kadakuda

i have a borderline monstrose/crest diffusa. i call it monstrose and crest because it has crested fans and also has mutated growth with no crestation.

i wouldnt cut. the newest growth doesnt look that affected. Just keep it drier than norm and it should be fine. It certainly isnt pretty, but i wouldnt cut anything at this point as it looks relatively -ok-.

in regards to Lophophora williamsii i have done it numerous times both ways with not a single crested/mutated plant to be seen. But, cant speak for trichs.

never flowered? wow, what LAT are you on, if i may ask? and they rot with 55cm a year of rain? they are worse than i thought

The answer to make everyone happy: graft an areole or 10 grow up some normal stems and get them to flower and find out in time

$10 on hybrids.

There are acacia that are very easy to get very nice white crystals as well. if dmt is the only reason for growing it, it seems silly considering the concerns you have when there are very strong and good alternatives that are not really of concern. In fact Acaia, though slower growing, is easier because you can use stem bark instead of spending hours digging up roots.... I have dug up mimosa roots, its not easy or fun. Acacia harvesting on the other hand is easy, fun and no thorns....and the extraction process is similar and jsut as easy and also makes ayahuasca just as well. powdering acaia is no more dificult than MHRB, the only difference is there are more retail shops selling already powdered MHRB, but that doesnt mean its easier. plus people are using acacia more and more and there are many places now selling it outside of australia. i also think with australia getting more and more oppressive and losing so many freedoms it may be wise also to grow native plants, as that could quite possibly serve as a scape goat in court. growing an invasive mexican plant with 1 commercial (illegal) use might look worse when shit hits the fan. your call, but if the concerns you express are real, there is not much going for MH to be honest.

do you have wind there? MH is pathetic in wind. when mine bend over, and they always do, i take a machete to them about 2-3 feet form the ground. within a month they are jsut as tall again anyway. i guess one added plus in your situation is you dont get seeds that way eithee

learn the name in whatever language those "asian stores" are actually from. if ya need chinese (real mandarin, not that dumbed down crap china uses ;)) just let me know.

piper betel is also used in the same fashion (wrapping rice/mixes) in Asia. eatfoo, what exactly are you looking to do? wrap with or eat teh leaves?

my wife helped me find the latin for the chinese name Alpinia zerumbet 月桃 a good site, though in chinese. http://www.moxa.org.tw/grass/034.pdf flowers make a decent tea as well.

i dont knwo a lot about plant disease/disorders either. but dropping humidity does tend to make leaves drop in a lot of species. When i grow M. hostilis (and any Acacia species that i have thus far sowed) i always do teh following with amazing results. heat treat teh seeds (almost boiling water soaked for 12-36 hours). when seeds swell i platn asap, leaving too long makes them seemingly explode. i plant outdoors under my roof/deck thing. On the edge it receives almost no direct sun but is well lit all day. humidity here is generally never under 80% so it seems fine that way. i try not to get too worried about low leaves/old growth as much as i worry about new growth in most plants. if i am burning the new growth i know its too extreme for the plant to cope with, or at least too extreme too fast, so i adjust the changes i made, whate ever they may be, in about half. i do notice once you see dehydration/wrinkles int eh stem in seedlings you are kinda fucked to be blunt. thats my experience anyway. But i never had any trouble with mimosa except for too strong light too early. after they reach a couple feet, especially in ground, its almost hard to kill them. one last note, and keep in mind this was with about 100 seedlings in a 16"x12"x6" deep tray i had bad leaf drop after about 1 month. conditions were unchanged so it was obvious it was due to no available nutrients left in the dirt. this is why i like to mix in a weak amount of organic pellets for food, so there is some more margin for error if you rely on liquid ferts.

here they use a leave to wrap rice concoctions (Zhong Zhi). i forget the latin name on them, they are like a mini banana leaf and look like the banana/ginger type of growth habit. they are used to wrap and cook in, i assume thats your need?

lol. but you know i bet most of the cheapo brands you can find in most liquor stores probably do have a ton of otehr shit in them that do leave a resinous looking goo at the end. at least the ones i have tried (Czech as it happens) i would not ever think of them evaping clean, or even close. i have not tried a great deal of types, but the ones i have tried have always left me with a feeling i can only describe closely related to chewing betel nut and drinking strong drink. its a very uplifting, gitty (or giddy?) "high" in a sense. a very upbeat happy time, not anything so foreign feeling, but up a level from simple booze depression.

lets also keep in mind lower leaves (talking about your acacia, cause i dont know how large they are) always die back when low light is an issue. Think of the inside of a trees canopy, no leaves. they all died off and dropped cause there is no light. lower leaves dieing off once the plant grows i personally dont give any attention to. but the plants above are tiny and the upper leaves are too. lack of water makes wilt, not burn marks. that is surely too much light i think..just from the pattern of the burn marks. MH are weeds though, tough as shit! but if you notice bad stuff spreading, especially if it goes to teh stem, its time for some change in plans.

probably too much light, looks like it. But they are fast adapting and are mostly lower leaves getting scorched. I would honestly play it out a little longer and if you notice new growth is fine, just leave as is. if new growth is having troubles maybe raise the lights a bit or cut down the hours a bit.

