Fractalhead

Thanks for info. Will check isopropanol next time in bunnings. Also, will try to check get acetone checked on GC. sounds dodgey.

Ed, what makes you think Carpobrotus edulis is likely to contain mesembrine? I've got a wheelbarrow full of the stuff to extract but I can't find any specific reference to it containing mesembrine. Will extract anyway

Ahhh, yes that's what i thought u said T, but now i know for sure, it gives me more encouragement to work on the extraction procedure. People, look out for a new topic entitled 'Pure Mysisticin: Bioassay Volunteers??' in coming months

Sorry, i meant Anh. calcium chloride for drying CH2Cl2 in storage and Anh. MgSO4 for drying CH2Cl2 alkaloidal extracts. I understand CaCl2 is no good for drying solutions of amines in organic solvents because it reacts with amines. Hence, I'm interested in whether it is possible to dry normal epsom salts (MgSO4) in a household oven.

I'm pretty sure i can confirm bunnings has 90+% for sale. Its in the acetone/paint stripper section According to Vogel's Textbook of Practical Organic Chemistry, it is standard practice to dry any moist solvent over salt before distillation, except for those solvents or liquids that are practically insoluble in water. My understanding is that drying with salt prior to distillation binds the water and minimises the amount of azeotropic water carried over. The constant boiling point fraction of moist isopropanol boils at 80 degrees C and contains ~12% water. To what degree drying with salt reduces this water content i'm not sure. If i was trying to get 90+% isopropanol from 50% stuff, I would probably fractionally distill the 50% stuff, dry over anhydrous calcium oxide, and then re-distill, and store over more anhydrous Calcium oxide. But I think you can just buy it from bunnings anyway. Oh yeah, and while we are on the topic of drying solvents... Auxin, you might know.. is it possible to satisfactorily activate common epson salts in a household oven? I know calcium oxide requires temperatures of ~800 degrees C to be fully dried. What are the deals with magnesium sulfate and calcium chloride? It's easy to make calcium chloride by dissolving chalk in concentrated HCl and then evaporating water and leftover HCl. Appreciate the info

Sorry, the experiment has been cancelled. I tried to delete this topic but was told only administrators could do that?? I did have my extraction technique up for criticism (prior to ANY bioassay) but after checking it myself, realised that my theory was a bunch of bullshit, and thought i should rip my ramblings off the forum before i hurt someone The ultimate aim was to provide some reasonably pure 'myristicin/safrole/elemicin fraction' for bioassay. From memory, I don't think anyone we know has bioassayed pure myristicin, but i thought i might be able to help provide material for the next best thing. I figure it must be somehow possible to at least separate this mix of compounds (which will mainly be myristicin anyway) from the rest without using fractional distillation under reduced pressure. Basically, I was trying to separate the myristicin fraction from the other stuff in nutmeg without fractional distillation under reduced pressure - starting with a cold ethanol extraction of freshly ground nutmeg. I'll keep working on it, but I'll probably have to wait until i've got a decent vacuum pump Can anyone confirm that they have experienced the nasty toxic effects of nutmeg from myristicin-devoid preparations (ESPECIALLY low-myristicin nutmeg-oil)??

hehe, and it ws until recently that i thought 'adrenochrome' was a fictional drug just in fear and loathing. Has anyone tried this indole?

There is a group at Griffith University called (i think) the 'Natural Products Discovery Group' or something. They are probably the single biggest pharmacological explorers of the native australian biome (mainly qld stuff) I remember seeing that they had discovered beta-carboline alkaloids in some marine organism (a sponge of some sort i think). Might be worth sniffing around their website for leads.

Hi, I remember someone was recently looking for oak acorns but a search for oak + acorns didn't reveal the post. I can get lots of acorns if you want them, and/or young oak trees (which are coming up everywhere under the old oak tree). Email me if you are interested. Cheers, Fractal

I can do it as soon as they ripen up. not sure how long that will be - maybe a couple of weeks, probably more. If you have some that are ready to send straight away, then maybe you should send him some. I'll be collecting them anyway to send to at least Torsten, so I really don't mind. I guess it just depends how urgently IM wants them. Fractal

