MORG

I'm moving soon and although it hurts me, I will need to downsize the plant collection. Will probably offer them on Facebook and here. I have some mature potted specimens (B. caapi, C. edulis, Sally) and not really sure how best to price them. Cacti have the auction page which makes it easy, but what about non-cactus?

Thanks for posting. The observed gradient in concentration casts all the relative potency talk in a very uncertain light. TBM still looking good though And fun quote from the second paper linked in this thread: "Interestingly, the concentration of mescaline in E. lageniformis “psycho0” was determined to be approximately one-third that of the standard variant of E. lageniformis, despite its being advertised by some users as being “exceptional” in terms of the “high” experienced from its use."

The most useful tip I can offer for urban areas is to check woodchip beds on the *south side* of buildings and fences. These stay wettest and coolest during the hot/dry months. I reckon 80% of the urban patches I find are shaded to the north by structures (the other 20% shaded by vegetation cover).

Thanks champions. I have some seed on the way now.

Looking for A. courtii seeds, have some seeds or other plants to make a trade, or just $$$. Would also consider a trade for mature A. courtii plant. I might just have something you're interested in. So PM for a completely obligation-free assessment of your options! Thanks

That's a lovely specimen! I wish I had a photo of the TBM I saw in South Africa that was bigger than a car. Now that was a "huge" TBM. Not shitting you.

We have a fair few Saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) seed. If anyone wants any, get in touch. Happy to just mail some out, but would also love anything you might have to spare for exchange. Germination with takeaway tek works well, we are getting outstanding germination rates. Growth for this species is however SLOOOOW. It's a very special species, and a "pass-it-down-to-your-kids" kind of cactus.

I should have been a bit clearer. Can you cut and paste the text of all the ATCGs in those screen shots? In order for anyone to use them they need to be in text format. Otherwise I'll have to transcribe from the .jpg screenshots into text, and this is tedious and prone to errors. If you paste the DNA sequence text in here, then I (or anyone else) can cut and paste to use for downstream analysis.

The 99% similarity to P. cyanescens needs to be considered in the context of which locus you got sequenced, and there seems to be some confusion about that. The letter says TEF, while the chromatograms say ITS4. As mentioned, ITS is ideal for this, as it is the most widely used locus in molecular species delimitation. Species-level difference in ITS is typically 3 - 5% depending on the taxon. Can you upload or PM a text file of the sequences? This is the easiest way to work with the information. I'd be happy to help you make the most of this.

Sure guys. I will PM now.

Thanks mate. Much appreciated!

Yes please! And thank you very much!

Hi all, Looking for some Pere cuttings. Can anyone help me out with trade or $$? I'm about to put down a bunch of seed, and keen to graft some. Morg

Can any soul out there send me some woody B. caapi cuttings so that I may strike them before the cold hits? Would love to get 5 - 10 stem cuttings if possible. We can talk cash or trade. Please get in touch if you can spare any material.

How are you all on your Ephedra ID? I've looked for a key but can only find regional ones. Can anyone ID this plant for me?

Thanks sagiXsagi. This ID request was lonely for a while. I'll check out the Gymno database in more detail in the hope of ID-ing this thing. Only one around though, so I'm afraid there'll be no fruit.

I have just been alerted to this fairly new PhD thesis titled: Genetics and phytochemistry of Salvia divinorum from our very own Southern Cross University. The bottom lines are: 1) Genetics shows international collection of S. divinorum accessions to likely be of a single clone. 2) Some chemical variation exists among samples (rosmarinic acid and salvinorin A). 3) Chemical variation therefore likely to be environmentally induced. I've scanned the genetics part and it looks solid. Although nuclear DNA evidence would have been good to see. Have yet to have a close read of the chemistry work (and is less my expertise), so I'm not sure how good the science is there. There is also a nice job done on a literature review covering natural history, ethnobotany and phytochemistry of the plant.

So I just moved to Melbourne. I haven't been round the forum in a very long time... but I remember a couple of old-timey usernames. Maybe one or two will remember me. Anyway, I hope to come along and meet some of you soon. I need to restock some plants after the mandatory moving-house-clearance. It would be great to meet some new plant-heads.

I'm not sure what general protocol for moving a thread is but if the mods (or anyone else) can think of a more efficient way to separate the discussion on plant sentience in thread "A Sad Site" from the issue of ethical harvest then this is putty in your hands. ****************************************** What do you think?

I'm interested to hear of anyone's experience with Vipassana meditation. I have been thinking recently about going on one of the retreats and learn these techniques. I'm primarily motivated by the opportunity to learn a new way to use my brain and to explore an altered (right word?) state of being. Who knows, I might even get some practical benefit like increased focus or concentration. I'm attracted to Vipassana because of its non-ideological nature. I'm slightly intimidated by the ten-day retreat though. Has anyone done these retreats? If so, where abouts did you do them? What was your experience? Would you recommend? http://www.dhamma.org.au/

