves.

(15:35):
And I'll see them out in West Texas, just forming
these little thickets that have to be great habitat for
all kinds of cool critters to hide from, you know,
raptors and bobcats whatever. It's also good cool.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
I haven't seen that yet. I want to come see it.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
You've never seen COBERLINEA. Yeah, there's a I think there's
a there's a disjunct stand in the Newberry Mountains and
the Mojave, but everything else is like I think other
than that, like Western Arizona Cofa National Wildlife Refuge is
the furthest West. I've ever seen it, but I guess
there's a disjunct in the Mohave. But the Mohave is
so much drier than where it normally grows too, so

(16:12):
but anyway, sorry, okay, So, and then there's such a lant,
the se which is such a lant this. So tell
how did you get into Brassic Kaylee's work and what
is so bizarre about it?

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah? So I got into working on the Brassickeales during
my PhD. And it was really coming at this perspective
of trying to understand where whole genome duplications happen across
the phylogeny, and so we tried to mostly using like
a feed collection, grow as many representatives from the order

(16:44):
that we could. And so it was like growing these
weird plants, which I just kind of feam of them,
like riseidacy, it's so smelly that people either love it
or hate it, and then like kleomis are super sticky,
Like it's just there's just some really cool plants in
this group, and so kind of fell in love with
them growing them in the greenhouse. And then when we

(17:05):
got their DNA to try to understand how they're related
to one another and trying to place these whole genome duplications,
we found that we were not unfortunately able to confidently
place this one whole genome duplication called at beta that
is somewhere in the middle or near like the base
of the order. Such a land sac is actually going

(17:28):
to be a really important group to understand where that is.
But that a lot of these families have family like
independent whole genome duplication, so like polyploidy and hold gingum
duplication is rampant across this group of plants. And it's
cool because we already know that some of are my

(17:48):
favorite crops, like the Braska crops of cabbage, cauliflower, canola, blacktoy,
all these delicious vegetables and seeds wells like have the
history of whole genum duplication that may be associated with
their ability to domesticate them for all these unique cultivars
that we enjoy. So polypilidi, you know, we believe is

(18:12):
like one pathway to developing new traits or key innovations,
and so that's one of the that's the way we
came at this order. But then kind of luckily started
learning more about the group when we were successful in
getting funding from the Joint Genome Institute, which is through

(18:34):
Doe Department of Energy to sequence a genome or two
mums from every family in the order to look at
just these really interesting traits. So at the base of
the order, wittiness is actually ancestral. And so when we
typically think Nebraska, I think most folks will picture a
herbaceous plant, but the ancestral state of this order is woody.

(18:56):
Secondary metabolites like lucosinolates are all across the.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Order and glucosimilates those are they're like sulfur compounds, correct.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, mustard oil. So the reason you like mustard, Yeah,
with sabby mustard. All of the reason why people used
to hate Brussels sprouts, it's really been bred out of
them so much of buttery. Now they're so good. They're
so good.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
You roast those things. You know what Brussels sprouts, that's
what tiganophyton looks like. It looks like Brussels sprouts.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Oh, I never thought.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
It's the same fucking thing. Yeah, it's like those rosettes
of leaves and there, really and really quick, let me
interrupt you for polyploidy, for any fellow degenerates who may
not be familiar with the you know, humans, mammals, vertebrates
have two copies of the chromosome, or of the of
the genome, right, two two copies of chromosomes. One comes
from the one parent, one comes from another. Plants, of course,

(19:52):
can have multiple copies of the chromosome, so like backup copies,
and this is extremely beneficial. It gives them more in
their quote genetic toolbox. It enables I mean, like all
our crops are polyploid, like people hybridize two wild species, uh,
you know, and the hybrid is polyploid, and it's more
robust and more able to cope with environmental stresses. Lots

(20:15):
of weeds are polyploid, like you know, ruteral plants you
find growing on piss strewn roadsides at truck stops that
are able to cope with like getting the ship beat
out of them by the sun and you know, really
bad soil, et cetera. So polyploid is the thing that
plants do that I think maybe there's probably a couple
of animals. I don't know, I've never looked into polyploid

(20:36):
and animals. Salmon are polyploid.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, so there some fish, there, some frogs.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, Okay, mammals.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
It's tricky because we have sexual reproduction.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
But yeah, but anyway, but so it's the thing that
you normally associate with plants. But it's a very it
can be very adaptive, it's very it can be very
beneficial most crops, most weeds, et cetera. And so that's
polyploid is dominant in a Brasschle's order, not downinant, but
very common in the brassicle's orders, as is being monotypic, right,

(21:09):
like having a family that's out there on its own
branch when you look at a phylogeny at a family tree,
but it's only got like one species in it or
one genus.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, I was curious, Like I tried to do a
little like research preparing for this, like to talk about
like how if it is the order with the most
monotypic families, and I think it has to be one
of the most if you consider like percent of order,
because there's on.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Let's go ahead, sorry, sorry, keep going, keep coming.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
No, it's okay, there's uh, there's eighteen families on and
I counted that there's like eight or like eight monotypic
or nearly monotypic families. So what I mean by nearly
monotypic being like just a couple full of species or

(22:02):
like like two species one genus, and then there's like
sometimes one split into two species that other people recognize
it as one species. So around around eight families, which
is kind of crazy. It's so they're so weird too.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, totally, Okay. After wasting some water to ask
artificial intelligence something, you know, they're they're doing it, they're
gonna be they're using AI to find ways to fucking
builk consumers and start in new wars. But I can
use it to ask what is the most you know,
the order with the most monotipic fan. It's saying lamey Alies,

(22:38):
but oh, I don't know. I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
I feel like eight of of just like because lame
alias has so many more families.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, yeah, maybe I don't know. I think as full
of shit. Maybe it's maybe it's mixing this so I
use deep Seat because that's the one that pissed off
all the American billionaires and it's you know, I want
to support Chine but uh anyway, okay, but so but Brasilles.
I mean, like I think, I think with this order,
people don't realize how much is in it. Maringa, which
is like the famous abulita plant where I live, Like, oh,

(23:11):
where I live. Every Mexican grant he's got a maringa
tree in the yard.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Uh, papaya love maringa powder. For like people take maringa
as a stupplement. You can go your local GMC and
buy a maringa.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Do you think that's snake oil? Do you think that's bullshit?
I mean it's good for you, but enough to be
I've hoized and sold it, you know, however much.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
I've never tried it. But yeah, so speaking for your memory,
I'll try.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
I'll try boofing maringa powder next time. You can be
ye subject, okay, yeah a cane ac. Never heard of
that tropy olece. Of course, that's the genus Tropiolum, which
is mega diverse in the Andes, really fucking cool.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, are sorry desertions. Everyone loves planting. I can't ever
say that genus that.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, totally. But and you can again that glucoscinillites you
can smell or when you touch on me. They got
that mustard. It used to be this thing like every
hippie in the Bay Area would be like, oh, tropy Nosturtium,
you could you could eat it. And then like I realized,
and so I just came to know that one species.
Then I realized there's like thirty of them with crazy
flowers and they're all kind of waxy and have that

(24:20):
you know, really heavy on the wax on the leaves.
And then I found out that that's the common names nasturtium.
It's not actually Nasturtium's its own genus that's also in
this order, but in a different family.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
But.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Mooringaycy Yeah, and then Mooringaycy, which is the I will
lead a plant, you know, the nice tree see and
like the granny's backyard, but it's also Maringo big genus.
Some of them are bottle trees and the Maybia. Did
you see any of those?

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, they're so cool. They're like I saw one. Nothing
else was in flower, like it's just lunar landscapes. And
then off a distance you see one Maringa tree and
a full flower. So we like cart the car, of course,
and ran out. It always looks far, it looks closer
than it is, but we got out there and they're
just like thousands of bees just like so happy because

(25:10):
this one Maringa tree and it was it's so beautiful.
And then we like scaled this rocky mountain or outcrop
to try to like get up to some closer to
some Oh. They're just so cool.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
And they can love them. They can flower and survive
in that because a lot of them are succulent, right yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, Well they have that like storage system in their trunk.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
The bottle. Yeah, they've got like a bottle shaped trunk.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
And then oh wow, that's Mareen Gacy's sister to Kara Casey.
That's the papaya fa correct.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, and sees interesting because we also know that it
has sex chromosomes and that's not too common in the
plant world.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Okay, explain what do you mean by that?

Speaker 1 (25:54):
So, like humans, we have an X and Y chromosome,
and so that's not too common across the plant plant
world that Casey is one place you found it, you
find it.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Oh, so the chromosomes themselves are like demarketed in the
genome as being one sex or.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
The other cracked. Yep.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, that's crazy, it's so cool. Yeah. What do you
think the adaptive benefit of that is something having to
do without crossing?

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah, I would guess something about keeping the nied diversity.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah yeah, okay, And then we got the limb nant theacy,
which sounds familiar, but I don't. I don't. I can't
think of that. Do you know that one?

