Rockwalls Are For Lovers w/ Strombocactus disciformis

Graced by the song of the giant cicada, we scope out a canyon at 4,000' elevation to check on some cool cacti. Along the way we pass by the edible Spondias purpurea (Anacardiaceae ) and Vallesia glabra (Apocynaceae). At the canyon slopes we see Lophophora diffusa (non-psychoactive peyote), the incredible Strombocactus disciformis, Mammillaria parkinsoniana, Coryphantha erecta, and Agave xylonacantha.
Pseudosmodingium virletii makes an appearance, as well, which produces the human skin allergen Urushiol in its tissue just like poison oak.
A small shrubby member of the subfamily mimimosoideae (Fabaceae) in this episode was incorrectly identified as Pithecellobium dulce. while Pithecellobium dulce was indeed featured in this video, the shrubby, flower-less and fruit-less legume in question was Senegalia reniformis, a little-known species that looks nothing like other species in its genus. This was really exciting to realize!
Some of the species featured:
Lophophora diffusa (Cactaceae)
Morkillia mexicana (Zygophyllaceae)
Echinocereus pentalophus
Vallesia glabra (Apocynaceae)
Spondias purpurea (Anacardiaceae)
Your contributions support this content. It sounds cliché but it's true. Whether it's travel expenses, vehicle repair, or medical costs for urushiol poisoning (or rockfalls, beestings, hand slices, toxic sap, etc), your financial support allows this content to continue so the beauty of Earth's flora can be made accessible to the public. At a time when so much is disappearing beneath the human footprint, CPBBD is willing to do whatever it takes to document these plant species and the ecological communities they are a part of before they're gone for good.
Plants make people feel good. Plants quell homicidal (and suicidal!) thoughts. To support Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't, consider donating a few bucks to the venmo account "societyishell" or the PayPal account email [e-mail]...
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Thanks, GFY.

[@spareparted]

I got a compliment today on my Department of unauthorized forestry long sleeve shirt that I dyed olive color. Thank you so much Tony for what you’re doing. I enjoy the videos so much.

[@OUSurf2]

I'm due for another hoodie, it'll be #3 , how can I pay to get a gold print on black? I want it to stick, too many washes lol

[@kendalq.1645]

Dude.... They also called you Tony!!! ...so, was I wrong? Yes, yes I was. Also, the cicadas-quesadas ARE out in ATX, anyway, and it's THE sound of summer. I ❤ them. Thanks for all the sharing of knowledge.

[@Kenghym]

As an European 'botanist' (molecular), who has a collection of succulents and a deep love for extremophiles (and thus their habitat, as one is intrinsic to the other): Thank you so much. I'd never travel to the americas for hesonism alone, since our planet has enough pollution to deal with and there's loads of amazing life outside my door to marvel at, so I couldn't make peace with flying to your deserts. And i'll probably never get an excuse through my lab-heavy work either. (Also: US american fundamentalists are scary these days, ngl) But if I ever had the opportunity, these types of excursions would be what I'd fill my free time with. The infodumps are hilarious and amazing, filled with so much apreciation for the ecosphere you are moving through - it's the next best thing to being there myself. Amazing stuff, keep it up man.

[@fuzzy3440]

You'd love the Chihuahuan desert. Fly into San Antonio, take a train to Alpine, rent a car and go into Big Bend National Park. Or, fly into El Paso and rent a car and drive. Fort Davis also has the Chihuahuan desert research institute. The planes are going to fly whether you're on them or not, so why not get to see these incredible areas. You watch too much news if you're scared of American fundamentalists. Most people outside the major cities are incredibly friendly.

[@KOKO-uu7yd]

You ain't kidding about our Fundamentalists! I have EXTREME RESPECT for you foregoing travel for eco concerns! Take care. I'll keep working g with others about those Fundamentalists. If you ever DO have sufficient reaso. To vote over, hopefully it'll be a more welcoming environment you can expect. 😊

[@susangallagher986]

I really appreciate what you put yourself through to educate us. You actually might be the only person on the planet who could re-educate my son from some of the far right BS he has been indoctrinated by lately.

