Healthy Fire-maintained Carolina Sandhills & the Graminoid Dungeon

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]So people call them bogs, but they're really fs. They're they're where >> eco tones between sand hills and stream heads.

[00:00:07]>> Sand hills and stream heads. That's right. But you get kind of boggy soils.

[00:00:11]You'll sometimes get spagnum pete. But that's where you get the air and fun stuff. But they're squeezed. So if you don't keep that ecotone open, it'll fill in the woody stuff over time and you kind of lose that component. So the fire needs to push in. Sometimes it won't carry to the stream head if it's wet, but you'll see up here they must have burned it when it was pretty dry because it completely consumed it. So yeah, it's just fun to read the landscape a little bit here and you can see where the cane brakes start. They usually mark where the stream head start and stop.

[00:00:44]This bamboo stuff, this is all ordinary tecta.

[00:00:51]God, it's just so man. You ever been in a longleaf pine savannah?

[00:00:57][ __ ] It's gorgeous. Look at it. All open, cleared out. Don't have to worry about ticks. They burn like mad here.

[00:01:08]And then Andropogan, which is what is this? Which Andropogan?

[00:01:12]>> The Andropogans here are Ver Virginus and then Gyrons or Eliotti, but that's the one with the thicker bracks up there. We also get little blue stem.

[00:01:22]>> This roose copalinum right there.

[00:01:24]>> Yeah. And then dog pal. So this was probably disturbed a little bit. They probably did something here in the United States.

[00:01:32]>> So this you got this is Andrew Pogan gyrand and you got arrista desta back there. The quote wire grass keystone species essential for carrying fire. And then this is this is just little blue stem.

[00:01:43]>> Yeah that's probably skazicariums. Yep.

[00:01:46]Scaparium.

[00:01:48]And then Big Blue is around in the sand hills, but as you get further south in the coastal plane, you pick up other andropogans, other aristo.

[00:01:56]>> Scott's a gramoid wizard. Oh, look. It's a toxic dendrum pub. Ah, [ __ ] I was just touching it.

[00:02:00]>> Oh, you get it good.

[00:02:01]>> Ah, it's going to be all over my balls.

[00:02:04]>> Tucked up now.

[00:02:04]>> Oh, what? What? This is vaccinium. What?

[00:02:07]>> It could be fuscatum. Uh, one of the corium segregates.

[00:02:11]>> Berries.

[00:02:12]>> It could be uh batum too. Batum or fiscatum.

[00:02:16]>> Don't eat. Don't you eat that berry. So, I'd say keep it camera ready. What' you say about lighting this stuff up? Why do we want that to burn?

[00:02:23]>> So, you can kind of see the scorched veg there. A lot of the shrubs that burn.

[00:02:28]And you can see how tall it's getting in the fire shadows. So, if you burn at a wetter time of year, you're going to open the ecotone maybe, but you're not going to keep that open there. So, over time, it gets so woody, it starts to shade out other stuff.

[00:02:43]>> So, that's what you want. You want the fire, you want to get in there or something. You want that fire to penetrate.

[00:02:47]>> Mhm.

[00:02:48]>> Yep. You want to You want full fire penetration.

[00:02:54]>> The [ __ ] I should I could leave that in. The other [ __ ] we've been saying I can't leave in.

[00:03:00]>> Poison sumac. It grows in these high quality stream toxic dendran vernix.

[00:03:05]>> That's right.

[00:03:05]>> You So you saying I should rub this on my scrotum?

[00:03:08]>> You could start there.

[00:03:10]>> Yeah, we'll make a an ointment then a balm.

[00:03:12]>> A lot of people would be grateful for that. But yeah, >> Alex Glabra.

[00:03:15]>> Alex Glabra. You have all sorts of gramoids, which we don't even have to get into, but >> yeah, please. Thank God. Oh, then we got polyglo or did they put this in a different genus now or what is it?

[00:03:26]>> Yeah, sinega. And you actually have two sarasinas here.

[00:03:30]>> Oh, >> you have rubra passflower.

[00:03:34]>> Mhm.

[00:03:36]>> Let's see the smaller thinner pitchers.

[00:03:38]>> Yeah, >> the hoods kind of go over. Not quite like minor, but still kind of over.

[00:03:44]>> So, rubra. And then we got perpia >> venosa.

