Phalaris

We've cut a long way my brother. It's quiet the breakthrough.

yes, shout out to ChimpZ!

..Sidisheikh.mehriz..your ongoing work with Phalaris is certainly being noted and acknowledged in nexian circles, as one of the new 'phalaris wizards'..you've all paved the way so much further for future generations..
And the arguments for why Phalaris is the way of the future are outlined throughout this thread

thanks also borris_yeltzun for the report
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I'm putting a link here to this excellent research thread:

The Phalaris Project

..Sidisheikh.mehriz, your findings towards p.18 are encouraging..thanks for the constantly evolving reports



Also, Phalaris will be important in the future, in other ways..
i'm not sure any of you have posted this recent kind of medicinal research yet

Canary Seed (Phalaris canariensis L.) Peptides Prevent Obesity and Glucose Intolerance in Mice Fed a Western Diet (2022)

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...and, respect to goddess Demeter
(surely the goddess of Phalaris)

photo attached below:
The former gateway to the sanctuary of Demeter at the Temple of Eleusis, in Greece, where she was worshipped, with phalaris growing among weeds near the entrance...

Thank you Nen for the encouragement. Also special thanks to ChimpZ, Jamie, Dreamer, Dithyramb and Benzyme and many others. Without you all I wouldn't have set path on this discovery journey.

This is another promising research paper on a local canariesis strain from Tunisia: https://www.phytojournal...anariensis-from-tunisia

I spent last night reading on goddess Demeter and temple of Eleusis after reading your post. Such a beautiful story full of guarded mystery. Funny enough my oral phalaris brew with rue had earth and soil as the main theme of the journey with death and rebirth as a cycle of life. For all we know I could have rediscovered the eleusinian potion and communicated with Demeter hahaha

attached is a screenshot of me texting myself on messenger to document my thoughts during that oral phalaris drink experience.

I harvested some leaves of the fresh first growth this evening and tested the dark purple sap from the cut leaves. It tasted bitter, salty and was a bit stingy on the tongue. Dark blue leaves tastes more bitter and the sap is darker. As the leaves grow older they turn green and taste less bitter and the sap become lighter in colour.

I found the blueish bitter leaves to be consistently more potent. This autumn I got 50 clones Instead of just two last year. Plenty of material for more experimentation. A chemistry teacher offered to lend me a lab scale for measuring out harvest and extract so we can precisely measure this cultivar yeild. With the increased numb of clones this year I should have more samples for analysis and more bioassays.

Could any of our chemists provide a little assistance here.. Benzyme, Endlessness or anyone else with good understanding of chromatography / mass spectrometry ?

I have just gained access to this HPLC by the German brand KNAUER called "smartline autosampler 3900" that is supposed to include a mass spectrometer.

The thing is I have only very basic understanding of high pressure liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. This machine is in good shape but still needs a column.
So my question is what specific column is best suited for analysing phalaris? What's the best protocol to follow?

I am not the one who is going to conduct the analysis but it will be an eligible master degree student. I am also collaborating with an agronomic engeneer (PhD in plant biology) from a local agronomic research Institution to expand our knowledge of the alkaloid profile of the current local aquatica cultivar which I have been working with but also 13 wild local accessions of aquatica and maybe a few local wild accessions of brachystachys.

This will be all carefully documented And published in a research paper which I will share once completed. We're still discussing how to plan and conduct the experiments I.e; shaded Vs non shaded... Different nitrogen sources at different concentrations... +Silicon Vs -silicon.... Different harvesting regimens... +Aphids Vs -aphids.

My Intension is not just to identity the alkaloids in the grass but to also reliability quantify them. Reading from Endlessness posts on the phalaris analysis thread it seems that quantification is a lot more troublesome than just identification or approximate quantification.

I have seen endlessness though make quiet a bit of progress in this regard from reading more recent posts of his on other analysis threads with percentages shown in the results.

Maybe someone can reach him or can you just message me if you're reading this so I can send you a sample and perhaps we could double check together? I could invite both the master student that will operate the HPLC and the engeneer to the forum for a better informed discussion.

i don't have time for a lengthy reply now - thanks Sidisheikh.mehriz for continuing and deepening this field of future expansion..

i don't have any specific tips on HPLC, but there are simpler ways to determine things like how many alkaloids in a plant and roughly what they may or may not be..
When I get more time, I'll do a write up on Simplified Column Chromatography..

strain based appraisal of basic Phalaris alkaloid content is a big step forward

^
..so here, as promised, is a link to Simplified Column Chromatography…provided in the spirit of providing useful tools for people to progress with their Phalaris research..