[@mackavicious]

"Just grate my fanny with it. Like a piece of gouda against a cheese grater." Fucking poetry.

[@littleSallyJo]

We call those Cicadas "Rain Callers" here in Coastal Nayarit MX. signaling the start of Monsoon. And sure enough, we've had our first little sprinkle of rain here this week 6/16/24.

[@traciklein4291]

We're hoping to see some of that rain action here in Tucson, AZ, USA later this week.

[@CIB8282]

I do like the fuzzy shits, thanks for asking.

[@merryfergie]

12:41 funny, when you said," I feel like I'm gonna pass out", Then you decide To go higher

[@dowittrock1330]

Would have been the first like, but I was busy killing the lawn..

[@darranwilkins4648]

smoke that grass its all fuzzy ba tards bwhahahhahaahahahaha

[@darranwilkins4648]

get this fk in shared people man is saving your land and educating

[@dougblack9638]

I'm so glad mine is dying lol

[@baba-booey3232]

BIG KISS FROM MICHIGAN Edit: i take it back, for making fun of my nasaly midwestern accent

[@Exquailibur]

falling to your death in a place like that sounds better to me then being flattened on one of them poorly designed roads that plague the US, like seriously not only are they terrible environmentally but remarkably dangerous.

[@pamelasmith7740]

I didn't know there is a better design for roads. From Chicago to Cairo they all look paved to me. I wish cities would go back to brick streets. I'd love to see a path of permeable pavers lined by bio swale. If only we could convince the mentally misguided to leave dead and dying vegetation alone to decompose and reseed. Every time I see machines on the side of the highway it usually means total destruction of plants that have struggled to exist only to be mowed. Illinois was supposed to stop fucking mowing not only to provide habitat for many species and try to prevent Monarchs from going extinct, but to lessen the mosquito population. It pisses me off that instead of wildflower blooming I get to look at a monotonous stretch of wads of dead grass, most of which is invasive fast growing crap that doesn't even belong here. I want to see orchids and carex and stonecrop. Not mulch. I want to see sumac and passionflower, not foxtail and wheat or autumn olive and worst of all bush honeysuckle (I hate that fn sht). I wanna drive down the road and see big white morels peeking through the treeline and critters content with the bountiful food surrounding them so they don't have to risk becoming splat just to eat. I want to live in a world full of life instead of one where I show a child a native wildflower only to have her vulgar grandmother tell her it's just a damn weed and throw her cigarette down and stomp it on the sidewalk I'm sweeping over a creek. Then the dumb ct plants some hybridized crap that looks related with way more blooms around the telephone pole next to her raggedy ass trailer. I'm glad she chooses to pretty up her life with flowers but it don't change her ugly.

[@pamelasmith7740]

I choose heat over water boarding.

[@morningstar8187]

I love when they’re so flat and buried in the substrate. Pot-grown plants don’t look as nice. They’re too perfect and pretty. Wild cacti have character.

[@adamlucashill725]

Cacti are my favorite plants so I understand both sentiments. A perfect pot grown plant is equally impressive for the opposite reasons in my opinion

[@Farimira]

Could be a project to grow them from seed in conditions attempting to replicate habitat

[@itsrachelfish]

Hell yeah ROCKS!!! Sweating our asses off

[@nathanielvargas3863]

There were some real bangers in this video.

[@snuugumz]

Was reading the description, and noticed, amongst the various and sundry hazards, you mentioned ‘beestings’. My goofy ass immediately went to ‘Huh…I wonder what type of beest is messing with him?’ It’s a special world I find myself in from time to time…

[@Heterogeneity]

Picturing Joey fleeing from a flock of Straandbeests 😂

[@annakozlowski4837]

We have 5 inch cicadas in Romeoville Illinois and they are so annoying and earpiercing. 😊

[@hestheMaster]

Joey you are a maestro of binomial nomenclature. To keep it real some coarser words are intertwined in the oration just for us regular guys to enjoy ( fuzzy shits) if you know what mean.

