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Acacia "Harvesting" Age

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wattlez

wattlez

Rising Star
Currently growing Acacia Acuminata (Narrow Phyllode) & Floribundas. They are a year old now and I have not gotten any alkaloids after evaporation of my nonpolar solvent.

I am using phyllodes and stems.

Is anyone aware of a "minimum harvest age" for me to sustainably harvest phyllodes and get a yield? Coastal NSW does not afford me the luxury of any active native variants that I have seen so far.

Cheers.

(STB Tek, 1g Lye:1g plant matter (cut up, dried, partly blended using coffee grinder). Is it possible the alkaloids bind too strongly to plant oils and don't transfer between solutions in my clean-up mini A/B process?)

Happy to post some pics if people are interested in growing. The Floribundas grow far faster than the Acuminatas but my research tells me the phyllode yield will be significantly smaller.
 
What time of year have you been harvesting them?

You're right acuminata would be better to grow.

Is there a chance the acacia's were mislabeled?

I'm not aware of a minimum age but there certainly could be. Although highly speculative, it would make sense at a young age, the plant is putting its efforts into growing rather than alkaloid production.
 
Currently Summer in Australia and I picked some branches off just 2 days ago to do a test.

I'm sure the answer is out there, for now i'm going to try out the nonpolar solvent pull I evaporated in a dish (jungle spice? Probably just oils but will see.)
 
You'll want to defat phyllodes after an acid cook first. Then proceed to adding the base and extracting the alkaloids.

Alkaloids are reported to be present at a higher concentration after aprolonged dry spell; it could be that they are a way of storing auxins in preparation for a wet spell, as well as acting as antifeedants. So I wouldn't specifically rule out the possibility of alkaloid production in younger plants.

Other than that I'm unable to comment on the basis of experience until I do something with a bunch of (UK-grown) phyllodes that have been collected over the course of two years. Frustratingly perhaps, the phyllodes from when the plant was younger were collected during wetter weather than the following year's collection, which was after several weeks of very dry weather.
 
I have heard about the dry yields being higher, but not from those growing- The wattles have a deep tap root that theoretically would always be providing them with some moisture... I am replanting from pot to ground shortly and they will have a lot more ground water from then on, hoping that doesn't cause me trouble down the line...

Either way, I'll keep them happy and try to do tests in 4 and 8 weeks time. At this stage they don't seem to need extra water because it has been a wet year. I just like to keep them happy so I get faster growth, before I start cutting too much away at them.

With the defat during the acid phase, in past I found no effective way going off visuals- All naptha pulls seemed the exact same yellow colour as the last, and I was hesitant to waste solvent doing an evaporation to see oil left. If I do a bigger batch I will try and find a way to defat and minimise solvent usage.

Thanks for the reply
 
General consensus is that STB doesn't work well with acacia.. admittedly I have always taken this in with my mothers milk from others .. and always stuck to the a/b or CSIRO type route.. I know of someone who successfully obtained actives from A. Colei via stb on phyllodes but they had no reference point as to what the yield may have been from A/B. I think would depend on how thoroughly the material is ground after being dried.

I think after 1 year its likely that the plants aren't producing DMT yet.. on page 2 of the Acacia Analysis Thread Nen888 shared that:

at the 2009 EGA conference near Melbourne, Australia, acacia phytochemical researcher 'J.J.' mentioned that he had tested young Acacia phlebophylla plants..the phyllodes contained almost entirely simple Tryptamine, around 0.2%, and some betacarbolines..
it was quite mature adult plants which yielded 0.3% DMT in the phyllodes..
..so both these examples suggest DMT is an alkaloid which comes with maturity in some acacia species..
Click to expand...

Lastly - Some Floribunda are inactive. With this one you want to source seed from a known tryptamine variety - snd it is also probably sensitive to soil quality - as many researcher's results (my own as well) seem to suggest. I never yielded anything from Floribunda growing in built up urban areas. But once out in more 'wild' areas I always had great results. Take from this what you will. In a couple weeks I will have seed from an active vaiety that I am happy to share to other members if they flick me a pm. I also found 'Shellite' inneffective with this species but xylene/toluene worked well .. in fact Shellite is essentially useless now anyways .. and not what you'd want for a tree like floribunda that most likely contains numerous other actives worth keeping
 
Shelitte isn't useless if it's sufficiently heated. Using the lye as the heat source will help pull a significant larger portion of actives, downside is it can be a bit harder to crystalise but it usually will produce nice yellow crystals.
 
