sagiXsagi

Compiling some interesting information I found here and on the www. I include several opinions, knowing that not all people grow stuff the same way and not everyone has the same climate and enviroment, Germinating seeds Torsten the germinator problems after germination reply by planthelper planthelper On flowering time - how long does it take to reach maturity Torsten propagation Torsten Various short comments Fresh seed makes things a lot easier and then getting them past their seedling stage is the next hurdle nice link with lots of info on cultivation http://www.ephedra.nu/en/botanical_2.htm EDITED TO ADD MORE STUFF: also on erowid on e. sinica: karode from shroomery: modern shaman: torsten 2006 well that's all for now, please add your own experience and discuss. PS: I will be making my first attempts the following days

equisetina at the phase of doing multiple suckers. the 2nd plant I made last year died because I left it unwatered during summer in too much of a sunny position. same with my best chiloensis, sadly new equisetinas from suckers sinica with multiple suckers, I removed the branches that were coming out of the holes, which is a pretty good way to propagate after all, holes being large enough and all the new sinicas I made today distachya ssp helvetica last but not least, 4x intermedia transplanted to their own individual pots, even though they were supposed to be lower in hight and general size from equisetina, I have found they are superior in terms of speed, hardiness , size and ease of growth compared to equisetina and sinica. Also 3 of them are flowering, so I am hoping to get some some seeds eventually Cheers

amanita muscaria and the rest of isoxazole amanitas are gabaergics. they can be alchemised to be either sedatives or more stimulant but at high doses they are dissociative. Tons of new info nowadays about therapeutical properties, including good effects for sleep issues, anxiety and even PTSD. Beware of dosing!! I recomment you check out "Amanita science and magic" group in FB

easy. insert the number of leaves you feel best to handle at once, chew, shallow juice untile its tasteless, repeat. it might be best to chew less leaves at once than more. Couple friends have told me that chewing Khat is greatly enhanced by combo with chewing ephedra stems, which is is much easier. also catha varies a lot according to strain. And of course alcohol.

