Jump to content
The Corroboree

Ed Dunkel

Members2
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    1,111

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Ed Dunkel

  1. Posted · Edited by Ed Dunkel

    I have some spare seed from this native tobacco that would do well sowing right now. (enough for 1 or 2 people.

    I have several plant coming up and the mother plant is still going strong this winter so I have no need for these seeds.

    The mother plant was sourced from VINC, so it's indigenous from the northern Melbourne area.

    A simple trade will do.

    Sorry, they are gone!!! Come back in the summertime :)

  3. Posted

    Pretty much as: poor boiling water into a mug with the seeds already in there. That simple :lol:

    You must remember that their strategy is to lie dormant in the soil till a bushfire rages over them. This heats up the waxy outer coat of the seed and allows the seed to take up rainwater after the fire has gone. Making full use of the rich mineral soil and lack of cover. Pioneering the newly cleared area. Other plants do this as well, pea family, Indigoferas, Kennedias etc...

    If you have little seed then just try and knick the outer coating till it absorbs water and swells. but they are suprisingly hardy against heat!!!

  4. Posted

    You could do that, but all I did was (general Acacia germination procedure):

    1) Drop the seeds in boiled water and let cool.

    2) Pick out the swollen seeds and reprocess the rest with another go in boiling water. (one can also knick the outer coating with a sharp blade or scratch the coating with a file/sand paper. The outer coating needs to be made water permeable)

    Sow seeds in well draining media (perlite/native soil mix ~1:1) and keep moist and warm. (i.e. place a glass lid on the pots/tray and leave in the sun)

    Seeds should germinate in a coupla weeks to a few months.

    Those packets of 'smoke aided seed raising for natives' can also be used in the boiling water, to let the active ingredient soak into the seed.

    Most Acacias are pioneer plants and should germinate quite readily like a weed. Neglect is probably a better approach that babying them.

    Good luck

  6. Posted

    http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=...line-news_rss20

    “Magic” mushrooms really do have a spiritual effect on people, according to the most rigorous look yet at this aspect of the fungus's active ingredient.

    About one-third of volunteers in the carefully controlled new study had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin, with half of them describing their encounter as the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes.

  9. Posted

    At the moment I'm trialing A. nervosa (2 winters already), L. williamsii seedling (3 winters), Psychotria carthaginensis (looking strong), and Ololuiqui (looking good too) outdoors against a sunny wall. All are looking good so far :)

    Years ago when it was legal Salvia divinorum grew fine outdoors over the winter and flowered fine. The flowers did start to go bad near the very coldest part of the winter with leaves going a bit pale. But it all perked up again come spring.

    This spring I'm going to plant out nearly everything I have and see what makes it through the next winter after good solid growing season. (I will take back-up cuttings just case things go wrong)

    With good placement and condition management, most should make it I hope.

    Any other stories of success with other (sub)tropicals down south, would be great to hear from.

  10. Posted

    Well picked, I was trying to coax some more hot cock lovers out of the closet... Nothing more, really.

    Seeds, excellent. I would like to trade those once they are harvested. Are they hot?

    The female version stabalised would be very cool too. What a dish that would make (both filled with cream cheese) :wink:

  12. Posted

    Cheers Julian,

    Good to get some feedback from you. Nice to get some more species on the list as well.

    Maybe someday there will be a good systematic investigation and collation of these acacias and what they contain. Seasonal changes, possibly daily changes, "terroir" or climatic/locational effects. Like cultivating a great grape for the wine.

  13. Posted

    In this discussion "DMT in longifolia group" there is a list of some possible other contenders.

    and pages like WattleWeb, WorldWideWattle and (heaven forbid) Mulga Country should give you some images and general indentification to the wattles you might be after.

    If you intend to harvest, take only what you need and ensure you don't cause major damage to the plant (i.e. in removing bark, cut of a branch that isn't all that useful for the plants growth, instead of removing bark from the trunk causing the eventual death of the tree).

    Consider getting some seeds from some people on this forum, free seedrings or from SAB or other retailers and start propagating, a much more rewarding and sustainable way of going about it.

    And stay clear of the rare acacias (i.e. phlebophylla, maidenii in south eastern Vic, etc..)

    Enjoy the learning experience.

  15. Posted

    What would be the best way to extract oil from the dried timber?

    Try heating it over a billy :wink: .

    But seriously, chop the wood up and boil it in water and the oil should boil out of the wood and sit on the surface (if it isn't too volatile).

    If the oil is volatile you can distil it off and collect it. If it is a little less volatile you can use steam distillation.

    You could also extract the wood chips with solvents (methanol, ether, hexane etc..)

    It depends a bit on the oil.

  16. Posted

    Just a confirmation.

    I presume the concave spots on the spores are the "apical pores" - from which the mycelium emerges - and the protrusions on the opposite side are from where it was attached to the basidia?

  17. Posted

    post some pics of the cystidia - the C.cystidia on the gill face are easier than the p.cystidia on the gill edge.

    I'll try, but I will need to find some more fresh shrooms!!! Also I will need to hook up with a botanist and go through some sample prep procedures. As dessication is a real problem for larger specimens of soft, high water content, tissue.

