Stenocereus (Ritterocereus) hystrix

[trucha]

Torsten nailed it nicely with this one.

There seems no reason to dispute reports of activity, Activity from just what species is another issue.

This seems the start of something that is probably going to get more messy.

There is a growing amount of confusion about some cacti that are used by shamans.

Several are now being provided through ethnobotanical channels that seem to lack any background other than an odd and unreferenced statement made in Folklore Americana a while back.

At least one of these looks like Armatocereus laetus (in photos- I've not seen it in the flesh except dried).

I'm not trying to confuse things but no matter what the picture here there seems to be several "new" ones that are either reaching people or are about to; ALL as dried material.

I'd like to be seeing live material or at least decent photos of live material rather than trying to discuss a subject based on dried material with something less than an optimal identification.

Until someone starts linking live material with the dried material actually being bioassayed any meaningful discussion is sadly limited to what people experienced from the material consumed and can not reliably be extrapolated beyond that.

Pachycereus species are another story. Several species seem useful. None contain mescaline. Isoquinolines seem to be the active components.

[mescalito]

Rev:

quote:

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Keep in mind that a traditional dose of the andean cactus Pishicol - Armatocereus laetus is 6 foot!

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Fuck that...the marginatus I tried was difficult enough to lift @ 8 foot let alone swallow !!

I'm pretty sure shulgin reported isoquinolines as well in this sp.

1 foot weighing 8lbs was turned to snot the consistency of cold honey and 2 tablespoons were consumed.

After about an hour and the initial nausea from eating snot,the somatic effects were reminiscent of e coming on particularly the hairs standing up on the arms.

After onset the effects were of a dreamy relaxed state much like lotus and somewhat pot-like with mild visual disturbances like golden flashes of light and tracers.

I will exp further later with this as there was definite activity and no adverse side-effects to note other than the gagging on snot

edit:just remebered the day I ate this I had inadvertently eaten some seeds and was having a pretty bad diverticular attack.After consuming this cactus it did bloody wonders!~!

I have some processed material and access to the mother plant(1/2 a ton!!)if this needs to be researched further.

[ 05. May 2005, 14:46: Message edited by: mescalito ]

[apothecary]

Aw crap...

I may have that HPPD or whatever it is :/

Whenever I have a joint then sleep I trip pretty hard, e.g. I had golden flash of light the last time I did it.

If you want to bioassay some more mesc, send a specimen this way and I'll try it...*breaks down* ...ok I lied, I can't help it. If you send a specimen this way I'm probably gonna put it in a pot and grow it :'(

[amanito]

http://www.kakteen-haage.de/cgi-local/shop...&and_gattung=SE

[Rev]

Ive read that stenocereus species can have nice fruit. Might pay a visit to Arizona..

[mescalito]

I didn't want to eat the only fruit from my marginatus so I let it ripen and collected a hunge or so seeds.

I've got stuff put away for ya Rev...seeds etc so don't fret I'm just making ends meet before I can afford postage(and to all I've promised stuff to as well)

[Rev]

cheers bro

ill reimburse you for it if u let me know how

U know those marginatus chunks you sent me?

none of them have rooted yet

only the pup

but one of the chunks is putting out a pup.

seems to me they dont like tricho style propagation but they root ok from tip cuttings.

re: fruits

the pitaya agria and pitaya dulce ar ethe ones i read of

i think they are S gummosus and S thurberi

[ 16. May 2005, 12:47: Message edited by: Rev ]

[woof woof woof]

Rev:

Ive read that stenocereus species can have nice fruit. Might pay a visit to Arizona..

Stenocerues Griseus does have nice fruits!

I will be collecting seeds soon! interested Rev?!

[woof woof woof]

btw

Stenocereus gummosus - (Pitahaya agria)

Stems of this cactus were crushed and thrown into water by natives. Substances in the cactus act as a fish poison and stun fish. Natives using this method of fishing were all to happy to gather the abundant harvest

http://www.cactusmuseum.com/uses.asp

[teonanacatl]

"Discocactus zehntneri and its varieties albispinus, araneispinus, and boomianus are the Moon cacti. This is what Dr. Solomon Melchor Arroya, curator of the Peruvian Museum of Natural Science and Health has to say about Moon cactus. “...this is the Peruvian peyote. The plant produces seed-pods twice a year, when it flowers. Each flowering lasts only one night, but that night it produces many flowers and each flower has several seed-pods. You boil ten pods in just a half-a-cup of water, only for fifteen minutes, no more. The liquid is very sweet since the pods are filled with something like honey. After you drink it you begin to hallucinate. You travel all over the world - not like the San Pedro, which takes you to worlds which do not exist yet - but more like travelling in an astral body in this world. You can go wherever you want and see whomever you want. For eight hours you will have visions of your friends and what they are doing right now. You can learn many things from these hallucinations."

taken from vlados site here http://www.cactus-seeds.com/medical_cacti.htm

any thoughts???