DISCLAIMER: this thread should exist and I am drunk enough to take the responsibility for starting it ... DISCLAIMER 2: Amanita is no kiddie stuff - this is not material for the hasty youth I am writting these from a country that thankfully - willfully eating amanita muscaria to cause inebriation is perfectly legal. I haven't eaten them for more than 6-7 years now and there's no real reason for this, but I certainly claim to know a bit of their mechanism as I have drank muscaria and pantherina tea more than a few times - also served tea to others several times. I only broke through once. That one time was , actually an "accident" but I loved it... honestly people dont seem to know about this.. but this seems like a powerful agent to me and the tabboo and ignorance is starting to annoy me ... yeah the material is hard to master in a couple ways.. it might not fit you... statistically it wont you dont have to like it.. needs a patient, mature person to realise the same material can do different things on different doses... and that the dissociative (high) dose is not a choice to be taken lightly, because that is a realm that resembles conscious dreaming and fears and loss of the ego and consciousness..... thought - out - experimenting with amanita muscaria should be done by two persons or 3 persons even best .. you got to have a sitter and I am not really here to tell you that , but even at mild doses, when there 's not tripping , if you're like me you're gonna wanna like to socialise on this shit, similar to what alcohol inebriation is, only lots more concentrated and intelligently... ,,, when talking about dosages .. I am giving you some expirential quidelines here - I dont even invite you to play - dont play this game if you dont know what it about so, the material SHOULD be dried OR brewed / roasted in some way.... the more controlled way is to dry the material and try to homgenise, at least to smaller particles, and then if you are a more spiritual dude, you can sun-bathe the material and maybe the material likes it as well they say muscaria does not work in milk to kill flies, but I have seen dead flies in the pan I was sun bathing dried muscaria material! yeah yeah, all these stuff about ibotenic acid, muscimole and motabolisms, and the whys and howsm there's that.. but people dont learn, dont fancy such stuff , dont really care dosage ranges of amanita muscaria when talking about dosages you have to know that I am not suggesting anyone taking anything . these mushrooms can me dangerous and they are reoported to be pretty tense! it is just annoying that there's such a huge a tabboo around such potentially helpful mushroom and I decided to talk about my past experience with it. ... I am giving you the quidelines here - I dont even invite you to play - dont play this game if you dont know what it about note1: reports with european material as opposed to us reports seem to feat a larger percentage of stomach problems that might indicate a larger muscarine percentage in US specimens... perhaps this is the reason that european muscarias are regarded more esteemed... note2: scientific reports show that muscaria stems are much less in actives that caps , so when indicating dosage, a caps only batch would be more potent than a caps and stems batch.... note3: there are reports that show that muscaria material is slowly metabolised by most individuals, there are reports for 2 hours - BUT, sometimes its really important how fast you drink the tea: if you want to have it mild and more stretched out drink it out slowly - if you want a kick then drink it up fast, and this goes for all doses... BUT stupid people go and try up amanita muscaria without a reason ... and now we are starting to give you some numbers (in grams, dried material) 1-2 (grams of powderised whole mushroom material) for 3-5 portions of meal : flavor enhancer *** also use the powder to season meat *** could use the stems for cooking and caps for divination ====>>>> [example with caps and stems material] 2-3,5 tonic tea, tasteful along with honey and cinnamon most people dont feel it, but you might see it looking at them 4-6 base line - where it starts to be felt 7-15 (20) the mid dose range of muscaria is pretty interesting, its a euphoric , inebriating thing that might last as long as 4 hours, the non dissociative doses of amanita muscaria when mastered , resemble alcohol inebriation, and it strongly relates to the rate of intake of tea. there seems to be an appetite regulator dimention in muscimoles action... this is from both personal and other peoples reports and it might be not dose-related... (16) 22-35 this is entering the dose range of wanting to break through to the other side, and its true that you can do it at this range... or maybe you can do it at the range of 10-14 caps-only dried material tea.... YOU CAN UNDERSTAND that all numbers are indicative .. for caps only (no stems) the number would rather be 2 for the tonic 4-6 for the slightly euphoric 8-10 for more euphoric and 15+ for breakthrough again, no one should be trying to experiment with muscimole and amanita muscaria.. I was just fed up with all the rubbish amd thought I ought to share my knowledge of this thing

Short update + pictures , as I was tidying up a bit today : Indeed , for such a hot and dry summer as mine in zone 9 southern greece, placing plants under shade in the summer seems to work wonders, resulting in a more care free style of plantcaring . But you have to change to sunnier positions the rest of the year.. I got 4x Ephedra feldschenkoi plants, put then in a more clay based soil. These are supposed to be in the E.minima category, very short, small bushy, slightly crawling and 4 x E. intermedia plants , those are supposed to be the intermediate form between the shorter sinica and the taller equisetina. all newcomers are seed growns , they came with some while etiolation in the package, but I trained them in shade and they seem to be doing great so far.. Intermedia seem like vigorous plants, I wonder how they will compare, since my equisetina started from damaged and stressed rooted cutting / branch took its time to take off.. By the way I made my first attempt at propagating equisetina today, here's a pic of the mother plant after the proceedure. Fingers crossed! I have been postponing to transplant my biggest E.chiloensis to bigger pot, its been in the same pot with a big variegated cactus , a polaskia chichipe crest for many years .. Part of me was afraid of the stress.. Anyways, here some of the fattest branches of my biggy chiloensis . Definately my small experience and losses have taught me that chiloensis and propably any american species is better of in poor clay/sand style soil mixed only with a tid bit of nutricious compost soil. I am quite positive now that I woulnt have lost the american species I have lost if I had consistently used such poor heavy substrate and yet another 2 pics

its one of the best plants to grow, but it can respond badly to cutting back, contrary to, say caapi.. Once I had a turbina strangle and kill mine (they were traveling up the same way towards the next floors. I have also had one in a big barrel flower at 15 months from sowing. I think both argyreia and turbina can react badly to insufficient water ... Still not sure why my turbina died...

