Torsten

That is possibly the most challenging description of a plant I have ever come across ;-) There are many hundreds (if not thousands) of plants that could look like this. Do you know anything else about this plant, such as where it grows (country), what it is used for or what the flowers look like. I would like to help, but this just isn't enough - sorry. Any hint could narro the field drastically.

I am already working on it. Daniel has been very shy about giving out info for a very good reason. I've been trying to do it along the few hints he has dropped, until I relaised that he is probably leading everyone donw the primrose path ;-) I found a good method for it and it is environmentally friendly too. Give me a few more weeks and i should have it ready.

More pups means slower growth on each pup. I fail to see the logic in having more pups at a slower rate. We grow ours for one season and then cut them up into small pieces. That way we get a lot more than 14 per season. Rooting is best done on perlite. Just place the cutting on dry perlite and wait till the first roots emerge. The advantage of perlite over sand and soil is that you don't damage the roots when checking on them and also you reduce the chance of rotting drastically due to the lack of pathogens and the low waterholding ability of perlite. Do not mix with vermiculite. We root our sections lying on the side as this produces roots quicker.

If one was to accept the rights of one part of the community to have certain rights over a plant, then this would entirely justify the current position of drug plant prohibition. And I am sure that most of us agree on the stupidity of this concept. For what we prohibit and regard as evil in our society is sacred and live-giving in another. When I made my comments about the way natives protect their plants and rites, then I wasn't actually agreeing fully with their views. Their rites are definitely their cultural heritage, but the plants are free for everyones use. This does not mean that they have to tell us about it though. Just the same that we don't tell others the truth about the plants we prohibit, they tell us little or nothing about the plants the revere. On another point, I think that the whole issue of plant rights and registrations is very exaggerated. Most of the multinational type research that is going on is for new products developed from old plants. While I think it would be nicer to have this as public domain knowledge, I have to agree, that a lot of reaesearch would not be done if it wasn't for this greed. And the end result usually only affects those people who choose to live within the boundaries of this market anyway. Example: I take a ginger extract for arthritis. There is a standardised product which is 'fully' researched, which is about 10 times the price of the generic product. It is entirely my choice which product i want to use. I can pay the extra when I want to get a guaranteed product, or I can take my chances with the cheapo. To be honest I do both. At times when I need to have guaranteed relief i will use the pharma product, while most other times I will use the cheapo. I am paying for a service and a guarantee, but only when I want to. the consumer makes the ultimate choice. This service is an important one though and i am gald it was available. Anyone who has tried to establish the efficacy or efficiency of a herbal remedy for a sporadic or transitory ailment will understand the difficulties. The standardised product made i possible to establish this and saved me lots of time, money and pain, while at the same time it established that it didn't work for another member of my family. As for plant variety rights, I think it will get so messy that it won't make any difference anymore anyway, while at the same time fuelling an illegal 'counterfeiting' industry. Whenever society tries to impose too much control, it will invariable loose control. It is an automatic process and there is no need to get too upset about the workings of it in the meantime ;-)

Communication is the lifeblood of ethnobotany and it would be silly for me to stifle that. the more forums the better. In any case, this is still the only australian one

A friend of mine crusied in from canada and started studying ethnobotany in cairns this semester. he has the ultimate goal to live with tribes in the gulf area to study their use of plants in combination to their spiritual beliefs. Exactly the opposite of the reductionist approach so frequently disliked. He had his work, projects and contacts pretty well all worked out even before he arrived. His unprejudiced entry into the field has enabled him to enter pretty well right into it without overcoming many of the usual barriers. I wonder if we create these barriers ourselves by growing up here? It always appears to be easier to approach people where there were no previous unbalanced interactions. "Sorry" does not remove ALL the guilt. I think it's just a matter of packing up and doing it. As for the actual information....I don't think it is all that easy to bring much of the aboriginal information into the open. they generally do not want it publicised and many of their traditions are sacred and secret. To obtain such information would mean to gain their trust, but to publish it would mean to betray this trust. This is in my opinion the main reason why we havent' seen much of australian ethnobotany, especially th spiritual side of it. The aborginal wisdom would prohibit for much of the psychoactive knowledge to enter the uncontrolled public arena. It is only passed on to the youngsters as they mature and recognise the significance of these rites. To throw this information at white people without the controls and settings of a tribal system would probably amount to an abuse of their sacraments. obviously this was a similar situation when Wasson and Hofman made their first trips into Mexico, but their persistence payed off. But we should never forget at what price. While almost all of us are aware of the accomplishments of Wasson and Hofman, the shaman who actually opened up these secrets to the rest of the world was punished severely by her own people. Maria Sabina received little in compensation for getting her house burnt down and for loosing much of her traditional status. The close-knit tribal structure of the aboriginals prevents this kind of renegade behaviour we are hoping ellicit. maybe we are going about it the wrong way....

