Trichocereus grandiflorus Akira crested & monstrose

[Uda]

Just came across this wicked looking crest on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260622678831

"Though T. grandiflorus is not known as a traditional hallucinogen, this short columnar species has gained interest due to Shulgin's unpublished chemical analysis, which indicated the presence of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the powerful hallucinogenic drug contained in numerous plants known for their historical use throughout South America.

Upon the reanalysis of T. grandiflorus Shulgin was unable to confirm the presence of DMT and had some concern as to whether or not the same plant material was used for the confirmation. Shulgin's belief was that he used the red-flowering variety originally and the yellow-flowering variety afterwards, but there had also been concern about the use of contaminated laboratory equipment.

Contemporary human bioassay has strongly suggested the presence of mescaline, at least in the white-flowered variety."

Sounds interesting, and looks pretty. If anyone over east bids on it I'd love a cut

[del]

Hi

I have one of those, sold to me as a crested cereus sp. Im no expert so you may wish to wait for better opinions but that isnt a trich at all. The seller is wrong. They are very common and very cheap (got mine for $4). Look at the spines and wool from the areoles, no way is that a trichocereus sp. Still a cool cactus, but not a valuable crested trich as the seller sugests .

cheers del

p.s if you want a cut of one give me a p.m

[PD.]

I have a very large one of these. i think someone here got some from costa/gollums cacti once and he mentioned they were imported????? I think that is when i got mine, cant recall, anyways, I got craploads of it so i might try an areole graft and see what that turns out, according to someone well experienced with this the areole will produce a plant without the cresting etc. I have seen it sold as both grandiflorus crest and cereus crest and fwiw my dwarf cereus monstrose that originally came from japan many years ago looks nothing like "akira" plus i have seen many small echinopsis crests growing in a very similar fashion. The plant is said to be a crested monstrose, only one way to find out what it is i guess be very interesting to see.

will have plenty of these available in spring.

[Moses]

i think someone here got some from costa/gollums cacti

 

i got one from costa and i also have the form pictured on ebay,(the one from costa is diff from ebay item)

they are definitely two diff plants but are very hard to tell apart unless you have them physically next to each other.

i'll get pix of both tonite

[Moses]

according to someone well experienced with this the areole will produce a plant without the cresting etc.

 

how accurate is this?

i have a large crest that is supposedly a trich/echinopsis form that i would like to try this too.

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?app=gallery&module=images&section=viewimage&img=2809

[naja naja]

I gotta try areole grafting, if I can make it work. I'd be happy to offer this service to our community and even the wider cactus community as a whole if need be.

[naja naja]

how accurate is this?

i have a large crest that is supposedly a trich/echinopsis form that i would like to try this too.

http://www.shaman-au...wimage&img=2809

 

Unfortunately it seems in order to duplicate crested cacti, you must actually graft part of the crested apical meristem. During experimentation over the last few years, we have found that an areole from a crested cactus is going to grow like a normal plant (not crested). This has shown us that areole grafting is not suitable for crested plants.

source

[Moses]

cheers naja naja,

that's good news the seller of this crest didnt know what it was so maybe i can grow an aerole into the normal form.

ok now promised pix

this was sold by mexicali as trichocereus grandiflorus

the front of this plant had been recently pruned in this pic so it didnt start to rot as it was getting quite tight growth

and this was sold as cereus peruvianus monstrose crest(also sold as akira)

poor thing got absolutely massacred by little snails

[syz]

looks awesome! bidding on it now!!!!