Oh, hey, it's your neighbor who makes refrigerator magnets out of rocks, Allie Ward. And this is ologies. These are plants. These are roommates that are plants. Let's talk about it with this guest, too. I'm just going to be straight with you as very famous for an ability to do plant things. And rightly so. So he grew up loving chemistry and is a second generation botany nerd. He's hybridized plants and created new cultivars.

He's an artist and an educator and an author of the Grow a Damn Plant Journal,

as well as the book The Universe in 100 Colors, Weird and Wondrous Colors from Nature,

which features a forward by Hank Green, who's a former ologies guest himself.

And he's also experimented with glow- the dark plant creations and opalized flowers, which we're going to get to. But first,

thank you to patrons of the show who sent in so many queries for him. We'll get to them. Also,

we have a spinoff G-rated podcast for kids. In case you didn't know, it's called Smologies. You can find it wherever you get podcasts. And Smologies are classic episodes trimmed for brevity in their classroom and family-friendly because here in Ologies, we talk how we talk with candor and emotion.

Okay, so I know like cursing is cool, right?

Yes, yes.

I'm not going to like go crazy.

If you did, that would be fine.

I get excited.

And we do, especially on this episode.

So just feel free to do a tiny, imperceptible butt dance, take a sip of whatever you're drinking to celebrate the squares in this one. Because it's more than usual. It's plant passion through and through. I loved it. Instant classic. But before we get there, thank you also to everyone who leaves reviews for me to read and keeps the show up in the charts with them. And it's proof, I think, one of you each week,

such as Shark with Underbite, who wrote, late last night, you literally saved my sanity. I was jolted awake by the sound of unholy bone-chilling screams right outside my bedroom window. Did I call 911?

They write? An exorcist? Nope. I smiled and thought, benevolent thoughts for the randy little porcupine I knew it to be.

And to understand that review, and for more on porcupine noises, you can see our recent erythrosinology episode.

Okay, this one though, this guest and I, we're having such a good time. We recorded for almost two hours.

So with editing and some quick asides, I have no idea how long this episode is going to be. I don't really care because it's amazing. So sit in a patch of sun and learn about how much love to give a cactus, $20,000 house plants, fungus gnats, root rot, what to grow in a dark basement, the rarest plants in the world and the

punishments for poaching them, grow lights for people and for plants. Are houseplants ethical?

How to keep your cats from taking whizzes in them? If you should name your plants, how often to

repot them, how to keep an orchid out of your trash can, where to find out which plants are pet safe,

...