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, that's a cool one. And there are some really
endemic like natives to California. There is another really small,
small family. Uh, and it's just the one in California,
I think so. And it's a it's just their nice, cute,

(26:57):
little tiny plants.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Oh yeah, okay, I've seen Yeah, that's right, Lemna.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
In vernal pools, which I think are one of the
coolest ecosystems in California. I only know them in California.
So some of the members of lemon thesis are vernal
pool endemics too.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, that's right. I haven't thought about this genus in
four years, man, because I haven't been I haven't been
out there button. I think, Wow, that's great. Yeah, I
forgot about that. Guy. Oh that's nice. It's nice to
be reminded. Okay. And then we got such a lant thesy.
Tell everybody about such because this is so fucking cool.
This is a really cool there's another monotypic family.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Yeah, so such Alanthus is just when I'm like just
getting kind of familiar with. So with some collaboration with
Mark Olsen and some other colleagues in Mexico where it's
endemic too, he actually thinks that this could be one
of Mexico's only endemic plant families. So really cool group.
And so we believe that it is like really important

(28:00):
to understand where at beta falls in the phylogeny. And
why that's important is and it allows us to kind
of track the fate of genes that are responsible for
some of these interesting traits that you and I have
been talking about. But it has a disjunct distribution in
Mexico as well. But really hard to get to these
are like multiple day drives into the field to get

(28:24):
to these plants. But they have purple flowers. They're really pretty.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Wait what okay, so at beta again, refresher is what
is this again?

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Well, it's just holding on duplication that we know is
somewhere at the base of the order for this like
file for the phylogeny, but we don't know exactly where
it is. And so to kind of the one major
goal that myself and doctor Pat Edger have is to
try to figure out where it is in the order.
And so we haven't been able to sample such a

(28:54):
lands e very get any nuclear DNA for it. So
we're hope we're with this collaboration and we're going to
be able to figure out where that event occurs.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Okay, So when you say where it is in the order,
basically you're going to find where on this cladogram it
is and find what families don't have it, and what
families do.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, and then hopefully we can see as like an
expansion of a gene family that's responsible for I don't know,
any kind of interesting trait after that whole genome duplication
once we know where it is.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Would you say as a whole that that brash Achilles.
I mean, there's there's aquatic members too, but would you
say as a whole they're kind of more more of
the species and families in there are more cut out
for dry environments.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
I they're very woody, like a lot of them. But
there it depends like for the families. Maybe for if
you just look at the families, but I feel like
at individual species, a lot of them are Mediterranean.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Mm hmmm, well that's I mean that's dry, that's somewhat dry. Yeah,
summerre dry. The hottest season is the driest.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
But uh, and then you have like Cape Racey that's
more tropical ish. Yeah, Papaia is a little bit more
tropical ish.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, Pi is not. But yeah, man, there's some really
cool Okay, so keep it. We're moving down a finelane. Okay,
So such a lant. They see sister to lem nanthis,
they see which is lym Nanthe's yeah, in such a lan. Yeah,
there's like a population in Hidalgo and then a population
in takuakan uh the wa kan take Uaking you know,

(30:31):
take Waking biospe reserve.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
But we're working on that one right now. So working
to first you got it, you need to go into
the communities. But these plants occur, So this is all
information I've learned from Mark, like, and then ask for
permission to sample these plants. And then once you have
permission from these communities, then you're allowed to ask the

(30:56):
government for permission to sample them. So it will be
many year or a year probably till we can get
the proper permissions in order to sample this plant. But yeah,
trying to do it the right way.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, they don't. I don't want just a bunch of
random hockeys going down there being like you know, they're
they're skeptical, understandably, I guess. But I mean, you guys
are working with Mexican bondanists too though, Yeah, yeah, but
are they are they generally they're not like wary of scientists,
are they? Depending on where you go or what I mean,
Like indigenous communities, there's just small farming communities or I haven't.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Been down there, I hope too. So I'm not sure
exactly what the community makeup is, but for sure to
small local communities. And I think it's just trying to
I know that's required for the permits right now in Mexico,
so getting permits has been really hard lately. Yeah, just
trying to protect resources, which is understandable.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well. Also, I think when like the one of the
countries involved, it's like behaving like such a dick to
the you know what I mean. Yeah, I guess they're
asking for visas now to go down there too. I
want like to there, which they're just like, you know,
I think understandably to their attitude is just kind of
like you fuck you.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Guys, like you guys you know, yeah, no, maybe too,
you know, have to have a visa Jesus really yep.
They just went into a fact April.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Oh god, so what does that mean just topply online
and then pay a fee and wait or what?

Speaker 1 (32:26):
That's it sounds like it I have it stupid, I mean,
we charge them visas to come.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, that's stupid too.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Yeah, I know, I know, man, I agree.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Just think of like Marco Rube Gout. I fucking hate
Marco Rubio. I fucking hate that guy. He's such a phony.
He's such a fucking car salesman. All these people no
offense to actual car salesman, you know what I mean,
insurance salesman, you know what I mean. I'm not knocking
to work. I'm just saying I'm not going to work
in class someone who's got to sell fucking mazdas for
a living. I'm just saying. These politicians, all these specially

(33:00):
the right wing ones. Anyway, Okay, sorry, So uh cobralinear
c bad tasty, bad tasty is Ah, that's like a
salty It's a salty dog. It's a salty litter yeat.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
An aquatic plant too.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah yeah, where have I seen I think I've seen
that on the Gulf here in southern Texas.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. It's another really
cool one. That's a kind of nearly monotypic too. Right,
there's two species but one genus, and it is I
grew that one at the University of Missouri during my PhD.
And it is so cool. It's just they're very very

(33:40):
cute plants. I really like. Unfortunately, that that one has
not made it, but I really want to come go
try to see some. Also, a lot of these I
grew and then haven't seen all of them. But there's
so many to see. It's like a checklist.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Their baitis is its succulent too? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Mm hm. But it's like you have this plant and
then you have taigonophyton in the same order. This is
so different from one another.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
That's so weird, man. Yeah, so so succulents and salt
tolerance and glucoscinilate fight out chemistry. Does every family have glucosinillates?

Speaker 1 (34:17):
I think every family, but uh, cobralin ace o.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Weird, weird Salvador ace Ooh, another one of my favorites.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
What we learned about Yeah, so Salvador acey is you
can also find it in the bibia. It's all along.
There's actually one growing in the lobby of the globobob
Research facility and it's all along in the washes. And
I learned this last trip that the local tribes chew

(34:52):
on the sticks of it to like as a toothbrush
to keep their teeth white.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
So, okay, how many how many genera in there?

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Three?

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Three? God damn man, I want to see that too.
Are there any is there any? Are there any in
North America of Salvador? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Easy? Uh?

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Probably not? No man. How long were you in the
Mibia for.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
This last trip? I went for because I kind of
fell in love with the country, so I commenced my
husband that he had to come see the country. So
we went for a week before work for just touring around,
and so I got to go up to the north
part of the country. That was a week, and then
I did a second week in Namibia doing the research,

(35:41):
and then a third week in South Africa at the
University of Patoria where they just had their one hundred
year celebration for their herbaria.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh shit, that's that's great. Man. Did you see you
see any cool snakes in the Mibia.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
No, I'm afraid of snakes. I was shying not to
see them, but I didn't see any.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, they got those. They got bigger lapids over there.
They got every vipers and the lapids. There's some cool. Uh,
there's some cool I'd love to see. I've only seen
a lamp at once. The cobra family. It was spitting
at us and my friend Adam was like trying to
I don't know what he was doing. He had a
death wish at that point, so he was trying to
like get to know it better. And it was funny.

(36:22):
And this thing was just pissed off. It was like
a spitting cobra. And I was like, just leave it alone.
He's like, I just want to get close to look
at it and and uh but it was spitting at us.
I was like, Jesus christ Man, this is like a
this this really ups the ante. Like, we got rattlesnakes.
They're very kind. They let you know when you're close
a spitting coat, a snake that spits venom. It's like

(36:43):
a you know, he died.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Is a danger noodle. You stay away from it. Yeah. Yeah,
this is why when we went to try to when
we went to go find Taygonophyton, the collaborators are talking
about Jillian and eighteen. They are the coolest people. But
they were like, okay, well we just pull over and
sleep on the side of the road. Like and I
was like with these snakes and like all these scary

(37:09):
animals like lions and everything that are going to eat. Yeah,
they don't even use a tent. They are super hardcore.
And I really I do not consider myself like too prissy,
but apparently I am because I needed I.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Wanted to no man, no, and they have there's scorpions
over there that will that can kill you too. They're
not just like the little bark scorpions we have that
will you know how, it's like a beast thing. It's
like big ass scary scorpions. Man.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah. And then uh, Eugene's like, don't worry, I sleep
with an axe and I was like that, I know,
I still don't think I can be sleep.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Did you see did you see any large predatory mammals
while you were there?

