agara

[nabraxas]

did a search ov this forum, couldn't find anything, any you geezers up north heard o' this un?

AGARA

Family: Himantandraceae

Genus: Galbulimima

Species: belgraveana

A large rainforest tree that grows up to 35 meters tall with leaves which

are glossy, metallic green above and brown beneath. The bark is scaly,

highly aromatic and is 1 cm in thichness. Flowers have two calyx lobes, no

petals and a large number of flattened stamens. It has red fleshy fruit

with a resinous scent. Found in Queensland and New Guinea, it is most

commonly found growing from 1200 to 2700 meters but can be found as low as

5 meters above sea level. It is only used by New Guineans who use it as a

pre battle hallucinogen, it was not used by the Australian Aborigine at all.

Usage: The bark was chewed and rubbed on the legs of tribal warriors.

Effects: Intoxication and hallucinations followed by extreme drowsiness.

Active Constituents: Twelve different alkaloids including himandrine,

himbacine, himgravine, himbosine and himbadine have been reported.

[mr b.caapi]

mmm sounds very interesting!! are you able to source it?

[nabraxas]

not down here in Melbourne, unfortunately.

it does sound interesting.

[Torsten]

Benjamin Thomas has done a lot of study into this. I have a paper here of his which i am supposed to put up on his site which covers a bioassay performed by him. Will get that sorted soon.

I am working on sourcing both the PNG and the QLD variety.

[Rev]

Finding a rare tree in the Tropical rainforest is like a needle in a haystack!

Im only starting to get a handle on it and some things i dont have a clue and i consider myself to have a very good eye for plants

Even when you find it its a big tree so you have to a) climb or shoot down branches

I know someone whose superkeen mmm wonder who?

[Fractalhead]

I've posted here numerous times on this species dating back over the last few years but the threads must have been lost during one server crash or another... I won't tell the whole story again but to cut a long story short, I followed an internet lead up and found a massive specimen growing in north qld in an isolated patch of rainforest on the atherton tablelands. There were apparently about 4 trees within this patch of forest which i think was a few square kilometers in area. From speaking to pro botanists at my uni in qld that have worked both in PNG and in north qld, the agara trees in qld are much more sparsely distributed usually not in dense clusters but spread out one tree every kilometer or so in specific regions of rainforest. Hence, the needle in the haystack problem ;-) However, in PNG they tend to occur in more dense communities and they are a piece of piss to find once you are in the right spot.

In the great book, Plants For Medicinces, the first real chemical and pharmacological studies on this species were conducted and the authors were so impressed with the results they called the species the hilight of the whole project. They even went on to try a number of himbacine analogues for potency and selectivity as (from memory) acetylcholine receptor antagonists (like atropine etc). I think they saw potential for himbacine as a neuropharmacological research tool as a new highly selective atropine alternative (antispasmodic activity) in that it was highly selective for a particular family or subfamily of acetylcholine receptor (can't remember exactly which muscarinic? nicotinic?) Its structure does not lend itself to easy synthesis so would probably never replace atropine or scopolamine in their markets but is interesting tool for neuro research and particularly interesting from a psychonautic point of view as a new way of looking at the datura type pharmacology with possibly less of the danger of scopolamine/atropine etc. who knows... but would be fucking interesting to play around with... carefully.

While himbacine was found to be the best alkaloid in the material tested plants for medicines for a particular pharmacological property in animal studies, this does not mean it is the only or the best psychoactive component for shamanic purposes. This issue leads onto another major issue when conducting bioassays on this species. That is, the massive amount of intra-specific morphological and chemical variability. Even within PNG and QLD, there is a lot of variability. Until only recently, there was much dispute over how many Galbulimima/Himantandra species actually existed because of the variability in sample morphology and their chemical constituents but IMHO the time spent arguing over differences in phenotype would be better off invested in getting some genetic studies underway on the various samples to see just how much genetic variability there is. At least then we could home in on what is genetic and what is environmental. This info would allow us to gain insight into the environmental response mechanisms evolved by plants at such a primitive evolutionary stage. It seems amazing that such a primitive angiosperm is laden with such an incredible diversity of chemicals with such complex structures.

Anyway, probably the only reason you aren't all growing your own little agara trees already is that the tree is so damn big and i've been so damn busy that i haven't organised a tree climber or rifle owner to come and bring some propagation material down. This tree is about 30m tall with a trunk about 1-1.5 m in diameter. The lowest branches are way up in the rainforest canopy and there just don't seem to be any babies around ?

As much as i have been busting to dedicate a good week or two to securing a decent gene-pool for this species into the EB community, i'm sort of stuck in WA atm but am planning to get back up there this year. This dilly dallying has gone on long enough and ppl (inc me) have been talking about collecting this properly for years but always getting sucked into other activities when time is available.

I really think another team needs to go to PNG and fully document and participate in a real agara/homalomena usage with the locals and chemical analyse the actual tea and botanically/genetically characterise the actual specimens used.

There seems to be even less published research or even discussion of the Homalomena species that is used with Galbulimima and given the nasty toxicity of a lot of Araceae, its use in this tea is particularly curious...

Anyway, hopefully this year i'll get an opportunity to finally secure some of the QLD gene pool...

[nabraxas]

excellent stuff ---good luck fractal.

[theobromos]

They have found a lot more alkaloids, 30 - 50 if I remember aright. Some are called things like GB1, GB2, GB13, etc.

There is a Homalomena used in traditional Chinese medicine that appears to be non-toxic and very beneficial for some diseases.

[Fractalhead]

Yeah that's what i forgot to point out, theo. Himbacine is only one of 30-50 alkaloids in the genus. That's what is so mind blowing about the primitive plant. Still, its amazing how many natural products turn out to be experimental artifacts. Who cares anyway if we know how to make them from the plant...

I can see we'll be needing the 2D TLC for this one! Maybe we could make a 3D cube of silica for a 3D TLC ?

Can't wait to get some...

[theobromos]

Primitive only in appearance to your limited Earth sciences, human. Why call a clubmoss "primitive" when it is oviously one of the elite superfit survivors of 400 million years of disasters that have destroyed the vast majority of DNA variations.

[Fractalhead]

LOL

[Indigoboy]

In Australia and Malaysia the bark and leaves of the Agara Tree are mixed with the herb Ereriba and the decoction is drunk, producing a powerful intoxication followed by a sleep filled with fantastic dreams - source 'High Times Encyclopedia' 1978.  I wonder if one plant potentiates the other?