Trans-Pecos Botany with Dr Mike Powell

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, welcome to the crime page, but Bodany doesn't podcast.
I'm here today with the Texas botany legend, doctor Michael Powell,
curator of the Soul Ross or Barium and uh botanist
in Texas. How long have you been doing botany in Texas?
Fifty years, sixty.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Years, sixty some odd years?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Yeah, so a long time, A long time.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
You've seen it, you've seen it all. Just come a
little bit closer to my Okay, so, uh, yeah, I
guess in that time, So you start when did you start? Then?
That would be like early sixties, mid sixties.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
In nineteen sixty three, I guess is when I came
to soul Ross. Uh.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
And how what brought you to West Texas.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Baseball?

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Oh? Really? Is that what you is? That what you
came to Suwaros for?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
That's right?

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Uh? And what made the what made you switch to bodany?
What made you say I'm gonna do this instead? This
is more interesting?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, I was a majoring in physical education as an
athlete playing basketball and baseball, and I took a class
and plant tax on me under Barton Warnock. So that
was to me, that was amazing learning about the plants,
and all, and so that changed everything for me. So

(01:21):
I decided to change my major and then get a
master's degree right away, and then luckily I was asked
to go get a pH d after that.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
So a single teacher pretty much kind of influenced.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, teacher did. Yeah, he actually influenced several people before me.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Go into botany.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
I wish so many more people were doing that. Switching atics. Yeah,
I'll offence to athletics, but I think one's a lot
more menthally rewarding. One feels a lot more mentally rewarding.
So what was it about? Because Barton Warnock's a well
known name in West Texas, Bondney too, what was it
about him that made you switch?

Speaker 2 (01:59):
He was enthusiastic and went in the field all the time.
He took students with him, especially me. I got to
go with him. Marshall Johnston was here at the same
time too, and he's a you know, he was a
co author of the Manual of the Vascular Plants of
Texas and a famous botanists and so anyway, I had
had all of that those people to go to and

(02:22):
cultivate your interests going in the field to me was
amazing and learning species.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well was it just interacting with the land and.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, exactly. And the topography here was something I never forgot,
the Schwallon desert country. And then I just love to
climb mountains and that sort of thing, and find new plants.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
In the endemics too, a ton of endemics out here,
or plants that this is the only place in the
United States that they grow. The rest of the populations
in Mexico and back then too, I would imagine a
lot of these species were not even named yet, right,
This was kind of.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
This was the least investigated by home in North America.
And then the Swaman Desert region anyway, and we're in
the northern Schwaman Desert region here. Of course, most of
it is in Mexico. As you know. The diversity was
something else. Geological diversity is what fosters plant diversity. So

(03:21):
this is the most diverse, biologically diverse biome in North America.
It's Schwamann Deesert region.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
See the geology. You've got limestone which is prevalent all
throughout Texas, remnants out of western Interior seaway, which is
like early Cretaceous, right.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, it's early Cretaceous.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, and then you've got much younger volcanics and you
get different casts of plant species on both those. There's
a couple that will grow on both. But then there's
so many limestone endemics too.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
The other endemics as well. Of course, through geological evolution,
a lot of other kinds of exposures were formed, Like
the gypsum exposure became a big deal for me. Oh
yeah in the late nineteen sixties, starting about then, and
this is a wonderful gypsum place here into Mexico.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, all the way from Albuquerque down into Nuevo Leone.
I mean the gypsummism I didn't really become familiar with
until maybe twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
It goes farther in Mexico than Uev Leone too, and
into San Luis bodesee Zakitacus.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Were you going down to Mexico a lot?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, a lot, yes, mostly in other kinds of pursuits
at the time. Monographing composite genera is what I was doing.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
So Asta RASI especially was your specialty. I know you
worked on paridally for a while. What was it about,
And we'll get to that later, But what was it
about Asta Raci that really struck you? Because it's a
family that, as you know, you taught botany, so many
students are just like nah, but when you really learn
about it, it's utterly fascinating.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah. It's the largest family of flowering plants, of course.
And that's where I started at UT. My PhD assignment
was a Mexican a monograph of Mexican genus that was
extended into South America. But that's where it got started,
and my major professor had a an NSF grant to

(05:18):
do chromosome numbers and do other kinds of studies and
Asta race It turns out that there were other centers
for Asta racey studies at the same time in California,
at the Smithsonian for example, so they were all doing
chromosome numbers. So anyway, that's what I did in Mexico

(05:41):
was do my tried as collecting field investigations, and at
the same time I was collecting plants for my major professor,
bl Turner.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, okay, I want to talk about him too, because
he's another name. I mean, yeah, all these names, Warnock, Turner, Powell.
I mean, when people think of wests, you know, United
states Chiuhaiwan does her botany, your name comes up like
you're famous, man, you are so, but yeah, deservedly so so.

(06:13):
But let's talk about the chromosome work, because you were
doing botany at a time before the advent the PCR
and and all the molecular work that's being done now,
which must have been hard. I mean, that's I think
back to those times, like no GPS, no molecular work,
I mean, and you guys were still going out there,
I mean, no digital cameras too, like you had. I

(06:34):
remember seeing a picture of Barton Warnock with like an
old school film camera, and I just I can't imagine
what that must have been. Like I'll take twenty photos
of the same plant sometimes before I get one. I like,
so what, I guess I want to talk about all that,
like the going out of the field then and then
also doing chromosome work. I guess I's start with the
chromosome work first. What what's that about and what did

(06:56):
that entail?

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Well, it was ah with that asteras or composite chromosome numbers,
because there's so many in the first place. Everybody was
realizing that chromosome numbers were important in composite taxonomy, and
there were few chromosome numbers known at the time, so

(07:19):
there were people that were doing that almost exclusively, a
few people anyway, and so I joined the crowd, was
invited to join some of the crowds I was involved
in at the time in four chromosome number series that
were being developed. You know, people doing series of chromosome

(07:42):
number papers where the papers would include tables of the
chromosome numbers, the number of species and their chromosome numbers,
and then the text would include what was important about
those chromosome numbers and with respect to the taxonomy at
the time.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
So this was this was not just plody levels, but
number of chromosomes.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Ye, well there if you do there's here's a thing
about that too. With plants, we can do myotic chromosome observations.
So it's more than chromosome numbers, it's myotic chromosome behavior,
which tells a lot about the relationships of plants and
the the direction of chromosome number change because of myotic

(08:32):
chromosome behavior. Of course, more important, I guess than that
is as ploity levels, you know, whole genome changes and
chromosome numbers.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
So how would you how would you figure these out
without molecular analysis? What what would it entail?

Speaker 2 (08:48):
What would well look under a microscope? The technique is
fairly simple with composites and other kinds of plants, and
we got into all the other kinds of plants later
on here at so OSS anyway, but what it involves
is picking buds in early stages of myosis and putting

(09:10):
in in vials of fixative that one takes with them
in the field. So if I were going in the
field for a week or two weeks or a month,
I would prepare in advance a number of these chromosome
number of vials with the fixative in them files about
I don't remember how many milliliters of fixative that they had.

(09:31):
And then you would when you encounter these species in
the field and you picked the buds from the plants.
You have to take a number of buds, of course,
because you can't anticipate the correct stage of myosis, so
you want to get them while you're there. And I'd
have to go back several hundred miles or several.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Thousands at different staably.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Oh yeah, indeed, at different stages. Yeah, So anyway, we're
going to get back to the laboratory. Then this is
a compound microscope thing. So it is the technique involves
taking the young buds which are in early stages of myosis,
and you don't know what stage that is until you
make the preparation. And the preparation is on a microscope

(10:14):
slide in a DNA specific stain acetocarmine. It's a carmine
stain to be specific. And so anyway, if there's a
maceration technique with a glass rod and removing all of
the debris and making a what's called a miotic squash,

(10:34):
it's called a miotic squash technique where one flattens these
things so we can, if we have the right stage,
see the chromosomes and a narrow plane of focus, so
we can focus and actually see the chromosomes in a
miotic stage and count the number. It's just that simple.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
God, that's incredible. So, how what magnification are youse? A
thousand necks or more than that?

Speaker 2 (11:00):
We use oil immersion lin so it's uh and depending
on the ocular in the ocular magnification and the hundred
times magnification of a of an oil immersion LINS, so
it's several thousand, so.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
You but it's just wild that you can see the chromosomes, that's.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, in different stages. You see different stages, so you
can follow the behavior of the chromosomes pairing behavior, yeah,
homologous chromosome behavior. You can see the effects of structural
rearrangements like rings of four, like univolence. So all of
that is apparent under a microscope and you're good at it.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
And so you'd get the buds before the flowers opened,
because that's yes, in the bud stays, that's when the
plants are undergoing milsis that's correct, and producing half loid sporangia,
So that's.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
They're on the way to doing that anyway. And this
is a this is a microspore mother sells microsporocytes. So
it's if you imagine the amount of pollen that is
ultimately produced the myotic cells. Each each microsporocite produces four
ultimately produces four pollen grains through myosis. So there are

(12:18):
a lot of cells to work with in the in
the anthers, young anthers undergoing myosis.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
And so you were using what you were using this
for taxonomy presumably, and.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yes, it's systematic pursuing systematics taxonomy. That's right.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, and so you said you were working with trite
acts before. I know that. That's it's a native to
lower latitude North America. I mean it's now it's like
a weed all over. It's been very successful, and you
know it is a ruterural plant with human development. It
benefits from from human development. But it's a really I

(12:55):
mean I've seen it where it grows native. I saw
it in the Dominican Republic, like growing on a rock
out crop, behaving like a native plant, like it like
it would. What was it, tritex pro commins you were
working with, or well.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
That's one of them. It's it's actually a weedy species
in Mexico, but a lot of.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Them are not weeds.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, they have pretty narrow distributions in Mexico.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
So this is a big genus.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
Oh, it's not a huge genus. About twenty five species,
I think.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
So what what was I guess what what did you
find exciting about that genus? Specifically what druids were.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Well, we were able to recognize two subgenera because of
chromosome numbers, for one thing, and then that leads you
to closer examination of morphology, just like modern DNA sequencing
data do today. You can look back and after you
know the living the phylogenetic relationships, and see morphological characters

(13:48):
that one didn't realize the significance of initially.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, and so you'd realize these are two different clades
within the same genus.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
There was some divergence event, however, for exactly what was
what was traveling in Mexico like back then? I mean,
it was probably a lot safer than now, but also
you know, a lot more rugged too.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Well, it was much safer than it is now. But
after you get farther south in Mexico, we were still
advised not to camp out, so I'm we stayed in
motels all the time. But traveling in Mexico was no
problem at all as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, and
every time you're dealing with the people, it was a
wonderful experience. Yeah, no problems at all. I didn't speak Spanish,

(14:32):
but I just spoke a little bit of Spanish and
I was working on Spanish all the time. Never learned
to speak Spanish, yeah, but I always tried because I
was in Mexico and everybody seemed to appreciate that, and
so they would start speaking English so we could communicate.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
So you guys would be just rolling down there with
a crew of what like four or five bodanists and.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Two people men another person. That's the way you always went.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
And you went down there with Billy Turner quite a
few times.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Go down first with another person who agreed to go
with me. He was that person I met at Sows.
Actually he was a baseball player and it was from
from the Houston area, but and he went back and
went to school at San Marcos at Southwest Texas State
it was called in Texas State now, But he agreed
to go with me for a month in Mexico when

(15:22):
I was so glad about having a gaudry along.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Did he ever make the switch from baseball to botany.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
No, he didn't. He was from Mathis originally, and so
he really got into he was got into natural naturalists
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
You know, so he's starting with it a little bit.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
I mean, yeah, a little bit he did.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
I'm still just amazed that, I mean, because that's such
a change. I'm sorry to go back to this, but
from baseball to natural sciences, that's got I'd love that
it's bad teacher.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Well, that's that's right. I guess I was always an
outdoorsman when I was a kid, mm hmm, cunning and fishing,
that sort of thing, and so I love the out
of doors anyway. But it's a it's a combination of
the of the topography and all the countryside and plants.

