Inyan

http://www.systransoft.be/ If someone can get the arabic version of the text... we can translate it using the above or the below link. http://www.maximumedge.com/translation/ Perhaps, Tortsen, this is the rare jelly bean plant that is grown in secret places by secret people with secret agenda's? Sorry, I haven't heard of this before. But it piqued my interest so here I am.

B. cappi lends itself to fast propagation via air-layering or simply unwinding branches and laying the long branches down in the ground. I did this in years past by digging a very shallow trench with dips and rises so that every other foot was lightly buried in the ground. You can do a slight variation of this by running the vine through pots of soil with a space every so many inches as this will allow you to cut the pots free and you have a nice row of plants to trade. Of course, B. cappi grows very fast when done this way and you can literally create a veritable forest of vines very quickly in this manner. Still, if your a bit lazy, you can simply take hard wood cuttings devoid of leaves and stick a handful of them in a single pot and fill this pot up with soil. Time to see active growth and roots varies with this method, but several months is not unheard of with some smaller hardwood cuttings. Most hard to root plants can be air-layered. My quick fast and in a hurry method is to slice open a pot on one side. I then make a hole in the center on the side or on the bottom depending on the angle of entry of the branch or vine to allow the branch/vine to fit inside without a lot of rubbing. Bind the pot back up with some duck tape or other such quick binding material and fill the pot up with potting soil or moss. Keep this moist, humid, and warm and you should have a nice rooted specimen ready to be cut free in no time. Air-layering is even helpful with some Brugmansia which can be hard to root like B. sanguinea, B. flava, B. aurea Rothkirch and it will almost always result in a faster growing larger plant earlier than it could have been achieved by simply taking and rooting a cutting. Psychotria species can be propagated via air-layering branches, rooting the leaves, or starting seeds. My favorite method is simply to pull a few handfuls of leaves off and cut them in half. Stick each half halfway in the ground and the lower portion with the petiole still attached will throw up 1-3 new plants on average. The upper portion with many veins cut and exposed to the soil will generally throw up at least one plant per vein. Keep these moist, humid, and warm at all times to maximize results and don't be alarmed if the leaf starts to die before your plants start to sprout. This generally means you picked an immature leaf and immature leaves are not the best for this as they tend to dry a bit faster. Patience is always a virtue with everything of this nature. Keep a watchful eye to make sure conditions stay right, but don't mess with things... i.e. try to pull up the leaf to see if roots have started, etc. You can sometimes use a single leaf for multiple propagations. I.e. after you have a set of plants from each leaf started and growing just a bit, you can remove the plants from the leaf and pull the leaf out and start them in fresh pots to get another batch of clones going. Top 5 seeds to choose from for my personal amusement... Any hybrid or pure species seeds of the following... Trichocereus Lophophora Brugmansia aurea Psychotria Syrian Rue

All you need is a leaf Teotz. One leaf packed in moist moss and you should have 2-40 Psychotria viridis in a month or so depending on your method of propagating the leaf. I generally bury half the leaf if I have plenty of leaves and am short on time or I place the leaf on top of the soil and push the center down into the potting soil just a wee bit to form a slight valley. Fill that valley with a smidgen of soil and then place tooth picks along the length of the veins going out from the center as well. Most places you have left your tooth picks in will form plants as this holds the vein in contact with the soil. You might also want to create a humidity dome by placing your growing apparatus/tub into a zip lock bag. Then its smooth sailing.

