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vapour

templetonia retusa

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west australiens may have noticed a shrub with red bean-style flowers blooming at the moment along the limestone cliffs in east fremantle and also in nature reserves along the coast near perth. According to Florabase it is locally known as 'cockies tongue' and there is an article about it in the Australian Journal of Chemistry (vol 44, 1991). Details are given of an extraction from 68 kilos of dried leaves yielding 0.9% cytisine and 0.65% quinolizidines including templetine, anagyrine, lupinine, piptanthine and ormosanine. There were a few interesting things in the article, such as the extraction technique, which used different solvents to separate the alkaloids - the cytosine was removed with chloroform and the rest with benzene. The focus of the study was templetine, which was 0.14% of the original dry weight (or 27% of the benzene extraction). The structure of templetine contains trans-quinolizidine/piperidine moiety (dunno what that is, but thought I would mention it for the science heads). From this it was concluded that templetine was a diasteroisomer of the ormosia alkaloids piptanthine and ormosanine. :confused:

Anyway, there must be something special about templetine if they are willing to kill 68 kilos of cockies tongues and write an article about it... They don't just do this stuff for fun, do they? (the extraction was carried out at the CSIRO chemical research laboratories and funded by the Network for the Chemistry of Biologically Important Natural Products as well as Temple University in Pennsylvania - hence the name templetine?)

Our friendly chemists also did an extraction from the seeds, which yielded about 2.2% nearly straight cytisine. No mention was made of extractions from bark, flowers or roots. I don't know if this was an omission or just that initial tests proved that these parts were low in templetine. I'd be inclined to think the latter, given the agenda of the research, not to mention that professional scientists are supposed to be methodical, but you never know...

Anyway, just thought I would post this for anybody interested in native legumes and unusual quinolizidines.

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vapour:

They don't just do this stuff for fun, do they?  

Why not? I would :)

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vapour, apart from the hints in native aboriginal use, scientists don't have much chance of discovering anything interesting unless they jump into the field and look for it!

You don't think someone thought "hey, those Peganum harmala seeds look like they contain a MAOI! Let's make sure." ...more likely the alkaloids were discovered during an examination of plant matter collected from the field.

They probably are enjoying themselves immensely, but nobody has to know that

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vapour, apart from the hints in native aboriginal use, scientists don't have much chance of discovering anything interesting unless they jump into the field and look for it!

You don't think someone thought "hey, those Peganum harmala seeds look like they contain a MAOI! Let's make sure." ...more likely the alkaloids were discovered during an examination of plant matter collected from the field.

They probably are enjoying themselves immensely, but nobody has to know that <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

would u like black to do a bio essay on it after surving my accesedentil smoking of accia tetragonafillia (DEAD FINISH)ill try anything ,ill give it a smoke and drink test

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the extraction was carried out at the CSIRO chemical research laboratories and funded by the Network for the Chemistry of Biologically Important Natural Products as well as Temple University in Pennsylvania - hence the name templetine?)

Templetonia - templetine? The genus is named in honour of the Irish botanist John Templeton, but then we can only guess as to where the name "Templeton" comes from. . . .

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was csiroine taken?

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I had an interesting conversation with an Elder down here where she told me they would eat the cockies tongue seed pods and have visions that would start with lots of laughing for a couple of hours before falling asleep and seeing faces one after the other very close with the last one you see is your own face. I had never heard of templetonia being used like this before. She also said soaking the root black kangaroo paw in cold water until the water turned blue could be drunk as a cure for endometriosis pain and an anti-cancer treatment.

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