(16:14):
I guess. Plants are marvelous. There's always something interesting about them. Yeah,
never run out of interest, at least in this area.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
I think for people that aren't into botany, it's still
really hard to not love West Texas. You like to
enjoy spending time on here. I mean there's so much
and especially I mean going to Mexico back then too,
like watching the landscape change from high and dry to
more you know, tropical, you know, dry deciduous forests. Like

(16:43):
when you go further enough south. Yeah, I mean like Quatrisiegasa,
all these, all these when you when you leave south
out of you know, the Big Bend region, I can
only imagine it gets really interesting. You start seeing species
that we don't get up here. Yes, indeed, let's talk

(17:04):
about your work with peridally, because the rock daisies, it's
the you know, most of them. There's a few terrestrial species,
but most of them grow out of vertical cliffs. There's
a lot of microinthemics tool that only grow. You know,
this species of peridally grows in this region, and then
fifty miles away, even thirty miles away, you get a
whole other species of paridally that's you know, completely different.

(17:27):
What how when did you start working on paridally and
what attracted you to it?

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Well, when I came here from Austin, I was looking
for another genus to monograph, because that's what that was
the ultimate and systematic botany at the time. And then
of course I started with composits, so I wanted to
continue with the composits. And parially I knew from here,
you know, a couple of species or a few species,

(17:54):
and so I looked into it and it turned out
it's a widespread genus in the southwestern United States and
Mexican go and there were a lot of species, and
so that looked to me like it would gain National
Science Foundation grant support. So I wrote a proposal to
the National Science Foundation and got funded luckily the first year,

(18:15):
just really lucky to do that, because it's hard to
do but had some good people in my background, I think,
to help out, and some product too. You have to produce,
and so I'd already started publishing by then, and so
that's impressive to people at the National Science Foundation. So

(18:35):
I got funded and off I went. So I guess
that lasted for about I think it was nearly ten
years of grant support for monographing Paridley took me all over.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
You were going all over West Texas, Mexico.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
All over the southwest Arizona, because these are the.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Arizona, Nevada, Utah. They curved for it as far north
as the Salt Lake City.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Lake.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
There's a there's a Pirelli Stansbury Eye on the margins
of the Great Salt Lake and then down through California,
Nevada and California, but the Preleys are east of the
of the Sierra Nevadas. But all the way down through
the south part and in the Baja California, and then

(19:22):
in New Mexico.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
They specialize in dry areas.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Basically, well not always they're in they're in high mountains too,
you know eight thousand feet approximately that there's a species.
It's only in the annual mountains in the California about
eight a little over eight thousand feet in ensis is there,
so in Mexico and the high mountains too, and other

(19:47):
high mountains and uh in Arizona for example, But that
evidently there they undergo geographic speciation. And so, as you
mentioned while ago, every isolated mountain range, every isolated bluff
rock formation, they're likely to be a different taxon of brittle.

(20:10):
So that was fun investigating all those new habitats in
different areas. It's a lot of work because they're not
on every bluff.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
I bet they're like Darwin's finches in that.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
Regard, Yeah, sort of like that.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, see this, I mean you can't see the specialization
like you could in the beaks of Darwin's finches, but
you know it's the unique species that in the same
genus that are, you know, not so far apart from
each other. I remember seeing pretty vandavenduri, that rare one
in Sonora. We met then tell that day. That was
kind of terrifying, but they were they were nice to us.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
But that's after our tales were after me, thank goodness.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah. Yeah, the so what was so Texas is mostly
private land and so how are you getting access to
most of these places. It was probably a lot more
lax back than this is what late sixties, early seventies.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, in that time, ranchers were proud of what they
had on their land, and if there was an unusual
species there, they wanted to know about it, and so
they took care of it and protected it and just
wanted to know what was there so we could gain access.
But frankly, when early on, a lot of my access

(21:23):
was because of Barton wan Hawk, because he knew of
the ranchers and he could help you get access to
various places. But there were places we couldn't get access to,
and that's always been a problem.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Some people just weren't having it.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
They just didn't, Yeah, and you couldn't get in contact
with people. Sometimes there was some you know, the landlorders
were the owners were somewhere else, and there were people
that weren't authorized again give permission for access. Yeah, so
eventually that could happen. Eventually you could find some way

(21:57):
a friend knew a friend or something like that.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
What is the there's a parially east of El Paso
and Waco tanks? Is that? What is it Prey? What
is it Hawaco?

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Inces that's correct.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Have you seen that one that's a super that's.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
The one I described?

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, that is the one you described, well, one of them,
one of them? Yeah, yeah. How many species of plants
have you described?

Speaker 2 (22:19):
I don't know. There's quite a few, I guess, counting
chips of philes and uh yeah, Mexicum species and several
general I don't I don't keep up with that.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
And you wrote the flora of the trans peoples too, yes,
of course, yeah, which is a massive, beautiful tone. So
that parial Waco instance, What was the story with that?
How did you find that? How did did how did
you come across it?

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Just going places and looking in different rock formations?

Speaker 1 (22:51):
This good feel body, you knew, the habitat you knew, yeah,
oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
And it takes a while to get all all these
places and find things. But in several years, you don't
ever see everything any one time you go in the
field because are different climatic conditions at the time, different
flowering times and that sort of thing. So you learn
this through trial and arrow over periods of time.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Regarding the climatic conditions West Texas is, I mean, we're
in a drought right now. It's super dry, and it's
been You know, rains can be hit or miss. The
rainfall pattern here is really bizarre. Spring is generally always
pretty windy and dry, and summer monsoons are what the
region relies on. Hey, how have you seen the landscape
change since you've been here?

Speaker 2 (23:38):
It's getting drier And I don't know what else to
say about that. The landscape has changed because plants die.
And this is mostly in recent years in my experience anyway,
there are more juniverse, more invasive plants, more plants dying

(24:01):
in recent years, getting drier all the time. It seems
like it's just it's just an observation, it's not scientific.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Well, you've mentioned, I mean, large oaks dying, even juniper's
dying in some cases. I was talking with Deb yesterday
she had mentioned that, you know, even Koreosot's starting to
die in the park. I know, you know, rainfalls always
hit or miss, but this seems more like a prolonged
like a more prolonged rout. Right.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Of course, dryness has been going on for some time.
The Shewahen Desert has been moving north then expanding in territory.
If we if we wanted to look back fairly scientifically. Luckily,
we have some good, good data going back to since
the last ice Age, at least from packrat middens. And

(24:52):
this was done early on by a person from Kansas,
Philip Wells, and then he published a paper or two
on that, and he moved west a little bit. But
then that was really enhanced by Tom Van Devender you
mentioned a while ago in a specific epithet, who's a
famous botanist in Arizona, and he he did some early

(25:17):
studies and with back right middens in Arizona, Mexico and
here as well. So we have a lot of paleological
information from the middens, so we know what the We
have a good idea of what the conditions were like

(25:38):
eight eight, ten thousand years ago when there were woodlands
all the way south into Big Ben National Park, for example,
and then New Mexico. So we know it's been getting
dryer all the time.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, But in.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
We keep weather records like anybody does, I suppose, and
I've been keeping them since since the nineteen I suppose,
and it's and it seems it just seems that things
are getting drier, and it's it's pretty clear for the
last thirty years or more.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, and of course, I mean there were megadroughts in
the around twelve hundred, you know, whatever drove the Anisazi
out of their cliff dwellings or as likely to have.
So this is a I mean, this happens, but it's
certainly it doesn't spell. It doesn't. It doesn't look good
when you've got a large human population. Aquifers are dropping.
There's just way more human impact, and all the habitats

(26:30):
carved up to into development or non development or agriculture
whatever the pack rat middens, you know. I mean you
look at places like the Cheeseaus Mountains, which is a
sky island, or the Davis Mountains, another sky island, and
there's plants that grow there that don't obviously occur in
the hotter lowland areas, and then you start thinking, well,

(26:53):
how they get there? I guess it could be birds,
but it's more likely that there was a contiguous population
that occurred much lower down. And then, as you know,
the post place to see drying and warming, this stuff
starts moving up. I think that kind of stuff is
wild to think about, you know that watching a landscape

(27:14):
change over a few thousand years and then seeing these
clues that kind of hint at it. What regarding these skylands,
like the Cheeseos and the Davis, there's an you've obviously
probably done a lot of work in both those places.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
I've climbing around there.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yes, there's I mean you get our Beutis halapenses, which
is the you know, a madrone which you see in
Mexico and cloud forests and pine oak forests, and then
to see it here. I mean if I remember finding
two trees in this wash in a really really dry
area that were just remnants. They were large trees and

(27:53):
no seedlings, and they're hanging in there. Half of them
might be dead, but you see that and you really
start to think, wow, this is you know, what did
this place look like the thousand, two thousand years ago?
It's wild to think about the sky islands act Is refugia.
What are some notable species that that you find really
interesting and that you you know, would encourage people to

(28:18):
focus on in both the Cheeseos and the Davis. I mean,
you got archdol stapfelos pungings up there in the Davis Mountains.
I didn't I didn't even know that. I just found
that out our beautis these Oaksquircus rugosa, like really really
cool species that seem way out of place in West Texas.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
There are oaks and pines and the Arizona cypress Suda
sugar men cazi, which is Douglas fir. Yeah, that's in
certain places Douglas fur in the Guadaloupes and in the Cheeseos,
but not in the Davis Mountains for some reason. And
these are oliqual populations apparently, is it would seem anyway

(28:59):
from what data are available, so oaks and pines and
maybe some other things that aren't coming to mind.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Now.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
I've seen the arch estaphlis. It's in one big population
in the in the eastern Davis Mountains, and then it's
scattered around in another place or two in the Eastern
Davis Mountains, but maybe somewhere else as well. Yeah it
may it may have once been in the Cheesos Mountains,
but evidently it's not there now.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
I wonder, you know, with stuff like that, I wonder
how much divergence would be you'd be able to see,
you know, if you did like whole genome sequencing comparing
that population with one further south, and you know, saying
the way will lay one. You know, I guess it
would only be what twenty thirty thousand years divergence maybe,
What do you think?

