Andrew Hipp in Joey Santore's Podcast

Andrew Hipp talked to the legendary Joey Santore (the naturalist and communicator behind the “Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t” YouTube channel and Instagram account) about genus Quercus. Joey is extremely knowledgeable, but he admits he had his mind blown by the things he learned during the interview. You probably will too.

Members with sensitive ears and not familiar with Joey’s style should be warned: the persona he has created for his programs has a proclivity for profanity that is not typical of botanical banter. But the content is outstanding and Andrew’s story telling is captivating and his enthusiasm contagious: he can make the story of oaks sound as exciting as a fairy tale from when you listened on your grandmother’s knee. 

They talk about the 13,000 year old Palmer's oak in the California Desert, explain "delayed fertilization", oak evolution, oak pollination and flower morphology and how acorns develop and disperse, how acorns can withstand getting a bite taken out of them by a squirrel and still germinate, and what wonderful organisms oak trees and scrub oaks are. They also talk about the future of oaks, how oaks will deal with climate change, how oaks dealt with the incredibly hot temperatures during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), why there's so much oak diversity in Mexico, the multitude of ecological services oaks provide, and the numerous ecological relationships oaks foster within a plant community, landscape, and regional setting.

Listen to the podcast here.