I haven't collected them yet but will if people want them. There are quite a few old oak trees on the "Oak Lawn" at uni. One of the trees actually has bare soil under it and this has allowed the acorns of past years to germinate and grow into little oak trees. I presume they will transplant OK if people want them. As for the acorns, they are still mostly unripe at this stage but appear to be close to maturity. Also available from the uni gardens are Ginkgo biloba cuttings and Catha edulis seeds Cheers, Fractal

Hi Infinite Monkey, I can get you plenty of oak acorns and baby oak trees if you want. Email me if interested. Cheers, Fractal

brentor, i'm not sure if we had the same leaf-deformation problem because mine happened during summer. But... Hmmm... yeah, when i used to grow it, i had an experience where the plants were putting out fairly healthy looking leaves (apart from scorch and caterpillar damage). Then when i repotted them, i repotted into various different mixes of potting media (some just normal potting mix, some potting mix with 50% sand, some with potting mix and ~50% vermiculite etc.) At that stage i didn't know that salvia preffered acidic soil and made the mistake of adding lime to most of the mixes. Not long after repotting into this mix, the plants started to go a real sickly pale colour and my natural response was to give them a hit of liquid fertiliser (Thrive). This sure got rid of the pale yellow look. Most leaves returned to a deep green. The problem was that the new leaves developed into these really deformed, dark, dark, green things that were all curled inwards and down like a cylinder curved downwards. Yuck. I thought it might be nitrate toxicity due to an excessively high pH caused by the addition of lime to the potting medium. The weather was quite warm around this time but the plants were kept in a shadehouse and watered everyday. The thing i noticed was that the plant in vermiculite/potting mix/river sand was the healthiest looking plant through the ordeal but did eventually show the same leaf deformation upon a second feeding of liquid fertiliser. The problem was, abstaining from fertiliser made the plants stop growing (and get more and more shabby) whereas feeding brought on these warped looking leaves. Interestingly, housing the potted plants in individual coathanger-wire/plastic bag humidity domes seemed to alleviate the symptoms somewhat and encourage normal-looking growth. I am curious, has anyone else come across this leaf deformation problem? Has anyone seen deleterious effects of high pH? Azalea/Camellia mix might have been a better mix to use? Details on any more experiences would be much appreciated

check out the SAB webstore for some top quality seed

I'd be really interested too Smiling Cloud. Haven't tried growing this species yet. seed i can offer in return (i know its not much) is: Phalaris AQ1 (dozens) Catha edulis (heaps) Hyoscyamus niger (hundreds) Nicotiana rustica (hundreds) Withania somnifera (dozens) Papaver somniferum (i'm no expert on varieties but have a few varieties that are presumably good) (dozens) Lophophora williamsii (a few) Ipomoea pes-caprae please email if interested Cheers, Fractal

Ours recently flowered and set seed also. The flower bud appeared and developed into a fully grown flower over the space of a couple of days. It opened and closed a bit over the next 4 or 5 days i think it was. Although it seemed more than likely the flowers opening and closing mechanism was causing the pollination of the stigma(s)? (can't remember exactly what the flower looked like), I wanted to make doubly sure at this stage, and used a pair of tweasers to rub a bunch of the anthers on the stigma(s). I only did a semi thorough pollination job though. Then miraculously a little pink cigar shaped fruit appeared what seemed like overnight (but was probably 2-3 days). We only got 12 seeds from it. I'm not sure if this is a low or normal yield. I just used a pair of tweezers to remove the seeds from the fluffy crest, and to remove the ripe fruit and the seeds from the soft flesh. They are now drying. BTW, the flesh of the fruit is rumoured to taste quite sweet Ramon, have you tried hand pollination? Or do you think you might have some sort of hybrid?

I might be able to get you as much as you could possibly want in june/july. How many kilos would you like? It'd be quite cheap.

Cosmic Debris, That's a really neat little hotbox. Well done. Just need some cash...

