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The Corroboree

Darklight

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Posts posted by Darklight

  2. Posted

    For the last 4 nights I've been dreaming that I'm at EGA Garden States and miss out on giving one or another of the talks I'm involved in.

     

    Martin's pretty cross with me but I can never seem to find Ronny or Obtuse, the layout of the building keeps changing- at one point I'm wandering down some dark stairs thinking " shit these nuns had tiny feet " ( originally I thought the venue was The Convent ) and people keep pointing me at the wrong stage or distracting me by talking about their plant interests

     

    Is pretty funny when I wake up, I'm prolly the best prepared I've ever been, not terribly nervous, but even my subconscious knows it's important to me to get it right cos so many cool ppl are working so hard to make it a great event

     

    So yeah, I don't mind those dreams, hope there's no more nuns in tonight's tho :D

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    But bring what ya got. It doesn't need to be the flashest thing ever. You got stuff to share, bring it!

     

    Plenty of gardens ( including mine ) lost heapsa species during the dry. Geez, I even lost the bloody choko vine, my Hemia, basil, cornflower. Veggie patch is full of weird holes from missing species that carked it over summer

     

    Lots of people starting their collections too, more'n a few here have lost species moving house/ relocating

     

    If you've got cuttings, seedlings, seeds or interesting garden related things like the screened topsoil- just bring it!

     

    Is always a surprise what people want at plant swaps, which is half the fun

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    Orright, bringing some Pleurotus djamor ( Pink Oyster mushroom ) cultures isolated from wild NNSW fruit, they're pretty hardy for much of the year here

     

    And some local NNSW Hericium coralloides ( Coral Mushroom ) cultures

     

    And a few Pycnoporus sp.cultures I isolated from fruit across the road. I dunno why. No idea how to use them medicinally yet. I think I just like their potential, even in bush regeneration

     

    They'll all be in 1.5ml single use tubes, store in the fridge well for quite some time

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    On 09/04/2019 at 8:23 PM, alkatrope said:

    Bringing my mum to this one :lol:

     

    That's a gift in extremely good taste. Double bonus points, a great gift she'll remember for years AND you get to hang out with plant heads

     

    OMG it's less than a month away, so excited OMG OMG I need to wash my hair, subculture the fungus, get the brakes done on the bike, finish the a/v slides for the workshop, it's panic stations for me from here on in

     

    Ronny how the hell does the EGA crew manage to fit all this excellence into a single day? Most days I can't even manage an autoclave run and a full subculture session with updated logging

     

    My main plan, work aside, is to catch up with as many ppl as possible. EGA is about the only place where I see so many of my favourite people so very close together in time and space

    • Like 2

  9. Posted

    On 26/03/2019 at 9:11 AM, gunfighter said:

    Ive got a few different Tabernaemontana seeds, is the penicillium (I think) growing on them likely to damage the embryo or is It after the leftover flesh on the outside of the seed?

    Any recommended remedies?

     

    IMG_6897.PNG

     

     

    IME sometimes fungus can be beneficial to germination, helping break the seed coat and possibly offering useful metabolites to assist the process.

     

    It's a matter of balance. What you have there is probably a Trichoderma spp on the seed coat, attracted to the remnant of the horrible stuff that surrounds the seed while it's in the pod. Too much of it there? No idea. Trichoderma is pretty universal, and it's fucking awesome mostly.

     

    There are surface treatments you can apply to half the group, or just remove the excess with a soft cloth from half the seeds, but otherwise WC is right, sow em straight away under optimal conditions.

     

    Some species actually require fungus to germinate, and these can be a right bastard in completely sterile conditions

    • Like 2

  10. Posted

    10 hours ago, Freakosystem said:

    I haven't but need to do some myself for work soon. Will see if any opportunities arise and let you know. I won't be accepting cash.

     

    Do the species in question have a known diploid chromosome count?

     

    Wow- thank you- that'd be awesome

     

    The species has been heavily modded previously as it has a long history of cultivation and may be sterile. I do have controls available from the single plant parent stock clone I used for the ploidy experiments

     

    Will PM you

  11. Posted

    I need to get some samples checked for polyploidy.

     

    Apparently the best way to do this is with a flow cytometer. I know nothing of these

     

    Anyone here ever used a flow cytometer, esp for ploidy checks?