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Well, so the first week I was there more is
like tourists. We were in Atosha at the National park
in the north part of Namibia, and so we saw
lions and lion cubs and very cute que animals. But
I didn't see anything like out just a lot of

(38:18):
ors Ostrich What about Secretary, I saw drafts in Oh
we saw them the first year in twenty twenty four
out like and then we saw zebras. We I think
we did see zebras this time too, but yeah, it's

(38:38):
it's so like coming from the US like driving and
doing field work and like you look over after you
filled up your car and gas and there's like giraffes.
This hanging out is just like the wildest experience.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Were you guys collecting for the for the your barium
and Wynd Hook? Vind Hook? How do you say? Vind?
What is it? Vind? Hook?

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Is that right? Vin Hook?

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Then Hook? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, okay. Were you guys collecting for the bearing there?

Speaker 1 (39:07):
So they have a herbarium at Goba Bub Oh god,
it's not digitized or anything, but it's just tiny, like
a tiny yeah, but very good, good reference collection.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Were you guys collecting a lot out there?

Speaker 1 (39:21):
We they collected specimens as vouchers did I? We didn't
collect We just mostly did I and at documentation.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah yeah yeah? But still what else was growing with
with titana fighting in those salt pan areas?

Speaker 1 (39:39):
So a ton of South Sola, but not much is not.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Bray, Probably not much else though?

Speaker 1 (39:47):
What else? I did see a borage because I'm always
on the look for a borage, and I think it
I think it was a helotropium. I don't remember what
I identified it to, but and then I think we
saw some other amorans. What else. That's pretty much. But

(40:13):
it's growing like concurrently with the cell soul, which is
why I'm not like surprised that they were like collected
and on the same herbarium sheet if they like kind
of share a little stand mound, so they were.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
On the same way with Gigano fighting was on the
same herbarium sheet, like thought to be the same species
as cell Sola.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, that's why it hasn't been described. It basically was
like hiding in the herbaria for many years.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Oh wow, when was that collection from, you.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Know, the original collection? I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
We see, but like decades ago.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah wow, let's see. I can.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
So someone collected someone collected cell Sola and then collected
a branch of tigain A fighting because it was growing
next to it, and just said that these are the
same thing. Yeah, wow, crazy, that's wild.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Man, my understanding of it when I like read read
the paper.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
So someone was then in the herbarium and looking and
that's how they noticed this is different, then went out
to go why not to go inspected at the collection location.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah, that's the first author.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Damn, that's that's wild. That's pretty cool. That's it also
highlights the importance of her baria exactly.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Like there's so many taxa that are still like order
specimens that are like, you know, a genius stuff Like
there's I think a lot of biodiversity that's underscribed that's
in the herbaria. And as you know, herbaria are critically
underfunded and being closed, like the do Cerbarium where they
just decided no more.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
That went already. Huh is that closed it?

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Or yeah?

Speaker 2 (42:04):
It's crazy man.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Right, it is crazy. And so like all these stories,
we would never know about it if you know, people
weren't going through their specimens.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Well yeah. And also but like plants are the base
of everything. Without them, you don't have any life, and
you know on land and then and then an erbarium
is a collection of pressed plants from you know, that region,
you know, dating back a century sometimes two or three centuries.
And if you don't have that, I mean, how can
you be like a large mainstream institution and not having erbarium.

(42:37):
It's insane. It's totally for them, it's totally embarrassing. Yeah,
but I mean it's it goes along with like the
defunding of science in the US altogether. Unless it can
be used for medicine or for some other like technology anthropocentric,
you know, but if.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
We think about it, this one, right, this weird plant
in the middle desert, right is super adapted for salt
salty soils and for super dry areas, And those are
the types of environments we're gonna need to be able
to grow crops when we think about how the climate
is changing. And so we can learn from this plant

(43:19):
and a dot and like try to adapt and like
help our crops, like kind of a it's a cousin
of Ourbraska crops, Like what did it do to survive?
Can we then help our crops?

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Oh? Absolutely. I mean to people like you and me
who see the big picture and can see that little
you know, that that little pin of worth in the haystack.
I mean it's easy for us because we're not just
looking for the pin. We're enamored with the whole haystack.
But I think the people that are still indoctrinated in
the cult of just anthropocentric thinking, they don't see that.

(43:54):
They don't find anything wonderful and incredible about the haystack.
So they have to find that little pin. They can't.
You often can't find it until you're looking sitting there,
taking the time to look at the whole fucking haystack.
And that's what that's what drives me nuts man about
I mean everything that the society we live in. It's
just it's so it's so disconnected. And then of course,

(44:15):
you know you always hear like progressive Honkey's time, like
oh the digit is this, the digit is that, but
they never talk about stuff like this. I feel like
they're it's just kind of like this identitarian fetishizing of
a culture, many thousands of cultures, as if they're all
the same. But they like this is why I always
encurage me. I like talk about like the meat of
the issue, like what is what is the ideology that's

(44:36):
important here? It's like you have reverence for everything. It's
all important. It's all important, and if you don't see
the worth right now, you'll see it later on. But
I fucking assure you it's there. These pieces are these
plants are pieces to a living machine that keeps us
all alive. It's it's a yeah, I could go on
a rant forever, but I just wrote a book about
it's all stopped. But it's a fucking depopera worldview. It's

(44:59):
very frustrating.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
So yeah, yeah, that's what we talk about. Plants keeps
this happy.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah but okay, so okay, moving on
down this fucking name. This name is hilarious. M blinge ac.
What the ship is?

Speaker 1 (45:16):
I don't know much about this one.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Have you heard this? You've heard this name before though, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yeah yeah, let me double check what I know about
this one. So Australia, so this one is just in Australia,
so I should have and I have only been to
like Ularu kind of the central part of Australia and
eastern Australia, so it's been like more western Australia.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
What were you doing there? You were in wait, you
were in the central Australia.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
I went to Ularu. Yeah, for my honeymoon. Whoa, I
was giving a talk in Sydney, it was. I was
also like give a talk at a Nebraska conference in Sydney.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Man, that's when was that? That's pretty cool. You've been
in the Bras. You've been doing brassicas for a while,
you know, I said, I said, Wow, she's been into
these most of things for a long time. I thought this,
you know, I'm a newcomer.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
No, I feel like because you and I most we
talk about bouradges. Yeah, funny to talk about the bass
is now on. I think I was twenty twenty two.
I was there. It was a conference on canola oil. Actually,
they're interested in understanding some of these other Brassica species
and what we can learn from them, So there's interest

(46:31):
for sure.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, okay, this there's only one there's only one photograph. No,
there's two. Yeah, yeah, one observation of Emblingia excuse me,
and it's by someone calling themselves botanist Bob, just north
of Perth. But it's it's yeah, I mean it's it

(46:52):
looks like it might be a marshy environment. It's kind
of near the uh, the coast. It's near let's see,
what the fuck is this nature preserve? Lake Lake Low
Nature Reserve. Yeah, I'm guessing that's like a marshland. I
can't tell. God, it's another weird Yeah, it looks like
juicy and kind of hairy. And I can't really tell

(47:13):
what the flowers are like.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
But in Blinga, right, the flowers are kind of weird looking.
But I don't know if this is in Britannica and.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Blingia kelciot a weird. I love shit like this. This
is one of the coolest things about INAD is you
can go through you go on like the taxonomy chart
and you can just look. You go to taxonomy and
then you can click on like family genius whatever, and
just see weird shit you never knew existed. Oh I
think this is monotypic too.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, yeah, it's another weird one. We've been trying so
for that funding for the genomes across the order. We've
been working with research in Australia to try to get it,
but we have haven't been able to quite yet. So
hopefully we figured that one out. Oh you have, I'm
on a mission.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
To get samples that is you mean?

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Yeah? Yeah, because to get high molecular weight for a genome,
like so really good quality DNA, it's tricky. So all
the way from Australia.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
So what is that? What do you mean high molecular weight?

Speaker 1 (48:18):
It's just a DNA. So if you like think about
DNA kind of the strands of DNA, just the ones
that are very long rather than little tiny pieces like
it's been cut up.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Right, which is what Yeah, because you're doing whole genome
I guess this is the difference. This is the difference
between whole genome sequencing and just doing like looking at
certain regions gene regions.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yeah, yep, yeah, we're trying to get full chromosome to chromosome,
like the end to end telling you're telling your level
chromosomes or genome issembly.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Just piecing together? I mean, are you like doing it
by piecing together pieces of it?

