Hi guys, I've harvested about a bunch of peruvian torch cacti I've been growing inside for the last few years, and did an A/B extraction on it. I based with NaOH, pulled with d-limonene, and salted with HCL. I pulled twice, combined and titrated to app. pH6. The saltings that I evaporated contained some limonene, and I got some very strange powdery blossoming growth around the edges of my evaporating extract. I chopped it all up and cleaned it 3 times with dehydrated acetone. The evaporated extract once again has the same growth around the edge of the crystal growth.

Does anyone know what it could be?

The petri dish with the orange oil in it is my evaporated acetone. The other is my acetone washed extract.

Those are called dendrites and are normal for salt growth. They will form when the salt is able to pull up the solvent and evap it and thus forming a "tree". Just look at what happened to me. The solvent evaporated and the salt grew out of the glass. It then pulled more solvent and the crystal grew outside of the glass. This is just calcium acetate. Dendrites are more typical for different salts but even metals can form them during electrolysis. It has to do with the surface area inceasing so more evaporation can take place.

Dendrites are usually very pure when there is solvent left to retain the impurities.

Just crush them up and use them as is

Very cool pictures! The dendrites remind me of the crystal tree growing kits one can buy.

I'm glad to know there's nothing wrong with the extract. Thanks for your reply.

I find base contamination will form dendrites quite rapidly whereas mescaline has a tendency to stick to its needle like structure on the plate. sodium, calcium, potassium nearly always climbs the side of the dish so if I was you I would separate out whats on the plate and whats on the edges, do they smell or taste different?

Great pic from Ulim there, I looked at the OP and thought "that's probably calcium acetate", perhaps Ulim thought the same thing.

Separating the two different crystal forms is a good idea, they could be recrystallised for further purification.

Thanks guys.

I tasted the dendrites and they are as bitter as the crystals. For now I've combined it all.