Its ironic when a 'exotic' plant you have devoted passion into growing, turns out to occur near where you live. but at the end its all really funny and lucky...Well while 3 species, foeminea, distachya and nebrodensis (2 ssp) are reported from greece, I really thought distachya distibution was limited to the few undisturbed costal regions in north greece while it hit me! I feel really lucky.. because while I was chatting with a new botanist friend, and talking about valencian distachya and central asia distachya, wanting to show him north greece distachya pics I knew I could find from greek fb groups, I found a set of pictures that def seemed distachya from 2018 I didnt remember next to an asphalt road (a new one at that) .. and it was a guy from my region.. so I sent him a message - was he really in my region?? and the kind dude gave me enough hints for me to get to the spot... ! Long story short, this is again, like all ephedra habitats in my region and propably all greece and maybe even all the ephedra euro zone of greece-italy-spain , a remanant , relic population. So this particular remnant population seems to come from when this use to be a real delta .. delta in the rivers sense.. lots of river material and river round stones... Which is one of the typical habitats of distachya in greece.... At once this population in my opinion is of immediate danger.. but thats another story... the dude that gave me the locations also told me the place had been burnt in recent fire and that he doubt the plants wouls survive, but he told me there are several ephedras in the area.. I was still sceptical then .. so yeah, I went and (lucky first??) I parked and found the first plants , baked from summer 2021 fire, but when I checked the biggest ones more, I saw they were resprouting. I was immediately happy the plants seemed to have survided the fire, and went on to walk more.. I found pieces of plot that hadnt burn thus I saw several patches of the plant unharmed... there are some really fucking old plants there, and I am sure some of them burnt... but because distachya is a sucker plant, I seems like a pretty firer resistant plant to me .. and thus , not only I now have a real distachya habitat to explore, but I have the opportunity to do a case study about how it recovers from a fire too! cheers to everyone!!!!

these berries are really sweet . tastes really like a negelected superfood the population is thriving after the fire .. new sprouts do not cone unburnt plants fruit heavily

well my friend , I think that the whole shit started with usa alcohol prohibition because USA... that mentality. and then they decided they would grade drugs and enoforce this to the whole fucking world, because they had a failed psychdelic revolution in their hands... drug classification in my country is nuts and thats because we have the USA paradigm ......

Having said all this, distachya , major, fragilis, foeminea are less likely to die from overwatering, and once established they are really OK being wet all year round in my zone 9 roof, and now I almost have them all in permanent semishade even sinicas during the heat of the summer except a couple of them, and those ones that are in full sun, I have to be more carefull so that they dont dry up.... so yeah, after a while, and especially in summer, the worry is never the overwatering, its the drying up if they are not watered often enough .... I also thing that the more they grow the more vegetative growths per year the do, especially distachya once it gets going , in the right climate it will grow almost yeararound... if you prune a fragilis, it responds back quickly, it does thick new sprouts ... they are very strong plants, especially fragilis... . sinica and seemingly equisetina are kinda in the middle in terms of how prone to rotting are ... and the american species are the most tricky, at least in my experience... thing is, once they are established (size and a routine) , they are kind of easy-going plants, almost care-free, and I am currently in a state I have 3 chiloensis at this advanced, wood at the based stage.. I lost a big viridis approaching this stage which was a pity.. Well I think plant material might be more suitable for a therepeutic approach than isolated alkaloids, propably european distachyas have the best profile ( medium PE and low E ) for these kind of treatments. But I also think that maybe when taken for a long time for a therapeutic scheme , you might have to have on and off periods.. I think these alkaloids can be kinda cumulative and I also know they actively change your metabolism.. So in a case where they were needed for a treatment, I would definately consider periodic off times and maybe substitute pill PE with distachya .. Its often said that the whole herb is more therapeytically active than isolated compouds, maybe this is also true with ephedra.. NEWS/UPDATES: well I went to the distachya habitat today and I found a several plants packed with fruits, or more correctly cones... I have tried some fominea fruits , they are pleasant but hardly any sweet usually, now I had tried some of my own unknown progeny distachyas fruits, and sometimes they are very pleasant and sweet... now, I tasted those wild ones from my area , man those are very sweet fruits and pretty big fruits, fleshy, and juicy.. (distachya does 3 pairs of fleshy cone bracts) ... THere's a asian paper on the nutricional value of sinica fruit... Its really puzzling how this plant is boycotted from the collective knowledge - because the implications with everything are too huge to ignore.. I mean you cant fucking ignore the ephedra genus.. the fuckers have multiple value in several science fields .. to be continued in the the habitat thread