Trouts notes and books (including those on cacti) will be available from Shaman Australis within a few weeks. We can all check then

salvinrin is not soluble in the type of hydrocarbon used in the honey tube. acetone is best for salvinorin

post the reports and I will endevour to obtain them! many obviously need to be grown from seed and this takes time, but I will offer the seed soon after activity has been pointed out.

Poppies cannot be propagated by cuttings as far as I know. In growth mode tha plant will be a rosette of leaves which emanates froma single centre. then as it goes into flowering mode it sends up a single stalk with a few leaves on it. This stalk cannot root and will put all energy into flowering. In any case all Papavers HATE being transplanted. About your other problem, try to hit the reload button a few times - it might fix it. Although, I must admit that the other day one of my posts went missing too.

Those big pods are probably Papaver giganteum. They are not all that crash hot in regards to alkaloids, but the size makes up for it. I think this may also be a subspecies or variety of somniferum and thus illegal to grow and import.

I am attempting this for the first time this year as well. Although my flowers are still a few weeks away. Little is known about the timing and pollination vector, but the greatest problem with seed development isn't actually the pollination, but the abscission of th pollentube as it reaches the .....now what's that word...'female gamete' will do. This can't be avoided and a maximum of 20% fertilisation can be expected (from memory). the seed viability isn't much better, also being about 20%. Fresh would probably be best. There are a couple of places selling the seeds at inflated prices and I have had only disappointing reports from people trying this. Maybe if we produce lots of seed the prices will come down so that more genetic variation can be spread. please stay in touch with this one, as we may learn from each other.

Hey, don't give up....they are a little hard to get going sometimes and seem to be quite temperamental. That's why I started a tissue culture project on a high alkaloids strain. the tubes should be availabe within a couple of weeks, but I recommend to wait till they are potted up and somewhat established in a few weeks. the timing of the year is unfortunate, as they don't like the winter, but if you can maybe keep them inside for the first few months, then they could take off quickly in spring.

We had some 6 ribbed ones, but as soon as they were potted up and got more fertiliser and water they went to 7 and 8 ribs. The four ribbed one is only revered as a special plant as the four ribs represent the four directions. No pharmacological difference has ever been noted. As trichs hybridise they inherit some of each parents morphology. The scopolicolus could be the source of the four ribbing.

There is so much info I could put in for every seed, but there just isn't the space on the website to do it. I keep all seed and plant records that are made available to me in my personal files. Hopefully one day this will all be available on a database, but there is no real need for it until the Garden opens.

It is made primarily from PVC, but at the temperatures this operates at (well below room temp), and the speed of the extraction, there will be no exudate. I have been told that there are plans for a S/S version later in the year.

My attraction to daturas and Brugmansias is almost exclusively due to their beauty. I have this thing about funnel/trumpet shaped flowers.

I have no confirmation of activity, but at this point I treat all Cereus derived genera as candidates. I recently talked to a cactus specialist who also has an interest in the psychoactivity and he told me that almost all members of the *cereus group he has tried were active. he seemed to think that regional variations are more to blame for non-activity than actual genus specification. This was a pretty sweeping statement, but as he is such an authority in the filed it should certainly not be dismissed. K.Trouts recent musings on waterstress as a major factor of activity would also support this theory somewhat. The Myrtillocactus is an excellent grafting stock!!

I don't actually know what the butter is used for, but I presume it finds some use in food prep. Insofar I can't see any problem with having the fat in the mix with the essential oil. It makes things a lot more dangerous though, as you can't judge the actual essentail oil content in the mix. I think buying/importing a small amount of mutmeg oil will be a lot cheaper than extracting it from the nuts.

It definitely won't flower till the second year. It doesn't have quite the same requirements as MG, and will actually require quite a bit of water to form its seeds properly.

There has been at least one case in NSW where someone was prosecuted for preparation of peyote. I don't know how far this preparation went, but apparently harvesting it and letting it sit around can be enough if there is written material around the house on how to ingest it. It's all a matter of prooving intent. as I mentioned in my post in the cactus forum, I could not allow any instructions for extractions to be posted.

I am still looking for a reliable and cheap supply of a whole range of datura and brugmansia species. Obviously I would like to offer them all ;-) If anyone knows of a cheap bulk source, please let me know. I have problems groing many datura in the subtropics, as they really don't like the humidity.

Live plant material can harbour all sorts of pathogens they would like to keep out of NZ. This is why they allow most seed, but really frown upon soil contamination and live material. I haven't finished sorting out the details of a NZ distribution, but when I do I will pst it here and will contact all nZ customers (as far as I know them) by e-mail.

Theoretically it would work for nutmeg, but it would also extract all the fats. Nutmeg contains large amounts of nutmeg butter and this woul elute the same way as the essential oil.

Index plantarum means the list of plants in a collection. Index seminum is the list of seeds in a collection. The index seminum on the site is fairly up to date, but the index plantarum hasn't been updated for a couple of years. Which source codes, what key, and what do you need them for ??