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Well, evidently there is some of that going on or
has been going on there. I've noticed and say, in
the recent years, there have been some Ponderosa Pine experts
it has been doing molecular work with bond rosis, and
evidently there are some genetic differences between these populations, and
there's some early genetic evidence that there's more than one

(30:12):
genetic lineage in a Cheeseo's mountains alone. I've seen that
in a fairly recent paper.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
That's why.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
So I don't know that that's been followed up. And
a lot of the preliminary DNA work has been done
with chloroplasts, and some of that is fairly suspicious because
of the way chloroplasts may be inherited. Yeah, right is Yeah,
in chloroplast capture and through hybridization is also a possibility.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
It's a it's a cool thing to think about. It's
fun to think about because obviously the environment is still
selecting in even if it's only twenty thousand years divergence,
Like the environment in one place is selecting slightly differently
and the environment in another place. So I mean still
saying species just different ecotized. But it's really really interesting

(31:03):
stuff to think about. Regarding the Davis Mountains, What interesting
things have you found there or encountered there, because that's
a mysterious that's kind of mysterious area. It's really hard
to get access.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yes, it is. My first access was through the Davis
Mountain Resort, which is a development on the or sort
of on the southern slopes, and we could gain access
that direction anyway with a little secondary permission or two.

(31:38):
That's for the highest elevations at Mount Livermore anyway. So
there are some say I'm trying to think there's a
there's some rare oaks on the at the near the
top of Mount Livermore if there of course a southwestern
white pines are there. And what is that pseudostrobus uh

(32:00):
that is a pinas strubble offormis yes, yeah, And some
relitual populations of of populous tremuloidies that quaking aspen are there.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
That's wild.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Some high elevation salvias are there a viola uh, things
like that.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
What are the salvias that are out there?

Speaker 2 (32:26):
Salvia Arizonica comes to mind. Wow, a blue flowered salvia.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
And I assume there's all collections of this stuff in
the herbarium here.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, they have collections of all that.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah, do you.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
I guess I want to come back to this at
some point because the Sky Island stuff is really fascinating.
But the herbarium, I mean, this is I love this erbarium.
This is one of the best in Texas. The other
one is at Austin, the other large one. I guess
Alpaso has one. But herbaria are almost becoming an endangered
species themselves in some cases. I mean they're being closed

(33:00):
or you know. I know Rio Grand Valley UTRGV had one.
It was in what was essentially a janitorial closet and
a lot of the specimens were damaged. And I had
a friend who was working there scanning them. He's like,
I'm just digitizing them and sending him to Austin. We
got a grant to do this. I think the school
may have even maybe the school paid for it, and

(33:21):
I think it might have been a stepping stone for
them to be like, we've digitized it. Let it. You know,
who knows what happens to you whatever.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
What?

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, I guess what are some of the other good
or barrier in Texas? And what do you see? I
guess what's the importance of collecting plants?

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Oh? Plants or plant collections are fundamental in botany. Without them,
we were almost lost. We got to have the voucher
specimens for chromosome counts, for example, voucher specimens for DNA work.
They have to have the collections throughout populations to see

(33:59):
variation and populations before species can be understood and described,
or before we can know taxonomy or lineage of plants,
before we can know times of flowering and all kinds
of things that were happening back when they were when
they were first collected. The largest iberium in Texas is

(34:19):
at at brit Botanical Research Institute of Texas.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Oh wow, I thought it.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Was about over a million four specimens at brit.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Apologies to Brit, I forget to mention you been there before. S.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
The second largest siberium is at UT Austin. They're over
a million, well over a million specimens there.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
So it's I mean, obviously the importance of of of
herbaria is keeping a record phenological data, noticing phenological changes,
seasonality changes, and also I think with how much development
is going on in some of the higher population density
areas of this state, it's some of these populations might
not be around and even a decade or two they

(35:01):
might be wiped out. And so having a record, I
mean that upo me anti Cyphialitica from South Texas alone,
I've watched that population get destroyed for a solar farm.
I mean, that's a really unique species to be. You know,
that's and especially that it might be two species within
anti Syphilitica. Nathan Taylor was saying it's and he's right.

(35:21):
You look at the flowers on the South Texas population
compared with the West Texas population, they're completely different. Certainly
they probably weren't subspecies status and the rest of that
he mapped it out and was showing that the rest
of that South Texas Anti Syphilitica population is in Mexico
and now it's gone. So you know, they're the two
or barium records one I was able to collect are

(35:44):
the only remnants that show that species was ever there.
So do you do you see your barrier? Do you
see them as slightly threatened in the future.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
They're threatened in a few places because of financial problem,
but I think they're mainly threatened by people that take
care of them.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
M m.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
That's the most important thing.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
You need a good curator. I remember when I first
when I first came to this or Bury, it wasn't
been two or three years ago. You were very meticulous
about showing me how to handle them. You were like,
I'm gonna make sure this guy remembers and it was
pretty cool. So now I like, now it's in my
head too. Every time I'm in any herbarium, I'm like, Okay,
I make sure you stack it the right way, don't

(36:27):
mix them up, you know, don't sandwich anything that you
know belongs on top or on the bottom, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
So curators are that way everywhere.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, No, it's it's excellent. It's a high You gotta
have high standards with this stuff, man, So you you
really yeah, I mean, you encourage people to collect and press,
and then there's certainly an art to it too, which
is I love. I mean, that's what makes going in there, Buria.
There's nothing worse than seeing a collection that just looks
like a pressed salad, you know, or like a like

(36:57):
a bunch of leaves somebody accidentally sat on, separate them,
you know, and then yeah, Shirley's mounting is excellent as well.
I do want to mention though, I think you know,
for for especially for delineating species, are figuring out what speed.
You know, something's a certain genus, but you don't know
what species it is. That especially is where the herbarium

(37:19):
comes in to help. If you know you're new to
something and you want to get familiar with, you know,
like Onathra a. There's how many species of onathra used
you know some of them used to be? How many
species of Anatha in West Texas And you're you're you're
having trouble looking at the key whatever. Come to the
herbarium and and look at what's what.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
So when we're monographing general for example, if we started there,
what we do is we borrow specimens. We may have
all of them, we may be in the field doing
our own collections and that sort of thing, but we
always borrow specimens from other herbaria, and that's how we
get our populational information. You can't collect everything everywhere. There

(37:59):
have been collectors going on since well since we've occupied
North America, and so these are deposited in Herberia somewhere,
and so we know we know from historical records where
a lot of collections might be located in what Herberia.

(38:19):
So we intentionally borrow specimens, say of Paridley or Tridax
or Inauthra, if that's what we're working on, from other Herberia.
And so that's where we get our information to do
the descriptions and keys and other information that's necessary to
publish monographs of genera. So that goes on for all

(38:40):
kinds of taxonomic studies, whether it's a whether it's a
genus monograph or just doing a regional flora. We need
collections to do that work.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Photographs aren't enough.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Do you need a Photographs are never enough because distinctions
of most species are microscopic recognized vcs. After we know
what they are by gestalt, you know, by morphological characters,
by habit, by their appearance. We learned to recognize them,
but we didn't we learned we know that because of

(39:13):
the taxonomy that was involved previously. Yeah, you know, looking
at microscopic characters.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
So a compound scope and a good erbarium are absolute
essentials for.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Botany compound microscopes as well as dissecting microscopes. That's what
I use most is a dissecting microscope right there. Yeah,
so we have several in this herbarium, and we we
have a lot of visitors here and they we have
them available for use for visiting taxonomists or students.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Okay, so is everybody listening obviously, you know, collecting making
herbarium special herbarium vouchers very important. It's critical word. Okay.
So you've also done a lot of plant propagation too.
I mean, sewel Ross was really well well known for
greenhouse native plant sales. You guys were selling madrones for

(40:04):
a while. A lot of this stuff has really odd
germination habits, and you know, some people see as really
hard to grow. When did you get into propagating things?
And I mean this is a whole field we could
talk about you, but yeah, when did you start?