[00:03:47]>> Properia venosa >> which is kind of over here >> and it's >> Oh, yeah. This has much >> it's a it's >> bigger flowers.

[00:03:56]>> It's pretty similar to perp except venosa. It has um the outer pitchers are pessent so they're super hairy right there on the outside.

[00:04:06]There might be some additional characters, but that's that's the character you can use to kind of distinguish it, but >> just where you get a little bit less elevation where it drops off a little bit.

[00:04:14]>> So these Yeah, these sandill stream head or seepage eco tones. This is where all the good stuff is.

[00:04:20]>> God, I got a I got a thing for toxic dendra. Man, I'm going to go get some photos of that. That's a nice >> that that species whenever you see it.

[00:04:27]>> Oh, you rush. It's usually in some good stuff. a little nasty.

[00:04:38]Hi, this is Tony. Uh, we're not shopping for flat screen TVs no more on Southwestern Avenue. Today, we're coming to you from Richmond County, North Carolina. Got a lot of nice stuff here.

[00:04:48]It's going to help you get your rocks off. Lot of interesting plants, interesting plant communities, some well-maintained, fire dependent woods.

[00:04:56]Fire was real important out here on the East Coast. A lot of people don't realize it, but when you get this much rain, 40 to 60 in a year, depending on where you are, you're going to have a lot of veg growth. You're going to need the burn every uh 3 to 5 years or 7 to 15 years. Depends on the interval, depends on a lot of factors. This was done for thousands of years out here. It was been suppressed for the last, you know, 200 or so, but people are learning. They're burning a lot of lot of nice stuff here. So, you know, especially coming to these longleaf pine woodlands with the uh the sand hills and uh you're going to you're going to need the burn. But we got a lot of good stuff right here. Okay, we're on a we are on a coastal plane. Elevation's like 120 ft maybe and you get these undulate sand hills. A lot of it's been destroyed, but as you can see, there's some remnant patches that are just full of wonders.

[00:05:43]Again, we're going to help you get your rocks off today. Let's go look at what we got. And I just went to the bathroom over there. It was a number two. So, we're not going to get too close over there. Uh we're we're going to stay more out here, but uh but I we'll start off with showing this this fancy lad right here. This is this this is long leaf pine. You can see it's just emerging from the grass stage. They do resemble grass for a little while. Again, this these are burn dependent pines, okay?

[00:06:08]So, this whole thing can go up and it can just respout from that uh from that stem. Okay? You get a low you get again lowle uh low intensity fires. Here's another long leaf. You could see it's doing very well for itself. It's emerged from the grass stage. Wonderful pines here. Okay. Really important uh ecosystem. Again, not this dense shade.

[00:06:29]They create an intermittent light shade.

[00:06:31]Perfect for a lot of uh these sand dwelling species that you could see. Got a lot of oaks too. Got the teridium here as well. This understory of ferns diasporos uh Virginiaiana right there.

[00:06:44]compared to PCImmens looking ever so sharp with those new flushes of anthocyan enriched leaves and uh a whole host of really other interesting stuff that we're going to get into right now.

[00:06:55]But as you can see, we got a little bit of elevation on this landscape. It goes down. There's a little bog over there.

[00:06:59]We're going to show you some picture plants in a minute. Again, I think you're going to I think you're going to feel pretty good when all is said and done today. You know, I didn't I didn't mean to upset you, you know, talking about, you know, dropping a number two.

[00:07:11]I just I got to do that stuff, you know, or else you're going to get the squares in here. They they watch the channel for botanical interest. Then they, you know, they see something that upsets them.

[00:07:19]Next thing you know, they're complaining. It's going to talk to the manager, you know, leaving nasty comments. So, it's kind of like a way of cleaning house, right? Do that. You keep the sniffs away. Works better for them, works better for me, less obnoxious for me. You know, they're not upset, etc. You know, keeps them out of my keeps them keeps me out of their algorithm.

[00:07:37]Anyway, we got a real nice member of Koma and AC here. Let me get these these and make it more photogenic. Get those longleaf needles out of there. This is uh formerly in the genus Cuthbirdia. Now it's in calia komai. Got three petals.

