Author Topic: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea  (Read 186 times)

Vesp

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How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« on: January 01, 2009, 05:01:04 AM »
A more detailed grow guide: http://www.erowid.org/plants/phalaris/phalaris_info1.shtml

Seed Storage: I am keeping my seeds in a small plastic bag in the refrigerator. I don't know if this is the best, but for most seeds it is. I have read this is the best way to store them for longevity.

Germination: These seeds germinate really easily as with most grass seeds. Spread them on the soil,and bury them a little bit. I rub my hand across the soil mixing them, and burying them in the soil a little bit. It is important to water the seeds often enough to make sure the soil does not dry up.  You cannot over water this type of grass so be generous with the water at the begging.

General: In order to increase alkaloid content, you want to fertilize them with a high nitrogen soil (urea is great!) but otherwise have them in poor soil. Shading, cutting, and drought also increase alkaloid content in the plants. 

Harvesting the plant material: Once they have reached the stage at which you want to harvest them, cut the grass down, and let it grow back. After the grass has been cut, you want to put it in ideal conditions for a few days to get it growing again.

I'll update this continuously as the plants I am growing at the moment get significantly larger from the picture of them from the last update.


Picture 1.
The seeds are just starting to sprout. This is a picture of some of the first sprouts.
 
Picture 2.
All of the seeds have sprouted, they are growing pretty fast and I have transplanted some dormant Phalaris Arundinacea var. Picta grass into some yogurt cans and are just starting to get some small leafs.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2009, 11:54:46 PM by Phyto »
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zzhuchila_clocker

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #1 on: April 02, 2009, 05:48:30 PM »
Phalaris arundinacea is a common plant in my place on rivershores, covering ground near water. I've also tried to plant it, it germinates easily but don't see any sence in that since there are hectares of wild one. Id definitely contains some triptamines, maybe this summer i'll experiment with it & TLC 
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Vesp

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #2 on: April 02, 2009, 09:48:02 PM »
That would be really exciting, everyone claims it is a useless source of DMT, but I think it has decent potential.
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zzhuchila_clocker

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #3 on: April 03, 2009, 07:34:00 AM »
It seems to contains mostly m-MeO. Once i was smoking acetone extract of phalaris ears, and it had some immediate effect when inhaled, though not substantial to tell from placebo. But very similar to the discription of low doses of 5-MeODMT - immediate action(unlike DMT that should take several minutes), exhilaration and positive mood. 
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #4 on: April 03, 2009, 11:41:49 PM »
Cool, do you know or have any really good information on the toxicity of phalaris, or on gramine, which seems to be the chemical of concern?
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zzhuchila_clocker

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2009, 08:49:50 PM »
No, and i was interested in that too.. and stoped the experiments because of that partially. I read also that some psychonauts died in italy because of phalaris, and this prevented me form further experimenting with extract, because it could  just be a good piece of gramine.
But i think i found one way to destroy it and deminish its concentration in the product - basic hydrolysis. Sounds strange? I'll explain: Once i found on rhodium the procedure for either nitirle of indolylacetic acid or beta-(indolyl-3)-nitroethane ( i forgot what it was) synthesis from gramine, cyanide/nitrometane, and base. First i could not understand how it goes, it was too weird to be a usual substitution of NMe2 via sn2 mechanism. But then i found that it was splatting-addition mechanism caused by presence of indole ring NH proton. It deprotonates, followed by 1,4 elimination of NMe2- yielding  to 1,3 diene, which is attacked by another nucleophile(cyanide or nitormetane anion). So i suppose keeping the extract in strong alkaline conditions will change NMe2 to other group like OH/alcoxide
« Last Edit: April 04, 2009, 08:52:13 PM by zz-zhuchila »
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2009, 12:36:24 AM »
Hmm not to sure I understand exactly what you are saying, but why wouldn't this also happen with DMT?
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zzhuchila_clocker

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2009, 06:15:18 AM »
See the attached picture hope it will make it clear. DMT can do that because anion (-)CH2-NMe2 is unstable and it can not form. And then the product of gramine hydrolysis can be replaced by acid-base extraction (if Nu = alkaline or ethoxide).
« Last Edit: April 05, 2009, 06:31:40 AM by zz-zhuchila »
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Vesp

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2009, 06:45:45 PM »
Oh I see! Wow that is a great idea I'd like to see someone attempt this, do you have any links to more information on it, or on the people dieing from phalaris? I'd like to see if they were experienced psychonauts or some kids who ate way more then they should have with some harmala or something.
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zzhuchila_clocker

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #9 on: April 08, 2009, 07:55:23 PM »
No, that was not attempted (but i'll have a go this summer when i get chromatography plates) but the original procedure of using gramine as alkylating agent  is something like this:
 