Speaker 2 (40:21):
I started growing plants when I first came to soul Ross.
We had a greenhouse here, an indoor greenhouse, believe it
or not, in a new building with nothing in it,
And so I really first started growing plants to use
in botany classes. So we would students would have living
plants in their laboratories to me a lot better than

(40:48):
charts and models. Yeah, so we were using living plants
as much as possible, So I'm talking in the vascular
and non vascular plants. We were growing liverworks and mosses
as well as flowering plants. And then one of the
main techniques and biosystematics monographic studies is growing plants the

(41:11):
use in gardens and greenhouses, especially for artificial hybridizations, because
experimental hybridizations are one way that one can determine relationships
the ease of crossing, for one thing, and then if

(41:31):
one does produce F one hybrids, then the fertility of
F one hybrids is a measure of relationship potentially anyway
between two between species. So attempted to make crosses between
the fifty some odd species of per Italy that I
was studying during those years, and then later on with

(41:52):
another genus, Flavaria. And then during that time, of course,
I was doing gypsum studies too, and trying to grow
gypsum plants and trying to find out what was going
on with that and other native plants because they're nice
in landscaping. And then about that time the landscaping booms

(42:15):
started happening in Texas and so in the you know,
in the the Austin area and Dallas Fort Worth area.
So we accelerated that here at so OSS and I'm
no horticultures, so I just do this by trialing error,
or did it by trialing era. And then we started

(42:38):
started growing all of the trying to grow all of
the woody plants in the trans Vegas just because to
learn how to grow them, for one thing. And then
we we luckily got new greenhouses. President built greenhouses for
us and for this kind of work and for the
taxonomic work we were doing here is the eighties. That

(42:59):
was actually in nineteen eighty that's correct, President Bob Richardson.
He built two state of the art greenhouses for us here.
And I also asked for a native plant demonstration garden.
And it's a small little garden out in front of
the greenhouses now and it just has a regular gorden
soil in it. And because plants in nature look different

(43:26):
or may look different than plants and cultivation, and so
we needed some way to demonstrate to the public that
was just becoming aware of the value of low maintenance plants.
And those with low water requirements in landscaping, and so
I wanted a place where the public could see what
the plants look like in cultivation. And of course they're

(43:48):
quite attractive, our native species, A lot of them do
have large flowers. They're very attractive and grow well under
most any kinds of conditions.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Incredible, Yeah, some incredible stuff, are it?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
So we did. We actually grew trees and all kinds,
and I had to remove some trees from a native
plant demonstration garden because they were crowding out everything. I
put them in the wrong place. We had about one
hundred species in there at one time, including some smaller
plants to somemall smaller perennials, and a few annuals that

(44:21):
we could put along a sidewalk because it was sort
of a decoration for their attractive flowers.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
I think it's a great context for place too. I mean,
I'm always promoting native plants in whatever region someone's in,
whether it's South Florida or New England, or California or Arizona.
But few places really show the practicality of native plants,
like desert regions, especially West Texas, like I still see
crape myrtles, they're all dead, but crape myrtles being planted,

(44:51):
and you know, and I'm just like, why We've got
such treasures out here. Why are you planting this big
box store garbage. And it's also not going to survive
to it from a completely different climate. The winds here
are insanity. Sometimes the drought here is insanity. You can
feel it on your fingertips and your skin. It's it's crazy.
But these plants are built for them. Some of the

(45:11):
what are some of the structural adaptations you find in
a lot of the plants that are native here to
deal with the climate.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Oh, oh, I'd have to go through a number of things. Well,
narrowing of leaves. Narrow leaves, pubescence, density of pubescence is
one thing.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Reducing leaf area or service.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Reducing of leaf area, yeah, or hairs, evaporation and fewer stata,
positioning of stormata, wax coatings on leaves. Yeah, and on candaliah.
You mentioned candalia a while back, Yeah, the candiliah wax plant.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Photosynthetic stems, I see that a lot.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, photosthetic stems exactly, root systems, the kinds of root systems,
the depth of root systems and spreading root systems as
in most cacta those kinds of things.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah, because most cacti have roots. I mean some may
form a taproot, but then they'll form roots that really
go out, go laterally to collect rain that may not
always pinet.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Usually shallow roots and spreading fibrous roots. That's correct.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Did you see I mean back then was there? I mean,
have you seen more of an interest than native plants?
Have you seen it growing out here?

Speaker 2 (46:31):
It's growing. Yes. The first entries came with people that
moved to the suburbs and maybe in one of the
first developed areas from a ranch west of Alpine. Those
people were interested in native plants and they came in
shopped for them from us. And then the the population

(46:54):
was because this is what people are familiar with. That's
why they grow plants they're familiar with and that they
knew from wherever they came from, and the ones that
are sold in stores and really available. But that's grown
tremendously in this area. There's a Native Flant chapter here
and that sort of thing, and we did it's also
establish a native flant propagation program, an official native flant

(47:20):
propagation program and association with biology. And that's been going
on since the late nineteen seventies here and it's still
going on at this school.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Yeah, I will, you know, I'll be walking downtown in
downtown Alpine and I'll see there's a couple of spots
where there's madrones in people's yards, you know, and like
the right microclimate that especially, I mean, people love that
that tree. It's got beautiful bark, it's related to blueberries.
It can be really hard to grow. It needs special
Michael Rise, it needs to have it at some point

(47:53):
then it's life encounter. But you really nailed down how
to do that, how to grow these from seed from
the little berries. There's two beautiful trees and the native
plant area behind the school and all the ones in
town I presume came from seol Ross. How did you
figure out how to get those things going? And what's
the method?

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Trial and error? Again? Well, I did a lot of
things in connection with madrones. For one thing, I collected
fruits from all kinds of places, from the Guadaloupe Mountains
through the Davis Mountains and the Cheezos Mountains and wherever
I could find them. Because of different ecotypes that we

(48:37):
know about different adaptations to drier conditions. Did the same
thing with pines and other kinds of plants, but with
the my drones we're talking about now, I also started
growing them different ways, collecting the seeds or obtaining the
seeds from the fruits, from planting seeds, and different kinds

(48:57):
of media, different kinds of conditions, just to see what
worked the best. And I too thought they needed some
kind of special soil conditions at the time that my seed.
Of course the microflora in the soil, and they obviously do,
but they don't need that they get started. But I

(49:18):
grew them in mulch that I collected from underneath madrones,
and soil collected from underneath madrones, and that sort of thing,
and ultimately I found out it makes no difference at
least in our greenhouses. In my experience. The key thing
is to there are several key things and growing madrones.

(49:39):
One of them is to make sure that you have
viable seeds in the first place, because certain conditions and
you may think that the berries that are produced have
viable seeds because they're berries, but not always. That led
to myth that still persists today that madrones produce low

(50:02):
viable seeds, you know, low viability, and my experience, if
they are pollinated correctly and the conditions are correct, they
are almost one hundred percent viable all the seeds. So
I've done that over and over again, you know, planning
a certain number of seeds to see how many germinate,

(50:24):
and one hundred percent. It happens many, many times. So
I separate the seeds by using my wife and her blender.
For large numbers of seeds. Anyway, so we put a
pretty good batch of fruits and blend them and break

(50:47):
up the fruits and then put them in a paper
bag and let them dry out and crack them up
and shuffle them up, and the seeds go to the
bottom of the sack. And so that's if you have
a large number of seeds and you can get the
seeds from there.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
You'll take the berries and put them in a blender
and then just but not for very long, no seconds.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Not at very high speed, but not with the idea
of grinding them as fine as possible, but breaking openness
the fruits. Otherwise, one can remove the seeds one at
a time, I suppose, and that's very laborious process.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
And the seeds look like kind of like orange slices.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Tiny little orange slices exactly. Rugos are wrinkled orange slices.
Under exacting microscope, one can easily discern viable seeds or
filled seeds anyway, those that have into sperm. So I
always also do that now. I mean, if I'm growing
them today, I take the time to look under a
microscope and separate seeds. It's still a time consuming process,

(51:48):
but it's you can plant the number of seeds you
want in the container that you choose to plant them in.
And then today we've evolved with containers for growing the seeds.
There were some containers that evidently were invented in the
Northwest for growing pines for reforestation, the long tubes, and

(52:11):
those are the tubes, right, they call containers. They were
called that anyway, and I guess they sell our call containers.
So we started ordering those and there I planted them
in seven inch containers and then discovered that that wasn't
a good size for them, because I'd like to move
them up to one gallon plots after they get established
and after they first developed, and in seven inch containers

(52:36):
the roots are too long and you can j root
plants easily in a gallon plot. That means curving the
roots at the bottom of the pot. Yeah, messes up
there oxens in the direction of growing roots. So anyway,
we use a short containers these days we call stubbies.

(52:57):
There are about five or six inches I forget the
exact length of them. Stubby, the stubby containers the yellow
in color, and we can put them in racks anyway,
growing them in those Why just use ordinary potting medium
that has fertilizer in it. And if there's no fertilizer,
I add Osmo coat after that came along. It's the

(53:18):
time release fertilizer. Watering plants and pots ultimately ultimately leeches fertilizers,
so they need to be fertilized, and the more you
water them, the more they need to be fertilized. But
you can overfertilize plants, and we don't do that with madrones,
and time release fertilizers like Osma coat prevents a lot

(53:40):
of leeching. You know, you don't have to water, you
don't have fertilized you don't have to use a liquid
fertilizer very often. Anyway, the key to growing madrones is
controlling the water in the plotting medium. And that's what
I've found. They tend to get fungal infections since they
have no root hairs. The water has to be just
right for these madrone seedlings to develop all the time.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
So there's a narrow window.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
You're working with, narrow window. And I use potting medium
without any kinds of heavy material in its. You know,
this is a well draining potting medium. And one can
tell how much water is in a container by lifting
the container. And that's just what I do. Anyway, you
can feel it. So I water when they're dry, not

(54:25):
too dry, I mean they don't let them sip dry.
But as soon as they dry out, I water them
thoroughly or water runs out the bottom, and don't water
them again until they dry out again.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
So just basically just see a water when they're.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
Dry, exactly.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
And it's the way it was to take care of
plants anyway.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
But some people like to grow a bunch of stuff
in the same pod, germinate the seeds in the same
pot and separate them later. You can't do that with
madrones obviously.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Right well you can, yes, one can, but better be
careful because their roots go to the bottom. Yeah, if
it's a shallow container, and then the roots go along
the bottom and you can't get the whole root system.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
When you're disturbing roots though, if their roots are all intertwined,
I mean, how do you avoid that?