[00:07:52]Uh interesting stuff going on with the stammans. Unique stam morphology. What's going on in the center of that flower cuz members of komai quite often have uh interesting uh interesting stamon morphology. You get you get triscanti, you get komaalina, etc. This thing sometimes, this camera's been, you know, messing up focusing lately. Anyway, there you go. Ginia is the species right here. You can see why. It looks like a grammaroid leaves. Oh, nothing too interesting with the stammans. You do have some hairs at the base of the ovary right there.

[00:08:24]But, uh, just, you know, little little dainty uh, bastard enjoying its life here on these sand hills with all the different grasses, different andropogans. We got skyacrium again. We got this terridium fern everywhere. You can see. Flip it over. Look at the Revolute margins and the uh and the pinules. See that? Touchmy pinules.com.

[00:08:46]The pinules are the little uh individual leaflets, right? You get the pin a pinules, all that [ __ ] You know, parts of a fern friend. And look at the cones.

[00:08:55]You got these these uh long leaf cones everywhere. Oh, it smells delightful. We got here yesterday and it the whole the fragrance of the whole region, the whole local area just smells incredible.

[00:09:07]You can see, look, you got little turtles in this little pond.

[00:09:11]All those white flowers and them foes.

[00:09:14]And we got arantium right there. Array.

[00:09:17]It's an aeroid. Aquatic aeroids. Got a yellow flower when it goes off. Yeah.

[00:09:22]Look at all this. Look at all this. Look at that. Look at all themies.

[00:09:26]That's nice. It's a real nice You should have heard the frogs last night. They were They were just lit up. They were going off. Loud little bastards. I was watching them.

[00:09:38]It's a real nice pond.

[00:09:41]We got papalantis Ariel Kalaci. That's a cool family. You want to see this family do some wild [ __ ] go to Brazil. You get dryland Ariel Kalaci members. See that? They got the little uh what's the common name?

[00:09:55]The little uh what is it? Buttons. I don't know what the name is. Some stupid name. I'm sure it's some stupid name. I forget what it is. Ariel Klesy. Really distinct family. Look at those heads.

[00:10:05]Right. doing the same thing that members of the sunflower family do with their uh composite flowers. You know, a sudanthium resembling a bunch of flowers, you know, all smooshed together to resemble a single flower.

[00:10:20]Got tons of gay and you know, vacciniums and stuff. They got to mow it down otherwise it takes over. They want to keep it open for people. But uh let's go to the other side of the pond over there. See what we got. Woo! Some Magnolia Virginiaiana Acer rub. Got some nice maples. And we got a large, very erect, wonderful looking 3 ft tall Sarasinia flavor.

[00:10:47]Look at that. How graceful. It's an elegant bastard. Got the arantium in the background. Those beautiful aquatic uh green leaves. It's like a turquoise a turquoise sheen on them.

[00:11:00]Who's hanging out there? You thinking of going inside, buddy?

[00:11:05]Look at that lid. It's all It's all flipped back. You know, is that what M Dre meant when he said, "I'm going to flip your you flip your lid back." Or did he say flip your I forget what he said. Flip your lid or what? I don't know. But you could see that you got the nymphs in the uh in the background there. Those So that's a that's a nice aquatic. It's a very lovely aquatic actually. Oh, we got an actual nympha, right? No relation to nymphoides which is in the background there with the little white flowers right that nymphes cordata is in the family manantes which is in the sunflower order asterelis manes manantes is a littleknown family I think I saw that saw a member of that in Australia once most of them are aquatic all different variations on on sarcinia so you got some little sarcasia flavor you got some larger ones. Look at that. See, I can see why the autistic are drawn to these, right?

[00:12:03]Me me talking about autism is the pot calling a kettle black, though. I mean, no offense. That's a beautiful and very graceful and elegant form. I told you I was going to show you nice stuff today.

[00:12:14]It's not like you're shopping for stolen TVs on Southwestern Avenue, right?

[00:12:18]Different vibe. And then with a backdrop of uh Alex Glabra, some arcoids, and of course swamp titties, you know, the cyrillas, we got a wonderful patch of Sarasinia flavor with some emergent pitcher leaves that haven't picturesized yet. as you can see right there.

[00:12:47]What a beautiful what a beautiful species.

[00:12:51]Going to check the tubes. See if there's anything in there. Look at that. Look at that lip.

