Some Unflappable Agave Wisdom from Joey Santore , aka "Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't":
#41: Massive Flowers of Agave Shawii Ssp Goldmania
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueWGGnYlRCU&ab_channel=Crime...
>So anyway, here's that same habitat where I was filming scorpions last night, and here it is during the day time. [...]
>Let's take a look over here. This massive Agave. Which is basically just, uh, I don't know, 20 or 30 years worth of a plant manufacturing sugars. So that's about 30 years worth of sunlight put into a sugar form, which stays in the heart of that plant. They're, remember, most Agaves are monocarpic, so they flower once and then die, and it's because they take that massive amount of sugar, and put everything they got into these flowers up there, which produce tremendous amount of nectar, which are then pollinated by bees and bats. You can see the stamens up there.
>See the stamens have those anthers on 'em, those little banana shaped rads, with all the pollen. And then of course there's, for every flower, there's one central stigma, which is like the female part, it receives the pollen, so you have like six stamens and one stigma. And then when they're done, each one of those flowers turns into a tree lobed pod, which then has little tiny black flakey seeds in it. Each plant producing hundreds upon hundreds of seeds, only a few of which of course will form new plants.
>You can see there's quite a few others doin' their thing and bloomin' right now. You can also imagine fallin' on that will quite possibly kill you. This one, like I said, Agaves are monocarpic, but uh, they do send out, I don't know what the word of them would be, I just call 'em pups. But basically, just, ya know, little Mini-Me's that they send out on the sides, so that when the main plant flowers, the show is still not that completely over.
>See now this whole inflorescence is just alive with pollinators. It's buzzing. Imagine the amount of energy and carbohydrates needed to create a huge massive flowering stock like that. It's got to weight 150 pounds, easily. It's a 150 pound flower. Same with this one. And you can see it's already starting to shrivel 'cause its energy reserves start to diminish. If you just saw off all these leaves, you'd just have a massive, probably three or four hundred pound heart, composed almost entirely of carbohydrates.
#51: Annotated, Profanity-Laced Checklist of Desert Ultramafics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhWLtKy8kYY&ab_channel=Crime...
>Now a quick introduction to what's called analtramafic, ultramafic soils, are almost always associated with subduction zones. They're also known as serpentine soils. And, uh, they're often very barren of plant life, being to the fact that they're toxic to most plants. That is, they have minerals like nickel, magnesium, and and excess amounts of iron, while also lacking essential plant nutrients such as calcium and nitrogen. So many plants have a hard time growin' in them, but many other plants have adapted to them. That's not to say that they necessarily thrive in them, but they're able to tolerate the soil chemistry. [...]
>But look at this nice Agave Vizcainoensis. Another endemic to the region. Look at that thick cuticle it's got in it. You can almost see it. Look at those pores. Look at that nice thick cuticle. Oh, what a beautiful plant. I love this guy.
#74: Sassy Bastards of the Last Chance Range b/w Agave Utahensis Var Eborispina
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5yViQeLpPM&ab_channel=Crime...
>Now here is somethin' that's real nice. I think you probably will like it a lot. This is a species of Agave known only from the limestone soils in Southwestern Nevada, and a little bit into Eastern California, right here on the Nevada border. This is Agave Utahensis variety Eborispinus. And here's one about two weeks shy of flowering. You can see that flower spike just came up. Now that flower, of course, will open, it will get pollenated by a variety of different bees, and perhaps some bats as well, and then it will die. But you can see it's already got another offset comin' up that will survive, and then will probably flower a couple years later down the line.
>Now the reason this is called variety Eborispina is pretty obvious when you get up close and you look at these rosetta leaf blades, which, uh, I mean, is kinda just sayin' "Leave Me Alone!" You can see the tips of these leaf blades are about six inches long, probably, seven inches in some case. A very sharp, very hard, very easy to dissuade any potential herbivores or jack asses like myself from puttin' my hand right there at the base of this large flowering shoot, the peduncle. Now look at those spines. And again, this only grows on calcium carbonate soils, on the limestone. There's three different species in this genus: Nevadensis, Utahensis, and Eborispina. There might be one more. Utahensis is the name of the species. Might not be the name of the subspecies. It's either subspecies or variety. I don't know. Don't matter. Either way: What a fuck'n remarkable plant! [...]
>These things are nice too. These peduncles, these big peduncles, 'cause you can, uh, when it's done, they're woody, you can cut them off, and, uh, beat your friends with them, etcetera.
#154: Cat-calling Milkweds, Tracking Hippies, & Consoling Grandpas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KefiIdZR7Ck&ab_channel=Crime...
>Obsolete Racist Grandpa Trigger Warning
>Kinda glandular, too. A little bit, uh, little bit frilly, ehe? Look at those big-ass brachs. On the back of the flowers, too, huh? Like on this guy, you know? It's so nice. Doesn't that make you feel good? Doesn't that make you feel better? Maybe all those crazy white boys that are going shootin' up malls and shit, you know? Too bad they didn't know about botany, you know? Could have just calmed them right down, you know. Maybe they just should have just studied plant science a little better, some shit. You know? 'Cause it really, it's like the tissue paper that wipes the ass. You know, it gets rid of all the shit stain of modern society and civilization, huh? 'Cause you know, it's not a pretty world out there, folks, at least if you're looking at the human world. Kinda makes me wanna die. But then you just got look at that, uh, something like that monotropa, you feel a little bit better, huh? So you got much more music forest over here, and then here you got a royal like halis slope, then you got a, what seems to be an Agave Parryi. Certainly one of the Agaves. It is producing pups. So that when a, you know, the mother plant dies, you know, it's monocarpic so they die after flowering, it just sends out other pups.
https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/august-2019/joey-santor...
>Meet the “Misanthropic Chicago Italian” Who Charmed Twitter. The self-taught botanist sounds off on going viral, preserving the natural world, and the story behind that accent.