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Hillbilly32

Phalaris arundinacea 'Turkey Red'

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Hello,

I was wondering if anyone on these forums have any experience with this plant? I have researched a bit and unfortunately, there are no viable strains down from where I am from, and from what I've read, the 'Turkey Red' strain of Phalaris is supposed to contain the highest levels of alkaloids?

Can anyone confirm this or offer advice or information from their own personal experience?

Cheers,

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Hi Hillbilly, sorry for the belated reply, I have been travelling.

I do not have much knowledge on this strain, except that supposedly its alkaloid profile is relatively clean compared to the others, and consisting mostly of 5-MeO-DMT.

Are you currently growing any Phalaris? We wouldn't mind some cultivation tips from Tasmanians :)

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with any phalaris you realy need to stess the plants to get the alk lvls, cut it back, dont water it for a week or two, make sure you are using the young new growth tips rather than the old parts, light lvls can change the lvls as well, its been a while since i read up on this stuff but i do have a couple patches of phalaris growing one turkey red and the other is phalaris aquatica. i havnt had a chance to have them tested as of yet but the growth of both is phenomonal. any how as stated above, turkey red should be more 5meo while a lot of people dont like the 5meo and would rather nn, of which the aquatica would be a better choice. any how best of luck with it.

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To the best of my knowledge Phalaris brachystachys is the best Phalaris for alkaloid levels. Anyone confirm or deny this?

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my impression of the reports of phalaris is that alkaloid profile can vary from plant to plant.

that is from a batch of the same seed some plants may produce mainly 5meo and others spice,some may be inactive.

so if you want to have some control you would have to propagate from individual plants rather than just plant a number of seeds together.

may not be true but seems to be what people like trout are saying.

t s t .

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We wouldn't mind some cultivation tips from Tasmanians :)

geez, u guys will never let me live that one down....sina, u will get much better germ rates if you insert the seeds far up your rectum!!! :)

Edited by XipeTotec

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hows the garden growing down those parts tassie jd?? ive still got those plants for u and ur wicked tazzie crew.

sanks for looking after me big guy!!! (i miss ur lichens man)

a good trait of the 'turkey red' is that it seems to be a much more vigorous grower than other phalaris vars getting around. it really cranks with minimal care, and can take quite a beating. wish i had some now! anyone got?

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my impression of the reports of phalaris is that alkaloid profile can vary from plant to plant.

that is from a batch of the same seed some plants may produce mainly 5meo and others spice,some may be inactive.

In college while attending a particularly easy agriculture class I often sat in the back reading their collection of agronomy journals. I dont remember the name of the journal or the issue but I distinctly remember reading a paper on a phytochemists success in breeding P. aquatica into distinct chemotype cultivars. The researcher made strains clearly and reliably dominant in DMT, gramine, ß-carbolines, and one other group.. :unsure: non-psychoactive phenethylamines I think. So a distinct chemotype strain will be reproducable and a phytochemically variable strain is differentiatable to chemotypes by selective breeding. Having a GC/MS in your basement wouldnt hurt.

(Sadly I never gained access to that guys seed)

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Jeez!! I kept checking back on this thread for a few days without any replies, and then WHAMO! :P

I haven't ordered the Turkey Red strain yet, will do so when I have a bit more money, however, I was wondering if they are able to be grown indoors next to a window with a constant temperature of 24° C. Do they really need lots of light to sprout or will window light suffice?

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They dont need a ton of light to sprout but in low light the growth will be spindly and you'll need to be more careful hardening them off. I started aquatica, arundinacea, and brachystachys in pots on the floor of my hothouse- not that bright of light in that spot and ~22°C, all grew well when hardened off and moved outside.