you are right in the principle.. any suggestion will be better when customised to species, plant age + history, plant container , climate , microhabitat and caring habit. I have found that the easiest to die on me were the american species, so they particularly need free-drainage .. And its these species who hate it more to be wet over extended periods of time when they are 'sleeping/resting' . Yet its also possible you loose them if you forget them too dry - which then the plants usually warn you by drying off parts of their branches. Those species seem to like heavier and poorer in nutricionals clay-sand substrate , whereas distachya, major, fragilis, foeminea and even established sinicas was grow in typical garden plants soil. Putting pebbles in the soil surface seems to help in any species, any age and any pot size. as for fragilis vs major, I think I have begun to figure out a way to tell in established habitat plants or big plants in the ground, but its not as easy in plants in containers, well not until you have them growing side to side which I plan to do next season with new well-IDed seeds from spain. more or less, fragilis is bigger with fatter branches and it also tends to create sucker shoots more readily. Major is more erect too. But other wise they are very similar. on my good news, today I picked the first chiloensis seeds !!!! woohoo! the fruits cones fleshy bracts do not become red or as bloated as other species, they are pinkish.

Good news , the last chiloensis turnt up a female (see pic) , so I am hopeful for seed this season! Also check out a couple of pictures from the equisetina explosion of growth, which I de-weeded today.

Thanks for kind words. To be honest I had never thought about that, and its a pretty damn interesting point. You see, once ephedras are of a certain size and above they are quite easy-going and the only problem is a potential drying out, if you forget watering them in the summer months, especially in dry and hot summers. So, going from how much they like being in big containers, I would say that maybe that could be cool tip. In summer put most of mine in a spot that gets bright shade in the noon and they tolerate the summer much better there. I might try your idea this summer with some plants! ****** Oh well, the 3rd seed grown sinica proved another male, and this means I have 4 different male sinica plants, including the 3 seed growns and the one I got from ebay as a rooted sucker. The quest for a female continues! Here are the 3 seed growns, the one in the right is still growing and hasnt fully bloomed. Oh, the other day I saw my last chiloensis to have formed cone buds, still hoping for a female in that front! some pretty cool pictures from my equisetina, showing new growth which makes a nice contrast with the older blue segments , and making sucker-offshoots! seems I might be able to propagate it next year

Ephedra plants are available for sale (~20-30 euros per plant) , EUROPE ONLY distachya (male, female) sinica (male) fragilis (?) ask via PM

After some years from seed, around 4-6 years, sinica does suckers. Thats why one should not plant them in containers with holes at the sides (of course the same goes for distachya) . Waiting for the last seed grown sinica to reveal its sex, hoping its a female this time.

man I hate it that I should downside all pictures to post in here ... damn.... this is a healthy relic population that still shows how the species acts in its natural habitat ... this seems to be too healhty, maybe the healthiest greek population or maybe the people writing papers on distributions + behaviours of plants are as negligent as people who perpetuated the several problems in ephedra taxonomy .. Damn fucking scientists