     

    Hoping to find someone who can include my samples in a run or two. Can pool the putative polyploid samples if that makes it easier.

     

    Cash or trade- trade preferred

     

     

  13. Posted

    On 09/08/2014 at 12:17 AM, trucha said:
    The PDF of Snu Voogelbreinder's work Garden of Eden just went online as of last night.

     

     

     

    That link is dead, just checked it

     

    This is the current one

     

    https://www.troutsnotes.com/sc/snu.html

     

    ( Posted cos I caught up with an old mate at a party last night who is happy to pay for a copy rather than pirate. $AUD 12 for what's still the definitive reference for psychoactive plants is the best value ever )

     

    I have both the pdf and the tree-book. I word search the pdf for references but I fondle the tree-book randomly for inspiration. You will only ever pry my treebook copy from my cold dead hands )

     

     

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    3 hours ago, Amazonian said:
    Hey fellow SABers, :) just a heads up that at the upcoming EGA on Sunday, May the 12th,  there will be an opportunity for us to have a plant swap and catch up as a community.

     

     

    Woohoo! I love these things, thanks Amz and Ronny!

     

    Yes do check in with the plant's current owners when selecting your new babies, is only polite. Also for newbies- some species do require extra care in different climates and the original cultivators may be able to increase it's chance of survival

     

    Plus time spent talking to plant people is rarely wasted

     

    Can't wait to see you all there!

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    I have some really old Al backed TLC plates I'd like to use up before forking out the dosh for more.

    Can't find the original order, but they  had been snipped up and used for alkaloids a coupla decades ago so I'm assuming they had fluorescence inbuilt

     

    There was an old thread here that mentioned that old plates were still viable if they were re-treated and dried in the oven.

    Google and site search here aren't being useful. SAB site search shows nothing, and Google is throwing me too much irrelevant data

     

    Anyone know the protocol or has a link to a relevant page?

    cheers people

  17. Posted

    On 25/12/2018 at 12:34 PM, zelly said:

    I'm happy to announce we have NINE OUTSTANDING WINNERS!!!

     

    And THANK YOU for help keeping  sab the greatest forum on the internet.

     

    Zelly this is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a while. Only heard about it a coupla days ago. Almost lost for words. Incredibly generous of you and all the bidders

     

    THANK YOU RIGHT BACK!

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1

  18. Posted

    Tried keeping em a few times up in NNSW. Everything eats them.

     

    Wanted em for meat and eggs- the eggs are so lovely and creamy, and they're a fast and easy meal cos you can dry pluck them.

     

    But everything eats them. First. Before you get a chance to.

     

    Last try I made a ripper Fort Knox pen for em from bird mesh, ends sunk into concrete and corro put up around the sides. Goannas ripped that shit apart, let a fox in and when I went to rescue the rest I found a fat sleepy carpet snake under the floorboards with quail shaped lumps in it's guts.

    • Like 1
    • Confused 1

  22. Posted

    Go for it. I'd recommend bulking up your sterile spawn using the limesoak/ sugar cane mulch tek and stuffing the trunk with some of that once it colonises.

     

    I isolated a local pink oyster strain I found fruiting on a tree fern a few years back. Some strains can def handle the ambient conditions and contams, if you have one of his feral blues that can work too

     

    Mushrooms can't save the world tho, sorting our own shit out is a much higher priority. Expecting another genus to do it for us is bloody lazy

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    On 7/19/2018 at 4:46 PM, RonnySimulacrum said:

    Ok, I have been MIA, but hell I needed it. This year has been very challenging for me personally to date due to unforeseen circumstance and sadly is likely to be very challenging for me yet.

     

    Ronny my friend, I hope everything goes smooth as silk for you and all your loved ones. I so admire you, your work, and the community you have been a big part in making

     

    Not sure if I can make the event this year, could go either way. It'd be a hell of an event, the caravan park is a great venue and the owner sounds like a top bloke :) I wanna meet them and shake their hand

     

    Take it easy on yourself

    • Like 2

  24. Posted · Edited by Darklight
    clarity, a substance produced from claret.

    On 3/7/2018 at 10:13 AM, Darklight said:

    The actual lab phase for this stuff is facile and fast. It's the monitoring and logging which kills it for mutation work.

     

    Rightio, the above sums it right up.

