JumpedAngel

Hey Guys There appears to be some interest in this amongst those in the know at least. My plan is to go back to the desert when I can get myself organised(in 2-3months) and get some more. I recently came across someone who has just eliminated a long term (35year)tobacco addiction by substituting pituri for it. I have access to some seed however I am reluctant to distibute or post it around until I feel more comfy about whatever legal implications there may be. PM me if you want to continue this dialogue. :D

Common as muck. Found some yellow flowered ones yesterday. Began fermentation on the reds.

Hey Vin's I have a nice little lychee coming along and never even expected it. I had a handfull of fresh Lychee (to eat) a few months ago, and stuck about 3 large seed into a seed raising tray I keep lying around for just such an occassion, I never thought it would be possible as it doesnt normally grow down here in the south of the continent, but sure enough one of them did come up. To cut a long story short, If you can get fresh lychee at the local market, try them, you may be surprised.

Thanx for the excellent response guys, I guess I will have to try the fermentation treatment and see, look for an update in 2 weeks or so, I'd be happy to swap cuttings etc, and will do some PM's later today, I must say, It freaks me out a bit to think of sending things like this through the mail, any suggestions ?. For the local guys, it might be easier to score your own, as I said in the earlier note "they abound at the trash and treasure market", $6 bought 1 by 6inch pot so overflowing that you couldn't fit it into a shopping bag (thats at Wantirna)

Wanted - Seed Geebung - Forest(P.silvatica) + any other Quandongs - Sweet(S.acuminatum), Bitter(S.murrayanum) + others Fingerlime - any and every P.M. me, if you can help, will arrange exchange for money or swap. :D

I did a search, thanx, the smoke is mild

It is looking more like convolvulus erubescens (blushing bindweed) but unlike the description in the book, it does not have lobed or toothed foliage, foliage varies from ovate to elliptic with entire leaf edges, having noticed something strange while I was posting the image on the web earlier, I went back to the plant and noticed that the foliage which remained in the shade all day long was indeed hairless and polished in appearance whereas the foliage of the same plant which was exposed to sunlight all day long was indeed hairy, contrary to what I wrote earlier.

Hey guys, thanx for the response, there seems to be a bit of interest in this one. Firstly, I cannot tell you its latin name, my books have several similar plants listed, all close but none that is definitive. If you have a copy of Tim Low's "Bush Medicine" pp198-199 then the picture there is the closest but the one I have does not have those fine hairs, Tim Low suggests that it has mildly narcotic leaves, I have some drying in the shed and will no doubt find out, what dissapoints me is the lack of information about the local traditional useage. If I knew how to then I would include an image here, those who are interested will find a image linked from my main webpage for a short while (please do not take my webpage too seriously as it is constantly changing). Link is at the bottom of the list

My first find of this beast was a motherload or fairy-ring or whatever else you might want to call it but in any case there were about 9 of them all spread closely (within a meter of the trunk) by a half dozen or so Eucalypt trees, this was on a grassland type flat sandy verge on the edge of a more traditional eroded sandy desert type environment. I remember that it had been a wet season, and in October, when I was there, it was surprising to me to see just how much water there was out there, and how much animal life, I had seen quagmire before but this had been in the Victorian volcanic plains and I had not expected to see it here. The pituri plants themselves were noticably more spindly than I had expected and much more upright in form than what I have seen in supposed photographs illustrating this plant. I came away all confused, thinking at first that the water brought with it the abundant wildlife, but then if this was true then where does the wildlife come from, it can't just appear overnight after a dozen or so years of drought, can it?. The Australian bush always spins me out. In any case the site suggested to me shade and protection from frost, the reason I had gone there in the first place was because I had been looking for a shady sheltered environment to spend my mid-day break and that was how I found these plants, I had been out there for almost two weeks looking for this plant but had always expected to find it in more open traditional desert country. Anyway I hope this gives you a few more clues for selecting a site, as far a germination is concerned I have recently resolved to try again using a more tannin rich sand mixture, however you still have to guess if they germinate after rain or after fire and in what type of temperature range or season.

