00:00We're down here, we're at an undisclosed location in beautiful Starr County, Texas.
00:09This habitat type is becoming endangered.
00:10A lot of the land here is underappreciated.
00:12So that's why it gets bulldozed so easily, which makes it all the more tragic.
00:16So that's why what we're trying to do here is get more people aware of these plants,
00:19how cool they can be.
00:21Been spending most my life living in a botanical paradise.
00:27So here we go.
00:28The rarest cactus in North America here, Astrophytum asterius, aka the star cactus.
00:35Only known from South Texas and a few places in Northern Mexico.
00:38It is heavily poached.
00:40You can see what this cactus is doing.
00:42It sinks into the ground, basically recesses into the soil.
00:45You step right over it, all right?
00:46It's flush with the ground.
00:47I'm going to give it a little kiss.
00:49See that?
00:50Look at that.
00:51We got a couple of these that a friend of mine grew from seed, so we're going to plant
00:54some of these.
00:55So Al, what would you remark about this little cactus right here, Lophophora williamsii out
01:00of peyote?
01:01You know, I think it's, you know, I think it's a rather unauspicious.
01:04It's unassuming.
01:05You know, you hear so much about it, it's got a bigger profile.
01:08And when you're really meeting a person, you say, hey, you're bigger on TV than I thought
01:13you were.
01:14You're just a little guy.
01:15Right, a little guy, but they can form large clumps that get upwards of two feet across.
01:18So it's a whole village of little guys who happen to be psychedelic cactus that is a
01:22very sacred to the indigenous people down here.
01:25Right.
01:26Seeing that so much land is being cleared down here, we feel it important to plant not
01:30only peyote, but many of the surrounding tamalipan thorn scrub, endemic shrubs and other perennials.
01:38You know, like a star cactus, for instance, it produces what looks like a small fruit,
01:41but it's got, you know, 200 seeds in it.
01:44It's 200 individual plants.
01:45So it doesn't take much to just have a whole bunch of new plants and then be able to go
01:51put them back in habitat or give them to people in their gardens.
01:53Oh, absolutely right.
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