dryed cacti

[The Tinkerer]

A FOAF found a thread at EBA discussing drying out cactus in oven. Anyway he misread the directions(not having worked with cactus before), and dried out the white flesh instead of the green part between flesh and skin. He wanted me to enquire if it would be worth having or not. :confused:

[Rev]

not in your possession

get rid of it quick

as for the question

some well known cactophiles swear its has the magic

i actually dont know

[ 22. June 2005, 10:36: Message edited by: Rev ]

[Dodie]

AFOAF asked me the other day about drying out cactus in the oven, i told him it was illegal to do so but i too am curious if this method would work alright, are there any bad points to doing this? what temp should the oven be? should the slices be cut very thinly so it takes alot less time? Does mescaline decrease by doing this?

Thanks

[planthelper]

sure that would work, i guess the actives of pedro are quite stable agains heat, but mild heat has to be given favor over very hot.

i think to remeber (i did this in south america) that heat/sunlight makes the skin come off easy aswell!! so leave the skin on, and after a while check if it comes off sudenly with ease!!!

like this you don't waste any of the deep green material, which compromises of the most wanted.

[dracos6]

quite a few people are of the opinion that the white flesh does contain enough alkaloids apart from mescaline to positively "color" the experience, so if doing an extraction i'd use it.

personally never found drying in the oven to work very well and any use i can think of you end up adding water back to it anyway so i wouldn't bother. also while mescaline may be resonably stable in the presence of heat some of the other alkaloids may well not be

ph, can you remember how long the cactus was in the sun? because i had some pedro that was left around for over a year and when i looked at it the skin was flaking off just by rubbing it. of course i thought sweet, an easy way to peel cactus but this was not to be as the cacti already had a new fresh layer of tough skin underneath. maybe if you caught it as the old skin was just starting to come off and before the new skin had properly developed?

hey, check out The Nook

[teonanacatl]

someone told me oven works fine, he puts his on 150 and props open the door with a match box, the temp only gets to 80

[Dodie]

How would this go crushing it up and putting them in capsules?

[teonanacatl]

you can do that:) use a coffee grinder

[Dodie]

Whats the best way to get them angry? Ive heard of injecting them with dopamine but i think thats a bit far off...Whats the best season to take cuttings? And how many weeks should i stop watering before they go under the knife? Should i leave them for a few weeks after they have been cut?

Thanks

[teonanacatl]

injecting is a myth, you try the other things you mention and let us know your results

[Dodie]

This is all just hypathetical i might post some things in a FAIR while under what i think my suspitions are...

Thanks

[apothecary]

Injecting dopamine doesn't make the plants angry, I believe it's to boost mescaline conten (as dopamine is a mescaline precursor).

[AndyAmine.]

I have a book that covers this subject in some detail called "Peyote and other psychoactive cacti" by Adam Gottlieb.

This is what it has to say on the matter:

9. INCREASING THE POTENCY OF PSYCHOACTIVE CACTI

There are several factors which influence production of mescaline and related alkaloids in cacti.

Presence of a wide variety of trace minerals is important. Occasional watering with Hoagland A-Z trace mineral concentrate provides these minerals.

Combine 1 part concentrate with 9 parts water

and water cacti with this once every two months.

Experiments conducted by Rosenberg, Mclaughlin and Paul at the University of of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1966 demonstrated that dopamine is a precursor of mescaline in the peyote cactus.

Tyramine and dopa were also found to be mescaline precursors, but not as immediate and efficient as dopamine. It appears that in the plant tyosine breaks down to become tyramine and dopa. These then recombine to form dopamine which is converted to nor-mescaline and finally to mescaline.

One can take advantage to this sequence by injecting each peyote plant with dopamine 4 weeks prior to harvesting.

Much of the dopamine will convert to mescaline during this time, giving a considerable increase in the alkaloid of the plant. Prepare a saturated solution of free base dopamine in a .05 N solution of hydrochloric acid and inject 1cc into the root of each plant and the same amount into the green portion above the root. Let the needle penetrate to the center of the plant, inject

slowly and allow the needle to remain in place a few seconds after injection. It is best to deprive the plant of water for 1-2 weeks before injection. This makes the plant tissues take up the injection fluids more readily.

If dopamine is not available, a mixture of tyramine and dopa can be used instead 6 weeks before harvesting for comparable results. San Pedro and other mescaline bearing cacti can be similarly treated for increased mescaline production.

Inject at the base of the plant and again every 3-4 inches following a spiral pattern up the length of the plant. A seris of booster injections can be given to any of these cacti every 6-8 weeks and once again 4 weeks before harvesting for greater mescaline accumulation.

It is also possible to increase the macromerine and nor-macromerine content of Doñana cacti using tyramine or DL-norepinephrine as precursors. Injections should be given 20-25 days before harvesting. Series of injections can be given 45 days apart for higher alkaloid accumulation.

So, for people in a country where this would be legal to do, where would one get the L-Dopa?

Can you buy it as a suppliment like Tyrosine or Phenylalanine?

[ 25. June 2005, 08:26: Message edited by: AndyAmine. ]

[apothecary]

Mucuna puriens.

[teonanacatl]

yeah but ive heard its really not practical.

[Dodie]

Thats what i meant by making them angry I have the same book and was hoping there would be other ways other than chemically juicing them up

Thanks

[planthelper]

Originally posted by dracos6:

ph, can you remember how long the cactus was in the sun?

the skin came off easely after just a few hour's, but i might add it was "strong" sun, all the material dried up within a day or maybe two.

i remeber discarding the white and putting the outside green with skin into the sun, turning them over once in a while, than suddenly the skin came off very easy...

[Rev]

dodie303:

Thats what i meant by making them angry I have the same book and was hoping there would be other ways other than chemically juicing them up

Thanks

collective wisdom so far suggests tweaking

age - older

nutrition - higher

water reduction - before use

timing - point in flowering cycle

and post harvest storage

positivey affect the issue at hand

[Rev]

and ive heard injection with tyrosine certainly does something positive but how or why isnt known

more hmm speedy

may be just the tyrosine anyway as T has suggested