Going to Jail for Botany

Dr. Peter Breslin is a Botanist out of Tucson Arizona specializing in Cacti, and recently did time in Brewster County Jail for "trespassing" to photograph some rare endemics that only grow on Novaculite (ancient biogenic silica) soils in West Texas. He also helped elucidate some of the evolutionary relationships between species that were formerly classified in the genus Mammilaria but are actually more closely related to the Baja genus Cochemiea, which specializes in hummingbird pollination.

This conversation was fun as hell, and we talk about why nomenclatural change-ups and classifications of this sort are important, and how they tell a story about how organisms (including humans) move and migrate across continents and landscapes, and how the environment (which consists of geology, climate, presence of certain animals, etc) SELECTS for various traits in plants.

We also talk about DNA and transcriptome analysis, and how it clears up some of the evolutionary relationships between plants and how transcriptomes can actually change depending on what habitat conditions an individual plant is in.

We talk about the remarkable genus Pediocactus, a genus of the frigidly-cold high desert in the American Southwest and the radiation that it has had there, as well its ability to pull itself into the ground during the dormant season, effectively "hiding".

LAstly, we clear up some of the confusion around the extremely bizarre and endangered Mexican genus Pelecyphora and how it's related to plants in the genus Escobaria that grow all over North America, including in some very cold climates.