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Like, No, we're trying to get like full, like the
full sequence of everything. You're right, but that we can
know all the genes and all the orders and of
the genes.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
You know. I never even thought about. But the differences
between like PCR, like just doing gene regions and then
the whole gene I'm like, yeah, how do you do that? Man?
That's so massive? Like are you you're still doing PCR?
Presumably right, you have to amplify it.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
So so PCR typically what for like in I don't
I think this is PCR free library prep. I haven't
done any library preps. So we're working with a group
in Arizona, the Arizona Genomics, a GI genomics institute, and
they are experts doing all of this, so I get

(49:49):
the fun part personally, I think I think they think
their part is fun, Thank goodness. But I get to
go on the field and try to find these cool plants.
And then they take the tissue that I send them,
so taking some leaf tissue, some different parts of the
plants flowers, and then send that tissue to these folks
in Arizona. They extract the DNA and make sure it's

(50:10):
per They have like in house protocols that they do,
and then they send that now DNA that's been extracted
out of the plant to the sequencing team at Hudson
Alpha in Huntsville, Alabama, and they do the sequencing. Oh,
it's a full process, takes multiple years.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
So this is not just like this not just like
Alan Rockefeller doing PCR in the trunk of a fucking
Nissan or something. This is like a more a more involved.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Yeah. But what's cool about it is then rather than
just looking at like a few genes at a time,
or you know, we're able to look at the whole
genome and so try to look at every gene, every
like the order the genes are in, but not even
just the genes, the like repetitive elements, like just everything
about that genome and then we can compare it to

(51:03):
all of the other families in the order and try
to underlook at patterns.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah, so you look in at everything, coding, non coding regions, repeat,
all that shit. Yeah, and so all that data is
that's got to be millions of base pairs and that's
just stored on I mean, how much storage space does
that take.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
I'm probably not that much because it's just code, but yeah,
but it's it's once we have it all, it'll all
be publicly available through like open source data basics.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
God, that's cool, that's so cool. But basically, then at
the end of the day, you're taking this code, like
the code from one family and then holding it up
against the code from another family and saying where do
they differ? Where are they the same?

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Yeah? Exactly. So there's like just like each of these
plants are have a book, and all the like letters
in the book is the code for making different genes?
Are the words in the book? Are the codes the
different genes? Then we can ask how are the books
different from one another?

Speaker 2 (52:04):
And then each and then that information tells the story
is how did how did this family you know, evolve
differently under different conditions? In a different place than this family,
which then tells a story about the land that it
grew on itself and the climate and the period of
time when they were thought to have evolved whatever. Very

(52:24):
totally interesting shit exactly. Yeah, Okay, Well, in this podcast,
I've learned what in Blingia is, which is fucking cool.
I had no idea. That's weird monotype monotypic plant from
West Australia. Okay, but now moving right along tovari ac.
What's up with tovari ac?

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Another kind of like near monotypic depending on what taxonomy,
what taxonomy you want to use, But I another one
that I am less familiar with but would like to
learn more about because it is another weird one. But
it is more more like Central and South America and distribution.

(53:04):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
I'm looking at how many.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Not too much information?

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Forty five observations? One another fucking monotypic? Is this monotypic? Two?

Speaker 1 (53:15):
It's nearly It depends on how who you ask, like
sometimes two species, sometimes one species. There's one species. I
think it's if you're using this taxonomy, I think it's pendula. Yeah, yeah,
that it's only in Jamaica.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
What the fuck Colombia. These are from Colombia. Wait, only
in Jamaica. Okay, so there's there's like a there might
be some speciation in Jamaica.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Yeah yeah, so at least it like has some sort
of different morphotypes or characters that folks have been using.
But there is no documentation I believe of that in
I not. I think it's only kind of known from
her barium records one.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah, okay, yeah, there's nothing. Nothing from Jamaica. And it's Ecuador, Colombia. Yeah,
so like Central America.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Yeah, it's only like a specimen.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Cool flowers though.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Yeah, they're weird. They're really like flat kind of.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Yeah, well but they've got they have this like stigma
that looks like a poppy stigma. Yeah, it's bizarre. It
goes up into Mexico supposedly, if those identifications are correct. Yeah,
northeast of Tawakan. Damn, No, that's probably bullshit. That's just

(54:39):
a photo of leaves. I don't know who. No, No,
it does look like it. Fuck wow, shit.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
From ars super tropical this one.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Yeah, they like moisture. This this thing's grown in arracrus.
That's fucking humans. So god, damn, I didn't realize it's
another another monotypic Okay, okay, moving right along. Uh pented
did plant? Dracy? What's what's this?

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Oh? I was so excited. This is one that like
I have my sights on. I'm hoping to figure out
a way. But it's a really interesting one to me
because it's a it has a really huge history in
the United States. So a researcher from Wisconsin, uh I

(55:28):
believe was, Yeah, University of Wisconsin scientists firm that collected
the plant in Gabon, so it's kind of all across
Western Africa, and they extracted this protein is brazen that's
like a protein based sweeter, so it makes everything you

(55:50):
eat very very sweet, but it's protein based, and they
patent it, but there was no benefit sharing in agreement
with like Gabon or the Gabanese people, and so it's
kind of been blacklisted as a biopiracy issue, and so
it makes it really complicated. Want and I want to
know about this plant in terms of its evolutionary story.

(56:12):
I'm not that interested in being any sort of you know, chemicals,
So then we have to figure out and I've been
working with a researcher in actually Cameroon to try to
figure out like what we could do and how we
can manage benefit sharing where like the folks that this
plant is native to have all these benefit sharings because

(56:35):
you can imagine the type of money someone can make
from a protein based sweetener, and like, how can we
do this ethically when then our goals are the genomes
are open source. So it's like I don't have answer.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
So some guys, some guys basically what do they do?
Did they sneak this thing out or something and then
are using it for this?

Speaker 1 (57:01):
I don't think it was like an intentional I would
like to think, I guess I'll say I'd like to
think that it wasn't necessarily an intentional like misuse, but
that you know, they were setting this plant and brought
it back and like you know, it was just different
in how people were going to countries taking plants and
bringing them back to the US. Like the whole history

(57:24):
of colonialism is like strong with this history of going
to different countries collecting plants and bringing them back and
they were lucky found this really interesting sweeteners. If you
talk to the folks that are native from this region,
like this is every single human there knows this plant.
It's like so ingrained in the part of the culture,

(57:45):
so maybe they did know or had some suspect because
it's like part of the what I've learned from these
friends and collaborators is that you like can eat the
berries and then like everything you eat after tastes really sweet.
So you could eat like like I think this is dramatic,
but like a fish, the fish would be sweet or
like something like.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
You could eat a dog. You could eat a dog
turn But I mean either way, you know, colonial lizard
or not, you're like taking like a plant that's culturally
important to people and not hooking the people up when
they're broke as fucked, you know, compared to you. It's
just kind of a dick move, you know.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
Like go to Disibler's day, bro, this is really great,
Like we could we could, you know, turn this into
a boutique coffee roastere and with without any consideration of
the repercussions.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Like it's just kind of shitty. It's just going to
being disrespectible.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And I don't know these people. I
have no idea who they are, and I don't know
you know, the reason or how this all happened, but maybe.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
They're fine that they might be fine. When did this happen?

Speaker 1 (58:48):
When did it?

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Now? I'm interested in it, pentadip Plandra. I mean because
it's you know, if anything like this, like no, no
culture owns a plant, but it's just if you're going
into someone's area and region, it's good to like just
fucking be respectful and cognizant of you know, of hooking
them up too, instead of just taking someone shit and

(59:09):
being like, oh, look local, we just found.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
And now there are laws right with the Nagoya Protocol
to provide benefit sharing.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
What was that? When is that? Tell everybody what that is?

Speaker 1 (59:26):
So the Nagoya Protocol is like just written laws that
helped prevent colonialism and these buyopiracies from happening. It's just
an agreement to the nineteen ninety two Convention on Biological Diversity.
It's called the Nagoya Protocol because it was signed in Nagoya, Japan,

(59:46):
and I think it started officially being enforced in twenty fourteen.
But importantly, the US is not a signatory on it.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
But of course I was gonna say if it was Trump,
that would be like, you know, Trump signs and executive
or as like fuck this, but it could.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
I think what I've heard is that they didn't feel
like it was enough. That's why the US wasn't a signatory,
not because they didn't want to play by the rules. Yeah,
I don't know one hundred percent sure, that's just like
what i've heard on that what I've been told, But
it's really focused on genetic resources, specifically the Noglia Protocol.
So yeah, I still try to just basically follow it.

(01:00:30):
And so we tried there, but I believe most of
the countries are signatories, so you have to play by
those rules. Yeah, you're supposed to do at least, but
it's such a it's it's such a cool one. So
right now we're trying to see I have to actually
send an email to this field botanists in Cameroon to

(01:00:52):
see if you can get in chart touch with the government.
So we had, like our legal team kind of look
at it over and see like what we could do.
And so the next step is to get in touch
with the Cameroon legal team to see what they would
request as benefit sharing. And then how can we when
we already know there's this patent for this sweetener, how

(01:01:14):
do we protect that when we release the genome that's
open access. I don't know if they can. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Oh shit, Wow, I didn't know that. Okay, I mean
I guess you said that. I just maybe it didn't
hear it. But man, that's yeah, that's kindpplicate Jesus. So
this is already so they patent. Is it being sold
or something or what?