Quote
A mixture of 34.8 g (200 mM) of gramine, 242.5 ml of 2-nitrobutane and 9 g of solid sodium hydroxide was heated to reflux temperature in a nitrogen atmosphere for 8 hours. The mixture was suction-filtered after cooling. The pH of the filtrate was adjusted to 4 with 10% acetic acid (80 ml) and the filtrate was washed with five times 180 ml of water. The organic phase was treated with activated charcoal and then dried with sodium sulphate. Evaporation yielded 43.4 g of residue having a melting point of 69°-73°C. This was chromatographed on 15 times the quantity of aluminium oxide activity III. Evaporation of the combined benzene eluates gave 36.6 g of product having a melting point of 76.5-78.5°C. (yield: 79% of the theoretical), from which 3-(2'-methyl-2'-nitrobutyl)-indole was obtained by recrystallising from benzine to a constant melting point of 79°-81°C.
The temperature is high, the reaction at r.t. should take much more time. On the other hand, in the conditions given above i don't see any protons that can activate NMe2 to be a better leaving group, so maybe in water the reaction would be easier.
Anyway this is a procedure from a patent. I found one book on gramine chemistry, but it is currently not avaliable because of problems with server, maybe some answers could be found there.
I was trying, but did not find anything about italian psychonauts, but definitely this info was in google some years ago. There ware no details mentioned about what and how was used.
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #10 on: April 08, 2009, 10:59:06 PM »
I see, with all that work it almost seems like it isn't worth it, and that you'd be able to extract most of gramine out with solubility, or something like that.

My phalaris, as pictured above didn't do well at all in my house, so it kind of went into hibernation. I cut the tops off, and planted new seeds, so it should grow back extra thick very soon. I have it outside so it can get the earliest start. I think it will start up in a few days because some of the other phalaris I have growing in my backyard, strawberries and cream ribbon grass, is just sprouting. I'm pretty excited.
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zzhuchila_clocker

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #11 on: April 09, 2009, 03:45:17 PM »
Phalaris is a very hardy plant, it will sprout from roots anyway. Just divide them and plant separately outdoors (in moist soil).
You were probably right concerning basic hydrolysis of gramine. I've downloaded that book and looked throughout it in order to find something useful for destruction of gramine, and found that: 1) it is resistant to boiling in methanolic KOH for 12 hours. So the answer to my supposed method is no. 
2) Boiling of gramine with levulinic acid in water results in alkylation(skatylation) of one or both alpha positions for keto-group. At the same time, decorboxyltion uccurs resulting in 3,3-bis-(skatyl)-methylethylketone in case of gramine, and 1,3,3-tris-(2-methylskatlyl)methylethylketone in case of 2-methylgramine. Also decarboxylation is very unusual for levulinic acid (it can be heated to 246C without any decarboxylation). Note - they used not gramine, but N,N-diethylskatol that is practically the same as gramine  [A.Kamal, A.A.Qureshi, and I.Ahmad, Tetrahedron, 19, 681-690 (1963).] 
3) Boiling of gramine with benzenelulfamide in water for 20 min results in formation of N-skatyl-benzenesulfonamide. Gramine alkylates slufanylamide(streptocide) while boiling in 95% ethanol for 2 hours. [J. Licari and G. Dougherty J. Am. Chem. Soc. 76(15) 4039-4040 (1954)] ;  [J. Licari, L.W. Hartzel, G. Dougherty et al  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 77(20),  5386-5387 (1955)]
Probably boiling the extract with excess of streptocide can help to destroy this shit  :D  but still it is too unconvenient method. While reading that book i realized that the reactions of gramine are sometimes unpredictible, i thind there should be some mild method to utilize it. (hope, the same unpredictable reactions will not affect dmt ;) ). I am still not sure about solubility difference - have anybody tried it and did he analyze the product purity by TLC control?
« Last Edit: April 09, 2009, 03:47:01 PM by zz-zhuchila »
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #12 on: April 09, 2009, 08:11:17 PM »
Very interesting information, but yeah it seems to impractical and it seems like a lot of those my react with the DMT, does your information give suitabilities in different solvents at all? I'll look in my CRC and Merck index and see if I can find anything later today.
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #13 on: April 10, 2009, 06:38:32 AM »
Unfortunately there were no solubilities given, but this lit. refers to other books about gramine, some of them will surely contain solubility data, i suppose. I'll also check maybe some articles i would be able to find in web
« Last Edit: April 10, 2009, 06:55:10 AM by zz-zhuchila »
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #14 on: April 10, 2009, 06:41:56 PM »
Awesome, I haven't found any data in the Merck about the suitabilities so that is disappointing. I haven't yet looked in the CRC I have.
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #15 on: April 13, 2009, 07:16:24 PM »
sorry.. just understood that you want suitabilities, and i thought solubilities by mistake.
Actually, what is suitability?  :D  I tried to google by "solvent suitabilities" but did not understand what does this term mean. My translator does not know any "suitabilities" related to chemistry(since english is not my native language). Could you explain?
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #16 on: April 13, 2009, 07:25:20 PM »
lol sorry just a very bad typo haha I meant solubility.  I have an auto-correct spelling thing so I must have typed something similiar and then it turned it into that word.
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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #17 on: January 04, 2012, 08:49:42 PM »
Sorry to bump this thread but I was wondering if there were any newer developments around the phalaris grass and gramine dilemma. This is my first post so please don't be too rough on me for asking, has anyone explored anything with sublimation and a cold finger?