Mutant, I like the fact that sacred succulents offers some choice hybrid seeds, but then so do many other places. Personally, I don't advertise for any place I haven't personally done business with and I advertise freely for such places as I want others to have a good experience. There is nothing worse than buying seed from a "professional company" and having to wait 2 months for an order. Now, you do have to take into consideration that this may be a one time thing... etc. I don't nock people who make a profit either, but like you... I think for myself. I don't let hype do my thinking for me. Now, hype might persuade me to buy something once, but once bought... I will of course dispel any hype I find as I don't wish for others to waste money on something under false pretenses. I buy what I buy and from whom I buy it from as they have faster than fast service, generally good germination rates, cheap prices, etc. Now, if I see a novelty item I might want... I may enquire on it or be willing to pay a bit more than I might otherwise. Cuttings are pretty straight forward if your buying the pictured item, but many places have one picture up and you get something that doesn't quite match up to the picture. Hybrid seedlings are even harder to maintain a tight lid on as some of the experts find things in their seedlings that couldn't possibly have occurred from the cross they made which means that in all likelihood, cross contamination occurred via an insect, q-tip error, paint brush contaminated via the anthers of one cacti/plant while pollinating a series of flowers, etc. Things happen, so anytime I get seed from a supposed hybrid... I count it as valid only after I see the seeds themselves growing and or flowering and even then sometimes I dont' count em as genuine until I've seen the babies produced from the hybrid babies. Your honesty Mutant is to be praised as well, but I'm not sure how helpful it is. Specific insights into another person's comments often helps if you can make a direct quote or point to a direct line. Sometimes this wakes us up and were like... holy sh... that was me.. or that was how I sounded... but then other times the person is like.. who cares.. or I'm just like that.. either way, you can't change other people and you'll go nuts trying to help someone change who doesn't see that they need to change or that anything is wrong with what they have said. I know I've come off as arrogant at times, pissed, and all kinds of other things that I'm not proud of. Sometimes its been warranted and other times it hasn't. However, if I'm feeling attacked I have been known to lose it and react instead of act. Enough said on this sad commentary of being human. Damn, if we were only all perfect beings of light and love. Still, I'm not one for letting another walk on me either and neither should anyone in here accept such abuse either inferred or otherwise. We need to show each other some respect, but most of all we need to respect ourselves... If we need to police members who are being unruly or bar them from a forum for a time to let them wake up then that is what must be done. Still, if you slap a person with a punishment of some kind like this it doesn't do much good if they don't see what they have done as being wrong or offensive. My brain is starting to hurt from all of this nonsense. Enough rambling. You most certainly have a right to your opinion Mutant and you have a right to express it as we all do.

http://www.lophophora.info/e_index.htm This page has some excellent information for growing cacti from seed. You can treat Trich's the same way, but you will find that they are much hardier and can be pushed much faster. Still, if your new to cacti... you can't go wrong with this set up for Trich or Loph. If your having trouble following this link then try http://www.koehres-kaktus.de/index1gb.htm Click on links, then click on Lophophora. Click on the flag that corresponds to your language, then click on sowing. You should have plenty of ease there. MarKCond, I'm all for cuttings to speed ones collection along, especially if it is a proven cutting or something unusual like a variegated crested pachanoi. You can start your own seed production in this manner. I'm also one for buying seed from multiple places to help ensure genetic diversity in your own seedlings later on down the road. With that said, 10,000 seeds or even 1000 seed will give you some genetic diversity to play with even if it is all seed collected from just a few stock plants. Hybridizing related within a species or unrelated species/genus also makes for a more genetically diverse and more aesthetically pleasing collection if you should choose to go down that route. Sure, breeding a lavender or rose red pachanoi hybrid with tinges of purple in the flower may take a while, but it will be something unique to your collection and something that you would be right in claiming as something truly special in your collection. Still, I see most are simply making white x white type crosses when there is so much out there in the way of color this seems like a crying shame to me and is something I intend to fix.... at least in my own collection. If your really nervous about your ability to follow seed sowing instructions then there is an easy fix. Read the sowing instructions from a few different places and then try a few seeds each way. One thing is for certain, if you don't try to grow from seed... you never will grow from seed or learn from any success or failures along the way. Trichocereus are among the most easy of the cacti to propagate from seed and if you can't grow them from seed ... chances are you can't grow anything from seed. I'd say many people err on the side of too much caution when it comes to Trichocereus seeds and they end up with a lot slower growth and or lower germination rates then they should have, but even then they still have seedlings growing. Give it a whirl and learn something. Keep a few back for later experimentation if you want, but you can purchase these seeds for so cheap that its really a moot point to save any back unless you have some hybrid seed that you consider very special or such.... Seedlings are incredibly easy with Trichocereus, but many still chose to graft them onto larger specimens to give them that added boost. Live a little and learn the joys of raising your own genetically diverse seedlings. Grab some noteworthy cuttings along the way for comparison if you want. In the end, you will have a field of cacti much faster than someone who simply bought a dozen or so larger specimens every so many months and you will have spent a fraction of the cost in attaining that collection. http://basementshaman.stores.yahoo.net/tricbrid.html Now the above place sells some hybrids and also some pure species. Now, http://www.herbalfire.com/macrogonus.html Sells packs of seed... how many not listed or not listed in a manner that makes it easy to find. A 12 inch cutting of macrogonus costs $25.00... http://www.bouncingbearbotanicals.com/tric...onus-p-244.html offers seeds... not listed how many in a packet... or at least not in a manner easy to find. 6 inch cutting of macrogonus is $15 dollars. 12 inch cutting is also $25 dollars. Now, prices on both seem comparable enough. Still, why spend 15 or 25$ for one cacti when you can have 10,000 macrogonus seeds for 31 euro. I don't know about you, but I'd be willing to be even the worst germination attempts by the worst gardener here would more than make up for any loses in seedlings with his gain from growing such a small quantity of seed. 1767 bridgesii J 32.00 1778 macrogonus J 31.00 1781 pachanoi 82.00 1784 peruvianus J 41.00 9366 Mischung Lophophora 190.00 865 " v texana 10K J 360.00 Now, if all you bought were the above seeds you would have 10,000 seeds of each variety for fairly cheap and a heap of diversity to play with. 1767 bridgesii J 0.60 1.80=100seed 8.00=1,000 seed 1778 macrogonus J 0.60 1.80=100seed 7.00=1,000 seed 1781 pachanoi 0.70 2.00=100seed 10.00=1,000 seed 9366 Mischung Lophophora 1.10 3.30=100seed 22.00=1,000 seed 9636 " v Huizache 10K SLP J 1.10 8.40=100seed 41.00=1000seed Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but considering that these guys deliver faster than anyone else I've ever dealt with.... prices are excellent...