I don’t mean that it’s useless at holding DMT.. but is causes a lot of complications these days for a lot of people. It’s clearly a different product to what it used to be. It used to work well for getting nice crystaline extracts but for the last 5 or 6 years has not been the same.. it seems to drop out strange oils/moisture beads that get in the way of crystallization... The only time I’ve seen it work well in recent times was rinsing it with ethanol and vinegar prior to use.. and pulling from an acacia soup that wasn’t exposed to prolonged boiling in the acid phase.. to me it’s just not worth the headache when toluene or xylene hold way more spice .. hold alkaloids that shellite can’t hold.. and don’t require heat..

I think at the end of the day it should be about producing an extract that yields the deepest experience.. these trees often offer a multitude of alkaloids to give each extract its “signature” or “spirit” if you will.. isolating dmt from the rest of them is almost like ignoring the plant’s voice

Using Floribunda as an example.. there is a sedative stillness that just isn’t there in the shellite extract ime. Worth leaving in :)
 
acacian said:
I don’t mean that it’s useless at holding DMT.. but is causes a lot of complications these days for a lot of people. It’s clearly a different product to what it used to be. It used to work well for getting nice crystaline extracts but for the last 5 or 6 years has not been the same.. it seems to drop out strange oils/moisture beads that get in the way of crystallization... The only time I’ve seen it work well in recent times was rinsing it with ethanol and vinegar prior to use.. and pulling from an acacia soup that wasn’t exposed to prolonged boiling in the acid phase.. to me it’s just not worth the headache when toluene or xylene hold way more spice .. hold alkaloids that shellite can’t hold.. and don’t require heat..

I think at the end of the day it should be about producing an extract that yields the deepest experience.. these trees often offer a multitude of alkaloids to give each extract its “signature” or “spirit” if you will.. isolating dmt from the rest of them is almost like ignoring the plant’s voice

Using Floribunda as an example.. there is a sedative stillness that just isn’t there in the shellite extract ime. Worth leaving in :)
Click to expand...

There's a trade off to each solvent, toulene and xylene can be argued is far more toxic than naphtha. Toulene exposure levels to the respiratory system are life threatening at 500ppm, naphtha has been rated at 10000-20000ppm.

I think the experience is often too subjective to say whether it is the other impurities changing the nature of the trip or simply the person's interpretation of the experience.
Data on the acacia analysis thread so far would indicate the main active is ofcourse dmt and some of the others found are more likely to be inactive like 2MTHBC. This could definitely change the nature of the trip I.e make it weaker and give the user a different experience. However, there also could be the presence of dangerous compounds I.e Acacia georginae is very poisonous and alot of African acacias produce cyanogenic toxins. Which is why it's important that perhaps more MS LC tests on extracts are needed.
 
Yeah.. good points for sure.. usual precautions should be taken when dealing with solvents .. always good to wear a mask and work in a ventilated area - especially when dealing with more toxic solvents.

My prediction is that when more extensive testing of extracts is done, we will be able to start pinpointing some of the contributing factors to the differing subjective effects.. we do need more data on acacia extracts as they seem to fluctuate a lot in composition.. I can for sure say that some species feel different to others in a way that I intuitively feel is beyond mere suggestion .. but your right.. without data it is anecdotal

Back to the OP .. I would give the plants longer to develope.. a year is very young and they will no doubt change in chemical makeup as they grow
 
Thanks for the answers, so it seems the takeaway is that I both need to wait longer and work on the extraction process.

I'll definitely switch to an A/B and xylene for my next attempt, which means I should probably also take some cuttings from nature and just hope that bulk input can compensate for poor choice of subspecies (coastal NSW, very little success from past attempts).