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And now, for a bit of historical remembrance of the Phalaris trail, 30 years ago..
From Psychedelic Shamanism by Jim de Korne (1994)



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and for what's happening now
the Phalaris Project
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Thanks a lot for the link nen, that sounds like a great idea to try. Seems quiet straight forward and simple Even though I don't understand how blotter paper can work like silica gel for chromatography. Could the glass inner surface play a role?

I've recently been collaborating with a couple of german friends who are working on TLC analysis for a number of phalaris aquatica strains and one german arudinacea clone.

With their permission I'd like to share their findings so far and ask your guys opinion and suggestions to improve their method.

In the picture from left to right is DMT (from MHRB), 5-MEO-DMT (from bufo aalvarious toad), hordenine (supplement), capi leaf extract, the German clone of arudinacea, and finally a mixture of DMT and 5-MEO-DMT.

The eluent was made up of 99% IPA with 5% concentrated ammonia solution 25%. The tlc plate is standard aluminium plate covered with a layer of 60 micron silica gel

hi Sidisheikh.mehriz...it's molecular weight/polarity
there is one big advantage of planar paper chromatography over tlc, which i'll mention again in that thread..

re the TLC below...the only modification i can suggest is that most TLC i've done, or seen work well for those kinds of alkaloids, the mobile phase was methanol or ethanol + ammonium
..looks like an alkaloid you're missing reference for there...rf heights/reagents come into play then..it's probably worth starting a new Phalaris TLC thread...

Paper chromatography is definitely a thing, even without the glass. The cellulose provides a polar surface which helps separate eluands according to their polarity. Granular cellulose can also be used for column chromatography:
https://www.camlab.co.uk...r-column-chromatography

[/quote]
hi Sidisheikh.mehriz...it's molecular weight/polarity
there is one big advantage of planar paper chromatography over tlc, which i'll mention again in that thread..

re the TLC below...the only modification i can suggest is that most TLC i've done, or seen work well for those kinds of alkaloids, the mobile phase was methanol or ethanol + ammonium
..looks like an alkaloid you're missing reference for there...rf heights/reagents come into play then..it's probably worth starting a new Phalaris TLC thread...[/quote]

Indeed methanol with ammonia solution has proven more consistent than IPA however the separation of DMT and 5-MEO-DMT wasn't as good as IPA with 5% Ammonia. IPA even though it gave the best separation at one time as in the picture I showed, it couldn't be reliably reproduced.

My friend whose conducting the TLC experiment thinks the reason for the lack of consistency is that the ammonia is evaporating uncontrollably. To counter this effect he is ordering some triethylamine to substitute for the 25% ammonia.
What do you think about this nen?


He also just bought anisaldehyde for spotting . We got for anisaldehydeidea from this research paper.
Although the paper doesn't say what concentration is the sulfiric and acetic acid so we'll have to find the best parameter through trial and error.

When I compare the HPTLC bands in that paper with the TLC in the picture above it all seems consistent with each other. Unfortunately we couldn't reproduce that good separation as in the picture again. So we're waiting for the triethylamine first before we can give it another try. I'll keep you updated.

Thanks for the clarification regarding paper chromatography. You made me eager to try it myself.

Hey there Phalaris wizards

I'm absolutely taken with the amazing work you have done, with the insolubility of gramine in certain solvents, and similar amazing discoveries.

I hope to add some further data of my own. I'd like to explore wild harvesting for extraction, and using TLC for assays. I'm convinced if we can get something close to a TEK for working with wild harvested grasses, we'll have the DMT question well and truly solved for the future.

Now a question linked to wild harvesting though - as we're talking about a grass that tends to live among other different grasses in the wild, we need a good, reliable way of finding and identifying species in the wild.

I'm wondering if any of you grass warriors know some good books or apps that have proven useful for learning this specific task. Most that I have seen only have a limited amount of Phalaris species listed - most grass ID keys only have arundinacea and that's it. The app Flora Incognita has maybe three species, and only does AI based photo identification, no traditional ID key.

Hey PsyDuckMonkey. Until a phalaris geek makes that app, it is non existent. Besides, a lot of people would tell you that working with wild grasses is not worth it, and that ordering well established seeds is the best way to go. If you still have the drive to get to know the wild spirits of your local ecosystem, like I have, then you will have to learn taxonomy and identification the old fashioned way, researching it yourself, as we all did. Perhaps a phalaris identification key thread would be handy in this forum? I personally feel like I will be passing on the phalaris torch, at least for the foreseeable future, and it would be nice to have a collective discovery engine going over here.