[00:12:58]You know, I've never actually looked at the roots of these things before.

[00:13:03]Not that I'm going to now. You know, you got to talk to the poachers. Ask them what the roots look like. I'm sure they know.

[00:13:09]Plenty plenty of poachers. Uh these things get hit hard. Oh, it's just one.

[00:13:16]They'll regrow.

[00:13:18]And one of the one of the basil angioperm genera. This is brcinia in the family cabam basi. You can see it's got that mucilage. It's actually cultivated as a vegetable. Not this species, but the genus is cultivated as a vegetable in Japan. Look at look at all the snot on it. Nymphles is the order. Kaban Bases the family with us we have Scott Ward grammaroid wizard and a carnivorous plant the wizard as well to to describe some of the things we're looking at right here what are we looking at Scott >> so we're looking at all types of [ __ ] here we're in the coastal plane which means there's often a lot of grammoid diversity carnivorous plants all packed into one small area with this water here too we're giving habitat for vitriularia giba brcennia nymphoid 80s. So, Arantium, we're seeing a lot of characteristic coastal plane things. So, yeah, the Arantium, this is a character that Alex always makes fun of me for pointing out, but the way the water beads off the leaf.

[00:14:19]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:14:20]>> It's hydrophobic.

[00:14:21]>> Super hydrophobic. So, you know, it grows in areas that will flood like crazy. You can play a game like that little maze where you try to get it through the leaf without, you know, >> Is that cuz of hairs on the uh >> It's probably Yeah. hydro uh hydrophobic hairs. If we looked at it in the hand lens, we'd probably see Yeah. something in the cuticle, too. It's very water repellent, but you know, it gets flooded out like crazy, and so it needs to be able to still do its thing and not get completely submerged.

[00:14:49]>> Got lovely leaves. Yeah. Look, you could see there's there's like a little coating of iridescent hairs, >> like a little film kind of >> there. Yep.

[00:14:57]But in addition obviously we have Sarasinia flava some of the characteristic carnivorous plants.

[00:15:05]We have all sorts of drosera intermedias mixed in. You can't see them super well from over there but >> those are all utrics, right? Which I did not know were thigonastic. The traps are actually thigonastic. Those yellow flowers are all utricularia. They're covered in mud. But if you were to look at each of these little clear traps in a microscope, you'd see like tiny little inverts in there. Probably some muck, too. But they're they're big monastic. And when there's enough of a pressure difference outside of the trap, they open up super rapid. It's probably one of the quicker movements in the plant kingdom, to be honest. And it'll just suck in. So there's a pressure difference. It just sucks in real quick.

[00:15:44]>> It's like a little vacuum.

[00:15:45]>> It's like a little vacuum. That's That's right. So vacuums for dinner. and utricularas. There's I don't know 30 or so in the in the southeastern flora and there's a few of them that have some really cool floats right here. So, they'll actually stay afloat on the water instead of getting flooded out sometimes. But it amazes me how these roots help it to stay afloat. You know, it'll kind of plop over now, but it sort of merges with the water column with whatever kind of muck or roots are in there and then shoots up this inflloresence.

[00:16:17]>> What's this? What's this Lionia we're looking at?

[00:16:20]>> This is probably one of the most widespread lionas in the southeast. This is Lionia Lucida.

[00:16:24]>> Mhm.

[00:16:25]>> And of all the Lionia, it occurs in my opinion from it has the widest breadth of soil tolerance. So it'll be in wet wet, it'll be in dry dry. But we also have lionia liriner around. We have tai tai cyilla.

[00:16:42]There's yubotus here. So cyroacy irriacy irriacy >> who's over there >> this is a vaccinium what's cool about blueberries you can see it in the store usually too you see how inferior the ovary is >> you got all the seepil up there >> all the seepil that are persistent yep so ovary below the panth inferior you can also see that the flowers are five maris they have five parts >> which is the yeah the old uh the old corola would have been well a corolla falls falls off and then the ovaries left. But >> that's right, the persistent seoles.

[00:17:17]Yep.

[00:17:18]>> So, lots of aracales the order. Lots of aracalles diversity here. Thriving on these acid soils.

[00:17:23]>> Super acid. Like super duper acid. And because of that low pH, it's often hard for plants to obtain enough nutrients.