    The magnifications are on the bottom left corner of 3 out of the 4 SEM images.

    With the specimen image I forgot to place the ruler in it. They are approx 4-5 cm long. Not the biggest ones of the patch.

  18. Posted

    if it's the same species as is along the Qld coast i believe the name you're after is Pandanus tectorius

    Sounds about right.

    I just read that the lowest recorded temperature for this one in its natural habitat is 12 C. I wonder if it gets colder on the Sydney beaches than this.

  19. Posted · Edited by Ed Dunkel

    Feast your eyes on some spores:

    Psub1.jpg

    Psub2.jpg

    Psub3.jpg

    High vacuum gold coating and FE-SEM scanning environment dessicated some of the spores.

    Psub4.jpg

    Spore size 10-11µm by 6-7 µm

    Here is the specimen they came from:

    Psub.jpg

  20. Posted

    Good, I thought the 'DMT' thing would lure you in :wink:

    I posted this at the bushfood forum and got no replies, maybe some people here can help me out:

    I assume that some of us here have already heard of the (alleged) DMT containing Pandanus from Papua New Guinea. (see http://www.entheology.org/edoto/anmviewer.asp?a=70&z=5)

    And also its use for weaving material and food...

    However, I was wondering what the species of Screwpine is along the NSW coast? I have seen it growing even in Sydney along some beaches (Coogee) but not looking as good as further north.

    I was wondering how far south this one grows and if anyone has some seeds of a south growing one (Sydney area or lower) for me to try down in Melbourne. I know I'm game

    Cheers,

  21. Posted

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...y/National/home

    Governments in Canada should steer completely clear from adopting or emulating any current drug policies in the United States, an outspoken New York state prosecutor said Tuesday.

    “My advice to Canada is stay as completely far away from U.S. drug law policy as possible,” said David Soares, the district attorney for Albany County in the state of New York. “You (Canada) are headed in the right direction.”

    In a blunt and scathing condemnation of his state and country’s ineffective drug war, Mr. Soares said lawmakers, judges and prosecutors in the U.S. know their system is ineffective.

    But they support it anyway because it provides law enforcement officials with lucrative jobs.’

  22. Posted

    What is the deal with all the ornamental flowering Nicotiana species/varieties you see in nurseries?

    And is there an exemption with native Nicotianas and native(indigenous) nurseries/regeneration plantings projects etc...?

    [drama mode on]Are there going to be extermination projects set up by the government, to clear all nicotianas from parks [drama mode off]

    Or is it going to be this crazy situation as with the NSW laws and native Erythroxylon australis?

    Ranting over.

  24. Posted

    i recall people using slugs off amanitia muscaria to get high as they only contain the plesent compounds.

    Waow, have people really done this?

    I remember suggesting people should try snails (nicer eating) as they are already used to accumilate rosemary oil, as they grase on them for several days to detox them, to give them a nice flavour for cooking.

    The suggestion was that cannabis "oils" could them also be accumilated from waste leaf/stem. Possibly Amanita muscaria could be tried as slugs and snails already love them!!!

    One can only hope that other goodies can be accumilated and not destroyed by the snails. They must be able to break some of these compounds down.

    Good luck for anyone trying this. Make sure you detox your fresh snails before re-toxing them ;)

    Regarding the Nudibranches, may I suggest you feed them on dreamfish :)

  25. Posted · Edited by Ed Dunkel

    I was browsing through wikipedia to see if there was much information placed in this online public encyclopaedia about our favourite subject, psychoactive plants etc...

    Unfortunately I stumbled across what looks like some bad information, maybe even missinformation!!!

    "The seeds, or the 'furry' outer skin of the seeds may contain cyanogenic glycosides. These compounds are also found in the seeds of many fruit. They may cause some of the reported side-effects from eating the crushed seeds. Attempts by drug users to scrape the furry coating off to remove the reported cyanide and strychnine elements seems to result in nausea by absorption through the skin of the same compounds they are attempting to remove. For more information, see subacute cyanide poisoning.

    The main body of the plant also contains small amounts of strychnine, a potent toxin, but its presence is negligible in the seeds." Wikipedia - HBWR

    I like the idea of an online source of information that is regularly verified and edited to reduce the potential of bad information being disseminated but this sounds like it's the old "strychnine" in the hallucinogenic source, scare-the-potential-new-users-off type thing.

    No references where given either.

    Has anyone got any journal references (or other) to dispute this? (online source HBWR myth) Unless ofcourse I'm wrong about the strychnine thing and the skin absorption of said compounds. I'm willing to believe that there are cyanogenic glycosides (as this is common in seed coatings) but probably not very much and skin absorption, I think, would be a very rare thing.

    It's probably also a good thing, if anyone has some good info, to start filling up some of the other gaps in wikipedia regarding some of our other favourite plants.

    No or little information for some of these:

    Calea zacatechichi

    Desmodium spp

    Erythroxylum spp

    Heimia spp

    Kratom - Mitragyna speciosa

    Pausinystalia yohimbe

    Peganum harmala

    Psilocybe subaeruginosa (and many other species)

    Psychotria spp

    Sceletium spp

    Tabernanthe iboga

    and probably many others.

    ...I should really learn how to work HTML and such things properly myself ;)

×