[Rev]

um.. stock up on discocactus?

damn you Teo

i have no room now

now i will have to sleep on the floor as i convert my bed into a growpad with electric blanket fluoros and a plastic sheet

[apothecary]

There's seriously a cacti genus called Discocactus?

heh!

[Pisgah]

Sorry to veer this thread back to topic, *ahem* (Pisgah clears his throat), but I have received my cutting of StenoTrichoRitterocereus hystricuzcoperuvianoensis hybrid, and I am reasonably sure the Stenocereus part is correct. I'll take a pic tommorow when the light comes out, but the areoles seem too fuzzy and flat to be Trichocerus, not to mention that the ribs are deeply divided.

In fact, I used to have a cactus in my yard at my old house and left in the ground because I didn't think it would be interesting. :mad: That sucker was eight feet tall, with two major branches!

But I digress. Pictures tomorrow...

[trucha]

A number of other cacti are also known as the moon cactus; including several trichs. Both the fruit and flowers of T. peruvianus are known to be active.

Discocactus are from Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay rather than Peru. The one in question is from Bahia, Brazil.

Perhaps what was written is somehow true but more information is needed before taking this report at face value.

There are a number of such seemingly confused points in the larger article; even in the comment in the same paragraph when their source is claiming several seed pods result from each cactus flower.

No cactus does that as the fruit is what becomes of the ovary of the flower.

I can't think of any flower that produces more than one fruit per flower for that matter.

Elsewhere on that page he makes the unsupported claim (sadly a common belief among underinformed drug users and some even less informed nonusers)

"Hundreds of species of cacti contain various quantities of mescaline or other alkaloids, consumption of which has effects similar to LSD and/or other recreational drugs."

So far as I can tell only mescaline fits this bill and it is present in several dozen plants rather than hundreds. It is present in useful amounts in even less.

Lots of other cacti can produce effects but so will taking OTC antihistamines or decongestants that often have the same or similar alkaloids.

A person can certainly feel hordenine, histamine, synephrine or tyramine but no one will consider them in the same league as mescaline.

Its worth reflecting that not a single naturally occurring phenthylamine other than mescaline has ever been shown to be hallucinogenic when ingested by humans. "Active" sure but the term active is so broad as to approach meaninglessness without some sort of a tighter descriptor.

In my more cynical moments I wonder if this stuff is not propagated to keep people busy comsuming nonmescaline containing plants rather than the real deal.

[ 13. June 2005, 01:32: Message edited by: trout ]

[strangebrew]

 

quote:

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In my more cynical moments I wonder if this stuff is not propagated to keep people busy comsuming nonmescaline containing plants rather than the real deal.

 

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I'm more inclined towards thinking they're just sharks who really have no other interest except trying to make a buck off the uninformed, the gullible or even just the curious.

[trucha]

Perhaps but a good bit of what I encounter among people curious about uncovering 'new' plants by eating them seems to be the desire to discover something new but without having to take the time to figure out what is already known.

The people making the comment on the Discocactus were not selling specimens so far as I can tell.

Oe odd thing on that is that the source the claim was attributed to may or may not have equated the Discocactus with the moon cactus. All that can be said is the presentation leaves this unclear.

The only thing that can be stated with some semblence of certainty is that Discocactus is NOT a Peruvian peyote. Its not even Peruvian.

I've not yet heard anything negative said about what is being sold as hystrix. Nor from anyone who has ordered it and then eaten it.

In short I do not yet know what to think about it.

The people selling it seem to be both honest and sincere and if the ID is wrong they want to learn what it is. They based their ID entirely on what some cactus person told them.

They also made a comment that it was only one localized population of this that was active which is at least part of why it is suspected to be a hybrid of some sort.