Pictures from a spot that seems to have been completely burnt in summer 2021. There's a picture that you should zoom in to see whats hapeing... I saw so many new sprouts in some places, and knowing how fragile fresh ephedra shoots are, I decided I should not go there soon, such a hippy sensitive idiot I am with that fresh shoots , lol.... I have been doing progress since then elesewhere though ...

tenontitis man educated guess for both or any location in greece, says E. foeminea, the large, climber one, which is distruibuted in all greece and is not very unusual in indisturbed habitats and archeological places .. E. distachya is rarer and more habitat specific and E.major (E.nebrodensis) is even rarer and I havent seen it in habitat. yours should be foeminea, its an impressive plant !

sounds like what you call major is a distachya .. its definately greener than major and fragilis and its easy to propagate through suckers when cultivated in pots..

pictures have to be less than 1 MB in size to be uploaded yes they have leaves, temporary leaves which wither and die and leave 'scales' in the notches which are aften characteristic for the species, generally speaking or PM me and we talk via email

RETROSPECTIVE / UPDATES , March 2022 INTRO : I have recently re-started itching my longterm ephedra project. While I have compiled a photo archive and have an excellent compilation of ephedra papers , some of them printed on paper, I left the studying project to sleep for the past years and I only kept growing some species. At some point I had projected that this ephedra monograph superproject I had in mind would last 4-5 years.. I am laughing now... Well, 5 years was the first wave, I now feel I am on the begining of the 2nd wave. The highlight of my new phase is that I discovered a local Ephedra distachya remnant population (see a separate thread about that) which was additionally severely damaged from fire (but even burnt plants seem to resprout) which is a separate project in itself, as the habitat is in a close-to-extinction- stage, and also that this is the most southernmost distachya in greece that I know, other know habitats being far up to the north coastline, so it was quite surprising. I intend to monitor the regeneration of the plants and explore more the area to find more spots of this remnant population, in an old river delta, among heavy human interference and civilization.. I also fantasise about finding a local scientist to push the cause for studying my find, try to pretect it and perhaps collaborating with the ephedra academics doing stuff in greece. Oh well, one can dream, cant he??? At the very least, I am all for doing the fucking work for free, but I will get a mention in the paper that I was a helper god damn it! hehe PLANT/SPECIES/CULTIVATION UPDATE + SMALL RETROSPECTIVE: the plan was to grow as many species as I could, side by side, so as I could determine best and first hand a better taxonomic understanding via cultivation notes. I stupidly lost my ephedra minuta/minor plants when I pushed too hard to propagate via suckers in the wrong substrate . Hopefully I will make new plants from the seeds I got when one female plant went hermie. I have lost my viridis and nevadensis plants, propably due to the same substrate issue.. I am now growing another nevadensis 1.5 year old, still looks pathetic, lol . I am hoping that the last, 3rd chiloensis will be female, and the same goes for the last flowering sinica, I am hoping for a female plant... Its a cool extra new feature, trying to get both sexes in a species, makes collecting more challenging... The substrate for species minuta/minor, sinica, equisetina, any american species should rather be more sandy/clay/cactus type substrate .. The substrate for distachya, major, fragilis, foeminea and any other climber-crawler, you can use a more common commercial soil for plants, it can be much more nutricious.. or some mix of the two. PRO TIP: I have found a source in europe for cheap small plantlets of ephedra intermedia and ephedra feldschenkoi, rarely offered plants in any form. PM me if you are interested. FRAGILIS DISCLAIMERS: In the past in this thread, I have refered to a greek form of foeminea as fragilis, cf fragilis or foeminea ssp fragilis.. Let me set this straight : theres is no fragilis in greece.. fragilis is reported from spain and morocco. Ephedra fragilis is a lookalike with Ephedra major ... Ephedra nebrodensis is the same (synonym) as major. There's a lot more taxonomic confusion with ephedra descriptions, especially from the mediteranean area, but I wont go into that. One of the reasons I made up that name and involved the name fragilis as a nickname for one of the local foeminea types, was one becasue it was "fragile" like fragilis description and two because I had begun to understand that fragilis is a problematic species throughout ephedra taxonomy and at the time I was leaning towards the position it might not be a true species, that it might be a misnomer, especially seeing the similarities with major. NEW EPHEDRA SCIENCE UPDATES+ NOTES + NEW SPECULATIONS : leading worldwide ephedra expert and one of my personal heros, swedish acedemic last 2021 paper finds that more and different research is needed. She finds that maybe foeminea was not the most ancient and sister-to-all-other-species after all... New and more detailed variations of the calculations show that major is the most ancient sister to all now ... I wont pretend I understand phyllogenetics, but the papers implies that introgression and / or hybridisation events could have been a part of ephedras evolution history, and of course this turnt me on because I am allready very much into the hybridisation and speciation events in baja california among Ferocactus species... I am not scientist per se, but I really think (and so do some scientists ) that hybridisation events is an underappreciated factor in speciation, and how wonderful and fascinating concept speciation is !!! thats why I am so much into taxonomy, I think there's magic behind it all! research in south american species is advancing too, but I am not too read up in this. hopefully in the future seeds from south american species will be more available for us freeks that wanna make ephedra gardens with different species side to side.. Cheers, grow on and stray true!