Hey Darklight, Can not help much with the TC, however bright red foliage as shown in pics is not thought to be that unusual. Toxicity after planting out into soil could have a number or combination of sources, I don’t want to be patronizing to you as I’m sure you have your own experiences with exotics and natives, so I’ll just tell you what little I know and you might get something out of that. Water - as an alpine species it is unlikely to have had exposure to anything other than the purest rain water, Chlorine and Fluorides are usually only co-conspirators in the demise of your plants, install a rainwater tank and use only rainwater if you can, but this is an expensive and time consuming experiment. Fertilizer - Some growers recommend NOT feeding natives at all, mountain soils can be naturally deficient in nutrients as these are readily leached out of the soil by the more substantial rainfalls. Phosphorous in particular, in standard fertilizers for garden plants has been known to be too high in concentration for some natives causing toxic reactions. If you have used commercial charcoal, then it too could be high in phosphorous and other elements, depending on what kind of timber the charcoal was made from. Soil - If you have used commercial potting mixes of any type whatsoever then it is possible that this plant is susceptible to toxic chemicals from pine bark as many native plants are, pine bark is the basis of almost all commercial potting mixes. Pine bark resin chemicals are known to be deadly toxic to some native plants and often take many years to leach out. The toxicity of pine bark has recently become THE major suspect for the demise of many of my failed plants, I had serious toxicity problems with some native and exotic orchids for many years, then had a complete turn around when I stopped potting up with premium grade orchid mix (based on pine bark) and replaced this with soils built up from local materials, I now feel ready to retry many formerly failed seed germination experiments.

My intuition keeps screaming “fermentation product” at me whenever I consider cured pituri, this however is beyond my abilities to investigate. More on lime, I distinctly remember my travels throughout PNG and the Solomon Islands and the effects of lime on those people. Stage one was a complete reddening of the inside of the mouth and teeth, as if every cell was under attack, like if someone had been chewing those red choo-choo bars for hours. (So what is in the red lime paste?) By stage two the teeth had turned completely black. Stage three showed the teeth to be corroded away to black stumps. And the final stage was no teeth at all, I wish I had been more of a photographer back then. Several years ago, I wrote an article for a local journal, on the historical use of plaster and lime putty in the trade of stonemasonry over several millennia, It became apparent to me back then through my research that the hydration of lime cycle is not immediate and never really complete, and that the best quality lime putties in statuary works for example was that from the oldest putty (left covered in water for decades and regularly agitated), Other references showed examples of ancient monuments where they were disassembled for modification to the building only to find that the lime putty used as mortar had still not fully hydrated after being a part of the masonry for centuries. I am further reminded that in poorer tropical countries the corpses of people who had died as a result of infectious diseases were covered in lime in order to accelerate and aid in the decomposition of the corpse. Lime, it appears, retains the capacity to dehydrate living cells for many years after it has been slaked (mixed with water). In considering ash, all I see is chemicals of the same periodic group and am left wondering as it certainly felt corrosive on my very sensitive teeth, and yes this was the carfully prepared ash of the sand hill wattle.

From what I recall the cured stuff was less unpleasant with an almost sweet or ripened aftertaste.

Hey Thelema I was unaware of this report, Ive been looking at native plants with activity and have several that show promise, I think the problem is we dont have the resources to investigate the matter further without giving the show away. One plant species Ive been looking at with great interest for some years is the humble acacia, yep!, the one we all take for granted, THE premiere Astralian bush survival food (Acacia Tears). Down here in the south east of the continent we have the two alpine acacias which have been shown to contain DMT in the bark as well as the typical high levels of tannic acid, I am not familiar with DMT and do not know if it will relieve pain also. Many people may not be aware that the tan-bark industry sustained the Australian economy at the turn of the last century. That is until the South Africans stole our plants, set up plantations and outdid us with cheap slave labour, ohhh, so cunning. Tannic acid itself is of interest when it comes to injury, one might automatically not associate treatment of a wound with an acid, but in England during WWII tannic acid was the one treatment they had which worked on the burns victims who were able to survive. However the one overwelming thing that made me think of acacia when I read your article was the knowledge that the wet or damp sap of one local acacia was used in traditional Aboriginal medicine to treat open wounds, it is also known that the bark of this same acacia was used to stun fish. It is quite likely by my reconning that there be whales out there yet. This is the Lightwood tree (Acacia implexa), very difficult to distinguish from Blackwood tree (A.melanoxylon), Lightwood flowers in the summer/autum as oposed to winter/spring for Blackwood, I will update my web site in a few months with fotos of the pod as this is the only other way to differentiate for sure, the pod of the Lightwood is long and wriggly like that of the Blackwood but the funicle on the seed of the Blackwood is red and encircles the seed, whereas the funicle of the Lightwood is white and folded beneath the seed. It is likely also with this being only one of some 900 members of this species that there are a number of acacias yet to be discovered or rediscovered.

