Mendelian Genetics, Living Stones, Plant Breeding & How I Learned to Love the Mesembryanthemaceae

In this brutally long but highly educational episode we explore one man's obsession with the plant family AIZOACEAE, known colloquially as the Mesembryanthemaceae (but if you can't spit that out just call them MESEMBS for short). This family is the family of plants that contain the genus #Lithops, also known as "LIVING STONES", as well as hundreds of other species that possess opposite pairs of succulent leaves and brightly-colored flowers, some of which resemble the rocks and quartz gravels of their native South African and Namibian habitat. This is also the family of the invasive-to-North-America "Iceplants", which form weedy mats along beaches and coastal highways of California and Australia. Also featured are some very bizarre and odd members of the Amaryllis Family and the Hyacinth family that have taken on some very odd habits, behaviors, and forms in order to deal with the arid, summer-dry habitat that they inhabit. Your contributions support this content. It sounds clichéd, 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 rest of us in the degenerate 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 [email protected]... Or consider becoming a patreon supporter @ : www.patreon.com/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt Buy some CPBBD merch (shirts, hats, hoodies n' what the shit) available for sale at : www.bonfire.com/store/crime-p... To purchase stickers, venmo 15 bucks to "societyishell" and leave your address in the comments. Plants ID questions or reading list suggestions can be sent to [email protected] Thanks, GFY. #conophytum #Cheiridopsis