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The Corroboree

Illustro

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Posts posted by Illustro


  1. Was just inspecting some of my young seedlings, and noticed they have just started to look quite interesting, and thought y'all might appreciate some phytoporn.

    The cacti seeds were sown pretty much exactly 3 months ago, for reference, the punnets are ~5cm wide.

    Turbinicarpus mix

    22-10-Tmisch.jpg

    Pelecyphora valdezianus v. saliillo (awesome flowers)

    22-10-Pvaldez.jpg

    Pelecyphora pseudopectinatus

    22-10-Ppseudo.jpg

    Mammillaria mainiae (awesome flowers)

    22-10-Mmain.jpg

    Mammillaria fraileana (awesome flowers)

    22-10-Mfrail.jpg

    Mammillaria bocasana (the whole plant [mature] reminds me of silk ribbons and lace frills for some reason lol)

    22-10-Mboca.jpg

    Epithelantha micromeris

    22-10-Emicro.jpg

    Got a whooole bunch more, but camera ran outta batteries, I think I got the best ones, but the pics really don't do them justice! Especially the M. bocasana seedlings; its crazy how fluffy those lil fuckers are!


  2. Pablo knows he was probably to blame for the majority of his losses, but genetics probably did play a part in it also, simply due to the PHx seeds having a higher rate of heterozygosity than the NL-selfs. Its bad enough to breed with a sibling or even cousin, imagine how bad it would be if ya bred with yourself!

    Anyways, it could just be human error on the user-end, I'm not really sure if bisexual plants have any genetic coping-mechanisms for selfing (they could have something similar to moles perhaps?). What are your germination rate experiences with raising the two (PHx vs NL) PH?


  3. have got 13 from 20 of the phf2 a.t.m. but so far none of the nl have sprouted. same sandy-ish soil, same pots, same water , same sun. only the nl was planted one day later. has anyone else noticed longer germ rates for nl seeds? the phf2 sprouted just under a week ago.

     

    My friend Pablo got quite poor germination rates from the NL seeds, but his friend got ~99% germ from the PH seeds. A lot of Pablo's poor success was likely due to his own ineptitude...but PH, am I right in assuming the NL were self-pollinated? If so, I think that could have caused a lot of the NL seeds to be inviable or be poor performers.


  4. as well as feeding their goats lots of khat, ethiopians also feed their goats loads of coffee, from when they wake up right up to bedtime. that's the ticket he reckons, coffee and khat

     

    Dang, them goats get hooked up; they must be real tweakers, all itchy and wild-eyed fuckers I bet.

    That is very very very cool info- do you have any papers on this? It has interesting ramifications for tissue culture as well. Thanks for posting it

     

    I had a look, but nah, sorry; I couldn't find much on google scholar, so perhaps it was a book I was reading.

    what is herbivore saliva anyway. that could mean vegans, sheep, nectar feeders or beetles. if it means vegans then go vegan and chew the leaves while they're still on the plant :P

     

    I'll have to start a vegetarian cult, like the moonies or something, and get all my protein-deprived followers to lick my leaves as part of their daily ritual.


  5. Well, you would imagine that a large tree would have far superior biomass producing capabilities to a stumped or coppiced plant, seeing as the surface area available to absorb CO2 and photosynthesize would be that much greater, as well as absorb soil nutrients, seeing as root mass is directly proportional to canopy size. Just the quality of the shoots would be questionable, seeing as growth would be spread out amongst so many different meristems - definitely worth investigating..

    Now, that's really interesting on the temperature effect, it seems bizarre that the alkaloids would change so much with temperate, but I guess cathinone isn't stable like most, so the need to be constantly synthesizing more would make sense. But, are you sure that the temperatures didn't introduce harvesting bias though? Like on colder days you hastily picked the closest tips to you, on hot you picked those under the shade, and on moderate days you were free to pick more selectively?

    Either way, khat sounds like a really interesting plant to do some studies on, it is quite the oddity.