There certainly are people who are selling almost anything appearing in the ethnobotanical literature whether the claims are based on reality or are anecdotal oreven mythological.

If their buyers don't take the time to educate themselves and are willing to consume plants they know nothing about, any lack of outcome is hard to fault towards the sellers.

Instead of "Buyer beware" I would suggest "Buyer inform yourself" is more applicable.

This is probably just another potential example of Darwinian evolution in action.

[Gunter]

 

quote:

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Instead of "Buyer beware" I would suggest "Buyer inform yourself" is more applicable.

 

This is probably just another potential example of Darwinian evolution in action.

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Sage advice,

thank you.

http://www.columnar-cacti.org/stenocereus/index.html

The S. hystrix picture on this page has ribs that differ from the others and do look sort of reminiscent of Trichocereus. I know this page has appeared before in this thread.

All of the cacti on the page look unique, but the S. hystrix strikes me as looking capable of being confused as a Trichocereus or a close relative thereof. In reading it seems that the material offered by ethnogarden.com is mentioned as hardy, and yet other sources seem to imply that the species it is not so hardy.

As far as synonyms and pictures I found the following

http://yann.cochard.free.fr/images/14/1450.jpg

http://www.horticopia.com/hortpix/pix/U4D692.jpg

http://www.cactus-succulents.com/stenocere...-fimbriatus.jpg

http://www.cactus-succulents.com/stenocere...riatus_flow.jpg

http://marcano.freeservers.com/fotos/plant...tas/cayucos.jpg

I cannot find a good picture of the specimens being sold by ethnogarden.com to compare with the other pictures, though in the picture they do have the plant seems to have rounded ribs, though that really doesn't help things.

If anyone could provide a better picture of the ethnogarden.com plants it would be very nice of them.

[ 13. June 2005, 20:01: Message edited by: Archaea ]

[woof woof woof]

of Archaea posted links.

http://www.columnar-cacti.org/stenocereus/index.html cant say if this is a stenocerues

http://yann.cochard.free.fr/images/14/1450.jpg

http://www.horticopia.com/hortpix/pix/U4D692.jpg

Of these two it is very hard to say... if they are or not.

http://www.cactus-succulents.com/stenocere...-fimbriatus.jpg

http://www.cactus-succulents.com/stenocere...riatus_flow.jpg

These two are definitly a stenocerues spp!!!!

http://marcano.freeservers.com/fotos/plant...tas/cayucos.jpg this last pic its hard to say - could be.

[trucha]

The cutting reached the US a couple of days ago or so Canada Post's tracking says.

This is supposed to be been obtained from the Dominican Republic

I'll post some photo including something with some details whenever it comes.

Interestingly the one at Ressler's website looks like the very first cactus that I ever grew.

It was labeled Cereus peruvianus but was far slower growing and had both trich-like broadly rounded ribs and a color & spination like the hystrix in that picture.

[ 14. June 2005, 03:34: Message edited by: trout ]

[trucha]

Something worth thinking about is potential activities of the cactus triterpenoids and sterols.

Some are antiseptic, others are anticancer/antitumor and at least one of the ones in pachanoi has antinociceptive activity (ie it screws with pain response or perception somehow).

Whether that means its an actual analgesic, or an antiinflammatory or if it alters perception somehow or otherwise reduces response to stimuli is not clear to me from how this was measured. This was apparently based on injecting acetic acid into the paws of rodents and tabulating the frequency with which they licked their paws.

I'm not sure too much can be gleaned from that.

It does makes me wonder if some of the analgesic and anticancer properties attributed to various cacti (like several Ariocarpus on the first or Lophocereus schottii on the second for examples) aren't due to this class of compounds.

[ 14. June 2005, 03:30: Message edited by: trout ]

[Gunter]

I have used juice of a living rock cactus (small sections cut from otherwise intact plants) to treat skin infections via topical application with favorable results when other conventional treatments seemed to have failed.

[Pisgah]

The one I received looked similar, but with longer spines, to the Hystrix on the columnar-cacti site Archaea posted. The thing that seemed remarkably different from any Trichocereus was the formation of the aereoles. They were fuzzy and matted, not particularly big, just little grey, beige mats with spines coming out.

The fact that there are so many different forms to the ribs, and so many alternate genera listed parenthetically next to Stennocereus makes me wonder what the defining characteristics are for this genus. What do I look for to make the differentiation?