Great stuff guys n gals. thanks for that! The idea of not using annuals is so that nothing needs to be replanted and it can grow in place for many years with only whacking now and then. The reason for that is mostly to avoid weed issues. Keep a solid canopy of varying heights to completely shade the ground, weeds here are OUTRAGEOUS!! Auxin, mind if i ask where this is from: i would really like to check out their references flower intoxication always triggers my interest but when they mention old i often wonder if it is simply fermentation they are referring to...? not saying i am against a good ol rotten ball of ethanol though, dont get me wrong Catha salad....hmmm. I have treid some weird things before but im not sure how keen i am on that one. BUt you will catch me chowing down on that before you catch me chowing down on camphor tree salad. Thanks for the link man, just not for me though lol. I am trying to find foods i can feed children too

Covers the mountains in spots here. Lots of it around, and also bamboo farms for food too. So i tend to go get it free, but here you can buy 100 stacks of 8' roughly 1" thick poles (used for beans and such) for $4. Bamboo is very fast and weedy, and thus very cheap to buy where ti grows outside year round. Here is my setup, if there is any interest and need for better pics just ask. I use black fabric at either 5 or 6 feet width. they come in rolls of 100 feet here. 5' is about $25 and 6 feet is about $30 (OZ $). I wrap the plastic around the bamboo and use steel wire to tie it on then use pliers to tighten it. Every 50cm or so i do this, which is slightly time consuming. I personally use cracked pots to hold the bamboo up, but anything works. Just need to raise the bamboo up, i put supports in between the wire to avoid any soil seeping out. if i were to buy the bamboo, 1 8' long piece costs about $0.04 each. 100 feet of plastic that is 6' (makes a 4' wide bed at almost 1' high) is $30. need 30 bamboo poles to make 100x4' bed, so $1.20 in bamboo, about $2 in wire tops, $5 for cheapo pliers, and if you wanted to use brand new pots to hold it up i use about 60 pots for 100 feet and they cost $0.08 each pot here ($4.80). total bed costs for 100x4' is $43. Here 1 1x10 board 10' long is about $18....but wood is crazy expensive here (cause its all imported)

IM not sure about your rainfall. No trichocereus will live in our rainfall in Taiwan. Not sure if you get that much rain, but if you get close to it you are going to have troubles. You can grow them in 3" rock and they will still rot, they cant take really heavy rains like they get in SE Asia. But i have found that peruvianus hybrids are the toughest in my case. Still died of course, but they put up a 3 month fight before doing so, about double any pach or bridge did for me. hybrids are often tougher in certain ways once they reach a slightly bigger size adn the weaklings are weeded out.

i use bamboo poles and plastic fabric. Lasts far longer than wood, is far cheaper than wood and you can make an assload of raised beds for about $30 at the prices here. Nothing against wood, but its not long term in many areas and is very expensive (maybe not where you are?)

liek mutant said its due to new growth. but more accurately its because the main arteries of the plant get woddy and harder with age. So fat sections will do very well if they are new growth and still very new cells that have not gotten woody at all. width means little in regards to ease of connection of tissue an healing, its all about having hard wood, or not. in this case we prefer not. me too, but that is more due to time rather than whats best. I find cutting out the areoles except teh very tip on most columnars is best. let them heal, faten up and graft away. Things liek Hylocereus are by far best done before. to put it simply you graba new stem (new Hylocereus stems are soft and rubbery, not rigid na smooth), take out all the areoles (when this soft you can use your finger nails if you want) clip the very very top and root it. this leaves it nowhere to grow and thus just gets plump. and because it is doing nothing but bulking up the vasc. bundle up to does not get woody, so you can save it for some months and graft later. by far the best way to graft to hylocereus, but its time consuming. often i dont bother removing areoels with most stocks simply due to time, and when i do its often like Archaea and i do it after...though my reason is that if the graft fails i still have a stock that can throw out new pups for further grafting chances. im wondering too? i do thsi as well, but its purely to jsut have a scion that sort of looks lieks its not grafted (althoguh you can still tell). but ya, maybe not for peresk that loos their leaves....but more surface area to a point sure does speed up growth speed, 100%. fatty stocks vs skinny stocks, tall stocks vs short stocks. there is an area where it seems pretty minute but comparing a 1" thick vs 3" thick or 3" tall vs 12" tall graft, there is definitely a big difference. one of the easiest experiments to do is get 2 grafted seedlings onto peresk stocks. choose 2 that are growing similar and rip the leaves off one. it will still grow fast cause it is getting water and such, but after 1 year we all knwo which will eb bigger. thats been my experience anyway. Also in cases of extremes generally speaking (i say generally meaning more often) a fat at the base columnar cactus tends to have a far superior root system to a skinny one. at least with regards to plants used as stocks. with other columnars it is so important to some collectors that a plant of the same height and age can be triple the price because the base is twice as thick...it has many advantages.

im thinking this might be better in PM, but ya i remember now. Thats Psychotria bro

I send you miracle fruit plants ro seeds correct? If i sent you just plain old leaves as is, then ya, they are P. carthagenensis And that would really explain why they look like Psychotria and not miracle fruit. I will admit, i tend to have this habit of not labeling gifts, probably should not do that sorry.

porn site, sure....but agreed. training people to jerk at dieing creatures cant end well this screams bad idea

Wll, all be. Sure looks psychotria to me, but i guess its not. Very interesting about the leaf cuttings i would never have thought it possible....now i have to try too