Well, a lot of people have told me and others that looking at plants other than Mimosa Hostilis is not worth it, and sourcing ecologically sound MHRB (which is essentially an industrial waste product) is the way to go... We all know now how that turned out.

I have looked into established seeds, and they seem to be massively overpriced, and surprisingly hard to find without having to ship from overseas. Also, I just don't have access to a garden at the moment.

There seems to be a general spirit of defeatism in the scene. Reading the Phalaris threads, people tend to have had some very positive bioassays with wild grasses, even if the results are mixed.


I wasn't really expecting anything else. I'm still curious what sources you have used to learn taxonomy.


There actually is a grass ID thread, but it's mostly filled with 'hey is this grass phalaris?' 'no it's not' type discussions.

Sidisheikh.mehriz - regarding the anisaldehyde idea, it may be worth trying treating it asthough it's p-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde since it's more or less the oxygen analogue of that commonly used presumptive reagent. Details of pDMAB reagent preparation should be readily available, the only difference with anisaldehyde being the lack of a basic amine. I get the hunch this may mean glacial acetic acid is used as the solvent. A further dig around the literature would be advisible before embarking on too much in the way of trial-and-error since the authors of that paper likely got the recipe from somewhere rather than inventing it themselves.

Anisaldehyde does seem to make a nice reagent for distinguishing indoles from phenethylamines so the forensic literature along with the EMCDDA should be worth a look. I hope to be able to look into this matter over the coming days. Plus, p-anisaldehyde is relatively straightforward to prepare by oxidation of the readily available anethole.

Thanks for the tip downwardsfromzero. I will forward this to my friend for discussion. We've recently issued a telegram group for this project.

This is yesterday's TLC experiment. From left to right is DMT/5-MEO-DMT standard mixture, Tunisian aquatica, Sardinian aquatica, and lastly aquatics from Uruguay. All strains are wild accessions.
The Uruguay strain seems to be the winner. Methanol with ammonia solution was the eluent this time.

The internet can be confusing when it comes to phalaris taxonomy. To make sure you start off in the right track make sure to learn the botanical terminology of phalaris like what what is the glume, rachilla, sheath, infertile lemmas etc. Once you get familiar with those you can start checking conservation websites and agronomic science papers like crop science for phalaris aquatics and cereal weed control domain for phalaris brachystachys, paradoxa minor and truncata.

You'd be surprised that many entheogen online stores sells minor as brachystachys. These businesses are no experts on phalaris taxonomy and it's up to you to figure out which species are which.

I've been thinking about starting a phalaris taxonomy thread or maybe issue a pdf guide. Once you learn the basics it should be pretty straight forward process. Best of luck.

Another TLC

Left to right: DMT/5-MEO-DMT standard. Numb 2,3,4 and 5 are all phalaris strains and numb 5 is psychotria virdis.

I haven't yet included the local variety of aquatica that I've been working with these past couple years but soon will send a sample. I hope it will match that big spot of virdis.


All samples in this TLC were 20mg dry matter ..

Sidisheikh.mehriz ..thanks for keeping us updated!

from a quick glance at the previous set of TLC pics (Tunisian aquatica, Sardinian aquatica, and...Uruguay) ..i think re-agents and some cross-referencing of height are going to be real interesting..From the quick glance, and having seen a few things, i would say, yes we can see DMT/5meo together (though it may be one or the other, is hard to know how differential that is) - then, the band below that is where i would expect NMT or 5meo-NMT to be - with a guess at possibly gramine faintly below that (gramine rf i need to check) - ...above the DMT/5meo region is where we would expect betacarbolines, and that is where the greater fluorescence seems to be, as would be expected...but there looks like maybe something else as well

here again is (as found in the nexus wiki) Festi and Samorini's 1994 Phalaris alkaloid list:

N-methyltryptamine (NMT)
5-methoxy-N-methyltryptamine (5-MeO-NMT)
N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT)
5-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (Bufotenine, 5-HO-DMT)
5-methyl-tryptamine
5-methoxy-tryptamine
2-methyl-l,2,3,4-tetrahydro-B-carboline (MTHC), not found in P. aquatica
2-methyl-6-methoxy-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-B-carboline (MMTHC)
2,9-dimethyl-6-methoxy-l ,2,3,4-tetrahydro-B-carboline (DMTHC)
Gramine
7-methoxy-gramine
5,7-dimethoxy-gramine
Hordenine

but i think one or two more may have turned up since, will check

..great to see some results...!

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PsyDuckmonkey wrote:

..now That's surely the correct attitude to become a Phalaris wizard !

and good to see you posting on the nexus again...