I think I like floribunda because it can be easily grown in volume in the backyard, cuttings taken and used for extracting- But there is so many mixed messages about it everywhere I read. Sure, acuminata is far more likely to work, but with a far smaller phyllode mass harvestable it just isn't practical unless 3+ years is an acceptable wait for your first extraction. In my head I assumed one year of growing would be sufficient but evidently not.

Maybe i'll try a micro extraction every 3 months on my floribundas and see if they ever yield anything?
 
I am doing a pull on acacia longifolia cancer soon. I my area, a.longifolia and a.cyclops are environmental nightmare. A natural pathogen was brought in long ago, giving it these cancer burs. The two extractions stand next to each other, and the bark/flower one has a orange/sunflower oil look to it. The cancer part top aqueous layer, is naphtha clearish.
Has anyone any info on what I might have to expect?
 
Floribunda can be disheartening but once you find ones that work well it’s a great plant.. an an important one to figure out the reason for variance. It’s a fast grower, has healthy content in the phyllodes and is a beautiful tree! Aeither it’s a strain thing or is only likes certain kinds of soil for trytamine production.. if it’s a strain thing that will be easy to narrow down and get people cultivating the right variety.. if the latter.. well that will take further research. Any ideas how we can find an answer to this query? it’s possible we may need to delve into the different cultivars and where they have been planted over the years..

There is a hybrid cultivar that was cultivated in NSW some time ago called “abundance”.. is is a hybrid between floribunda and oxycedrus (the latter also been found to be active - my single test found no content)

Acacia floribunda putatively hybridises with A. oxycedrus in N.S.W. A cultivar, A. floribunda ‘Abundance’ is recognized within this species, see E.Brueggemeier, Australian Plants 25: 263–264 (2010) for description and photograph.

FOA Reference
Click to expand...

Need a copy of this book!

This one really fascinates me!
 
For growing my floribundas and acuminatas, i'm using river sand, osmocote native potting mix, perlite and a layer of coir at the bottom for water retention (the mix is very quick to drain). Pests absolutely love to devour the new growth on both my acuminatas and floribundas, currently have a million white things on literally every plant so need to start spraying them again.

I'm not that well versed on plant biology but of DMT is produced as a result of stress, maybe I should let the pests remain and see if the plant deals with it on its own? Maybe the plant generates layers on phyllodes and the internal bark lining which helps retain water but contains DMT?

I'm very interested in learning both what purpose DMT serves the plant, why each species has a varying content and how we can learn to possibly trigger the production of DMT in our backyard species.

It's been a year and a half of research for me and now I can't drive down the pacific highway without admiring all the subspecies that are visible during the july/august blooms. In particular, there is a spot that is completely crowded with an abundance of species which domimate both sides of the road- I'll try find it on maps, I definitely want to have a walk around and see what is so special about these areas where the wattles thrive.

Given these plants also produce so much oil, could that have something to do with active yields? Less oil production and more alkalines in the phyllodes to ward off hungry critters?
 
wattlez said:
For growing my floribundas and acuminatas, i'm using river sand, osmocote native potting mix, perlite and a layer of coir at the bottom for water retention (the mix is very quick to drain). Pests absolutely love to devour the new growth on both my acuminatas and floribundas, currently have a million white things on literally every plant so need to start spraying them again.

I'm not that well versed on plant biology but of DMT is produced as a result of stress, maybe I should let the pests remain and see if the plant deals with it on its own? Maybe the plant generates layers on phyllodes and the internal bark lining which helps retain water but contains DMT?

I'm very interested in learning both what purpose DMT serves the plant, why each species has a varying content and how we can learn to possibly trigger the production of DMT in our backyard species.

It's been a year and a half of research for me and now I can't drive down the pacific highway without admiring all the subspecies that are visible during the july/august blooms. In particular, there is a spot that is completely crowded with an abundance of species which domimate both sides of the road- I'll try find it on maps, I definitely want to have a walk around and see what is so special about these areas where the wattles thrive.

Given these plants also produce so much oil, could that have something to do with active yields? Less oil production and more alkalines in the phyllodes to ward off hungry critters?
Click to expand...