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hows the garden growing down those parts tassie jd?? ive still got those plants for u and ur wicked tazzie crew.

sanks for looking after me big guy!!! (i miss ur lichens man)

jono

the gardens are still coming along, cacti garden is expanding, the grass is growing well, my psycrotria seems to be loving the summer, bruggies are covered in flowers, sally is getting taller, only thing that hasnt done well is the syrian rue but alas its somthing i can live without, if you still feel like adding cacti let me know i have plenty of space for cacti at the moment, ive run out of garden beds but plenty of space for pots still.

and about the grass indoors, it should grow but slower, lower light lvls should up the alk lvls, im not sure if that is where it will live that it will up the lvls much but if you can get it in full light then move them to low light before you cut it should help things. all in all i found the grass to be hard to stop once you get it going, it dont seem to mind what you do to it, it will continue to grow, its just trying to max out the lvls in the stuff that is hard, one paper i was reading on it was saying things like, dropping the light lvls will drop your growth by say 25% but up the alk lvls by up to 200% so it was all about getting the right balance between growth and lvls.

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You have brachystachys!! Don't they have ~3% alkaloid content?

They reportedly have 0.3%

The oft quoted 3% most likely began when someone mis-transcribed 3 mg/g

Its happened before.. If you make a bad scan of a page in a scientific journal and then smoke an excess of your favorite herb mg/g looks alot like %

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In college while attending a particularly easy agriculture class I often sat in the back reading their collection of agronomy journals. I dont remember the name of the journal or the issue but I distinctly remember reading a paper on a phytochemists success in breeding P. aquatica into distinct chemotype cultivars. The researcher made strains clearly and reliably dominant in DMT, gramine, ß-carbolines, and one other group.. :unsure: non-psychoactive phenethylamines I think. So a distinct chemotype strain will be reproducable and a phytochemically variable strain is differentiatable to chemotypes by selective breeding. Having a GC/MS in your basement wouldnt hurt.

(Sadly I never gained access to that guys seed)

Some interesting info there Auxin. Do you remember any details about how the chemotype cultivars were bread. Some insite into what influences chem dominance other than stressing would be invaluable right about now :).

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It was just as youd expect, Harry. Standardized extraction for analytical equipment was defined, different groups tested to see what chems each group tended toward, then growing out and testing every plant and selectively breeding for traits. It didnt go into tremendous detail, didnt say how many gene pairs were involved in each chemotype for instance, just that he did it and found that sheep staggars was unrelated to predominance of any certain class of alkaloid. DMT got a bum rap taking the blame for sheep staggars when its evidently totally harmless.

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I used to work with an old greek guy back when I was in the ACT. He had a property out of Canberra and some how we got onto the topic of phalaris. He said it was the best fodder crop and he loved the stuff. I said doesn't it poison your stock? He said nah, there is only 1 time of year you have to be carefull (can't remember when), you can tell by checking the base of the grass, where the aerials meet the root system and it will be a purple colour when it becomes poisonous.

I've always wondered if this relates to a time of year when alkaloid content is highest :scratchhead: . But if DMT etc isn't the cause of "staggers" then maybe it doesn't.

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geez, u guys will never let me live that one down....sina, u will get much better germ rates if you insert the seeds far up your rectum!!! :)

No idea what you're on about mate, I was asking for successful cultivation techniques for Phalaris in cold environs, what are you talking about?

Harry very interesting info there would love to see a comparative test for material when purple is present vs when it's not!

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geez, u guys will never let me live that one down....sina, u will get much better germ rates if you insert the seeds far up your rectum!!! smile.gif

-dont trust him sina...

so DMT does not cause staggers?

i always found that idea rather comical, some great beast trying to walk around all inter -diminsional, what does a cow see on DMT? and is the 'staggers' condition fatal? okay i can scratch that one-DMt is not the casue of staggers?