I assure you, Michael is an expert on more than just Trichocereus there Teotz. With that said, anyone can become something of an expert if they just peruse a few sites. Now, the degree of expert is often looked at... expert as in having read enough from various web sites and publications and such with high quality locality information, growing information, or practical first hand knowledge? Whether your borrowing your knowledge from a collection of other experts or learning first hand yourself... new insights are always possible if your open to listening to others. http://www.koehres-kaktus.de/index1gb.htm

You can get 10,000 pachanoi seed for 80+, macrogonus 10,000 31+, 10,000 Lophophora seed for 190+.... now if your into diversity... I'd say go for seed. If your into large numbers... go for seed. If you into simply having a few over priced specimens of a particular cultivar... go for cuttings. Even 1000 pachanoi seeds can be had for 10, or 1000 macrogonus seeds for 7 or 1000 loph seed for 20+. Sure beats the heck out of buying cuttings unless you have a particular cultivar you just have to have. Genetic diversity is where its at. Still, if your like me... you are a bit impatient at times and simply get a few of both. Seeds and cuttings both are thus a more profitable way to go if you have to have something nice immediately, but also want the joy that comes from growing your own seed. http://www.koehres-kaktus.de/index1gb.htm Just one good resource for you for all of the above and much much more.

Mauve, it would be more correct to say, "I or we didn't chew" rather than, "You don't chew".... Kind of like pejuta. You can chew a dried button, roll the powder up into a ball with some water or saliva, make a sun tea, dry the button first or use fresh.... there are many ways to prepare sacraments and one way is not more right than another. Kind of like saying, You don't make scrambled eggs.... you poach them. This is your preference perhaps and another's preference is to have them sunny side up.

Chewing a few dried leaves... I don't think I would call that enjoyable, but I can figure that perhaps it depends on the quantity chewed. I've only had dried leaves once in a ceremony and to be honest, I was more impressed with the ceremony and the rose water than the chewing of the leaves, course... not many were handed out.

I'm not privy to everything clearly, Mutant... but photo's are easy enough to come by, crop, etc. Photo's don't prove a thing in my book. Second, depending on ones country, circumstances, etc... it might not be wise to post pictures... but then neither would posting comments incriminating oneself either. I'd hate to see some member get heated about something and post something they shouldn't. Sometimes you have to take things with a grain of salt and say... does it really matter if the person is growing something or not? Does it really matter if all they have in their possession is a few T. pachanoi. and perhaps a stray L. diffusa. I could purchase several hundred cacti of interest all grown by some other nursery... does that prove I won't kill them in a week or that I grew them to that size myself? Sometimes, you have to let things go and realize its not that important in the end. What is important is a genuine interest and desire to learn and share idea's. Now, if someone shares something that doesn't work or is full of B.S., I don't always post my opinion on the matter to blow them away. Perhaps they believe it or perhaps they are mistaken... the point being is that their lack of knowledge does not detract from my own knowledge and anyone who wishes to become an expert over night by reading the forum's will be largely mistaken. Still, you can't discount an experience simply as it doesn't jive with what you know to be true. The mind is a powerful thing and if you know chicken pea soup is poisonous and you can die from it then you can be sure that you can. Regardless of the fact that you and I know the soup is safe to eat. Set and Setting... thats my opinion for what its worth. I try to listen to those I respect where it concerns another, but I still make up my own mind in the end. It may take longer if someone I respect has a negative feeling or emotion attached to such a person, but I realize that being human we can all misjudge character and who that person was yesterday is not the same as who that person is today. If it doesn't hurt someone then let it be as you may be hurting someone else who needs your support. Just my misguided attempt to share a bit of my personal feelings on the matter. I know Michael is very respected and perhaps one of the most respected in the cacti field in many forums. I respect him. I also know we all make mistakes and hold onto things longer than we should sometimes... myself included.