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Well, it's hard, you can. You can't avoid it if
you're growing them together. And what the result is you
lose a lot of the plants that you transplant from
that situation. I've never liked growing plants together in flats
of any kind because of that. I started out doing
that frankly. I grew Arizona cypress that way. Yeah, and

(55:31):
then I would weightily got farewell established and separate.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Them and then just keep them in shade for two
or three weeks till their roots can grow.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Yeah. Well, they don't have to be in shade. They
have to have light, yeah, not to bright light, and
not light, not west light, not south or west light,
east east. I found that east light is a bit
in the greenhouse. I put the racks of the drones
in east windows.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Morning sun, morning sun, getting bright light when it's not
very when it isn't heated up yet.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
And they get light all day long, but it's they
don't get too hot.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
I think, yeah, So I think with this species especially,
it makes sense to just try to sell them individually
in individual pots in those tubes, and then just water
them whenever they try out.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Right, I use four or five or six seeds for kubby,
I mean stubby myself, because I frankly like the multi
stem madrones.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Yeah, and they can grow like that, they can.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Grow like that. They'll be fine, They'll be fine. And
all seedlings don't survive anyway, It's just a thing about
growing plants. Everything doesn't always survive, but.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
This species certainly is. I mean, madrones certainly are more
prone to fungal infection when they're young they are most
other plants. And it's you think that's mostly just because
of the lack of root hairs.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Or well, it's from the development. One must use sterile
potting medium. These fungi are developing potting medium from and
spores that come in are spores that are already there.
And so we start with sterol potting medium. It's supposed
to be stero and it's in a sack, but it

(57:11):
may not be. And of course one can heat it
if one wants to make sure they're sterilized. But I
don't do that. I think sterol potting medium and grow
them that way. I have used liquid fungicide before. I
don't like to do that. And the last madrones I grew,
I didn't use any fungicide. It's just stero potting medium.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
The soil is just I mean, it's just like a
peat based.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
It's peat based, but it has other ingredients in it.
It's it's a commercial mix. I just buy commercial mixed
potting medium as long as it's well draining.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah, I've never been I've never sterilized any soil.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
I don't really have to do that now.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
I do wonder about though, what I did. What I
have done is some of those I mean, I'm skeptical
of some of those Michael rhizol mixes. You can purchase
all thing. Some might be snake oil, who knows what
they're what their process is forgetting it. But some the
ones that are more reputable, I might get and take,
you know, mix it up and then take like a
And I've done this with pines too, even though it's

(58:09):
probably not necessary. Maybe it's a placebo for me, who knows,
But I'll take a meat uh injector you know, you
can get on Amazon for like injecting meat. It was
like a giant syringe and up. But the it's got
a large gauge tube's needle and then I'll just fill
it with Michael rhiselin and inject the soil. You know,

(58:29):
and who knows. I haven't done any tests obviously, that.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Sounds like a yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
I mean the spores are good, yeah, because you know.
I also I remember I was in the Davis Mountains
with Adam Black a few months ago and I was
doing the same thing you would talk about, trying to
collect the duff that you could see my celium on already.
I don't know if it was just the saprotrophic fungi
or my or Micae rhizol or what, but I was like,
what the hell it went? You know, why not? But

(58:55):
I was so desperate. But the deer. I had one
that I got from Sewel Raw and I was I
put it in the ground. It got to two and
a half feet tall. The minute I took the fence off,
the deer came nibbled it down. And then Dan Hostage
was telling me they don't come back after that. If
they're that young and they get they lose all their leaves.
They try to re sprout, and then the new leaves

(59:17):
just rot, which was really Again, I don't know why.
It's some discrepancy between the roots and the shoots. I
guess I don't know, but I was angry. Angry.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
I have found that half in this area. One must
protect madrones from herbivores until they get above the brows line.
That is, if if herbivores can get to madrone, that's
ain't number one good?

Speaker 3 (59:48):
Yeah, yeah, So I have them drone at home.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
I've grown several on my property, and I have them
in wire cages until they get to above the.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
What do what? The deer will avoid things like salvia
and obviously anything that's very pungent. Probably a lot of
composites they'll avoid too.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
If it's they're avoid certain kinds of plants, but not
very many. They try them out. If they don't mind
having stems broken off your salvis, they don't mind breaking
stems off my salvia or mary regulars, regulars at home
try them out and spit them out.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Have they always been like this in town where there's
just these massive deer herds?

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Oh, since I've been in Alpine and they've they come
and go from Hankock Hill.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah, it depends how what the rain is like.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
It depends on where they have something to eat. It's
like deer jumping on the highway rights of way and
there's more water running off the highway and so they
jump in to get some food there when it's when
it's sparse in the pastures. So they've been coming into town.
When I lived in town, I had three madrone trees
and my yard and some pines and some oaks, and

(01:01:03):
even if giants of quaria. As a matter of fact,
Oh really, two of them growing in my yard.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Yeah did they last?

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Somebody cut them down after I moved. Yeah, they were
there for years. They were tall.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
That's crazy. Yeah, I forgot that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Somebody brought me some seeds from California, so I had
to grow them.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Yeah, that would do well out here. Those things move
fast when they get there. Oh yeah, they've got water.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
A lot of plants grow faster than people think when
they get water. That's this desert plant. Desert plants love water.
They grow better when they get.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
And they always look so much better and native like
in a garden. That's the thing with native that's why
native plant currents are so important because you can create
such a great seed bank of things that you know
might not be doing well due to drought in the
region or you know whatever human impacts. But anyway, well,
I want to talk about gypsu fhiles too, because I
think that phenomenon is really interesting, especially to people who

(01:02:00):
may not know what that is. So gypsum is a
sedimentary marine rock. It's much more water soluble than limestone,
and it's you know, a remnant of you know, shallow
water estuaries, briny area, saltwater lagoons, whatever that were existing
you know, a long time ago, sixties seventy million years,

(01:02:22):
and it's throughout the Chyuai Want desert. You often get
gypsum with limestone. There's a lot of gypsum in West Texas,
and it's like serpentine in that it's a geologic substrate
that kind of induces speciation, like it selects for plants,
and so you get new plant species evolving that are
restricted to gypsum. When did you start getting into that

(01:02:43):
and what have you documented?

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Well, that goes back to until in the late nineteen sixties.
Actually I knew about gypsum plants before that, but point
we had we had a thriving Department of Biology and
lots of graduate students, and finding thesis studies for graduate students,

(01:03:08):
you know, projects, is an ongoing thing. And so at
one point I asked my professor Turner if he had
any good suggestions about possible thesis topics for graduate students.
And so he gave several suggestions about kinds of plants

(01:03:29):
and then mentioned gypsum plants. I said, well, I'll look
into that further. And I already knew about some early
studies by Ivan M. Johnston in Mexico. He was a
borad expert and he was doing some some of his
work and in the Boltsontimpai and from Drongo into uh

(01:03:51):
Suawan Koela in that area, and so he collected some
gypsum plants and wrote a paper about it. And then
another researcher that was in nineteen forty one, by the way,
and about nineteen fifty one another person sort of took
up what Ivan M. Johnson started in Oklahoma and south

(01:04:13):
southeastern New Mexico and in a little bit in Transpacos, Texas.
That's a ut waterfall. He was at University of Oklahoma
and Oklahoma stayed at different times, so he published a
paper in nineteen fifty one, so I had that to
go by, But and I knew where a lot of
the gypsum deposits were, but not all of them. So anyway,

(01:04:34):
we started looking around for them here and then we
started visiting the one at the Castian gypsum deposit Permia's
permian Age south of the Guadaloupe Mountains in Culberson County,
southeastern New Mexico. And then we started finding other gypsum
deposits in other areas in Culberson County and Husabeth County

(01:04:54):
and then ultimately farther south in the Transpacos and then
Mexico all the way to San Luis, pot to see,
and there are great gypsum deposits there. As you mentioned,
Quatro Cienegus is a famous place and with white gypsum
dunes like those in the southern New Mexico, and there
are white gypsum dunes in the Transpacus as well west

(01:05:16):
of the Guadalupe Mountains and where there are gypsum endemics
by the way, So anyway, I started visiting these areas
and encouraging students to go with me. We even developed
a class called field taxonomy and field botany here, and
so I took students to these areas and we did
sort of class studies of using the situation the endemism

(01:05:43):
and gypsum habitats. One can go from say the Castian
deposits twenty thirty miles away over the Delaware Mountains and
north of Van Horn and find different species that have
been selected for on that gypsum deposit I go to
another place, say in Mexico, twenty miles away, fifty miles away,

(01:06:04):
one hundred miles away, at different gypsum deposits and on
different different gypsum floras. So we started collecting the plants
on these different gypsum habitats and doing papers about that.
And then I started collaborating with Billy Turner again about that,
and he started doing a lot of gypsum studies in
Mexico as well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
So you guys were probably finding a ton of new species.
I mean this all over the place, high levels of
diversity and endemism. And what's a relatively small geographic area
a few hundred miles right, What were some of the
most exciting ones you found that were just, you know,
really fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Oh well, there are a number of them. What's coming
to mind right now is something that came to mind
fairly recently when I was doing another project. I remember
four species from one Jurassic gypsum deposit between Ohinaga and
Shuaha City. Yeah, in in Chihuahua, about halfway there, close

(01:07:04):
to the to a lake there, Lake Lee Lewis leon
Forresa Granero, the dam. Uh. There was a Galordia species there.
There was a prickly poppy, our jeminy species there. There
was a dermatic phillim species there. Sephora used to be Sephorah,

(01:07:27):
a mountain laurel species. Uh, sort Wellia composite species in
a small area there. All endemics, all endemics there and
the only place they occur on Earth today as far
as we know. Uh, the Dermatophillum gypsophalom occurs there. We
named we named all of them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
The Gaylordia were named it Turneri and it actually the
our gemeny is named our Geminy Turnery after Billy's wife
sort Willia.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
Is Is there any protection for that area so far
as you know?

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
No, No, it's not, as far as I know. Gypsum
is mind as you know, for plaster and plasterboard, it's
a commercial product. In cement, it's a commercial product. And
so where we found the the what became it was
for at the time, the demount of film was in

(01:08:27):
an area that was being mined at the time. I
have no idea if it's still there. Maybe it is
and maybe it isn't. But the Mexican botanists are getting
better and better all the time, and they're really concerned
with conservation, like like we are here great botanist in Mexico,
and and they're doing conservation work all the time, doing

(01:08:49):
good DNA studies and that, and so they're quite aware
of all these things. Quadras hasn't been very well protected,
but it's that's because there's water there and that's the
problem there, I think. But they're all aware of that
and trying to protect all of those things.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
Now there's a what is that weird lofa for that's
freaky I for ci that's around that area, isn't it.
But that's not a gypsum endemic.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
I don't know if that I know of anyway. Yeah,
I wasn't much in the Kectie at the time. But
I should have been, but I wasn't. Yeah, you certainly
got yeah, because there's so many different kinds of here.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Yeah. But going back to the gypsum endemics, I mean,
from what I know, there's a gypsum endemic a gave
down in Wahaka. There's I mean this, yeah, this is
these exposures go far north to south, from Albuquerque all
the way down to well Haka. The some of the
traits I've noticed, especially in the more arid areas. That's
the other thing is, Yeah, gypsum is normally it's almost

(01:09:51):
always in arid regions where because otherwise it would just
be washed away. But the traits that you find in
a lot of these they're almost white. They're like a
much more pubescent dwarfed a little bit. I imagine it's
probably pretty stressful growing on some of these deposits, not
a lot of nutrients. What do you think it is

(01:10:13):
that makes growing on gypsum so stressful and causes these
new species to evolve that require new adaptations.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Well that there are gypsum deposits all over the world,
as you know, and there are a lot of them
in this area that have been exposed by erosion, and
I guess they're still eroding a little bit. But there
have been quite a few studies since my time anyway,
of people looking into those questions you ask, and I
don't think they're completely answered yet. In my experience, plants

(01:10:45):
grow there because of the structure, and they're selected not
because of the calcium sulfate that's in gypsum, but because
of the structure of the gypsum habitats. That seems to
be a restricting factor. There could be minerals as well,
different kinds of mineral situations. That's a very good question