[@bonanza27]

those montanoa flowers smell like chocolate heaven when they go off!!

[@danstotland6386]

Great video. Very Interesting. Suggestion. Have you considered wearing a hat with a havelock for headgear?

[@dhaktizero4406]

the right dose does make the world into a fantastic museum sure, it is normally too but sometimes you spring for the self-guided tour head-set and make a day of it

[@YouTube_username.]

True, and for the record it definitely didn't take me a bunch of tries to read the two basic words next to each other dose does

[@Heterogeneity]

​@@KZbin_username. Dyslexics untie!

[@absurdistsloth]

holy shit the landscapes in this video were so incredible, almost alien. every time i watch a new video of yours i’m just blown away by the beauty of earth

[@laurenr842]

They’re out in San Antonio now but we’re not getting the super emergence

[@HLBear]

I'm with you - cicadas are the best. People are whining about the big brood this year and I'm just jealous we can't hear it in NY. ❤

[@P4r4bo14]

My AC is out and I could not handle this video. Will have to come back when it's fixed.

[@lukehahn4489]

That's a lovely sumac! The poison oak i have around me is a sneaky bastard all mixed in with kinder foliage

[@marywolf1824]

Love the cicadas

[@AndreaDingbatt]

I love the lichens!! Ohh and the L.Diffusa is Awesome! 😎👍 Thank you for making and sharing your videos!!❤ Andréa and Critters. ...XxX...

[@jasonvilla2435]

This channel is perfect peace I fucking love it booom

[@nathanielvargas3863]

Those Stombo’s are so cool looking. Some of those must be ancient

[@mikeoxsbigg1]

I would have burst into fire in that heat. Ottawa is humid as all hell, but our latitude helps with the sun. We get all the bugs too.

[@HLBear]

"But it's a dry heat." 😆

[@jasonvilla2435]

This is helpful on this Saturday sitting in this airport full of unpleasant humans

[@keenkingjames]

That looks like southern Arizona

[@KayentaRojo]

I live in Tucson, and I couldn’t agree more. Arizona is right on the cusp of the Southwest and tropical Central America

[@717ammonia]

You need to have some sort of sunblocking hat on and long sleeves, and maybe even some sunblock and exposed skin

[@sharonkaczorowski8690]

Beautiful spot..gotta love canyons!

[@user255]

Quesada gigas sounds nice, but some cicadas I heard in tropical Asia sounds like table saw.

[@Ululiona-Linulu]

Can you do an episode in St Pierre and Miquelon and look for some unique or obscure flowers, any endemics if there are any down there. Also do Falkland islands.

[@sativaburns6705]

If I had the money I'd pay to send him and Alan around the world a few times. From Colorado to Indonesia.

[@Ululiona-Linulu]

@sativaburns6705 There are so many amazing plants all over the world. You haven't lived without touring the island of Saba from the cloud forest down to the arid zones.

[@darranwilkins4648]

reme ex vet ahh the falklands and there mad little tiny flowers

[@darranwilkins4648]

f k the oil companyies rats

[@Ululiona-Linulu]

@darranwilkins4648 lots of endemics theres

[@DesertsTreasureAZ]

Thanks for living our dreams for us Tony! U da man!

[@nevillesavage2012]

This guy needs to narrate all shows

[@petermede3698]

Great to hear you again.

[@yaddahaysmarmalite4059]

that wall of strombos is fascinating. I could stare at a wall like that for hours, no acid needed. I recently saw a picture, from somewhere in europe, of some couple dozen strombos in cultivation that were planted into a 2foot wide piece of lava rock. it was very evocative of a "wall of strombos" in habitat.

[@CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt]

Totally, they just got the geology wrong. Still cool though

[@jerryribyat1481]

Hey Tony you make a great influencer haha just kidding keep up the good work your friend Jerry in Moab Utah I grew up in Sonora since the early fifties and seeing these plants in their endemic location gives a perspective on people's so-called collections

[@BongRipBing]

Giant Cicadas sound like a batroom fan with a bad bearing.