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
No, it's kind of been as far as I understand,
like not like blacklisted because of the biopiracy. But I
don't know if they like retain the patent or if
like because it was biopiracy, like the patent goes away.
I don't I'm not sure, but it is I mean
from someone who just wants to like understand the evolutionary biology,

(01:01:55):
having to learn all this like legal part is like
something I did not prepare for or like have the
skills to do, and like truly it's like a whole
nother career. So it's been an interesting one for me
in that sense of like wanting to do right by
the people or this plant is native too, but also
really interested in the evolutionary biology story.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Yeah, but I mean, presumably there's there's no one growing
this like in any conservatory in the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
No, but like even if there was, like what, we
would sample it, But wouldn't that still be like I
would not have benefit sharing to the people and you're.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Still bound by the requirements for benefits sharing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Yeah, technically it probably maybe you wouldn't, but like me
my personal I feel like I would.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Well yeah, and if anything, then you're yeah, now you're
like involved in this thing that's sort of that this
ugly story you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, yeah, isn't that so interesting? Though, Like I really
don't know what to do? Yeah, anyone have any ideas.
I'm like up for learning.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Yeah, I mean I could see. I mean, you know,
at the end of the day, it's like it's you
didn't have anything to do with it. You're just sampling
the genome. But then like, yeah, you know, you're someone
could come at you in a weird way.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
And like the sequence for that that like sweetener would
be in the genome. And if it's open access, what
does that mean? Like how do people like if then
they turn someone takes it and then synthesizes this sweetener
and then uses it, Like how does the folks so
this plant is growing, like get any of that benefit.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Right, Yeah, yeah, they don't get shipped of course not
of course, you know any any company you see it
like marketed in like a six dollars drink in a
health food store. But none of that goes back to
no I hate it here anyway, the h but this,

(01:03:57):
I mean so, but being a protein based sweetener, what
does that? What does that mean? Exactly?

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Like it just lasts long, so instead of like a carbohydrate.
So I think it would be very useful as my
understanding for like folks with diabetes, or it could be
like a more slow release, like just would digest it differently,
the sweetener think a protein is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
It's a fucking cool plant either way. I mean it's
a tropical broad leave, tropical plant with these giant baseball
sized fruits that then open up. There's only one observation
on a naturalists too. Yeah, this is a It opens
up and then there's like, how what is it? Five carpals?

(01:04:42):
How many are in there? I can't even see the
thing just stopped anyway? Yeah, six six carpels?

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Okay, Okay, So it says here that the brazen, which
is a chemical, is a brasin useful as a low
hllary sweetener, but is not yet allowed as a food
additive in the United States and European Union.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Because it was ganked.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Basically, that's what I'm guessing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Yeah, yeah, damn oh, it's a sad story. Yeah where Cameroon.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
It's native to Cameroon and Gaban.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
It says that it's five hundred to two thousand times
sweetener than sucrose.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Jesus, I know. I'm just curious about the plant, man,
I would want to what's the the leaves look? Are
they like pinnate? No? Alternate?

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
I can't tell in the way alternate? I believe.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Two basic forms. It can be a much branched shrub
that can grow up to five meters tall, or a
climbing plant with stems up to twenty meters tall. What
the fuck? Oh? The root system in shrubs is a
branched complex of bulging roots, whilst climbing plants have a large,
fleshy tuber. The root is a very popular traditional medicine
in Central Africa, where it's commonly harvested from wild for

(01:06:10):
local use. In Portraye. The plant also provides an edible fruit,
which is attracted wider attention because of the very sweet
tasting protein it contains all right, wow yeah damn. They're
sold from medicinal purposes in local markets and a fruit
is supposedly used as a fish poison. I guess I
don't know anyway. Okay, so oh yeah, I didn't know

(01:06:30):
about that poor fish. Okay, moving moving along, Uh, Gyros,
We're gonna do the whole file line. We've got six
families left, gyro stem and.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Ac another one that I am not familiar with but
is in Australia as well.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Really is this I wonder if this is monotypic too?
Uh No, it's not gyro stem the whole the whole
concept of monotypic, like a clamping monotypic as we're too.
What do you think that's about? Like it just it
doesn't speciate, there's no radiation. There's what keeps it? What

(01:07:08):
keeps it? Like what keeps a genus from like why
is why are there no more species of Cobralinea? It's
just so good at what it does, Like I don't understand,
Like what's the constraint there?

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Yeah, it could be either that it didn't seciate, so
they're just like, yeah, some sort of constraint that we
get to understand. Could be like a geographic you know thing,
or just a really pollmic I have no idea. Or
it could be that there was a lot of other
species and they've gone extinct, but as of now, we
don't have any fossils to indicate that's the case. So

(01:07:44):
those are the two, you know, reasons it just didn't
seeciate for some you know, some reason, or there was
a ton but we don't have fossils to show that
there's been extinction in that family or those fossils.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
With all this stuff though, it seems like it's not
speciating me, I don't know, I don't under I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
The most parsimonious, especially because we don't have fossils, right, because.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
Then you get families like Astoracy or like the fuck
the genus on Nathra for christ sakes, how many species?
Like that's a nightmare of a genus because it's like,
you know, there's so many of them, and there they
can the differences can be very subtle. There's so many
of them, especially in arid areas.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Yeah, I mean, the other thing to think about that,
it's like, I don't know, this gets into taxonomy and
like decisions like so if you look at like salvador
ace and bat as, they form a clade, so they're
their sister to one another. So those are two separate
families and if you think about them there they like
are live in different parts of the world. They have

(01:08:49):
incredibly different morphology. But we could collapse that to be
one family and those are just different like genera or
different parts of the family. But I don't know, that's
like the decision of this the taxonomous right where, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
I guess there's that too. You have to understand, you
have families are still a human construct. Plant families are
still a human construct to just denote levels of differentiation,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
But if you look at central lanthis and Layman these
Layman thesy for example, those are just like single lineages.
Like I don't like, you can't really condense it. So
I don't know if it's interesting to think about that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
You mean you can't condense it?

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
What do you mean, Like they're like I can lump
them branches on the Yeah, like you would have to
like lump the entire Like if you wanted to lump
Laman thecy for example, you would have to include it
with battascy salvator ac and all the other like cleo
acy brassa cacy because of where it's positioned in the cladogram.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
Uh huh is it? But is that according to the
genome though? I wonder like how you know if you
look at this codes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Yeah, yeah, so this is based on a chloroplas phylogeny,
but I think my nuclear phylogeny matched it pretty well.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
So do you think do you think that? I mean,
as whole genome sequencing becomes more common, it's gonna it's
gonna like shake up taxonomy again, Like is it gonna
I mean, not probably at any great level, but maybe
certain families will be lumped together or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
I think we thought it would right when you have
like the whole book, you should be able to know everything, right,
But then what we find is that that's not necessarily true.
Sometimes things have speciated so close in time that we
cannot resolve like the order that they speciated, Like it
happened so quick that we just don't have that type

(01:10:52):
of resolution, Like we can't look back in time at
that sort of detail. So some things I don't think
we'll ever be able to like, like you know, understand
but also the assumption that everything bifurcated. That like, if
you have a population of organism, some species that they
always split in two, it is not unreasonable to think

(01:11:14):
that it's split in three, are split in four. Like,
so when we build trees, it's resolved when we make
them bifurcating, unless we're looking at like a reticulate or
evolution or more of a web. So my personal belief
is that most things probably are more weblike in their
their tree. It's more like a shrub than like a tree.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Yeah, when you say weblike, explain what you mean by that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
So rather than just like you have a line and
then a bifurcating note, or like things dividing into two,
it divides into three, divides into four, like if I'm
a single point mm hm, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Yeah, so more in other words, it's not as simple
as we try to make it. And I think with brassica,
what's what's interesting is that, and especially with whole genome
duplication with polyploid is that I think a lot of
this might like do you think these these kind of
events where like a new family evolves, Like do you
think it happens overnight? Instead of in baby steps like

(01:12:18):
some cases of speciation, do you know where like, because
that's a way for it to happen over that I mean,
if if the whole genome just randomly duplicates during a
hybridization event, there's or you know whatever, whatever's produced during
genetical combination during plant sex, or there's a mutation whatever.

(01:12:40):
I mean, do you think that that's kind of what's
going on here?

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
For sure, that whole genome duplication can lead to a speciation.
We definitely have seen that to be true across the
plant on tree of life. So that could be just
like the major mode that this group has been using.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
And then when it's got, when you've got when your
whole genome is duplicated, it's kind of hard. Now you're
so different from the population you just arose out of
you can't really mix with them anymore. You can't, so
you're you're already isolated. The isolation for speciations already there.
This is makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
Yeah, no, yeah, so basically right, so how you know,
no matter so when you get the whole genome duplication,
you're isolated from that progenitor you know, species or so
sometimes you know it'll be you can have whole genome
duplication within like many different ways which we don't have

(01:13:39):
to get into. But I think in some cases it
likely will end to speciation events.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Yeah, in some cases, right, not always, but that's definitely
how it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
I think many of them will probably not. I think
probably more of them don't survive than survive. But we
don't know. This is all like open question.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Right, I mean, I'm yeah, like with the brass of
Chailles order, how many families what twelve or fifteen or
something and we're talking I mean, how many eighteen eighteen?
And we're talking this I mean goes back millions of years.
What's the what's the what's the estimated origin evolutionary age
of the order, probably like ECN or something older.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
I know, I do know this. I am just.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Liking fifty million years. I'm gonna just throw it out there,
just fifty million years of and I've seen that it
seems like a good time for angiosperm diversity, you know,
I think I think that might be the age of
astracy two. You know, dinosaurs have been gone what really.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
One hundred and eight million years ago is their best?