they dont look like diffusa

It would be extra cool for me if you showed detailed pictures, especially since your plants seem to be major and fragilis , so a real side by side comparison would be awesome... 5 pics per plant would be cool! things we are searching is: 1) woody trunk , how many main trunks, are the branches the same width? 2) does one do suckers near the base while the other branches from the woody base ??

Ephedra are notorious for being hard to identify to species, so to know for certainty the source location of the seeds is a very important factor for ID purposes. Spain has all you mentioned: distachya, major and fragilis. All 3 species are relatively easier to cultivate, and notably faster than say american or asian species. This having been said, I regard distachya as one of the easiest to ID, and yeah its a plant that doesnt grow much in height, it grows horizontally through suckers, so woody trunks are a rare occasion on very old plants. Distachya has also a characteristic female fruit formation and its natural habitats , especially the coastal ones make it realatively easy to ID, especially when in fruit. Now, major and fragilis are another cake: they keep changing positions in the phyllogenic charts of the last 15 years papers and the major (pun intended) 2021 paper on the subject doesnt resolve open ends, it rather concludes that more research should be done. In any case, major and fragilis are very similar plants morphologically, leaves and scales seem to be identical, seeds are of the same type and growth is of the same kind, erect and their reproductive organs also seem very similar. Their main difference seems to be that fragilis grows much taller than major with fatter branches. There are some indications that fragilis seems to also tend to grow suckers from near the base of the plant , while this is not reported for major. I also assume that fragilis grows notably faster than major, and I think I remember Torsten pointing out the difference in plant vigour comparing the two. The fact that the two forms (species) are reported to grow in sympatry (both forms in the same habitat) in spain doesnt make things easier, but still spanish botanists insist they can tell one from the other.. You dont hapen to know the exact location your seeds were collected in spain , do you ??? So, it seems to me that having seen the plants in their habitat seems to play a major (pun intended, again!) role in the understanding of each species, especially if said species has lookalike species nearby. Habitat plants of the same species can vary dramatically, as most or even the vast majority are very old plants and remnant populations. Culivating from seeds of known species can also contribute such knowledge, but one should remember cultivated plants and habitat plants can look a lot different. But I am assuming that taxonomic infos and data can be obtained by both activities , that is visiting habitats and growing different species from seed side to side. I have grown several plants of the fragilis / major type in the past, and because I discounted the species status of fragilis back then (not without good reasons), I lost the tags, so I practically do not know which of my plants are major and which fragilis. I am now in the begining of another wave of studying ephedra I remember you saying your plants dont make cones at all, am I right??