  6. Pablo doesn't need to worry about it being spotted, he lives rurally; the tree could only be spotted by people right in on his property. And, Pablo really doesn't take too kindly to trespassers, that's for sure; he is well versed in clandestine tactics, he learned from the best.

    7 years you say? It would be interesting to do an alkaloid cohort study, see how these rumours measure up, I've heard so many different ideas on the topic.

    The hedge idea is brilliant! Plus, one could inter-plant the hedge with red tipped Photinia sp., and if kept well pruned, prospective thieves would be none the wiser to the hidden death-trap! Nothing quite like a quid of hydrogen cyanide to start the day, a deviant idea indeed..

    :devil:

    EDIT: @Thunderideal:

    Hmm, interesting, that's a good point, just prune back the small branches a bit, it would have to induce the growth of fresh tips.

    I was thinking of something similarish (to do with alkaloid boosting though), but it was a rather fancy full idea. I was wondering whether the alkaloids in khat are constitutive (always the same), or inductive (responding to attack). I read a few studies some time ago, testing the mechanism of how inductive responses are actually induced, whether it was just due to foliage removal, or whether it was triggered by another factor. One thing that came up in many inductive plant species, was that alkaloid production was unaffected by foliage removal (via pruning equipment), but showed strong responses to herbivore saliva, specifically some proteins in it; there was more of an alkaloid response to the application alone of these proteins to the foliage, than there was from foliage removal. So, I was thinking, Pablo could try let goats, cattle, horses, or some other herbivore which could have the salival proteins needed to trigger a response, graze the plant.

    Though, if Catha edulis is inductive, I'm not sure if it would be possible to find domesticated farm animals with the right salival proteins to trigger a response, with most being non-native to its range; but it could be interesting none-the-less.

    • Like 1

  7. Cheers for the replies, though I seem to have jumbled what Pablo was trying to ask, I'm not very fluent with español; he wanted to know if there was much difference in fresh shoot yield and quality between a large free-growing tree, and a coppiced plant?

    Pablo lives where this is legal, so no problems with the legalities. He appreciates that 1kg was probably too much to ask, though he says he does imagine he will be a heavy consumer.

    Muchas gracias, amigos!


  8. So, my friend Pablo's red khat sapling is just nearing the 2m mark, and should top 3m by the end of summer judging by growth rates - Pablo needs to make decisions on what to do with the plant.

    Pablo and his closest friends are total amphetafiends, so he thinks he will likely harvest and share the gift from the earth quite regularly during the summer months. Pablo though, doesn't want to maim the tree by stumping it, he would much prefer to let it grow into a big happy tree, plus he quite fancies the idea of being able to climb up it, chew some leaves, and get pranged in the canopy just like a koala.

    So, Pablo wishes to know from the khat veterans out there; if he lets his plant grow big and happy, will there be enough easily harvested (and potent) fresh tips to sustain a ~1kg harvest every week or so over summer?

    Pablo lives in a very productive area, with even yearly rainfall, at amounts optimum for khat (~1200mm pa), very fertile soils, and a subtropical climate - so the plant should have no problem supporting it, just the quality of the product is in question.

    Gracias!


  9. Do you use a spring bombilla? I find the tea strainer-looking ones don't quite cut the mustard, but powdered yerba sounds weird.. Most of the yerba mate I buy has about a 20% powder content. Are you sure the yerba was meant to be drunken with a bombilla?

    Funnily enough, I have a friend who is a major entheo-head in Porto Alegre, who is also an epic yerba fiend, I'll talk to him and see what the bizo is.


  10. yeah tink got the seed from her mate down the line which is where that mother is and from the seed she germinated there is massive variation between pach and terschekii, so almost certainly pach X. some look identical to pach but branch at a very young age. theyre very unique cacti.

     

    Oh right, I think I might know the exact story then.

