Diseased cactus in tea

[LoveInTheDream]

I have a question about scrapping cacti from your garden due to disease... I have a few that have suffered pretty bad sunburn this year, some that acquired some thrips damage, and another that has some kind of (potentially fungal) rot. Rather than try and save these plants, I am saving myself some headache by scrapping these weak ones so as to preserve a strong, healthy garden.

I am wondering if anyone has any experience with using cacti like this in a brew? Obviously I would cut away the mushy/callused/diseased parts, but are these pathogens systemic? What I mean by this is will it negatively affect the aqueous extract (tea) to use plant material that comes from a diseased plant, even if the portion used looked fine?

Thanks fam

 

[downwardsfromzero]

While the callused and fly-blown specimens are probably fine for a brew, prudence would suggest that the rotten specimens ought to be reserved for extraction (and sometimes they are remarkably potent- anecdotally at least).

I'd go so far as to suggest that you can probably just mash up the mushy cactus with some lime and pull it with ethyl acetate for rapid results. Adding powdered citric acid to the solvent pulls should give a pretty swift indication of the value of even a smaller portion of the mush if you choose not to commit fully at first.

And you can use other solvents but they mostly don't quite have that direct-to-crystals convenience of the EA.

 

[LoveInTheDream]

Interesting! I had a hunch that the mush was worth saving.
This article is quite interesting when considering this potential increased potency through fungi/rot:

Frontiers | A Friendly Relationship between Endophytic Fungi and Medicinal Plants: A Systematic Review

Endophytic fungi or endophytes exist widely inside the healthy tissues of living plants, and are important components of plant micro-ecosystems. Over the lon...

www.frontiersin.org

I agree that prudence would suggest not just throwing it in a brew, as most of these rots and diseases are fungal or bacterial, which would most likely make them undesirable for direct consumption.

Thank you Downwardz0, much appreciated.