[00:17:32]So, that's why we're supplementing with insects.

[00:17:34]>> That's why carnivory emerges.

[00:17:35]>> That's why That's right. That's a more eloquent way of putting it. We're here today talking about Joey's favorite family, the cyperaci. Yeah, you got that's that buffalo accent you're doing.

[00:17:45]This is not Yeah, that is a little more Western yard. Okay, there we go. Big surprise. Western yard. So, we have ilioceras, carrots, carrots, and then delicium, three-way sedge. And you can see the three rank leaves there.

[00:17:59]This is one of the easiest sedges to idea in Eastern North America, vegetative, because >> delicium is the genus.

[00:18:04]>> Delicium is a genus. Yep. Three-way sedge is the common name. Turgid sedge, caresses, and then this ilio. It's a pretty tough genus, but you'd have I'd have a couple guesses there. It could be microcarpa, could be olivacia, but either way, you can just if this had fruit, you'd be able to tell, but carrots really is the easiest to tell in that family. Why? Cuz they all make paraginia, these little sacks.

[00:18:29]>> What do you have to say to anybody who might who might not see why Sedges can be so cool? Why the family cypes might not not be interesting?

[00:18:40]It's really just a a family you can't ignore, one in five plants is a grammarid in North Carolina. So if you want 80% if you want to understand 80% of that diversity and in fact in some habitats, grammaroids are the dominant grasslands, right? So if you want to understand these really important ecosystems, you have to understand how diverse they are. You have to understand some basics and how to ide them.

[00:19:00]>> So they're just an important piece of the puzzle of the landscape you're looking at. They tell you so much more about the habitat, what disturbance has happened here, when it's burned, its historical fire frequency, if there's been mechanical treatment. So, there's all sorts of things you can tell just by learning some of the sedges and grasses in any given habitat.

[00:19:19]>> This is Look, we got dra intermediate, too. We didn't show any of these. The sundos always a treat to see and not one of the little tiny ones. No offense to those, but it's nice to see a a decent sized one.

[00:19:36]And we got a large nissa by flora. You can see uh thriving uh very close to the pond over here. And here uh is a female flower. There's a female flower. Highly reduced. It's just the stigma coming out. You can see you got seepil.

[00:19:56]Oh no. Those are petals. Yeah. Okay. So that's a little tube. Those are pedals up top and then you've got the seepil at the base. So it's it's a biceriate piant. You got two, not just one, but yeah, highly reduced. Not doing much to attract pollinators. So, but stuff's hitting it obviously. I don't think it's wind pollinated. See, we got the elephant topus. It's not going off yet.

[00:20:17]It's a fall bloomer, but you could see asterac uh purple flowers when it's going off. Veroni, Vernoni. It's the Vernonia sub family. Looking real sharp.

[00:20:27]Everything's seasonal, right? A lot of stuff is not going off right now.

[00:20:29]That'll be going off later. It's only May. Okay. There going to be a bunch of nice liatress in the sand hills. We got the popsis right here too. Looks like a little blue grass that's actually in the sunflower family as makes a little daisy like sisio like flower. They're not going off yet. Okay. But you know the more time you spend in wonderful places like this that don't make you feel like dying like the shopping plaza and the car dealerships do, you know, that you pass by every day of your life, right?

[00:20:56]It's just like mental pollution ruining your mind subtly. Here goes the rant.

[00:21:01]The more time you spend in places like this, the less time you spend in places like that, you know, you start to notice things you might not notice otherwise.

[00:21:08]Wonderful stand right here.

[00:21:12]See little white flowers. Again, same genus as Yerba Mate. Wonder if this has caffeine and leaves, too. I would assume it does. The bumblebees certainly seem to like it today. Okay, so to help us get into gramoids. Okay, Scott's going to we're going to get into it. Let's get into it. So, what are we looking at here?

[00:21:28]>> Let's just dive in. So, grasses, sedges, and rushes are collectively called grammaroids.

[00:21:35]>> Three different families. Poaces, junkacy, >> junky, and cypacy. Yep. And most grammaroids have perfect flowers, meaning they're bisexual.