What happens to a soul when you cut it in half? How do you cut a soul in half? If you cut a worm with a knife and you think you also cut the soul in half does that mean that you can cut souls in half with a knife? What part of the worm does the soul reside in? What if there is only one soul and every molecule and space is filled with that same soul? What is the purpose of a soul and can a portion of a soul evolve and grow or separate to birth a new soul? How are baby soul's formed? What if no one has a soul and we have to build a soul and we forgot where or how to acquire the building materials for the soul? Am I tracking or am I completely lost? I often wonder why some cultures believe that only sapien's have souls and if this were true... why are any of the other creatures, plants, earth, water, fire, etc... any less likely to have a soul than us? I guess my next question would be... what is a soul? What is a soul to you?

I'm a skeptical optimist who borders on optimistic skepticism at times. Yeah, I know that I don't know much, but I do know what I have experienced and researched and I can only say that seeing, feeling, hearing, touching, tasting... is not always believing, but it is often filled with a sense of wonderment, awe, euphoria, etc. Now, whether it is real or not makes me question why does it matter if it is real? What is real? Yeah, I'm a bit confused. A believer who believes or doubts what he believes at times is the same as the person who knows what he knows when he knows it and later doubts it or questions it and its realness. For me, questioning is natural and healthy and a way to keep oneself grounded in a world of flakes of which I consider myself to be a proud member at times. Not that I'd spill the beans of any great mystery to anyone here or otherwise if I knew or didn't know what I in fact know or don't know. With that being said, where are we and what are we talking about?

Teotz, now that might be taking it a bit too far. Someone might try to claim a reward for the found peyote after all. Then, where would you be... digging in your pockets just to find out that while it may be found... there was a reason it was discontinued in favor of a stronger or better medicine per say perhaps? Different doesn't always mean better, but different is sure nice in a world of oppression where one medicine may be here today and gone the next due to propaganda via those with an ethnocentric superiority such as those damn W.A.S.P's. You can bring culture to someone without class, but you can't make them any less ignorant as they are only capable of denying the facts and supporting the ones that support their own biased viewpoints. Logic? What is logic? Don't confuse me. I know not what I say nor what others say and this gets me in trouble from time to time and yet I am free to do so for a time.

For what it's worth, Auxin... I respect you for pointing these things out and being the first to do so. Personal grudges/feelings aside... we are all here to learn and share and no one here boasts of being perfect or knowing everything to my knowledge. Teotz may not be an expert, but I sure as heck like the term lost peyote or lost pejuta... either way, my mind constructs images of sacramental plants/cacti, etc. that may have fallen out of disuse for one reason or another. Silliness and unscientific brings to mind images of a heyoka I once knew. Clown pejuta is considered very sacred to some tribes. Too much serious work makes Inyan a dull boy. Bring on the silly monster and a bit of fun my way anytime to lighten the day. Michael, for what its worth, your human, but so are we all. Relax and enjoy a bit of fun and excitement. Everything doesn't have to be perfect or make any sense. I'm so full of it myself that I can hear the sh-- dripping from my ears sometimes. Then, I go back and edit my post as I realize that perhaps I meant what I said, but not how it was said. Other times, I can see how it makes no point to be so damn long winded... but yet I still find myself being long winded. Perhaps I just like to hear myself talk? I guess there could be worse personality defects... Jeffrey D. comes to mind....

So, the idea then is to get snipped... i.e. a vasectomy to increase chi and your life span. That could solve a great many problems... food shortage, starvation, etc. Can you imagine if even 90% of the the male population was to get a vasectomy at 18 or 19 years of age? They could live longer lives and have stronger chi while at the same time fostering a solution to so many of the worlds problems. I'm not saying they should not seriously consider storing some of their sperm for future use in a bank vault somewhere... but it would cut down on the number of kids accidentally brought into this world before a young man or woman were ready to have a child. More food for thought.... http://www.scribd.com/doc/7109388/Mantak-C...m-Enlightenment The above.. DMT via Taoist Dark room.... is some food for thought. http://www.universal-tao.com/dark_room/schedule.html The Lakota and other cultures have this same practice... its called the vision quest.

