Ep. 341 - Moonwort Madness

In Defense of Plants Podcast

In Defense of Plants

Botany, Natural Sciences, Ecology, Nature, Plants, Science

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2021

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we explore the mysterious world of moonworts (Ophioglossaceae) with botanist and moonwort fanatic, Steve Popovich. Whereas we still have a lot to learn about these strange ferns, the insights we have gained have revealed amazing things about evolution, ecology, and soil health. Warning: listening to this episode may cause Botrychulosis! This episode was produced in part by Ben, Lily, Craig, Sarah, Lor, Monika, Brandon, Jeremy, Suzanne, Kristina, Christine, Silas, Michael, Aristia, Felicidad, Lauren, Danielle, Allie, Jeffrey, Amanda, Tommy, Marcel, C Leigh, Karma, Shelby, Christopher, Alvin, Arek, Chellie, Dani, Paul, Dani, Tara, Elly, Colleen, Natalie, Nathan, Ario, Laura, Cari, Margaret, Mary, Connor, Nathan, Jan, Jerome, Brian, Azomonas, Ellie, University Greens, Joseph, Melody, Patricia, Matthew, Garrett, John, Ashley, Cathrine, Melvin, OrangeJulian, Porter, Jules, Griff, Joan, Megan, Marabeth, Les, Ali, Southside Plants, Keiko, Robert, Bryce, Wilma, Amanda, Helen, Mikey, Michelle, German, Joerg, Cathy, Tate, Steve, Kae, Carole, Mr. Keith Santner, Lynn, Aaron, Sara, Kenned, Brett, Jocelyn, Ethan, Sheryl, Runaway Goldfish, Ryan, Chris, Alana, Rachel, Joanna, Lori, Paul, Griff, Matthew, Bobby, Vaibhav, Steven, Joseph, Brandon, Liam, Hall, Jared, Brandon, Christina, Carly, Kazys, Stephen, Katherine, Mohsin Kazmi Takes Pictures, Manny, doeg, Daniel, Tim, Philip, Tim, Lisa, Brodie, Bendix, Irene, holly, Sara, and Margie.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to the Indefensive Plants podcast, the official podcast of Indefensibleplants.com. What's up? This is your host, Matt. Welcome to the show. How's everyone doing this week? This episode, we are taking a look at a very strange group of ferns, the moon warts. These ferns in many ways differ from all other ferns on this planet and their history goes back many,
0:21.2	many millions of years. And joining us to talk about this is botanist and self-diagnosed
0:26.2	sufferer of batriculosis, Steve Popovich. While Steve is skilled in a wide range of botanical
0:32.8	topics, he has a special passion and interest for moonwarts, which has culminated in some really great discoveries,
0:40.1	which includes descriptions of new species.
0:42.7	So let's just jump right into it.
0:44.1	Without further ado, here's my conversation with Steve Popovich.
0:47.3	I hope you do. Thank you, man. I'm glad to be here. I am super excited also because I am addicted to moon warts and off-field glass AC, so this is going to be fun. Awesome. My name is Steve Popovich, and I'm a recently retired U.S. Forest Service botanist. Congrats. I was a botanist for the Forest Service for maybe 15 or 20 years.
1:29.2	And I also worked for the Bureau of Land Management, so called BLM, which manages public lands
1:35.2	on Western USS does the Forest Service.
1:36.9	And I actually retired technically as the national program leader for the BLM in Washington, D.C.
1:44.5	as the program lead for wildfire rehabilitation and emergency soil stabilization.
1:50.1	Wow.
1:50.4	Program, which fixes Mother Earth after forest fires and grassland fires.
1:56.0	And it had a lot of botany in that job, actually we after all we used plants to to try to fix the
2:04.1	the bare soil after fires but my my love is botany i was also a research plant ecologist for the
2:11.1	usGS biological resources division which is a division for conducting research pulled out under the
2:16.9	clinton era and stuck into the
2:19.0	USGS from scientists from other natural resource agencies. And I also worked for the Fish
2:25.0	and Wildlife Service for a little bit trapping Selkirk Mountain Caribou in British Columbia,
2:28.6	which at that time was an endangered species or subspecies of caribou.
2:32.7	Wow.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from In Defense of Plants, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of In Defense of Plants and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.