Where Pituri is concerned I did a lot of study years ago concerning the plant and its applications, prior to going out and searching for it. Back then I recall my greatest fear was mucking things up by not being able to cure the harvest, as I had read that this was an important part of preparation. I remember reading that the herb was buried, and or baked. My culinary forays into Aboriginal cuisine lead me to suspect that this curing process involved nothing more than rapping the herd in a paper-bark bundle, then burying the package in a fire place with hot coals and sand and leaving it for a few days. Stories of storage caves, may have had more to do with the aging of the herb than the simple hording of it, where else do you come across a story of an Aboriginal hording anything?. Having had access to both cured/aged pituri as well as the fresh dry herb there appears to be a marked difference in effects, not that I was ever that regular a user, but I believe this too should be sounded out.

I am a newbie to this site and am only now catching up with some threads of interest. I was interested to hear that pituri was available at EB3. I went out into the desert some decades ago now in search of this beastie, and after some near death experiences managed to aquire it. I learned to avoid both ash and lime, I have found both to be extremely corrosive on the teeth. Much experience was gained sailing around PNG and the Solomon Islands where many young people no longer have teeth by their mid teens, this was lime/betel nut. Yeh, smoking it wasnt too bad, I stuck a hand full in a bottle of Gin, and took that down to the Waterstock Music Festival some years ago, educational. Tolerance seems to be reduced after time, ash and lime are thought to be inconsequential then.

I remember seeing Nick the Dick (Cave) there before he went off to England and got his bad seeds. I actually used to go there to see my friends play in the Editions and Second Editions once the Editions got banned. Now days they all hang out at the Greyhound on the Nepean Hwy and call themselves the Fuck Fucks, Shonky Tonks or just Freddy and the Fuckanuckle Choir. Harkening back to Fitzroy St, I had some times there, I once recall picking up a young lady with rather large sweat glands, she seemed more wasted than I, and the first words which passed her lips were, "Do you want a free suck?" How was I to know she was playing pool with a bulge of her own in her centre pocket?

Hey Yum Ifn you dont like chems then try bug squash, bug squash is an old remedy that works great. Bug Squash Recipe: Collect bugs and put them through a blender. Add 9 parts water to 1 part squash. Place in atomiser and spray affected plants. The theory is that bugs dont like to eat their own kind

I only discovered this website today and was pleasantly surprised that there is such an interest in local ethnobotanics. I became interested in the acacia species many years ago when I was mainly interested in the steam bending of local timbers. At that time I became aware of the toxicity of a desert acacia called Gidgee the saw dust of which causes dermatitis. More recently I have been building a webpage specifically dealing with bush survival techniques here in the south east of the continent, and as such I have focused some attention on what I believe to be the ultimate bush survival food in Australia that being acaia tears. More recently still, I have become aware of the DMT content of certain alpine acacias and have done much soul searching and many trials to assure myself that I was not encouraging people to poison themselves by eating acacia tears. The original fish poison as used by the Australian Aborigines was neither of the alpine species mentioned above but instead Lightwood (A. implexa) and while the inner bark of the tree causes fish to be stupified and float to the surface, the fresh sap or unhardened tears where used to dress open wounds as you might use unpasturised honey today. This does not necessarily mean that the bark is poisonous, as I know that many toxins which affect humans do not affect birds and animals and vice versa. At the same time I know that I can use lime instead of lightwood along the seashore, this is made by baking coral and sea shells, and it too has the same affect on the fish in a rock pool or billabong, in this case the lime sucks the oxygen out of the water and the fish in the pool asphixiate and float to the surface, is this poison?. If you check out my website in about a months time, you will find the section dealing with acacia much expanded and updated, however it will forever be a work in progress. I am not aware of what chemical is responsible for the activity on the fish, however the Aborigines would not have used this if they knew of toxic effects to themselves. http://www.geocities.com/ozethnobot/