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Oh fuck? Wow? So this is an old order.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
Yeah, we're only seeing a fragment, of course, of what
has existed.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
Mm hmm, exactly. You know. It's a cool cool okay.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
So anyway, So back to Gyros stemenac. So this is
all Australian m yep.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
And it's pretty like widespread across Australia.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
Seventeen species on in app probably more. Codona carpus cotinofolio
seems to be one of the most dominant. God, the
habitat looks cool. Where this thing is from Gyra's stemen
and Codona carpus and these are dry land plants. Do
you know are you familiar with any more of the
genera in there?

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
No? I haven't. I should have looked for them, but
I didn't. It's a cool one though.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
God, Central Australia's so fucking cool man. This isn't even
Central Australia. This is just Inland. I mean, I've I've
been to Australia. I've been to Tasmania, Melbourne, Perth. I've
never been to like Inland, anywhere where it's fucking really
hot and dry. I've never been. I want to go
to Queensland. I mean, there's so many there's a lot

(01:15:58):
of places I want to check out, but I've never
been to any of the super dry areas.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
It's it's fun, gotta bet.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
Yeah, all the cool cast arrhinas and stuff, and yeah,
I mean and just I think the cool thing for
me is just seeing seeing similar, like the same traits
and plants I know from you know, nine thousand miles
away from arid areas, nine thousand miles away. That's the
coolest thing about traveling to sea plants. For me, It's like,
oh shit, this is doing the same thing that. In

(01:16:28):
other words, the environment is selecting for the same traits,
and the environment itself is breeding the plant. The environment
is breeding the same traits in a plant that it's
being bred in a similar environment with a different cast
of plant lineages and families over here. It's so fucking
cool to see, man.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
Yeah, Like you're such a wealth of knowledge. It's so
cool to be able to like see that, that's like
because you're such a good field bonus and know that
there's like these groups so well, that's just really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
That's so it's so cool to see. It's so wild. Yeah, man,
photosynthetic stent. Some of the leaves look some of the
branching looks spiny, obviously resisting bevery leaves are you know,
the surface area is way reduced. The flowers on these
look fucking nuts. Gyrostemon Australia Australasicus australasicus. Yeah, these these

(01:17:21):
flowers look fucking nuts. Man, you gotta get some of these.
Have you got any of these?

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
Yeah? No, no, trying to trying to figure that out. Still,
eventually we'll figure it out. They're so pretty.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
We're going down the whole list. I didn't I didn't
intend to do this when we started to call it,
I just think this. I'm just looking at the I
didn't intend to go through the whole brassicle's phylogeny, you know.
But while we're here, I figure what this?

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
They're just so cool? How can we stop?

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
Yeah? And then okay, so and then and then residacy,
which is that's where that weird? That's a fucking weird one.
The only plant I know from that is Wow, that's
got sixty two species in it. Jesus, wait, where is
the one I where's the one I know? Aligo maris linafolia, Yeah,

(01:18:15):
which we get that in South Texas. We get it into
Mohave and then it's in like Iran.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
Oh really, yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
A weird disjunct. What the fuck? I don't know. And
I think it's like yeah, and it's not widespread like
on iinad it's like the American Southwest and then like uh,
like Saudi Arabia and like southern Iraq.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Weird, Yeah, what the fuck? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
And I guess there's some I mean, and you know,
who knows. Maybe this is like last few hundred years,
but I don't think. I think the collections were pretty
early on of where. Okay, but anyway, sorry, so what's
up with this whole family sixty two? Species? Residacy?

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):
I like, it's definitely an understudied one. I really like residency.
There's just like some really interesting like like stories with
residacy one. It smells like so crazy that especially Resida.
So I grew resident. But the first time they think
Pliny the Elder is the first person that like us

(01:19:20):
the name Resida. So it's like so cool to go
all the way back then. And then I think it's
one of the I'm trying to double check myself. Yeah.
Resida or data was used by Charles Darwin. In his
studies on self fertilization plans, so he like talked about it.
So it has this like this crazy history but like
it's kind of understudied in a lot of ways, but

(01:19:43):
it's it's a cool group. There needs more attention with.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
There's like ten gen era maybe eleven? Who was Who?
Who was Pliny the Elder? What do you do? Who's
this guy? He was a Greek.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Roman philosopher naturalists.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
Oh he was a naturalist. I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:03):
Yeah, m hmm, Like he wrote the Naturalists Historica. So
it was like this huge book on everything in the
natural world.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
Wow, no, ship, I didn't know that. So this is
a guy that definitely liked he was into plants. He
appreciated him, Yeah he did. Okay and uh okay, So
moving on down. What else do we got left? Capa
racey the Caper family.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
Yeah, who doesn't like cape raise on their bagels and locks?

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
What are what are capers? They're like a pickled It's
like a pickled little sphere. I'm not even that familiar.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
Yeah, they're like really like they're really salky.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
Okay, all right, yeah, how big is this? This is
kind of a big family.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
So we're getting into the last like three. So Brassa, Casey,
Cape Racey and Cleo Macy are the largest, like they're
the most specios.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
Oh shit, I didn't know that. Yeah. I think let's
see how many, how many observations of the Caper family.
I know there's a rare one from South Texas, but
there's so much rare stuff done here because everything gets annihilated.
So quadrilla, oh, quadrilla, Oh, quadrilla Indica. Yeah, I just
saw that in Costa Rica Bashia, Feta. Where the fuck?

(01:21:26):
Oh this has got to be This is in South
Africa Bashia.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Yeah, okay, they're cool. They're all cool. I'm so biased,
but yeah, so what was fun was on I was
looking at Braska and the Mediterranean, so in the genus Brassica,
and it was almost always like near a keep race.
So they like each other, they're good friends.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
Wow. And what's the I mean the fital chemistry then
is the same I assume for yeah, like lucosinola, it's
probably like a pungent I mean, yeah, obviously Caper's pungent smell,
but they're mostly all tropical or what.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
Are they? I think I think they're everywhere I think
I caught like across global I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
Not seeing them at the higher latitudes. Well, I guess
there's yeah, South Africa, at least in the United States,
they're not really.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):
Oh I see yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
Yeah, it's like southern like Florida, South Texas, Southwest Ooh,
what's in Baja? This seems interesting? What is down air? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:22:33):
Yeah, it's like the south two species?

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
Okay, so this thing is diversified and breaking with the
tradition of the Brassickelees. This this family has many species
and many genera in it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
Yeah, yes, yeah, these ones are species diverse for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
And then okay, now we're going to the fun one
Cleo may Sy which, of course bladder pod in California
Mojave desert plant, really distinct plant. Anyone who spent time
in the day deserts of California is familiar with. What
is that? I can't remember the genus name of bladder
pot again?

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Is it Clomela? I think so.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
I haven't seen it in four years, so I can't Yeah,
maybe is it Cliomela? Goddamn.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
The group just gone has just gone under a pretty
big taxonomic change. It was just published. They're working on
it right now. So this is yeah, lots of folks
are working on the.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
These are these These are some stinky ones. Yeah, we
get polynicia in Texas. Uh, some really cool ones to Polynicia, Dodochondra,
polynesia erosa.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
They're really pretty and sticky.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
Is it Cliomela to soifolia? Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah,
there's yeah, very stinky, very stick he, very glandular, really
cool flowers. Someone who's you know, just a lay person
might say, oh, it looks like an orchid like. The
flowers got that kind of oh very Uh. I mean
to me, it looks nothing like an orca. But I

(01:24:14):
can see how someone would say that, you know, yeah,
triffid trifolia leaves offen and waxy like, really waxy like.
I don't think any of these things have hairs. Whoa carsonia,
sparse folia? Wear the shit that I see that Manhattan, Nevada,
it's over there a boy Tonapa to Nopa, got Nevada.

(01:24:37):
I miss Nevada. God, it's so fucking nice being out
in the middle of nowhere there. The whole state is
public land. Have you spent much time in Nevada.

Speaker 1 (01:24:47):
Just Las Vegas?

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Yeah? Yeah, I learned the run freight trains in northern
Nevada between sparks and alcohol, basically going across the whole
northern half of the state, and it was it's just
one of the most beautiful places and so empty too,
and like like filled with nut jobs in its own way.
But like their wing, that's enough. You can appreciate them,
you know, just don't get them talking about certain subjects.