[00:21:47]And carex is the exception. So you see stigmas coming out of the paraginia here and then this would produce anthers coming out of these scales. Nonetheless, if you look closely at the rush flowers, they're essentially the same kind of flower as a lily. So if you look closely at a rush flower, this is juncus tenuous path rush. You'll see that it has six of these structures on the outside. There are six teeples, so indistinguishable seepil and petals. They're just like a lily. And you can see the feathery pink stigmas coming up here. If you were to look a little bit further down at the base of the ovary, you'd see the stammans coming out. So, these are perfect flowers and they're complete because they have both whs of perryanth and pistol and stamina portions.

[00:22:30]Grasses are tough. Why? There's so many genre. So, to learn the grass genera diversity can take a while, but you can still see some basics of biology here.

[00:22:40]>> So, tell everybody what the danglers are cuz those are the most noticeable.

[00:22:43]>> The danglers are the anthers. So the staminate portion of the flowers and if you look closely right next to it you see that feathery uh translucent kind of thing.

[00:22:53]>> That's the stigmas.

[00:22:54]>> So stigmas and anthers these are perfect flowers again. But you'll see with all three the perryanth is either gone or it's so reduced that it doesn't make a great landing pad for pollinators. So that's why we often think of grammoids as being mostly wind pollinated >> but juncus included.

[00:23:13]>> Juncus included. Yep. And I >> and they got a feathery stigma. That's a big giveaway, too. It's trying to get out there, catch, you know, air currents that are bringing bringing pollen around.

[00:23:22]>> That's right. They're bringing in criminals. They're bringing in pollen, all that good stuff. But here you see at the tip of the paraginia, you have the stigmas coming out. These again aren't really conspicuous here, but they're feathery enough that they'll catch the small pollen grains that are produced from the anthers in this portion. And in carex I I won't go deep into it but it makes a difference whether the the topmost structure is stamined only or bisexual >> and carro so carro is is is of course uh monicious but not all sedges are some sges have uh perfect flowers.

[00:23:58]>> That's right. So most sedges have bisexual flowers. They just don't have complete flowers because they lack a panth but yes they often are bisexual.

[00:24:06]94 95% of the plant kingdom has bisexual flowers. So it's it's actually kind of rare to have uh unisexual flowers in plants. Anyways, carrots has unisexual uh flowers, meaning the females produce the ovary here in the sack, the paraginium, and then these anthers after they're done, they're just kind of inconspicuous. You don't >> tell everybody what peranth means, right?

[00:24:27]>> Peranth are the seepil and petals.

[00:24:28]>> Yeah, just seepil and petals. Kaix and corolla collectively.

[00:24:31]>> Yep. And that's just surrounding the anthers, right? The anther, you know, the reproductive part of the flowers.

[00:24:36]>> And you help it be attractive to uh to, you know, vectors, right? But if you just use a wind, you don't need that.

[00:24:42]>> Attractive to ve to vectors, pollinators, botonists, biologists. Yep.

[00:24:47]All that.

[00:24:48]>> So, yeah, that's the basic spiel, but if you can get a close-up photo of these and look at those.

[00:24:53]>> Oh, we're going to we're going to get some nice shots.

[00:24:55]>> They're going to look really spectacular.

[00:24:55]>> We're going to get real nice ones.

[00:24:57]>> Okay, now back on the other side of the bug. Let's bring your attention to this guy right here. Right. Little dimminionative bastard. Not much to think about. Okay, just see. You kind of ignore it. It's got kind of an aquatic look to it. This is Proer Panaka pectinatada. And what's interesting to me is that I've seen other members of this same family that it's in in Western Australia growing amongst, you know, grenitic boulders and stuff except they're small trees in the genus hell ragodendrin.

[00:25:23]So, uh, pretty interesting there. And let's see if we can find a flower on Oh, yeah. I see some flowers right now. You can see they're axillary. All right.

[00:25:31]Tiny flowers on this. You can see them right there. Okay, you can see those stammans poking out. Three stammans, axillary flowers, preranaka, pectinatus.

[00:25:46]It's got pectinate leaves, right? Just growing right there on the margin margin of the the pond with the little froggies and stuff. The nymphes menaces again sunflower order asteris beans the common name.

[00:26:02]Oh, this is a nice one. Now look at this. You just step over the uh toxicodendran pubesence. Okay, we are on the sand. Sandy habitat select for the hairy trait in plants. So you get a uh hairy poison ivy species. Stepping up.

