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The Corroboree

CβL

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Posts posted by CβL

  4. Posted

    Surely mulch or rocks/pebbles will keep the weeds at bay?

    And awesome place man, I can see some seriously big potential. I can imagine that even in one year's time, most of those plants will be much, much bigger. Keep up the gardening, don't let those damn weeds win. :P

  8. Posted

    I've got a couple more HBWR seeds too, I'll try and root them first. :)

    I reckon the low germ rate was because of waterlogging caused by using cardboard pots and too much sand in the soil. Will be using seed trays next time, with finer, better-draining soil. Are you growing your HBWR seedlings in a propagator/greenhouse centipede? If I take mine out (as I did for this photo), they wilt within 30 minutes, until they're placed back into the propagator. I'm slowly opening the vents though, and will hopefully have them hardened enough to kick out before 2011.

    And speaking of which... I wonder if you could use a scop for a porno scene... Muhahahaha. <purchases scop>

  10. Posted · Edited by bluntmuffin

    So these here are my rooted (have more cuttings that are yet to root) cacti. Pretty sure that the smallest ones are PC pachanoi. Although they do exhibit the V indentation on new growth. Hard to say.

    (sorry for rotated images, imageshack did it)

    pachy2.jpg

    Big pachanoi. Will be slicing and planting the top section once the roots are established.

    pachy1.jpg

    (you can see pot fragments from a yucca that exploded its pot in this photo. Not my yucca - I wouldn't have let it get that rootbound lol)

    And these are my two (from 16!!! :/ ) reared HBWR seedlings:

    hbwr1.jpg

    Will update with new plants (very nice bridgesii specimens, and more pachanoids) in a week or so. :)

  11. Posted

    I have gotten very nice results with approximately:

    •25-40% 3-5mm pumice stones

    •The rest good quality, fine potting mix.

    I'm also experimenting with adding 5-10% limestone chips into it in order to make the soil slightly basic. Lophs apparently grow in quite basic soil, with lots of limestone.

    I use this soil for trichos, but would probably use it (with limestone and perlite) for lophs. :)

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    Yeah, the last one is a cereus for sure. Those photos are off 'Cacti of Hawaii' website.

    It does then seem to me that the first cactus is intentionally mislabelled. It wasn't just the one either, every single one was mislabelled. Only their scops were labelled correctly as Trichocereus. There was also a 'Cereus Jamacaru' that upon further research also appears to be anomalous. It had 8 ribs (research says Jamacaru doesn't get more than 6), and it's spines were more akin to the bottom spines of the first cactus. Above the spines - where you'd expect to find the v indentation, there was a darkish v shape, very vaguely. So if they intentionally mislabelled this one too, then I'd guess it's a hybrid of their peruvianus and their scops. :)

    I have photos of this anomalous Cereus if anyone cares.

  16. Posted · Edited by bluntmuffin

    Thanks for the quick replies.

    Now the problem, is that it was labelled as a Cereus Uruguayanus. I'm pretty sure it's not. It definitely looks tricho to me. And it looks nothing like any of the Cereus Uruguayanus photos I've seen:

    03063-Cereus-uruguayanus.jpg

    03064-Cereus-uruguayanus.jpg

    And lastly, I tasted a little piece I scratched off under my fingernail. It tasted a little bit bitter. Are all cacti bitter?

    Edit: Yes, it is in a botanical garden. I'm pretty sure they'd let me take one of the pups from the other ones (there were a few more of these) if I paid for it, I mean they do have a garden centre attached to the premises. :)

  20. Posted

    They're members of Convolvulaceae, which contain ergolines and some weird things called calystegines: http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10441

    I'm pretty sure that starting off small (CWE of 3 seeds, then 6 seeds, then 12 seeds, etc) and looking for signs of acute toxicity is quite safe.

    Other members of Calystegia are used "medicinally", although it seems they don't actually do a whole lot.

    Whether they're active or not is a whole other ballgame. I have no idea how, or why, some plants contain chemicals which have these psychedelic effects on the human body. Are they used by the plant for some metabolism processes or information processing? Are they just randomly found in plants as minor contaminants of enzymatic reactions? Are they used as some form of defense (the old desert animal eats peyote, wanders for 10 hours, can't find the peyote again and when it does, doesn't want to consume again - theory)? Or did plants develop these during cohabitation with humans for the benefit of a symbiotic relationship?

    As far as it's known, there are no hallucinogenic plants in the NZ forest - apart from psilocybes and weraroas (mushrooms, which conceivably came from the wind), and possibly Macropiper Excelsum in large doses (probably acutely toxic at that level though). Finding hallucinogenic plants in areas where there has been no long-standing human habitation could help to point towards some kind of answer - suggesting that humans play no part in the development of most hallucinogenic plants (exceptions such as S. Divinorum stand out though).

  21. Posted · Edited by bluntmuffin

    Hey bit, I'm in Auckland too. I'd be interested in some seedlings if you'd be willing to sell a few. :)

    I don't have any decent cacti myself, as I'm just starting out. I've basically got some pachanoi and perhaps a pachanot.

    Edit: I'm also trying to root what I believe to be an NZ native Calystegia species. If I can get it to seed, I'll bioassay it. Or maybe I'll return to site of collection and try to gather seeds there.

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