(01:25:11):
But god, there's some cool plants.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
Cleo Macy is really cool. We had one really cool
trait about the Macy is that it has C four photosynthesis,
so rather than the traditional C three photosynthesis?

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
Though?

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
How many families in Brasiclees do that? Is this the
only one?

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
So true? Like C four I think is just in
Cleo Macy. Let me double check myself.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
So it's using those bundle sheaths, uh cells, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
Let's see Cleo Macy and there is some Embrassic cacy.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
Oh wow, do you know?

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
Okay four?

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Since we're about to move on to the the family
and Cleo Mace is sister to Brassa Casey, we should
mess it to since we're about to move on to
Brassic Casey, do you know I've heard that Brassic, like
Brassic Casey, is one of the only families that doesn't
associate with micro ryzel fungi, which I don't believe. I
don't think that's true. That might be bad. It probably

(01:26:19):
is bad inform I forget where I read that, because
everything does a little. It's at least the Glomero my
seeds like Glomero my coda. But do you know anything
about that about Michael Rizel associations in the order?

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
In the order? I don't think I have heard anything
that interesting, though.

Speaker 2 (01:26:37):
Yeah, I think it was just the family. I think
it was just Brassic Casey. But then I'm curious about
if that one. If that's true, it's I don't think
it's true, but it might be that it's highly reduced
that they don't associate with Michael riise as much as
other families. And I'm wondering why, you know, like, what
would it be that they're able to somehow access nutrients
without what is it about their root morphology that they're

(01:26:59):
somehow able to access nutrients without needing fungi?

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
You know, I don't know that's interesting. So I just
kind of double checked in this one paper popped up
that is in lapidium, which is brass Casey, and it
talks about dormancy by fun guy. I don't know, so

(01:27:23):
I don't know. That's a really interesting question.

Speaker 2 (01:27:25):
I could also be entirely full of shit. This could
be bad information, but I remember I think it was
on a book ine on Michael Rise that I read this.
It's either highly reduced. I don't think they would have
said it's not there at all, because that's impossible to know,
or maybe that it hasn't been found yet, but I
think probably since then it has because I don't know,
at least with Glamara.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
And Nakota, but I know it's super interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
Okay, before we move on to the Brassic Casey, anything
else you want to say about cleam I see anything
notable about them?

Speaker 1 (01:27:56):
Now they're just the sea. I mean doing C four
Khoto synthesis is really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
Yeah, that is it's pretty Yeah, that's pretty notable, and
it shows it shows adaptation to really hot places, which
is where you can find a lot of them. So okay,
So Brassa Casey, the big, the big one. Now what's
I mean? Obviously so many food crops, human nutrition, polyploidy, rampant.

(01:28:26):
Uh you know, cold robbie, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, all
the same species. Technically, is that correct?

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
Yeah? Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
It takes very Yeah, it takes very kindly to human
domestication apparently and human selection. What else.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
There is? So the Brassa casey, it's also where we
have like the model plant. So the first genome I
ever got for a plant is a rabbit Opsis salina
and it's a Brassa cacy. So like everything that we
know about like genes and you know, how they control
different traits is a lot of that work has been
done in brass case in a rabit Opsis. So it's

(01:29:08):
like this powerhouse for genetic models.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
And so it's kind of cool because you have this
really important plant that has a ton of resources that thousands,
if not more people work across the world on. But
then it's closely related to all these cool plants that
we just talked about today. So you can really then
like kind of take what we've learned from A rabit
oxis and apply outward to some of these really cool species.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
One of the things why was ais Why is that?
Why was that picked as the model plant? Like why
do you know.

Speaker 1 (01:29:40):
Why that is Yeah, so it has a small genome.
So one thing that's true for most of these that
we know so far is that they all have relatively
small genomes, which makes doing a lot of this genetic
work a little easier because the continue the genome a
little easier, And so that's why it was chosen originally. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
So, I mean, and when you say most of these
have small gems, you're done about every family and Brassic
Kyley's that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:08):
We've looked at so far. So we're we're we're just
you know, we're just doing this. We're still in the
process of collecting tissue and trying to find these plants,
so we're still figuring it all out. But so far
that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
So how long how long do you think this whole
project's going to take you?

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
And it could be a while, Yeah, probably so once like,
once we get these genomes done, we'll release them as
we get them done, but kind of to have a
full project, I think it'll probably take us a couple
more years.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
Oh wait, did we did we talk about a Canny
A c I don't think we did.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
That's another just at the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
That's another Australasian family. God this thing looks fucking weird too,
got it? Man, I'm learning so much today about plants
from all around the world. I had no idea existed
family of canny ac two genera a Cania and bretch Nidera.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
Which I think are both mono tipic, Like there are
only one species and both are Mana.

Speaker 2 (01:31:10):
Yeah, yeah, brech Nidera snensis and Kanya Bidwilli I, which
that that species up at that bid Willy I tells
you it's Australian. Uh, both look fucking weird and cool.
And let me see if there's what photos are there? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
What? So?

Speaker 2 (01:31:28):
Okay? Going back to this one though, So what do
you know about this? Have you been able to collect
material for this or get your hands on material.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
This one nor one more on the list? I haven't
been able to. I really hope we can get all.
It's kind of like a goal. But yeah, trying to
do it, Like it'd be easy if I just like
didn't try to follow any good protocols.

Speaker 2 (01:31:57):
But you know, no, you're You're not me. You're doing
it the right way. Just collecting, throwing the fucking notebooks somewhere,
be fine, put it in here. Damn, this is okay,
so yeah, like a race seam of white flower, white
pinkish white flowers, golf ball sized to marble sized, and

(01:32:19):
then a fruit with like an orange seed in it.
What the fuck? Damn? I see these things and then
I see like pictures of habitat and I'm just like, man,
what what else grows there? It's so cool?

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
Super serrated leaves too.

Speaker 2 (01:32:38):
Yeah, this is what. Yeah, one species in Asia and
one species in Australia, probably very old lineage. So anyway,
all right, well, I guess that sums up the Brasic
Kyle's order.

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
Uh. I can always talk about Brassica more. That's like
what I've been focusing mostly on is brascol Erasia. That's
a whole other podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:33:03):
Yeah yeah. But are you going back to Namibia at
any point soon?

Speaker 1 (01:33:08):
I always hope I'm going back to Namibia, But I
have nothing planned at the moment, have it. Maybe you're
gonna plan something eventually try to get back there.

Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
Yeah, I'm gonna, yeah, definitely, definitely. It was. It's I mean,
there's so much good stuff and I love I mean,
it's like one of the best arid plant habitats in
the world too. So and that's like my jam. So
though I have been getting into the tropics lately though,
so's that's nice. The Costa Rica was Costa Rica surprised me.

(01:33:37):
I thought it was not going to be as fucking
crazy as it was, and man, it was amazing. Yeah,
there's just such diversity of habitat, from paramo to oak
forests at like nine thousand feet to the dry forest
in the northwest where there's cacti growing with Borceros simaruba
in the shade of these like drought deciduous uh, you know,
dry forest trees that are towering and with monkeys that

(01:34:01):
are trying to pee on you. It was amazing. It
was fucking The monkeys are intimidating. You could those little
bastards if they mobbed up on you, like twenty deep,
they could really do some damage. You know. They're cute there,
but so weird being around other primate.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
Species and like, yeah, sometimes they're intimidating.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
Yeah, man, And these were these were like the little ones,
like the neotropical monkeys are generally much smaller, you know,
but I saw like howler monkeys I saw and they're
all in danger too, And so they're all because their
habitat's gotten fucked. But yeah, I saw like little capuchins,
those little white guy, little white faced guys with the
fans and shit. Yeah it was funny. Man and and

(01:34:43):
howler monkeys, which are terrifying. It sounds like like this
gutt role. I thought it was like a large cat,
and then I heard another one and I was like, oh,
there's a bunch of them. This isn't a cat. And
it's like because I couldn't tell it was coming from
up in the tree or up on this like cliff
and uh yeah, And then I saw there and I
was like, oh, it's just you, Okay, never.

Speaker 1 (01:35:02):
Mind, that's scary though.

Speaker 2 (01:35:04):
Yeah, yeah, it was really cool. Habitat though, really really cool,
Like walking through the forest, everything's crunching because it's but
it's like ninety degrees. You know. You're just like do
you what are you saying?

Speaker 1 (01:35:17):
Sorry? No, do you feel this way with tropical botanies?
Like so, because I live in Florida right now, but
like you, I do a lot of desert field working
from southern California, and so like all the plants go
on top of one another in the tropics, I'm like,
what is what? Where does this plant end and this
plant plant start, but in a like desert, like nice

(01:35:37):
and separate, you know, which is an individual.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
I've never taken so many pictures of just leaves before,
which is really frustrating for trying to identify stuff. Yeah,
you know, when you've got no reproductive structures and like
the leaves, there's nothing notable about them, like they have
wings or they've got these like super elongated hairs or something.
I saw this one species of Meconia. God, the mconia

(01:36:01):
diversity like in Ecuador was wild. We were like thirty
eight hundred feet and a lot of the maconias there
have these swollen pettiole bases where ants live inside, and
like the people eat the ants like you can eat.
Everyone I was with was like, oh yeah, I tried
eating the ants. They're really good. I was like, fuck, no, man,
I'm like I'm not gonna Oh no, I did. I
did not know. He's like, oh, they tastes like sweet lemon.

