epehdra fragilis flowers.

[sascacheuan]

Hello.

This year i have found several ephedra shrubs flowering. Now you can see clearly the differences between male and female shrubs.

Female Flowers.

Male flowers.

I hope you find it interesting ;).

Edited May 31, 2007 by sascacheuan

[nothinghead]

excellent reference. they look like beautiful healthy plants.

[ENtiTY]

Very nice

Does this Ephedra contain ephedrine in any useful amounts?

Not much info found on this particular one in my 5 min search

[Auxin]

pfaf.org lists it as active and useful

[ENtiTY]

Nah, it uses the same copy and paste info as all the other sites I looked at. Refering to Ephedra in general as containing ephedrine but not this Ephedra specifically.

[Auxin]

the bit after the copy paste was species specific tho, it said so at the bottom but yeah... more data desired

Found a cool paper New observations on the secondary chemistry of world Ephedra (Ephedraceae)

Ephedrine alkaloids are absent from most species in the group Fragilis (tribe Scandentes of Stapf [1896]; see Price, 1996 ) of Eurasian species.... Ephedra fragilis may be the exception in the Fragilis group in that it has a high ephedrine content (Caveney and Starratt, 1994 ; O'Dowd et al., 1998 ); it may also be distinguished from other Eurasian members of group by its high tannin content

So like add a bit of milk after removing plant matter if making a decoction/tea (to bind tannin)

The compound (2S,3S,4R)-2-(carboxycyclopropyl)glycine (CCGIII) is common in the seeds and stems of Ephedra spp. but has a more limited distribution in the stems (Tables 1 and 2). Particularly high levels may be present in the seeds of E. foemina and E. fragilis (Table 3). CCGIII is reported elsewhere only in the bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora, family Hippocastanaceae) and a few other North American species of Aesculus (Fowden et al., 1969 ; Fowden, Anderson, and Smith, 1970 ). The compound CCGIII is a potent blocker of high-affinity Na+-dependent glutamate transport in the mammalian central nervous system (Kawai et al., 1992 ) and insect tissues (Caveney et al., 1996 ) and has been used as a male sterilant in wheat (Machackova and Zmrhal, 1983 ).

The compound (2S,3R,4S)-2-(carboxycyclopropyl)glycine (CCGIV) was first reported in the stems (Starratt and Caveney, 1996 ; Table 1) and seeds (Table 3) of Ephedra foemina. This species remains its sole natural source, with one possible exception, a specimen of the related species E. fragilis collected in Spain (Table 3). The compound CCGIV accumulates in larger amounts in the stems of greenhouse-grown E. foemina (Table 1) and is a potent and selective agonist acting at the glutamate-binding site of the NMDA receptor in the mammalian central nervous system (Shinozaki et al., 1989 ; Kawai et al., 1992 ).

New alkaloid toy for the biochem folks.