(01:11:07):
why they're restricted there. So they're exposed at different times,
and theoretically caedes are dispersed by some mechanism for related species,
so they've managed to get to another exposed gypsum habitat
where they can grow and other pants are selected against.
And there are plants that grow strictly on gypsum, those

(01:11:29):
that grow on gypsum and elsewhere. They're called gypsum vags.
Now we call them facultative gypsyphiles in my time. And
then there are those that never grow on gypsum. And
as you've pointed out, the distinction between a gypsum deposit
sometimes is like drawing a line on the floor. It's

(01:11:52):
very stark, very stark, and so a gypsyphile will be
on one side of the line and non gyps of
else would be on the other side line. I've seen
that often in Culbersom County, for example, where that permium
gypsum is located. The kalia hispoedisima grows on gypsum and
nowhere else in.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
My experience, Nama Carnosa too.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Nowma Carnosa exactly. It's another good one there.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
And some of these some of these deposits just look nuts.
I mean they look like just bright white. You could
see them from a satellite. Uh, you know, the texture
of concrete, like poorly mixed concrete when it's dry, like
very rough. It's a really interesting phenomenon. I think things

(01:12:38):
like that, especially when you point that out. The people
who may not be interested in the in bodany initially,
they see that and they're some of them find it
so confounding and cool and fascinating that they you know,
it's that you could see their eyes light up a
little bit. They're like this there. Really, I had no
idea that this kind of phenomenon occurred.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
They were gyps gyps and sites were neglected by botanists
in the past, probably because they look like they're practically
devoid of vegetation for most of the year. When it rains,
they light up like most areas do, and then if
a botanist happened by, they were collected, probably, but they
were generally very undercollected. That's why we found lots of

(01:13:21):
undescribed species there.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
I think what you said, most of the annual callists
are gypsophiles, right, that's correct. There's maybe what a few
that grow off of it, but most you find.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
Are in deluted gypsum, and there are some that grow
in a kind of a clay e gypsum that actually
we sort of realized was a true gypsophile kind of habitat.
In this area there are gypsies clays and the southern
Big Bend area of Cretaceous age where there were selenite
crystals are quite obvious there, and there are gypsophiles in

(01:13:57):
the clay, and some of those are any the calls species.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Like like Agua Fria. Would that be a good That's a.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
Good example where those gypsies clay occur.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
There's a slea down there too.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
There's a Stanleia there and they they're sort of a
marginal gypsyphile. Stanley Is it's known for absorbing selenium and
is known as an uranium indicator.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
In Utah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
There's such a thing as geological prospecting, and I got
into some of that too because it sort of interests me.
There are certain plants that are indicators of minerals, you
know that that miners are interested in, like gold and
silver and cinnabar and all kinds of other things.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
That's wild nickel, Yeah, yeah, nickel, all kinds of things. Yeah.
The that area agm Havardia. Is that a gypsyphile, that
little cushion there.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
It's a it's a questionable gypsyphile, but it occurs in gypsum,
but it occurs in the high a diluted gypsum gypsum
habitats as well, but it is restricted by something and
that area, as is the carrier recipes.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Right. God, it's such a that is such a unique
area from Botany too.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
It's so it is, and we revisit that all the time.
One of our gypsyphiles was discovered there. It was a gypsyphile.
You know this one too, the pseudo Clappya Watsonia. Yeah,
it was described from a Husbeth County in a ging
gypsyis class and as far as we knew, it was

(01:15:37):
restricted there until it was found at that Alla Fria
site and one little place there.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
It's just that's how big. It's a small population.

Speaker 2 (01:15:48):
It's a very small population there. But we found it
again recently Kelsey Wogan and I did in big the
National Park. So it's it's a as a further reach
than we knew.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
Well that there's another you guys found on the population
that one was there.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
Yeah, well not just recently the last. Every time we
go somewhere we find something new potentially or find something
interesting anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Yeah, that that spot, the one I'm thinking of, is
really really cool. There's really cool bad land formations, petrified
wood everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
And it needs to be revisited time and time again.
We also found a actually and it's fairly invasive grass species.
It wasn't known for the Transpacus uh in that that
habitat is that one of the drainages. It's a let
me think of the name, it's Andropogona. It'll come to

(01:16:44):
him in a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
Was it from where? What's the origin? Africa?

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Well, it's a I'm not sure if its origin, probably,
but it's all over Texas and South Texas. But it's
most it's most closely known distribution prior to this was
in Valverde County. It's not a very large range extension,
but it is with all we knew all the grasses
in the trans Vegas. But it's a large grass too.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
It's not a large range extension.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
Now what it could be, Well, I doubt if it's
going to occur anywhere else. It must be restricted to
those gypsum sites.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
It's the other plan I want to ask you about
to Castilla Stewarty, which used to be what was that
Hollacantha start that's a.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
Really Olacantha stewarty it used to be and now it's castilla.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
That's a unique one. Is that Would you say that's rare?

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
I would say it's rare, yes, But it's widespread in
this area. At least it occurs in Shafter and uh,
it occurs at all Freea where you were talking about,
occurs in big Ben National Park, and it probably occurs
at Black Gap. I don't know why I wouldn't, but
I'm not sure it's been found.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
There is that a limestone endemic or no?

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
Well it no, it occurs in mixed deets as well.
The Courson Volcanic Habitat and Big b A National Park.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
Those plants that are limestone endemics, like Concilius koposa or
I mean a kind of cactus Warzantalonius has generally thought
as that too. What do you think it is about
limestone that makes those plants restricted to just the chemical differences,
the pH levels I mean, obviously very different from volcanic
But that's a really interesting phenomenon.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
It's all.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
That's an interesting question about all edaphic endemics. I don't
think we know from Serpentine on through the things that
you've mentioned. Evaculate in a marathon basin and a few
other places.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
Oh yeah, that's another cool west Why they're there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
There should be nothing in that Devonian silicious material that
can be absorbed by plants. Maybe there is something, but
it's probably structure. Again, I'm just guessing. Of course, there
are several species of cacti that are in there and
nowhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:18:59):
Let's talk about that and novaculate because that's a those
those exposures are only found in a few areas in
West Texas, I guess. I mean they occur in other
regions too, but in West Texas it's not somewhat limited.
And that's another case of adaphic nimism. How many species
you get that are a daphak endemics you can think

(01:19:19):
of all.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
In evaculate, Yeah, I think about six or seven cactus species.
There's a Peronicia carryoflesi Pera, Nikia Wilkinsonia, I think, And
there are probably others that are not coming to mind
right now, or we may not even know about because
we really haven't botanized and evaculated as thoroughly as it
could be.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
It kind of serious. The vidya is that it vitii
and uh Escobaria minima.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Escobaria now Pelisiphora minima unfortunately. Yeah, that and Hesteri. You
mentioned that or did you? No?

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
I didn't, I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
Hester I supposedly was an endemic there, but now we
found it on another place on the on volcanic soil too,
just over the hills.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Yeah, I think I've seen it. I've seen that that
spot is that off Longfellow.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Maybe, Well, no, it comes over the hill on ignoist
material south of Alpine, about ten or twelve miles curs
on my property there as a matter of fact.

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
Oh wow, there's a yeah, there's there's It seems like
there's a lot to be discovered out here. It just
requires access to the land. That's great, making friends with
the landowner or ownership changes, and maybe someone's you know,
more amenable to letting botanis on to look at things.

(01:20:39):
Do you what do you think there's I noticed that
there was from what I hear, there was a certain
decade at which fear of letting people on your land
became more prominent. Was that after Endangered Species Act? Or
when did the flavor kind of change?

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
And my experience it was after the Endangered Species Act?
And and of course the venters I think had some
reservations about having rare things discovered because they might be
controlled by the federal government. That's the sort of the
word I get.

Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
Anyway, But that's not a reality.

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
At least endangered species don't jump fences, and so the
rules are different, the federal and the state rules.

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
The dangered plant species versus.

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
And animals are different from plants, and so there is
no problem in dangered species, but there's just the same
I think there's a fear of that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
The fear remains that, yeah, a lot more guarded. So
you saw people becoming a lot more guarded about access
after that, whereas before because a lot of these private
parcels are huge and people may not even live on
them or anywhere near them, and so you know, yeah,
prior to that, I could them being like, sure, go out,

(01:22:01):
you know, just after establishing a certain sense of trust.
But then I guess what was in dangered species like
early seventies Nixon.

Speaker 2 (01:22:10):
I think nineteen seventy three if I remember correctly.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
Yeah, now, but you've probably seen it's probably been a
lot harder to gain access to some of these places.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
Now, Yeah, early on too, I started trying to locate
all of those supposedly rare species in the Transpacus. After
I became provincial enough to have to concentrate on this area.
Didn't have the money to go all over from grant support.

(01:22:40):
So one of the things I like to do is
try to find out the distributions of all and the
localities of all of the supposedly rare or nearly rare species.
So it was fun looking in the field for those,
but you still couldn't go everywhere. I could do a

(01:23:01):
lot of work in BigMan National Park because you could
get permits there from the government, and in state parks
we could go there.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
What are what were what are some species that would
be good, you know, to put on a bucket list
if anyone's ever able to get access that, you know,
you would be curious about, like I wonder if that
population is still extent, or if it's how it's doing whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
Well, I said, if you knew where they were, that's
one of the main problems. So I don't know what
to say to answer that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
So a lot of these the distribution is just not
fully Yeah, the.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Distribution isn't known and just as just as taxonomy isn't
well known in some areas, because we know that distributions
of some species are very restricted. M like the one
that was recently discovered, right, yeah, well we'll get tourculate

(01:24:01):
by radiator.

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
But it sounds like there's big there's big blank parcels
on the map for some some of these distributions. There
very well could be range expansions.

Speaker 2 (01:24:14):
That's definitely true.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Other unknown populations, that's just there's no access, there's no
way of knowing they're there, and.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
We've we've documented that in some cases by but access
we didn't have before. For example, a few ranches. There
is a ranching in the Big Band area south of here,
south of Alpine, where there is there is some access
now from the from the ranching conglomerate, and we've been

(01:24:44):
able to do some botanizing there fairly recently.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
There was another species of composite discovered a few years ago,
a population uh down there right, what was that was it?