(01:36:22):
I'm like, Jesus Christ has some weird chemistry there. But
it was really cool because a number of Myconia species
did that. But there was this one that was growing
in the shade. It was growing in a shady, humid environment.
But it had these really long, like stiff tricombs on it,
like it like, uh yeah, I mean I assume it's
just for defense, like irdicating hairs or something. But it

(01:36:45):
had these like beautiful mahogany petioles and then like the
deep deep green broad leaves it was, and just all
the all the melostomes have crazy flowers. They're all fucking
insane looking with really cool anthe appendages and stuff. But
I remember seeing that being like, wow, this thing's so hairy.
But it's not. It's not like high up in the
paramo and it's not in an arid place because it's

(01:37:08):
it's yes, I mean most of the places. Like I
if I was, if we're going to go in academia
and you couldn't pay me to do it, but if
I did, I would probably study something like that, like
hairs on plants and like different adaptations for hairs on plants.
I think it's I know, it's just something I'm always
paying attention to. It's so interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:37:23):
Yeah, the tri combs, the you know what the plant
hairs are, the tri combs the so for brass Casey,
the like we could say he's like the grandfather of
the Rasa Casey. His name is isan Al Shabaz, who
was at Missouri bot Oh yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:37:38):
Emailed that dude. Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:40):
The best. He's so awesome, one of the coolest people.
But he believes the tricombes are the key to determining
like the different groups in brass case. Those plant hairs
are incredibly important. So like the some will be look
like little stars, some will be branched, some will have
like boldest great bases, like they're so cool looking.

Speaker 2 (01:38:00):
Yeah, I mean, I can't Yeah, it's I can't believe
we didn't mention that dude's name yet because he's like, yeah,
he's like the Brassica king. I what was I gonna say? Yeah,
I had to. I reached out to him because there's
a really rare plant called Mastelis sastrum vasi that is
in the population. It's like known from this one park

(01:38:21):
in Harlingen, Texas. It's it's used to be more common.
It's super super rare, and I think I only kind
of like seventeen individuals and it's an annual too, but
it's uh, and it's the habitat's fucked. It's like it's
like on the side of a mountain bike trail, and
then everything else is like dominated by invasive guinea grass

(01:38:42):
and buffalo grass. But it's one of those things where like,
if you've got seed, you could probably you know, after
a few generations, you could probably have thousands of plants
if someone were to grow it. But you know, it's
South Texas, so there's not many people that care. But
but but I reached out to them being like, do
you think that's what this is is? And yeah, he
basically said, yeah, that's definitely what it is. It used

(01:39:04):
to be, Yeah, what was it? I forget the name
it used to be. It wasn't Masilla sastrum. I think
el schabaz split whatever genes it used to be into
Masta scilla, masta silastrum. But yeah, really cool plant, really
waxy and glaucus. But I don't normally see brasicas with
hairs on them. Well that's not true. I just saw

(01:39:25):
a dimorphal karpa, which is a yeah you know that one, right, Yes, yeah,
super worry fucking awesome plant growing on these sand dunes.

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
But there's even like a genus and so the Braska
genus itself one the species is Braska Velosa because it
has all these like Velo's tricombe plant hairs all over it.
So there's a lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:39:48):
Yeah, yeah, you're right, one of my time talking out
of my ass, That's true. There's a ton when I
think of it. I just normally think of them like
that that kale style, like waxy rubbery, yeah, Farina, you know. Yeah,
Like so I'm a very greasy Italian. You know, I
could wipe off like the wax with my thumb on
the stem, you know, like that's a common thing I

(01:40:09):
associate with Brassica's. But uh, yeah, what a cool fucking family.
Though we didn't even talk about order. We didn't even
talk about Striptantus. Yeah, the whole order itself, and like.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
How it likes growing on serpentine soil.

Speaker 2 (01:40:24):
Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of Striptanta's in Texas. I
forget what common name they've got, but it's something that
alludes to their beautiful flowers. But uh, but I don't,
you know, I don't think a lot of texts and
Bonus even know like how diverse the genus is on
serpentine in California. It's fucking nuts, this thing. There's it's
like a I think someone had said that someone who

(01:40:47):
studied it had told me Striptantus evolved serpentine tolerance like
five or six times independently like the genus did I
think it was maybe Givnish mentioned that to me. I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
Yeah, but anyway, well, I guess I guess we could
wrap it up there and listen. I mean, anything else
you want to point out or talk about in reference
to this very cool and enigmatic order of plants.

Speaker 1 (01:41:14):
It's so hard to wrap it up. They're just so cool.
Like every time I feel like I turn around, I
learn about a new species and this order and it's
just a really cool place. I think it's interesting because
it's Brassa Casey and Brassicas and the like prefix of it.
People think it's really well studied, like the order, but
we're just learning so many things, just like just starting

(01:41:37):
to learn it.

Speaker 2 (01:41:38):
Oh yeah, we just looked at like six families on
INET that have like one or no observations.

Speaker 1 (01:41:44):
It has like this misconception that it's well studied because
of that, but we're trying to make it so. But
we still have a lot to learn.

Speaker 2 (01:41:51):
There's so many cool desert mustards. Yeah, man, yeah, nearris
Syrenia camporum, since flips is Greggii, and then fucking Fisarius
everywhere there's.

Speaker 1 (01:42:00):
Just like you gotta look up, look up Skis of
pedal on. Are you familiar with Skis of pedalon It's
a genus in the Brassic casey.

Speaker 2 (01:42:07):
I no, no, no, where is it from?

Speaker 1 (01:42:09):
Uh? Like the Autocama Desert, So this is where a
lot of the borages I love are as well. So
that's why I really like this one too. There's a
few different species in this genus. Oh if it has
these flowers that are like highly divided, but still like
the cross that is like characteristic the four petals. I

(01:42:29):
make a cross for the family. But it's like it
just looks so insane. It's one of my favorites.

Speaker 2 (01:42:37):
Well yeah, it's it's damn it's okay. So there's it's
coastal and then it's way up in the andes too,
mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
Just like a lot of the borages of panther.

Speaker 2 (01:42:48):
Yeah, damn. Oh yeah, this thing's nuts. Man. They're all
they're all like white four petals and then it's yeah,
what's up with those liciniate petals. It's got like divided petals.
I don't know what is this plinated by moths or
flies or something? You think you know?

Speaker 1 (01:43:05):
I know, I only I grew one for DNA, But
I don't know, like hardly anything about it than I
think it's super pretty. It's just like a really beautiful plant.

Speaker 2 (01:43:16):
God, that's cool. There was a genus in South Africa
that was everywhere. Al it's got long floral tubes. Maybe
it is mouthpone it there was a genus in South
Africa in Brassic. Casey, I should give this genus a
shut up before we pour waves here. Let me, I
can't remember it. Everything that you saw that was a
mustard was like in this genus you know that we
would encounter in South Africa. It was pretty. Why is

(01:43:42):
it saying? I don't know? Okay, my eight is fucking
up now home, let me look this up. Oh it's
on a tip of my tongue. I can't remember. Let's see. Yeah,
I don't know. This is what's up.

Speaker 1 (01:44:00):
I'm kind of think of what would be in South Africa.
Was it?

Speaker 2 (01:44:06):
Let's see, it's it's a dominant genus down there. It
was Heliophila. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, I saw like
six Heliophilus species, some blue, some white, some pink, some yeah,
some like blue with like a white center. Really fucking cool.
Oh cool, But anyway, all right, well I'll let you go.

(01:44:27):
Thanks so much, Mackenzie. And uh, yeah, I don't know.
If people want to read about your work, they where
can they look it up? I guess just the Google
scholar research. Gay, do you have a website?

Speaker 1 (01:44:38):
Yeah, I have a website just Mackenzie Maybrey. Can find
pretty much everything there, but it's also linked on my
Google scholar. But thank you so much for being interested
to talk about the Brassic halies, Like I really love
this group and I don't get to talk about it
very much. So yeah, thank you. I appreciate that opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:44:56):
Yeah, thank you. That was great. And if if anyone
wants to see your photos that I Gano fighting, that
weird that weirdo from the Mibia, the beautiful wirdo from
the Mibia, just go to ain At and type in
Tygano fighting in the explore bar and Mackenzie's photos are
like most of what come up T I G A
N O, P H Y the o N so Okay,

(01:45:17):
hey thanks, thank you so much again.

Speaker 1 (01:45:20):
Yeah, thanks so good to talk to you. Bye bye,