After my disastrous (wasteful) attempt at germinating this precious seed in Cairns last year i realised i had underestimated the heat requirement of this seed for germination. I assumed the tropical warmth of cairns would be enough on its own to cause germination and that additional bottom heat would not be neccessary. Wrong. But since then i've been trying to come up with a method of supplying the required heat without having to buy anything (i have no money) before trying again. I hadn't come up with anything until the other day when someone suggested their technique (for germinating other heat requiring species) that should work. The idea was: get an esky and fill it with very hot water (like water from the kettle or whatever) leaving enough room to put a plastic container (filled with vermiculite and sand or something like that) in the water so it is floating and have your seeds planted in that. Put the lid on the esky and leave overnight. By the time the temperature equilibrates throughout the esky and the soil and air, the temperature should be appropriate, the humidity should be high enough so that the medium or the seeds do not dry out, and the esky should keep the heat in long enough to get the things to germinate (I understand they come up literally overnight). I know i can't afford to go and by materials to build a more permanent bottom heating setup at the moment and there is no way my mum will let me germinate seeds in her electric fry pan. I would imagine most people have access to eskies, plastic containers and hot water so i think that this might be a zero cost and low time-input solution to getting this precious plant going for people. Am I correct in thinking that they are reasonably tolerant of temperature climate temperatures once actively growing? I hope so. Good luck, Fractal

Hi guys, Ahhh yes. I made a post some time ago regarding this confusion. I remember getting all excited when i found out that a particular tree growing on my tafe campus in cairns was an Adenanthera sp. only to discover that i was really looking for Anadenanthera spp. However, my interest in this species has remained strong since i read in a book by Cribb and Cribb (From memory I think its the one called 'Useful Wild Plants in Australia') that the seeds are 'intoxicating' when eaten. Seeing as though this plant is at least loosely related to Anadenanthera spp. and the authors of the book seem quite credible (I'm pretty sure its the same book (written in the eighties) that includes references to the indigenous use of the relatively obscure hallucinogen Galbulimima belgraveana in Papua New Guinea), i thought it made the plant worthy of deeper investigation. I'm not game to try eating the seeds to find out the exact definition of 'intoxicating' which could mean a variety of nasty or 'positive' effects. I think its bright red shiny (Abrus-like) appearance that makes me so cautious. What I was hoping to do is get in contact with the Cribbs themselves and ask them what the go was. If this plant does turn out to be 'useful' then it will be a significant discovery for our community because the tree is prolific (especially in the warmer areas of Australia) and is even regarded as a weed in some tropical areas. I can literally collect kilos of seed the next time i'm in Cairns, so i'd like to resolve this before my next visit in the dry season to see if its worth spending a day or so collecting. Anyone have the book? There might be some leads in it as to where i can track the Cribbs down (if they are still alive). My local library is closed today, otherwise i'd go and have a look myself. They seem to be well known in bush food circles so maybe i should ring someone from a major bush tucker club and go from there. Will report as i get more info. tantra, i am still keen to do a trade or pay for some B. sanguinea seeds if you still have some available. If you would prefer to wait until we know more about A. pavonina i totally understand. I should have explained the interest in Adenanthera in my trade offer. Cheers, Fractal Cheers

After reading in the newspaper that Iraq has bought millions of doses of atropine (presumeably for use as a nerve gas antidote), I looked out into the garden and thought, ahhhh, well we might be set for atropine in this household... But really, what sort of dosing regime do you reckon would be effective against your typical nerve gas attack? I can't do any literature research until after exams, but might be something worth thinking about... Fractal

all the more reason to make the suff in oz

LOL. Thanks guys. Will have to go to the bottlo tonight. Hehe. so can we use all the slugs for anything other than a cheap source of lube? might be interesting to add other drugs to the beer... (seems more humane than just letting them drown in pure beer just planted lots of catha seed. fingers crossed for high success. I hate using artificial fungicides and pesticides (i didn't apply fungicide to soil) so i hope fungi don't cause problems. bluemeanie, my guess is its probably just the low temperatures stopping the nervosa. maybe you can set up a little hot house to get them going if you aren't using one already. good luck guys cheers fractal

Yay. returned home from a holiday to find a couple of E. major seedlings have come up. I'd just about given up on them, but they are looking good. Caught a damn slug munching on another seed that looked like it had started to germinate... until... bloody slimey buggers... Some brugs seeds also came up, and acacia maidenii (thanks rev). They took a while but i'm stoked. Just gotta keep the slugs at bay...

Hi people, We've been briefly reunited with our babies in qld, and have come to find a fair few seeds on the Datura metel purple triple flower form that i donated to AFSR some time ago. The fruit are still a bit on the green side, but i reckon we'll be able to get some more seed for people via AFSR. Cheers Fractal