I’m not yet convinced that DMT is only caused by stress in plants.. nor what purpose it serves. there isn’t really a consensus on why the plants produce it.

It’s likely serving several functions I think..

I would focus on growing a nice healthy plant before trying to stress it out.. probably more likely to get what your looking for going that route
 
Hiya
I did recently an extract on A. Acuminata on phyllodes & twigs; it got tested by endlessness and came back negative for DMT. Waiting for more details, and possibily deeper analysis.

The plant was 3 years old , end of summer ( but got watered through the summer ; though it was relatively dry when harvested). I will try again during flowering time this spring ( i read somewwhere that people had success at that time, worth a try).

Definitly, 3 years sounds like a minimum for having a healthy, big enough plant to work with.
I'm interested in seeds from varieties that have prooven to work. Please PM me, i will cover postage cost =)

Question 1: i see you guys discussing solvent use ; i use D-Limonene ; in which way this is affecting the results ?

Question 2 : even if the extract from Acuminata came back negative for DMT ; would it be safe to make a bioessay?
 
How certain are you on the ID?

D-limonene is great but requires extra steps if you don’t want orange residue through your extract. Maybe if you post your extraction method in the acacia extraction workspace (link in my signature) we can nut out what maybe went wrong (if indeed something went wrong)

.. don’t want to clutter this thread too much
 
Little update:

Still no alkaloids present in extraction attempts- All Acuminata/Floribunda plants are well over a year old now. I had an interesting theory however, which I am now testing:

Are alkaloids produced as a coating on phyllodes/bark?

I have noticed many posts about floribunda variants/growing conditions resulting in different yields (with people complaining none at all for grown floribundas), and also the often mentioned "harvest when dry" to get max yields.

So I got to thinking, what if the alkaloids are a form of pest deterrent (as in other plants/cacti), and unless grown under a canopy of sorts, the alkaloid "coating" on phyllodes/bark washes off? This could go from an external protective coating to becoming internal in phyllodes/bark as the plants grow and new growth envelopes these alkaloids which were a coating previously? This could explain why acuminatas grown in a dry region have a phyllode yield fairly high, compared to say floribunda which appears on the east coast in areas with comparatively far higher rainfall.

I never had pest problems while growing under cover and watering daily. When I moved the young plants to an area with zero protection from rain, I had a huge pest problem. Multiple types of little bugs have decimated new growth ever since. I have since moved a few floribundas under cover again (transparent cover, they still experience most of the sunlight as before) and pests are still an issue.

I have not innoculated with any nitrogen fixing bacteria, unless they were present in the native potting mix that formed part of my soil mix.

I also put a floribinda over a tub with "fruit and veg" hydroponic liquid, with the roots growing out the bottom of the pot into the solution, kratky style. This plant has pests too.

All this has gotten me thinking, maybe the wild acacias have a much better chance at producing alkaloids? For instance, acuminatas would have to be not ideal for mammals to eat, or insects, and need to withstand a dry environment. So potentially, all new growth could have a small alkaloid content which over time accumulates throughout most of the actual plant, whereas I get rain often and I live in a somewhat humid area. (Coastal NSW).

To further test this theory, I would need data on successfully grown floribunda/acuminatas that have an alkaloid yield. I'll keep growing mine for now, but after failing at moving 2 acuminatas into PVC piping, I am left with only a half dozen from the nearly 300 i sprouted originally (quite saddening for me).

Maybe growing acuminatas in a low humidity grow tent with strong lighting could produce a reliable yield, but I am not keen on going down that route. I was hoping to be able to trim a few plants every few months for some experiences, but that is looking less and less likely.

I will post another update if I successfully convert an acuminata to kratky as i did to a single floribunda. The main issue is the NPK makeup of almost all hydroponic concentrates is not ideal at all for aussie natives, so I need a workaround for that too...

I will also look out for an innoculant for nitrogen fixing bacteria and see if that has any effect (I will use it on only half of the pots for experimental validity).

Always keen to be PM'd if anyone has advice or has experimented growing acacias!
 
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