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i have seen Gramine blamed for staggers before but again dont think this has been proven, closer to disproven i think

a quick snipet of info

Gramine is quite toxic and may be responsible for most of the toxic effects possible from Phalaris ingestion. "Phalaris staggers" a toxic symptom observed in sheep grazing on poor pastures high in Phalaris is thought to be caused by extremely high alkaloid levels in an overall poor animal diet, although tests on normal sheep fed with alkaloid extracts, pure alkaloids and dried Phalaris hay did not produce any toxic symptoms. The theory of toxicity caused by fungus growing on the grass appears unlikely as Phalaris staggers are observed mostly in dry seasons (less than ideal climate for fungus development) and at times of poor pasture.

and here is an interesting one on BREEDING NON-TOXIC PHALARIS (PHALARIS AQUATICA L.) in aus

i just coppied the summary and intro see the link below for the full paper.

http://www.regional.org.au/au/asa/1996/con...ted/450oram.htm

Summary.

The known toxins in phalaris herbage are monomethylated and dimethylated tryptamines (TRYP) and tyramines (TYR), the β-carbolines (BC) derived from TRYP, and cyanogenic glycosides (HCN). The relative concentrations of these have been surveyed in 50 accessions and over 500 individual plants in the CSIRO germplasm collection, in breeding populations, and in cv. Holdfast. Preliminary data suggest that low concentrations of TRYP+BC and TYR result from homozygosity of incompletely recessive alleles at two unlinked loci. Fifty plants with low concentrations of TRYP, BC, and TYR and low - moderate levels of HCN, were found in 1994 and re-tested in 1995. Five individuals are being clonally propagated to produce seed for field testing of an experimental population (LoTox) at Western Australian and South Australian sites prone to phalaris poisoning. If the concentrations of TRYP+BC and of TYR are simply inherited, the low alleles at each locus will be backcrossed into all agronomic types - Australian, Sirosa/Holdfast, Sirocco and Acid-tolerant.

INTRODUCTION

In the 1960s, it was thought that the occasional toxicity of the herbage of Phalaris aquatica L. (phalaris) was due to dimethyltryptamine alkaloids (5). Therefore, the cultivar Sirolan was developed with only 5% as much of these alkaloids as cv. Australian (10). However, Sirolan herbage still proved to be toxic in some localities and years. A search for additional toxin(s), in which phalaris extracts were fractionated and tested for cardiac activity using a rat-heart muscle bioassay, led to the discovery of N-methyltyramine (MT), which has strong effects on heart function (1). N,N-dimethyltyramine had been found earlier (9), and selected against during the development of Sirolan, but this compound is much less toxic than MT. Furthermore, cyanogenic glycosides (HCN) appear to have caused some sudden death cases in sheep in NSW (3). Yet other cases of sudden death are caused by nitrate (7) or by an unknown agent which induces a polioencephalomalacia-like disease (2). Losses from the latter two causes can only be minimised by ensuring that hungry sheep are not grazed on phalaris-dominant pastures during the autumn danger period. Cobalt prophylaxis by slow-release ruminal pellets or pasture sprays will reduce the losses from phalaris staggers, which is caused by the dimethyltryptamines and β-carbolines (BC) (2). Because no information is available on the extent of genetic variability in the concentrations of BC, MT or HCN in phalaris herbage, chemical assays were used to search for variability successively in a germplasm collection, in breeding populations and in a recent cultivar. This paper reports the results and discusses their implications.

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No idea what you're on about mate

i thought u may have been having a dig... like jono, about my mistaken use of weed killer. so... never mind. Are you using the word mate in a friendly context... or belittling, like it is often used? but, that said, id still recommend my germ technique for that one, as it is also great in warmer climates :)

Edited by XipeTotec

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geez shroomy i thought i was a paranoid freak!!

chill out bro, 3 deepbreaths.......

so is that germination tek, the insertion of the seeds, before, or after a glyphosate enima?

and no man, u will NEVER live that one down.ever....

edit... tassiejd can u pleasssse find shroomy and feed him some lichens?

shroomy, meet tassie jd, jd meet shroomy..get this little bastid HIGH for me man.

Edited by jono

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Are you using the word mate in a friendly context... or belittling, like it is often used?

Far out you've got some paranoia issues.

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edit i guess.... i may have been tired

Edited by XipeTotec

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wtf dude chill out, or this thread will get moved to the 'days of our lives' section. sina was only being friendly and confused.

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