This just came up on the EGA Facebook page. Someone has found 50-60 ringbarked mature A. obtusifolia in a NSW national park. Link below, click through for pictures. Absolutely deplorable behaviour. Events like this WILL have a profound negative impact on the local environment. If the person who did this is reading this, I urge you first to slap yourself. Ringbarking all the mature trees in an area is effective local extermination of a species. The genetic and seed resource of these trees will not be replaced. How do we stop it? Perhaps Atlas of Living Australia needs to have restricted access to information on "sensitive" species? We can't set up cameras on every stand of Acacia. http://the-nexian.me/home/knowledge/131-when-dmt-equals-killing-the-environment When DMT Equals Killing the Environment "What I saw yesterday has left me sickened and shocked. I took the Nexian, Spice Sailor, to see a very special and pristine nature reserve in a national park where there were large mother seed trees of Acacia obtusifolia. We went simply to enjoy the presence of the trees and the bush. This was a sacred site, too sensitive to touch, I would have thought. To our dismay, every single mature tree was either dead or dying. They had been completely stripped of bark, or had so much taken that they could no longer live. Every one of them was bare—maybe 50-60 trees—except for some very small saplings not yet ready to produce seed. At the rate these trees grow in the wild, they would have been between 20-50 years old. A few were older. I understand that there are greedy and ignorant people out there, but this is the worst case I have ever seen. If the perpetrator(s) were ignorant, then let me say yet again that taking bark kills trees! Then it is another 15-20 years before other trees grow to such a large size. As stated several times, the small twigs have the same percent alkaloid content as the bark. There is no need to cause long term harm or kill these trees. As I've said, if you're growing trees, you realize that killing them for trunk bark is wasteful and stupid…you can prune a branch. Please stop and think about what you’re doing. Nature reserves are there to protect the plants! If the people who did this acted out of greed, then they have stupidly destroyed what was a tremendous sustainable supply. The amount of bark taken indicates very large-scale dealing. Please, if you care about the future of these trees and the environment in general, don't support the sale of DMT; you are inadvertently supporting this kind of environmental carnage. The people who do this are as callous as mining companies and have no qualms about harming the environment. These trees were part of the ecosystem; providing shelter for numerous birds and other creatures, and maintaining the soil. More than just the trees are harmed by this thoughtless act. Even worse, all of the seed-producing trees in this area are now gone. How will this arboreal community ever repopulate normally? This once pristine area will now be severely affected for decades. A place where the acacia naturally thrived is now unlikely to do so for a long time. If a bush fire takes out the saplings, these trees may never come back. Seeing this devastation makes me wish that I'd never been involved in efforts to spread knowledge about acacias, in case my doing so increased the likelihood of this happening. If trying to increase awareness of psychoactive plants leads to this, it isn't worth it. When we first started exploring acacias, we took time to describe the potential damage to these species presented by harvesting bark, and to insist that increasing species diversity as well as growing new trees and harvesting sustainably were crucial. But to what avail? So savage was the destruction I saw, I have to put it down to more than ignorance. It's a level of greed approaching evil. There are such people in this world who have no issues wreaking such environmental havoc. We see them in a myriad of forms around the world; the extractive energy companies, the industrial production and refinement facilities, the drug cartels in Mexico or elsewhere. The main ways to stop them are to not support their trade and to disrupt their ability to act with impunity. Share the knowledge of what is going on and find ways to take action to prevent the atrocities with which they are so comfortable. So, Australians (and anyone else) reading this, the situation is now serious for this acacia, and it is the direct result of the selling and buying of DMT. I doubt the people who do this even take the substance much. The Nexus has lots of information on sustainable and easy to find sources of DMT, strains of Phalaris for instance, as well as great examples of growing acacias. Use them! Other than trying to increase awareness of this sorry situation, which shames the Australian entheogen community, the other action I'll take is to inform the national parks authority about what is going on in that particular area (in NSW) so they can monitor it more closely. If anyone else has any other ideas, we would like to hear about them. And if there is more of this horror going on elsewhere, please speak up and let us know. I can't believe that in 20 years I've watched beautiful pristine areas turn into graveyards due to people looking for a molecule that is meant to expand their consciousness! It's a crime against nature. If anyone reading this has any idea of who did this, please try to educate them as to the harm they've caused—not just to the environment, but to their own future options. These are dark days for DMT, indeed, when DMT means death and habitat destruction. For those growing the trees; thank you deeply. This work goes hand in hand with utilizing the compounds they provide. One more time, for the ignorant: don't take trunk bark. It will kill the tree and—in the case of A. obtusifolia—they are not fast growing in the wild. It’s so sad that I have to have to say this again. I thought we were getting somewhere."

Does anyone have some rooted and supple pereskiopsis? None of that old woody stuff. Looking +/- 6 plants. I've got some bebeh cacti that could do with a graft. We can talk cash or trade.

Earlier this year I took a chance and posted some dry leaf specimens to myself from overseas. Quarantine intercepted the package, deemed it an unacceptable biosafety risk and destroyed it. I received a polite but firm letter from them breaking the sad news. Fast forward 3 months and I get a call from Fedex. They want to know what's in a package addressed to me (same receiving address as used for the above case), from the USA, contents undeclared and value declared as $1. I'm expecting some documents and a journal and I told them as much. They seemed satisified, told me they'd write this on the description then allow it through to customs. This sounded somewhat peculiar that they'd take the precaution in this instance for a single package... which makes me wonder, did my previous transgression put me on a quarantine naughty list? Does this sound realistic or paranoid? Some of you must have had plant material intercepted before, perhaps you've had a similar experience?

Reflecting light most strongly in the wavelength range 450-490nm