[@PhoenixProdLLC]

I follow an entymologist whose channel is very moth oriented. They're amazing too. Especially the fuzzy headed lions mane moth. I'll let her know about your channel too. 🙋🏼‍♀️

[@raven5ism]

They sound like the old water sprinklers to me.

[@carrielyn4307]

Here in Mexico, they call the Pithecellobium dulce "guamuchiles", and the "Stenocereus queretaroensis fruit" pitayas. I was excited to learn the formal names for these, as I love the editable natives. We have a guamuchil tree in front of the house, and they're just ending their season right now. They are sweet, fun to pick with a hook on a long bamboo pole, and the birds love them. You can burn or cut the spines off the pitayas, and then just peel and eat them similar to the "tunas" or nopales cactus fruit.

[@Dranzerk8908]

If you think about it, snakes curled up look a bit like cactus close to the ground. Wonder if that was part of some evolutionary process in snakes.

[@transamericanlife]

14:50 Banger Strombocactus!

[@siggyincr7447]

Spondias purpurea is called ciruelo up there in Mexico? Down here in Costa Rica we call it jocote. There's a few cultivars that are sweeter and have a bit more fruit flesh to them than the wild type.

[@jollyjohnthepirate3168]

Tony get out of the sun. We can't afford to loose you.

[@walkingslowly5094]

You really do need a good bucket hat not some near useless baseball cap 😉

[@THESALLYMONSAL]

can't wait to see the stenocereus seedling updates

[@Dusty_Den]

My cat was very disturbed by the giant cicada asmr 🤣

[@douglascoleman5588]

Do not recruit an army of Giant Cicadas to thrive inside Isleworth Country Club.

[@seanturner7]

Very cool! I mean, you weren’t but thank you for showing me, us, this stuff!

[@douglascoleman5588]

"I want those seeds, I want to grow a bunch of this stuff." 🤣

[@kludgescraftsplus8631]

I made a recording a few years ago in Wimberley Texas along the streams. Sounds of cicadas and bubbling Creek. I put it on one of our sound machines. A lot of the sound machines you buy from Amazon will come with a SD card that the music is on. You can add your own audio if you figure out the naming structure.

[@MrEiht]

Strombee's are so beautiful. It is a bit sad that most of these ultra sexy cacti don't like any human company and only dwell in hell. If you want to hang "out" on an Aztekium party YOU better be a mountain goat...and not hungry. Never eat your hosts

[@antonyjh1234]

They say because the northern hemisphere is warmer by 1.4 degrees, the thermal equator is 10 degrees north so you're as far from that as the thermal equator is from the real one.

[@danielmeyer5820]

non hallucinogenic peyote evolved to avoid human predation.

[@evilsharkey8954]

12:25 Well, technically, the sun is a space heater.

[@Andy-zj3dc]

when you take acid and look at plants and trees you can see the fractal geometry. thats when you realize we live in an algorithm or a matrix as you would.

[@scaldedape6213]

05:45 rock & ball torture

[@jackstone4291]

Someone get this man a sun hat. (Those ones with the flap on the back to cover neck and back of head, baseball cap on the front)

[@darranwilkins4648]

from f kin glasgow s cotland your ma beech grove f kin grden mate

[@26hurban]

Sounded like you pissed off that cicada 😂

[@LivingBreathingRedFlag]

Man, I practically never say this, but I would totally buy you having autism if you ever got a diagnosis, drops walls of texts and tons of pictures every couple of days on Instagram that would make any university lecturer blush, has absolutely no trouble talking at length about semi-obscure to obscure botany, has been going at it for decades and is applying learnt knowledge in embedded clauses straight from the hip. Love your videos, you are a treasure.

[@Dracobear13]

Tony, listening to you makes me think you might just be a masochist. LOL

[@Dusty_Den]

"I love how this rock makes my hand feel like a slice of gouda on a cheese grater!" 😂

[@fegolem]

I've been hearing what I thought were frogs but maybe they are giant cicadas. Interesting.