Speaker 2 (01:24:59):
It was actually no from Mexico before that. It's a
Mexican species on the Kueva Nueva Leoned Khela border in
that area. Highly restricted species, and it was collected in
nineteen twenty nine by a ranch foreman on that ranch
who collected plants. We have thousands of his collections in

(01:25:20):
this heerberium. It was a ranch foreman and twenty eight
in the twenties and early thirties collected fossils and all that.
He was interested in plants, so he made two plant
collections of this platy limit Palmerum. They're in this herberium,
but we didn't know what they were never heard of

(01:25:40):
plaidy Limo Palmer myself. So when Billy Turner was working
in the Herberium he came to those, he didn't know
what it was either, so he took them to Austin,
where they have a wide collection of Latin American plants,
especially Mexican species, and he found out what it was.
And of course then we knew where it exists here,

(01:26:01):
but we didn't have access, so we all looked for
it along the road for a number of years. This
is one of the stories I could.

Speaker 3 (01:26:09):
Tell, never found it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
Every time I went south, we Shirley and I we
would jump out and I would walk a distance here
there I hadn't walked before looking walk on the road side,
walking the roadside because exactly that's where we do a
lot of botanizing, because the same plans that occur across
the fencer on the road side usually so so that's
where we do a lot of botanizing. And the water

(01:26:35):
is better there anyway, because it runs all the pavement.
So I would look there forever and ever never found it.
So one day, this is part of the story. The
Range Animal Science Department had access to this this this
ranch doing some range vegetation and a range range work

(01:26:58):
there and other kinds of experimentals things they were doing.
And a graduates didn't walked in here, and what happened
to know who he was because we'd met before and
he was interested in plants and he was doing a
transact for this person that was doing range research there.
So in a little paper towel, wet papertail, he had

(01:27:19):
this plant and he opened it up and I've recognized
it immediately, his platy limba palm rod.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
I've been the one. It was the one you've been
looking for exactly eighty years.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
God, it was unknown eighty years. So that's an interesting
little story. So then he started looking around and we
were luckily invited to join him on this ranch, and
we looked on throughout a lot of the area anyway,
and found that it's quite abundant there, but it's highly
restricted to one soil type on that ranch. So it's

(01:27:52):
another edaphic endemic. What is it to limestone, Well, it's
it's not it's not rocky, but it's a it's a
elementary deposit of a certain kind. And I don't know
that much about soils. It has a name you know,
the soil scientists have a name for it, and that's
I think it's posted on I'm just on a poster
oute in the hall. There was Chris Jackson who made

(01:28:17):
you rediscovered that a graduate student here.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
At so was he a botanist or just arranged signce
he was.

Speaker 2 (01:28:22):
Doing a range science experiment. They wound up doing his
thesis concerning that platy Limo Palmer, though his chromosome number
was unknown and the whole kinds of thing. Actually, we
knew the chromosome number before we've re located it here
because new Mexico botanist Rich Spelenberg came across it in

(01:28:44):
Mexico and collected buds in Mexico and brought them to me,
left him on the table right there on the table
because he had to go back to Los Crusis. So
I got a count from his buds, and so we
already knew the chromosome number from Mexico. But it's the
same thing here.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Did they do you guys publish a paper on this?

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
Well it's published, yeah, yeah, and a new new.

Speaker 1 (01:29:08):
Populations that are rediscovered yep.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
That's Paturner published that, and because he knew what it
was in the year two thousand and then the chromosome
number is published in a different paper.

Speaker 1 (01:29:20):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
And then and so information about that. Chris Jackson, as
far as I know, hasn't published his thesis.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
Wow, that's wild though, eighty eight years lost.

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):
It's there are many things yet to be found.

Speaker 1 (01:29:36):
Did you guys try growing that one from seed?

Speaker 2 (01:29:38):
Yeah? It grows from seed. It actually has a very
long route and it goes very deep in alluvial soil.

Speaker 1 (01:29:45):
Okay, so that's that might be one. It's restricted to that.

Speaker 2 (01:29:48):
Yeah. Very soon after that, I found it roadside too.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):
Yeah, I trying to find there. I found Paganam Mexicanum nearby.

Speaker 2 (01:29:58):
Paganam Mexican Kingdom locale. It's across the fence from there, Okay,
but it's farther up the road. Well, it's right there too,
and I'll give you further directions where you can find
a couple of plants.

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):
It's further Mexican.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
Well, it's the better population that we found ultimately at
roadside was further north from the Paganum locality. But we
also finally located it thanks to Kelsey's good eyes. Close
to that Piganem Mexicanum locality right adjacent to it. In fact, Wow,

(01:30:37):
I'll give you some directions.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Okay, yeah, I'll be kidding.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
But it's the rain first. Yeah, hopefully it didn't even
show up last year.

Speaker 1 (01:30:45):
It's been Is this the worst? Is this the driest
year you've seen since you've been there? One of them?
Or what?

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
Everyone seems drier than the other. But right now I
would say, yes, you know there are there are desert
plants that are dying all over.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
Yeah, okay, So I think it's fitting for the end
of the conversation here to talk about this new composite
species that was discovered last year. I mean it's only
been known to science for a year oviculate by radiata,
which you actually have already grown from seed. You successfully
grew it. I think that's interesting too. What do you yeah,

(01:31:22):
what would I mean, You've been here for so long
you to still think that there's new species out there
to be described, especially in a national park which you
would assume has already been thoroughly surveyed. What did you
think of that?

Speaker 3 (01:31:39):
Well?

Speaker 2 (01:31:39):
I thought it was remarkable, predicted, predictable that there would
be new things discovered. I even told her that that
manly when we were dealing with the white flowered kind
of serious a while before. But yeah, that's that's a

(01:32:00):
remarkable find and a remarkable discovery.

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
And it's it's so unique too. I mean, it's it's uh,
you know, sunflower family ast racy. It's only got anybody listening.
It's got these Really it's a really wooly plant, as
you would expect from a limestone desert area, and it's
got only two to three ray floor its per head,
so like these, and they look like these long what

(01:32:26):
someone who doesn't know about the sunflower family intricacies might
think is just a pedal, but two or three of
these long, candy cane striped rays that are almost twice
as long as the flower head coming out of these heads.
It's really weird. It's a really bizarre plant.

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
And not only is it restricted and distribution, and it's
remarkable for that reason, but as you just said, it's
a remarkable discovery for the whole family pastor racey because
of its position.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
And came up close to silostrophy.

Speaker 2 (01:33:01):
Closest to p ssilostrophy, that's correct, but not really close
to silostrophy, and so within that subtribe of composity. It's
an unusual discovery, and of course there's remarkable morphology as well.

Speaker 1 (01:33:20):
Is are there any guesses or has anybody talked about
how how long ago it might may have diverged from ssilostrophy.

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
I think we've all guessed about that, I think, and
of course Isaac lictor Mark has a good idea from
the DNA sequencing data that it's primitive, but how long
it's always hard to tell. I think we need to
be sure about other distributions or distributional rangees, because it's

(01:33:51):
it's so inconspicuous that and it's a it's a winter
blooming femeral, a very delicate annual apparently judging from its
root system, we have real short, slender, little root that
moodanists are not out at that time of year, looking

(01:34:13):
around very much and little. As you mentioned already, it's
very small and wooly, covered with hair, whitish and resemble
seedlings of many other wooly plants, plants that have a
lot of pubescentce wooly pubescence in the Shuahuan dead northern
Chiwuahuan does it region.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):
It's weird that a blooms in winter and this is
not normally a winter rainfall area.

Speaker 2 (01:34:40):
It's not, but even though it rains a little bit
or snows are used to at least in the fall
late fall and in the winter as well. Sometimes pretty
good snowfalls in February in the rain in February. But
we have other winter blooming species here as far as
I can remember, all of them are perennial, but they

(01:35:00):
bloom in the winter, and we're poorly known too until recently.
There's a cactus variety that occurs in blooms in February
as well. What is which one is that ancestral cactus
sclero cactus depending on your terminology me to rerevia Mattis
variety pallida, which we described.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
Here, and it's got white flowers or as.

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):
White flowers, and it's a limestone endemic apparently, but it
occurs in minute to vaculate as well.

Speaker 1 (01:35:29):
Wow, how rare.

Speaker 2 (01:35:31):
It's widespread, and it's difficult to say how rare it
is because of that, but it's one rarely encounters it
in limestone. It seems to be quite rare, s put
it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:35:46):
So it's got a broad distribution, but it's just sporadic
or what sporadic and the white flower do you think
that's a Is that some sort of special specialization towards
moths or is it?

Speaker 2 (01:35:57):
That's always a good question. It's it's some and a
genetic accident. Of course it was selected for and why
It's always hard to determine, but that that makes sense
to me, both of those things.

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
Is it a night bloomer do you know?

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):
No, it's not a night bloomer as far as I know,
And we have grown it too from seed and I've
I've looked at it and watched it. But cratypuscular activity.
It could be it could be involved with moss. I
don't know. But it's relatives are yellow flowered mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
I've always wondered about that. Why certain flowers or certain
plants will have the majority of their population, you know,
a color, and then there's this, you know, phenotype that
pops up that's white. It's like, what it's what selects
for that? I mean, I could just think of moths,
but maybe there's other things selecting for it too, who knows?

Speaker 2 (01:36:48):
Yeah, or maybe there is no. It could still be
an accident and it could be persisting for no selective reason.
So it's it's always difficult to say that that we can.
We know a lot of instances where certain things seem
to be true. But there are a lot of white
flowered individuals and populations of all kinds. I was looking
into that recently in connection with some other things that

(01:37:12):
we were doing, including a white flowered strawberry patalia. One
white flowered strawberry patalia when thousands, tens of thousands of
individuals are always deep magenta in color, and so there's

(01:37:32):
all those betaline pigments are present or else they it's
a it's a it's an accident, it's a I hate
to call it a mutation, but it's a phenotype thing there.
And it has more than one pigment in there too,
probably so it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:51):
May hop up, but it doesn't become dominant in the
population lesson I select for it. So I do want
to get back to a vicula. But before I forget,
I want to talk a little bit, just a little
bit on moth pollination, because there's a lot of moth
pollination in the Chihuahua desert, which I think is fascinating.
Salvia white housey eye. Have you noticed I've seen that

(01:38:11):
getting pollinated by sphinx moths.

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):
Oh really, I have not seen that.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
Manda villa. What is that out here? No, macrosciphon mana macrocyphone.
There's a ton.

Speaker 2 (01:38:22):
Yeah, there's several of them actually, all.

Speaker 1 (01:38:24):
The onantheras, all the nicktags. It's a really have there
been many people studying that.

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
Siphon and gloss. There are people who study that and
I don't know enough about.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
It too, but I mean people coming through sewel Ross
who studied it or hads.

