Pituri plants available later this year.

[JumpedAngel]

ok ok, I thought the author might have been getting ripped off, my apologies for that,

I still dont like the content though, I mean to say it is still all the same bullshit thats been put out there for the last 200 years, it might have been this and it might have been that and no-one really knows now in 66 pages, good grief mate, how many regurgitations do you need.

[Happy Cadaver]

Fuck, who cares. I thought it was interesting anyway.

[JumpedAngel]

Oh look, I'm sorry if it reddened your face cause you were trying to cultivate a relationship or something, its just that you face the same story, time and time again, with little more than a few old references and a little speculation, and because it was published in a journal it is called science.

Sometimes you want to treat these articles as confirmation of what you already suspected then you realize they are only refering back to the same articles which made you form your original suspicions in the first place.

after some years of this gibberish, your head spins and your patience wanes.

But yeh, I'm interested in what Adrien comes up with, I would like to know if he is wildcrafting the plants or raising them from seed, I'm about to have yet one more crack at that old batch of seed myself with yet one more new way of raising them, then I hope to have a new batch of seed by the end of the year to start from scratch with.

[Torsten]

Even if previous research is totally wrong, it is still important to know about it so that future research can disprove it. If you simply have two published opinions then every other scientists trying to make up his mind will either need to consider both opinions or will need to chose one of them. By systematically proving and disproving previous work we can establish a new and more reliable foundation for others to do their research from. Hence it is important to read articles like Watson's to compare the current old status with the new status.

Also, for someone who has little or no knowledge of pituri a document like Watson's is a good starting point. No one said that YOU have to buy it. It is quite clear that it is 20 years old or so, but it was also quite clear to me that it wasn't over 50 years.

Much of what you have said about pituri is probably right. Some however has already been researched in the last few years and is quite clearly wrong. Just because you don't know the people who are currently doing good research in the field doesn't mean they don't exist or that their work is invalid. Your attitude to their work just makes you come across as arrogant, especially in view of the fact that you have no published or documented or even properly researched material yourself. The stuff you have produced has been little more than anecdotal and has little scientific value. It is nonetheless interesting and has stimulated me into some different research avenues I was previously not interested in. But unless someone does some reliable work about the opinions you have produced, they will simply fade into the vast void of anecdotes. The core of ethnobotanical research is to take such low credibility information and validate it so that it can form a scientific basis.

Continually putting other people down for the work they are doing and trying to find the faults in people's ambitions is not winning you much respect around here. We are all trying our best to help each other to understand and learn about plants. And in the absence of publications telling the absolute truth about a plant or a traditional use, we must take the best information as well as the whole of the information that is available to us. Watson's is just one piece in a puzzle that still has many pieces missing, and after searching for this publication for the last few years (I did want it in print, but have given up) I was happy to see that Adrian had made the effort to make it available on a legal and ethical basis. It certainly isn't any worse that the stuff released by people like Ott or deKorne of the same era, and we still use their texts as references.

I think it is nice that darcy is trying to cultivate a relationship with Adrian. After all, 'cultivating relationships' is what this forum is all about and is the best way or advancing knowledge and our cause. I wonder if you have such motivations yourself. I think Adrian has a lot to offer to this community and whether he does this directly or via darcy doesn't really matter.

I am tired of people having a go at newbies who are trying to enter this community to share and contribute. If you are going to criticise then at least get the facts of your accusations right.

[Darklight]

Rehashing and going over old work is an entirely necessary part of the scientific process, in light of both scientific truth and what it often unwittingly reveals about the prejudices of the time.

For example I have seen several references to the term 'tonic' as a description of traditional use in several species of plants. Looking more closely at the bibiolgraphy I see that the usage was copied from documents in the 1920's. A tonic was then considered a useful term in medicine, but a reading today makes it easy to dismiss what we would now class as a nonspecific remedy of indeterminite and possibly therefore useless application.

Talking to the people who use the species I am interested in I found it to be considered a far more specific therapeutic which is still in current use. Should someone today attempt such a description of traditional usage it would be unlikely that any but the most condescending would use the term 'tonic'. And that's just one example.

Source documents for any research should always be consulted and acknowledged- but more importantly understood- prior to new work taking place. Scientific tradition ( and it's just one of many valid belief systems, but it has its uses ) always acknowledges that very few truths spring full blown and entire from the brow of the muse.

While too often citations are parroted over generations of papers and flaws are therefore perpetuated, this also offers fertile ground for us to re-confirm or disprove old work- and discover something of ourselves and our own history in the process.

As Stephen Jay Gould once said, " Good science is self correcting ". Just because something made it into print doesn't make it right, or relevant. But there's only one way to find out- and a full acknowledgement and understanding of earlier original work is necessary for that process

[Rev]

I know what you are saying Jumped angel

T and D are right in the ways of the world of Science but i empathise with your frustration with the shortcomings of this system

Many of the leads for answers we seek are prob buried in obscure theses some basement in a University far far away

Speaking of which - yes fractal that is the correct paper

plz copy/scan it if you can- at least the map for our perusal

Yes i do remmeber there are also mixed chemotypes in the north but as a i remember it was a trend including both lattitude and Altitude that influenced chemotype

[Happy Cadaver]

Gee, this is all getting a bit strange. If J A was a bit frustrated with the knowledge base, then i would be expecting him to be writing papers and collecting different plants and analysing them and proving that the current info is not good enough.

Adrian asked me to put this topic up if i wanted to because he doesn't like arguements, which i can understand, esp. with this topic. Let's all just get on with our bit to expand our knowledge on 'pituri'. Please let us know how your experiments with the seeds go J A.

I don't think J A was alluding to the fact that interesting theses are hidden in libraries Rev, I think he was saying that they all say the same thing and there is no answer hidden, its still out there in nature and free, waiting to be found.

[Happy Cadaver]

shit, that's what i forgot. Here's some pics of the plant that Adrian is propagating from.

http://shaman-australis.com.au/gallery1/native

[Adrian]

Fractalhead:

...My days of testing Duboisia spp. chemotypes by bioassay are well and truly over after my myoporoides adventure    

Almost LMAO!

[Guest mandragora]

l

Edited April 17, 2007 by mandragora