Try taking a few anthers from one specimen via a set of tweezers and rubbing these directly onto the stigma of your other cacti. You might also try dusting a few microcentrifuge tubes with several batches of pollen which can then be sprinkle/tapped out onto the surface of the stigma. Pollinating a second time a few hours later often improves seed set in many crosses. If you have a self-sterile variety such as Lophophora w. var. Huizache and you are pollenating clones... it will not matter that they are on separate roots so to speak.

I just wanted to see if any of you yahoo's had head of one week old L.w. caespitosa La perdida already throwing out babies. Clearly, there is much to be learned from this local variety. Impressive to say the least.

Very possible Kadakuda and something I didn't immediately think of myself.

Rain bird or agrosoak, the two look to be the same and like you... I once did my yard in this stuff. Bad idea! You'll have your yard looking like it just hailed after a good rain.

Grafted would be normal Kadakuda. No arguments there. This was a non-grafted specimen though. Notes: Etoliation seen in all of the seedlings sown at the same time except with this one. This one seedling was different though in that it remained round and fat and never etoliated. Perfect little ball with pups. 3 variegated/albino seedlings seen. One went straight to heaven in a ball of mush/fungi.

For whatever reason, I refer to Lophophora w. as peyote when I'm talking about peyote. Peyote encompasses the plant and the spirit for me. This is how I was taught by the Lakota and yes, I realize that peyote did not originate with the Lakota, but was introduced to the Lakota. Pejuta is another term I use in reference to peyote. Pejuta means medicine... so, for what its worth... If you on the reservation and someone offers you a button, peyote, or pejuta... chances are they are referring to Lophophora w.

There seems to be a fair bit of debate here. What is real? What is subjective? What is objective. Does something have to conform to known or accepted tools of measurement to be real? In the end, does it matter if it is real or not or is the end result what matters most? Who cares if it is real in any objective sense so long as it works. Study how or why it works or doesn't work rather than try to measure and quantify with archaic tools.. Does Qi exist? It exists if you believe it exists. What can you do with it? Depends on what you know you can do with it to a large extent.

Blog, you want a simple B. aurea or B. aurea hybrid. Very fragrant, can withstand heat, doesn't collapse in the heat. Anything with a significant amount of suaveolens will tend to collapse in the heat. B. aurea and B. suaveolens tend to be the most fragrant and hybrids composed of these two. B. arborea has a bit of fragrance, but not so much as to impress most. B. flava, B. sanguinea, B. vulcanicola... these hybrids don't fit your bill for fragrance at all and melt in the heat as well.

Dreams, visions, hallucinations, reality, all that is... taken in its totality can be altered in as far as ones own personal perceptual apparatus is concerned and this can be done in such a manner as to govern the control of such an experience to include all of your sensory organs, emotions, thoughts, etc. Your brain waves, pulse, breathing, etc.... all of it is capable of being under conscious control and should not alarm anyone that they are or can be under conscious control. For the most part though and for most people these things are a result of the unconscious mind manifesting. You place your own limits on your consciousness whether your choose to realize this or not. Much of this is taught from such a young age and so subtly that you are not aware of being taught anything in regards to this or not. Do some research, there has been quite a bit done in each of these areas. To put it simply, you can end your own life via the power of thought alone. It is the power of certain sacraments that enables us to break down these learned ways of perceiving reality that hopefully opens us up to the possibility of another reality of our choosing in much the same way that you can become aware of a dream over time and loosen the constraints of that world... you can learn to loosen the constraints of this world. Notice, I didn't say you could abolish all rules and laws of any world be it dream, waking reality, etc. I only said that you can loosen the constraints and much more is possible than what we allow ourselves to believe we can achieve. The few who manage to work in one field or another to learn to slow their heart rate at will, alter their brain waves, etc.... It all resides in how we choose to manage the information that our brain processes. Do some research on this and you will never be able to stop as you will find articles in sociology, psychology, etc. etc. to back up all of these claims. Ken Wilbur http://www.tao-garden.com/PCEtest1.html Taoist practices.... There is plenty more out there... do some research and post it here so we can all learn.

This one might make a good partner for the following Trichocereus...