Speaker 2 (01:38:42):
No, not in not far as I know, not specifically that,
but people who do come here and visit here and
visit the herbarium study those kinds of things.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
There's a menadora including.

Speaker 2 (01:38:52):
The caterpillars, you know the product of these moths.

Speaker 1 (01:38:54):
Yeah, the menadora. There's a moth pollinated menadora. That's laundrifa
flora acua xanthees. Uh what amsonia?

Speaker 2 (01:39:04):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):
So much good stuff? Okay, anyway, okay, so let's get
back to Well, that's like a whole podcast on its
on its own. Yeah, it seems insane to touch on
it for but I just wanted to put it out
there to get in people's brains so this so viculous.
So you grew this too. The seeds are tiny on
this new species, but really really small. Correct need a
dissecting sculpt to look at them. What what did you know?

(01:39:30):
I mean, I'm amazed that you were able to not surprised,
but amazed you were able to grow this. What was
your method? What do you what? Do they seem to need?

Speaker 2 (01:39:39):
Just the usual method for me is fotting medium, try
several seeds. Of course, what I did first was to
get filled the kenes or sipsila, that's the fruits of
a composite, and the seed is a single seeded fruit
on the inside of the kene, so we can call
them seeds just for and if they're filled, then you

(01:40:04):
can assume that they're fertile and should germinate. But they
may not be fertile just because they're filled, so they
have to test that. And these winter annuals logically could
require a cold season to overcome dormancy, and for that

(01:40:25):
we do coal stratification and I use just refrigerator temperatures
to substitute for formal coal stratification, lack in a potting
medium and under chill temperatures. So that seems to work
for a lot of navy plants. So I did the
usual thing there, there's nothing extra. But I did plant

(01:40:49):
several seeds in several pots before any of them germinated,
and all the time they were in the refrigerator. So
the coal stratification or the refrigerator temperatures after about three
months seemed to be more effective. It could just be
an artifact of time. I have no idea, really, But
then I got a pot to germinate with about seven seeds.

(01:41:14):
I put about maybe ten, I don't remember, and some
of them damped off right away. It's as though the
little tiny radicals couldn't penetrate the substrate.

Speaker 3 (01:41:26):
That's the way it looked.

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):
And of course I'm growing these at home in a
window sill where I could look at them as often
as necessary, and at ease facing window exactly southeast. Well
not even a greenow. They just loved that early morning sun.
Almost everything does. So anyway, four of them finally survived,
four of the little seedlings, and one grew faster than

(01:41:50):
the others, and others three and then the one quickly overcame.
We'll say two of them established very nicely and pretty
good sized plants. And the third and fourth were lagging behind,
but probably crowded out and shaded too much by the
larger plants. But I had four plants originally, and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:13):
And so when you were cold stratifying these was it
Were they in soil or just just bare seeds.

Speaker 2 (01:42:19):
In a in paper And actually it's quite envelope envelopes.
We used to put seeds always in paper, but in
a refrigerator. I put them in a plastic bag as
if lock and I don't zip it shut in case
if it don't want water to accumulate. But it protects
them a little bit in the paper from the cold

(01:42:40):
temperatures and keeps them a tiny bit moist or moist.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
It's alister. You want them to be a slightly moist,
not wet, but moist, and that helps with the cold.

Speaker 2 (01:42:52):
If I were doing real colt ratification with wallets, let's
say native wallets, I would put them in the maybe
a tray and potting medium, moisten the potting medium, and
put them in a refrigerator and they would if you
didn't get the mouth, they'd probably germinate for very long. Yeah,
under those conditions. The moisture, so just.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
Three months in a paper envelope in the fridge, and
that seemed to work well.

Speaker 2 (01:43:18):
That worked for these and it could be that they
would have maybe those particular ones would have germinated. Anyway,
this is not scientific, you know, we would do trial
and error and both kinds of things. But that's that's
just a standard thing that I do, is called stratification,
so that I call it anyway in the refrigerator because
it's required for so many of our natives. Anyway, up

(01:43:41):
they came, and I do have a few more seeds,
so I'll try try it again.

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):
And then you could probably get seeds off the one,
this one that you've got growing now too.

Speaker 2 (01:43:51):
Well, if you have two plants. But also found out
by growing them that they're self incompatible. And we didn't
know any of the biology about Ovicula by radiator because
it was, as you noted, it was discovered in March
March second by this remarkable pork volunteer, and and so

(01:44:17):
there was no in it. Right away. It got very
hot and dry in its habitat, and it started messing
right away, and before long it was gone, and there
was just nothing left of it except the wooly little
balls that were present there, and so we know, but
nothing biological about it, you know, it's it's life history.

Speaker 3 (01:44:40):
How did we know that much?

Speaker 1 (01:44:41):
How do you think? Because that pod that I saw,
there's what four individuals in there? How'd you figure out
it was self incompatible?

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
There was only two plants in flower at the time,
and something has to pollinate them, or something has to
pollinate them, you know, like an insect of some kind.
But there are no insects as far as I know
in my window cell. And what I did was take

(01:45:11):
the older plants, the older heads of the plants that
had been there long enough to develop the fruits, and
look in the heads. There are seven of them, I think,
and not a single seed developed. At the same time,
I also crossed some of the two plants that were

(01:45:36):
in flower and mark them with reds, which is a
habit I used to do to mark things. That's one
good way to mark them, tie a thread around the
head or around the peduncle of the head, so way
I did with prittlies and other composites. But these were
too small to do that, so it was not an

(01:45:57):
absolutely correct kind of thing. And then later, as a
matter of fact, just less than a week ago, I
picked those heads, and I haven't examined them yet, so
we can find out if they can be artificially crossed
that way.

Speaker 1 (01:46:12):
What were you using to artificially cross them?

Speaker 2 (01:46:15):
I rubbed the heads together. Okay, there are all kinds
of ways to do it, the brush or any kind
of thing to get pollen from one to the other
and put them on the stigmas of developing disc flowers.
So anything that works for that.

Speaker 1 (01:46:30):
Are the marginal floorrets, because the marginal floorts are just pistilate, right.

Speaker 2 (01:46:35):
The marginal floorits are pistolate, two or three of them,
and they two are fertile. They're pistelate and fertile. And
I could determine that from the original material that we
had to describe write a description for the species.

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
And the disc floor its are hermaphroditic but fertile. Correct.
And so these seeds, I mean that one growing now
might be the only one in existence at this very
dry time of year.

Speaker 2 (01:47:02):
So far as we know, the only they're the only
plants living today, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (01:47:07):
That's not in seed form, right, The rest are just.

Speaker 2 (01:47:10):
Not in seed form, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (01:47:12):
I wonder how long the seeds if some of these
can live.

Speaker 2 (01:47:16):
It's a good, good question we need we'd like to
find that out, of course, and we can do it
experimentally given a little time. But logically, you know, just
from other kinds of composites, these seed coats are very thin,
so I expect fability is not very long, maybe a
year or two or three or four.

Speaker 1 (01:47:35):
Because I normally think it doesert plants having very long
lived seeds.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):
But they do, and especially if they have fairly thick
seed coverings. There's more than just being you know, there
are different kinds of dormancy, of course, and one of
the most effective in these desert climates is mechanical dormancy
through thick sea sick seed coats. All of our legumes
have fairly thick seed coats, right to me. Overcome that

(01:48:01):
easily by filing or snipping the seed coats drems. Yeah, yeah,
rub them on a brick.

Speaker 1 (01:48:09):
I just did that with theirmount of Phylum I collected
near Fort Davis. And yeah, the population out here even
looks like a different ecotype. It's a much hairer than
you'd find.

Speaker 2 (01:48:19):
This is Mountain Laurel, cold hardy compared to Central Xas.

Speaker 1 (01:48:23):
Yeah, Texas they are all the ones I scarfight came up,
So yeah, I want.

Speaker 2 (01:48:28):
To how did you do it?

Speaker 1 (01:48:30):
Just a dre Oh yeah, yeah, held it in like
a plumber's wrench, and then you could use advice too,
and then.

Speaker 2 (01:48:36):
Just went in there and smart that is. I use
a three corner file, just.

Speaker 1 (01:48:41):
A dremal, just to the point that you can see
the endosperm.

Speaker 2 (01:48:44):
And commercially, people that do that use an acid, sulfuric acid,
and yeah, it's the seed coats that way, but it's
kind of a nasty way to do it to me.

Speaker 1 (01:48:53):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a that thermount of phylum that you
found on gyps And just going back to that, is
that same species or is it a different one that's
in the Guadeloupees.

Speaker 2 (01:49:04):
It's a different subspecies, different or as we describe them, varieties.

Speaker 1 (01:49:09):
But they look notably, they're quite.

Speaker 2 (01:49:12):
Similar in appearance, but they are different enough to be
at least and of course they're geographically isolated, and so
they're different enough for us to call them varieties.

Speaker 1 (01:49:21):
I wonder how that species would do in cultivation, because
it seems like it would probably be a great horticultural
specimen from their plant.

Speaker 2 (01:49:28):
I think it would be yes, I don't have any
viable seeds of either one of them. Now we do
have the.

Speaker 3 (01:49:34):
Specialist or her burial.

Speaker 1 (01:49:35):
You've got to go out there and get get some
seeds either one of those populations.

Speaker 2 (01:49:39):
Yeah, I can tell you exactly where it is in
Mexico and.

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
How far over the border from, oh, you know, thirty minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):
I think it's I can look on the label. I
think it's a certain number of miles from the railroad
tracks across the highway.

Speaker 1 (01:49:53):
M hmm, yeah, I've seen that special.

Speaker 2 (01:49:57):
Okay, so it's then you can't miss it because it's
right by the road.

Speaker 1 (01:50:02):
And it probably looks unique too.

Speaker 2 (01:50:04):
Just oh yeah really, and they are big shrubs.

Speaker 1 (01:50:06):
Any plant person would probably stop and be like, let's chat.
So well, I could talk to you for another three
hours here, but I won't do that to you. So
I really appreciate you being willing to come on to
this podcast. Is there anything you'd like to say before
we dip out here or any inspiring words to young

(01:50:27):
people who are getting excited on Texas.

Speaker 2 (01:50:30):
By plants are great. It's always something something exciting going
on with plants.

Speaker 1 (01:50:36):
Try to grow them, collect their Buryingboucher's.

Speaker 2 (01:50:38):
Feel work, growing plants, all of those things. There are
many things that aren't known yet

Speaker 1 (01:50:45):
As we've seen species being discovered, and yeah, well all right, well,
doctor Powell, thank you so much, and everybody else they
have agrest today

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