[00:26:18]Wonderful, wonderful canopy of long leaf pine above us. We got aius and plexicolus right here. God, I can smell it from here. Oh, it just it smells sweet. I could smell the sweet nectar emerging from this uh sand loving milkweed species. There's the leaves down there. You can see they got a nice uh you got a nice red pro red prominent mid vein undulate leaf margins elongated leaves and look at the flowers up there.

[00:26:48]Man, this is again this only grows on the sand. You could probably grow it in cultivation on quote regular soils. It would need full sun etc. But uh what a stunner man. This is a this is a nice one, right? Somewhat uncommon.

[00:27:05]So many different variations on a milkweed.

[00:27:08]But this is again fire dependent habitat. 3 to 5 year burn intervals.

[00:27:12]Could see burn scars on the pines.

[00:27:18]Keeps the uh the woody overgrowth down.

[00:27:21]Keeps it open, right? So you don't end up looking like the shitty woods. And a lot of stuff just comes back from the roots.

[00:27:28]We've been indoctrinated to not like fire.

[00:27:32]Very important plant species right here.

[00:27:34]This is wire grass arrista stricta keystone species. This is what enables fires to carry in this habitat.

[00:27:43]There's a there's the seeds right there.

[00:27:47]Well, the inflloresence is but you can see the grains with their threeons.

[00:27:54]Lovely habitat. God, the smells smelled really nice last night at dusk.

[00:28:01]Had the scent of uh could smell that escipius once you get close enough to it. Then you could smell the pine needles, various uh compounds emerging from the leaf stomata of everything growing here. It's another great one.

[00:28:14]Lepeda hera another hairy plant. You can see it's got three leaves. Tripfid leaves. It's a legume.

[00:28:22]Fabui subf family specifically.

[00:28:26]This is an interesting one. Euphoria epiwani.

[00:28:30]Okay. Hit the uh hit the side. You got opposite leaves. Can almost make you think it's a milkweed. Look. Bleeds latex. Rubbery epiak. Ipiac. Just a sprawling from a central a central tuber right there. Tuberous root like a lot of plants on a on sand get. Love to see the flowers on it though. probably not very showy but but cool in fluoresences. And I saw one over there that had much larger rounder leaves. So lots of variations in uh morphology.

[00:29:01]We got quirkus margarita little dwarf oak round leaves and pubesence on the eaxial surface right there. Compare compare that with quirkus leis the turkey oak right which gets uh much larger. This stays kind of dwarfed. It's the sand hills oak. kind of a rare oak or just a good indicator of habitat. One of those plants that really tells you you see it there or someone tells you it's there, you know what kind of habitat you're going to be looking at. Oh, emerging leaves of sulfium composite. I'm one of those asterac those sunflower family members that's not uh that's not blooming yet. They're a later bloomer.

[00:29:38]Look at the look at the leaves. Look at that. Look beautiful undersides to those leaves. You can see the individual leaf cells. That's beautiful, man. God, I love sulfium. Same genus as prairie dock cup plant, compass plant, all that [ __ ] you get in the Midwest. One of my favorite genera.

[00:29:53]And then over here we got uh this cerseium. Cersei rapandum. It's a thistle. Same family.

[00:30:01]Look at the uh look at the cobwebs. The quote cobwebs. All those tricoms on that uh main shoot that stem. Okay. Cesile leaves. Ner a pedial. Do you have a pedial? I don't think so. No. No. But lots of uh you got, you know, spines on the leaves and the leaf margin. Oh, look at that. That's glistening. That's beautiful right there. Just get close.

[00:30:24]Look at that. Look at that. Look at the stem.

[00:30:28]Oh, this is a stunner, too. Such a wonderful genus. You don't get this on the west coast, right? This is like uh you know, I've seen them in the Dominican Republic lots on the eastern seabboard. This is the genus Lionia.

[00:30:39]This is Lionia Marana, right? Woody capsule fruits instead of berries. like it's a a genus from the same family vaccinium the blueberries elongated elongated uh corollas just five petals fused into a little ursilit tube but more elongated than that look at the green stigma on the inside five petals or five seepil up top large flowers doesn't get much taller there's one with uh there's one with leaves on it you can see stunning plant man got lots of roots in Thiasperos Virginia Cesifress Uptorium to be continued.