     

    Interesting conclusions have been drawn, experiments from both the Surflan and pure Oryzalin batches  above are still underway

     

    The regen plants from the pure Oryzalin batch are of a different species to the Surflan batch. So yeah, some difference in response to be expected. Also, the first species had undifferentiated ( not embryonic ) callus as it's parent material. The latter species had apical nodes as it's donor material. This has def affected the selection process, I might not explain it well enough to do it justice, pls see below.

     

    Kill curves which escalated over doseage for the first species. A good sign. Progressive failing at 30 days was observed in the second species, which was only treated at a single rate. Also a good sign. Something's whacked em, especially obvious since untreated controls from both groups showed no variance from normal growth in-vitro

     

    Both treatment batches above maintained sterility after exposure- no further worrying about dirty Surflan needed.

     

    However none of the Oryzalin/ callus batch are showing signs of morphological changes at deflask. And the Surflan/ apical nodes are definitely showing morphological stress that only a few are starting to recover from now.

     

    Since Surflan is just Oryzalin powder + PEG, there's not the scope on this work to discuss the possible contribution of the PEG to the difference in results. I'm not convinced this is even an issue. For the purposes of the screening process I'm looking at two very different sets of results ( species and donor material aside ) and it seems to come down to exactly how the survivors of the treatment are selected for monitoring.

     

    This could be because of the length of time both treated parent stock could survive exposure. The callus regens were grabbed pretty much as they showed up, over a 2-4 week period, and the remaining callus died off ( possibly exposure rate for the callus was too high )- and thus while the kill curve looks great- what's persisted is Surflan survivors rather than transformed polyploids.

     

    Callus is a bit more sensitive to external influence than organised tissue is.

     

    I can't remember the application rates or whether they were comparable for the two species/ treated tissue types. Will look it up later

     

    Deflasked plants for the Oryzalin batch ( total of 18 survivors. 2 controls, 14 low range Oryzalin and 2 high-range Oryzalin  ) for this species/ treatment will go in the ground for long term monitoring of gross morphological changes to indicate polyploidy. It's the best I can hope for in this species, I've fucked around enough with wretched bloody microscopy teks to check the leaves, but my microscopy is shit, it's fiddly, and after all it won't make any difference to plant sales unless ploidy confers distinct traits which are visible to the buyer ( the entire point of the experiment in this plant- and yes, such distinctions do matter at the start when you're setting these things up )

     

    In contrast, ALL of the 1:200 24hr Surflan/ apical node treatment species showed significant distress not long after my last post. Discolouration from the Surflan hit them to varying degrees, and this became even more pronounced after a temperature rise on the grow shelves ( hint- keep your Surflan-treated tissue at a constant temperature. Growth almost completely ceased even after 2 subcultures to try to get them away from any excreted Surflan metabolites

     

    Growth in some of the remaining Surflan treated apices is now slowly resuming. Control, untreated apices from that experiment are fine and kept growing normally during this time. All leaves from apices in the treated group dropped or severely discoloured, new growth is scarce and severely stunted. About 30% failed at +30 days and another 20% failed really quickly after a temp rise. However root development is occurring in a few surviving apices and I'm hoping leaf regrowth will follow

     

    This Surflan batch is a way off deflask yet, hopefully the tells of ploidy will be more visible in this species.

     

    It could well be that cells/ tissue which has been rendered polyploid by these treatments takes a while to recover- that by grabbing the earlier survivors of the first ( Oryzalin ) treatment I was unlikely to get any polyploid individuals. The four month recovery rate for the second apical ( different species and parent material, Surflan treated ) batch would bear this out. At this point this idea is just that, but I have read ( mostly informal )  accounts of bothvigorous early, and of late recovery from Oryzalin/ Surflan treatment being indicative of ploidy. As a result of my ( minimal, early stage ) project here I'm more inclined to suspect it's the latter. But we'll see

     

    Am confident the application rate for 1:200 Surflan/ apical node batch is sufficient- maybe a tad high if anything. I woulda/ shoulda/ coulda run a lowed dose batch alongside the controls but CBF. Maybe next time

     

    So yeah, there it is... it's not just the actual wetwork, its the monitoring and logging which is the killer here. I won't know about the Oryzalin batch for 2 years. The second species isn't even close to deflask yet, so maybe 2 years from today- if there are any survivors

     

    Apologies for the lack of organisation or succinctness in the post, I only got my head around some of it last week

    • Like 3
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