[@FunghiJacob]

"Cause myhart is in a rock wall"

[@evilsharkey8954]

How the heck do those cacti ever germinate on vertical walls? You’d think the rain would wash the seeds off, but there’s clearly recruitment going on.

[@mamillaria269]

When I see videos like this, where they show the diversity of cacti In Mexico and Latin America, it makes me worried the more and more foreigners come to to steal the plants and smuggle them out of the countries of origin. there’s a big problem with this in Mexico where foreigners take plants and animals out of their natural habitat. Or higher poor people to do the work for them. Only leading to the extension of native plants.

[@CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt]

It's been going on for a long time and educating people about the existence of these plants and the importance of conserving the habitat is the least of your worries in terms of what is putting these plants into the public eye. The best way to combat poaching is to flood the market with inexpensive seedlings and offer stiff penalties for both residents and foreigners who steal plants from habitat

[@my_post_traumatic_growth]

Make sure to drink electrolytes in your water, some celtic sea salt with some lemon or lime and maybe a little local honey?

[@Henrynerdcore]

L o L

[@HLBear]

If only we could exude farina for sunscreen. 😊

[@jackstone4291]

Come across any Welwitschia In your travels..??… is it native to your country (the Stares) or somewhere else..?..

[@mcactus6210]

I have some questions from a ignorant in geology: . Are that region rich in gypsum? I believed that Strombos lived in gypsum cliffs . Is gypsum basic or acidic? I heard that some plants love gypsum but hate calcareous rocks and high pH like Geohintonia.

[@fastkuts]

hey Joey, question would you listen to a hip hop beat if created one with your tone of voice? also could use your voice some phases to add some scratches to it, if you would share some sentences you like to mention in your commentary and will use them for the vocal scratching, don't expect anything from this just thought could be a fun project, anyway greetings from New Zealand

[@benm5407]

Quesada Geiger

[@AssistantLeaflet]

I bet you know who Terence McKenna is.

[@chompers11]

Always take 2 tabs

[@vmota60]

🥊❤

[@bauhnguefyische667]

GFY,B!😂

[@mortrek]

"I wish there was a way to date cacti" .. I know you love cacti but that's taking it too far

[@raven5ism]

Ha Ha Ha...Passing a stone huh. You're in the habitat to "collect" one.

[@timjozwiak2293]

Hey...thanks for sweating your balls off for this video

[@TheTruthUSA]

Did you know double clicking a comment likes it???

[@demetriusshade9730]

No I did not

[@KenSilvers]

Joey, if you don't like the carbon monoxide... what do you think of the chemtrails, ffs?

[@karstent8138]

Joey, you're gonna think of me as a broken record, because I've said this before. If you could manage to cut out the cussing, you could expand your audience sooooo much - think of the children!!!! They are the ones you want to reach!!! That's the point isn't it? educating receptive hearts????!!!!! The content of your videos is so completely and utterly unique, and in fact, the few that are similar are still a billion miles from yours. The truth is, you might also vastly expand your adult audience........ Including me!

[@absurdistsloth]

huh? kids hear cussing all the time. CPBBD’s foul-mouthed delivery is part of the education, in my opinion 😆

[@chompers11]

Psssst... you can be a good parent and teach kids that swear words are fine depending on the context and who you are around. Treat them like adults and they grow up more balanced.

[@praise_lord_jesus_christ]

be careful of cooking your brains in the sun; you are wearing a hat and could use a parasol yet maybe take some good antioxidants of herbs or plants or barks of the edible and medicinal plants in those areas as the antioxidants or whatever will protect you... maybe take local propolis or local honey for starters... i have worked in summer heat, hot kitchens and on an organic farm etc... and the sun these days is so searing because they are putting those reflective metals like barium and aluminum in the sky which amplifies the blazing sunlight....

[@ChopsticksDIYGarden]

Someday I want to go see cacti in their habitat closeup. 🌵🏜📸

[@susangallagher986]

I really appreciate what you put yourself through to educate us. You actually might be the only person on the planet who could re-educate my son from some of the far right BS he has been indoctrinated by lately.