    If I am right, the original seed supplier, who I shall not name, has only two different clone-lines of Trichocereus, one is a long-spined San Pedro, which she does not breed (at least as far as I'm aware) and the other is a T. terscheckii, as well as a few different mature plants of what looks like backberg x scop hybrids. All her plants are clones except her backberg x scop hybrids, so she has to hybridize to produce any seeds other than more of her backberg x scop hybrids, so to produce T. terscheckii seed she crosses them with the hybrids, and gets what you see here today.

    Here's a pic of her typical backberg x scop morphology, the paternal gamete donor:

    unled1nhg.jpg

    • Like 1

  11. Hmm, now I look at the pic closer, I wonder if that is the same one I am thinking about, the garden and greenhouse looks identical, but the hills are no steep enough looking.

    The person I bought mine off of is a well-known cultivator, though she does not sell anything on TM, at least as far as I am aware. The plants posted in this thread look identical to hers though, perhaps she did a trade with tink, and tink sold them on?

    Here's what I originally bought:

    unled1uo.jpg

    And what it looked like sometime before I purged my Trich collection:

    unled2zys.jpg

    • Like 1

  12. here is that photo of the motherplant that our specimens came from, i have thought before that it may have been a bee cross?

     

    I've been there! And I've bought one of those T. terschekii's before. The maternal plant is definitely some form of T. terschekii, but the owner only has the one plant, so it is possible she is crossing the flowers with pollen from the many scop-pach hybrids she has around the place.


  13. Those Tasmannia's sound pretty cool! Sounds very similar in ways to Pseudowintera colorata, except P. colorata doesn't taste very peppery, its got more of that delicate, rich, full-bodied flavour of the terminals of a 9v battery.

    Microcitrus is cool huh? That would be something Pablo would like to grow out of curiosity, really quite unique, Aus has got quite a few interesting species derived from well-known counter parts, like Coffea brassii, quite cool.

    I thought kiwifruit were native to NZ? Aren't they called kiwifruit because they were pollinated by flocks of kiwis that hover and lick nectar like hummingbirds?

    Yeah silly NZers though, glad I don't live there, I went there on a trip once, and they kept warning me about a guy called Murray, they kept saying things like "make sure not to go alone into Murray neighborhoods", "watch out for Murrays at night, they might mug you" etc etc. Dunno who this guy Murray is, but he seems to not be very well liked.

    At least zebras are native to NZ tho, that's one thing they can claim.


  14. @Zaka - I can't believe Pablo has never heard of Moringa before, it sounds awesome, great suggestion. Pablos climate seems to be fairly well suited to it, a very promising lead indeed!

    @PH - B. citriodora looks really interesting, sounds like that could be grown organically really easily, with many different uses, seems like it could be promising!

    Cheers guys! :)


  15. Drainage is perfect on most of Pablo's land, though there is one reasonable size section with really bad drainage for some reason. Pablo has a full irrigation setup and lots of groundwater, though it is only needed infrequently.

    Tamarillo sure does grow well, it is like a weed, there are seedlings everywhere, but the industry is facing crisis where Pablo is.

    The problem with cut flowers, is there is absolutely no way they can be grown organically, if you want to export them that is, that is why Pablo is interested in processed crops like Yerba, because there is no scrutiny on how the fruit/flowers/leaves look, no pesticides are needed to ensure a 'good looking' final product.

    Brugmansias? Tapping the entheogen market, or is there some other use for them Pablo hasn't heard of?

    Great suggestions though people, just the kind of stimulation Pablo's brain needs!


  16. Haha, yeah, but hemp is a bit too contentious for Pablo, the crop needs to be approved by the board [of trustees], it would be totally awesome to do, but unfortunately it probably won't happen.

    Ah blowing, perfect idea! Pablo has been thinking about growing quinoa personally for a long time, just he never has got around to buying the seed, nor has Pablo thought about growing it commercially; he will definitely look into the facts and figures on that one!

    :)

    EDIT: quinoa, not quincho lol :blush:

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