I haven't had time to look into this more in over a year and my ideas at the time were likely not thought out to the fullest but I know sublimation has similarly not been explored to its fullest... unless someone knows something I don't know.

This is a project I have been meaning to do for over a year now but my money went towards collecting a bit of research materials.

This is all going from memory but my basic idea goes something like this:

1) Grow the grass
2) Use wheat grass juicer (I think it was recommended to freeze the grass to make processing easier, can't remember)
3) Get out the goods from the gunk
4) Sublimate and recrystallize with a cold finger

Sorry for having such a basic idea but I am unable to find the specifics and should be doing other work right now anyways. My (most likely unrealistic) tek that I dreamed up was made with dreams to go cheap and ghetto so that others could easily do this with very low financing and with easy to find equipment.

I overlooked a lot in terms of solvent use and the only thing I have really found relating to this area is quoted as "nonetheless, gramine isn't something you want in your extraction.
it can be separated from DMT with a column, silica, and EtOAc:MeOH." Running a column is not my ideal vision of a simple as dirt tek though so I want to explore my idea simply because I think it holds promise.

The cheapest way I thought of was to  get a toaster oven and fit it with an RBB flask inside at a slightly upward angle and have the flask attached in some way to tubing containing a cold finger type set up. I think I somehow had it worked out using a condenser where the DMT could be collected and washed out with solvent and recrystallized and the gramine problem would be eliminated.

The problem is I had this idea before going through organic 1 and 2 and I think that I made the mistake of overlooking quite a few things in the process. I am searching for the plans that I had originally wrote and drew up but I can't find them right now and don't want to go through 4 hard drives to find what likely doesn't work.

I know this isn't completely on topic but I thought I would post this on here so someone could improve it and move it in the right direction.

Phalaris grass is such an ideal source for DMT if only gramine was taken out of the equation. You can grow this with no suspicion in anyway, it requires almost no care, it grows fast and is hardy and looks like exactly what it is: grass.

I have dreams of this being grown by the acre and mowed down and collected in the clippings bag and then further processed.

So this is my first post here and this is one of the projects I am most interested in getting a down-to-earth easy as pie tek out of. I was so elated upon being given the 'go-ahead' to know about this site, been looking for this for a while now.

To further introduce and ramble, I also almost shit my pants when I saw the aspartame to amphetamine thread on here, I posted about that on bluelight over a year ago and am so happy that the idea is being considered, I hate aspartame and would love to see it turn into something else that is much sweeter than sugar.

To round out my first long-ass post I will also say that I would like to also potentially develop something fun and easy to make from doxylamine succinate and would also like to see some type of index of designer drugs that show structures and whatnot.

You can read my posts on bluelight to get a better feel of me but I am a simple developing noob with only a few ideas and very little experience in the field. Damn vyvanse, time to get some other work done.

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #18 on: January 06, 2012, 03:31:56 PM »
the current wisdom is that gramine is not soluble in naptha, pet ether or limonene while dmt is. So doing a pet ether extraction of a basic phalaris soup followed by a couple recrystalizations from limonene or pet ether is likely to remove most the gramine if it present.

What is discouraged, is trying to make some ayahuasca brew directly from juiced phalaris.

@ Vesp - where did your seeds come from? Do you know what variety they were? Any progress?

Here is link to a current discussion/research on the topic
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=16810

Vesp

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Re: How to Grow Phalaris Arundinacea
« Reply #19 on: January 06, 2012, 05:40:14 PM »
I stopped focusing on this.. I originally bought it from some place online but have since identified the grass in my city and could now get oodles of the grass. I've collected a few of its seeds as well.

If not for legal issues, I'd be very interested in collecting a bunch of the grass, running it through a wheat grass juicer after a freeze/thaw cycle, and than extract it further IFF the gramine crap could be separated.

I am having a really hard time understanding why gramine would not be soluble while DMT would be? Are they not essentially the same chemically? Surely it is slightly soluble in naptha, etc if DMT is soluble in it?
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