How will my concentration of the various MAOIs in the seeds have been affected? Is there any way to guesstimate?
That, i do not know unfortunatelly. I am under the impression that those alkaloids are pretty stable.
Read
Erowid Online Books : "TIHKAL" - #13 HARMALINE (the entry of harmaline in TIHKAL), and focus on "FURTHER EXTENSIONS AND COMMENTARY". I do not know if harmaline turns to harmine, but shulgin makes some hints towards it. Remember, this is not a definite answer, against popular beliefe Shulgin is a human and can err :lol:
Having trouble with my search function, but I imagine this may be a question that might evoke some original answers.
I happen to have some peganum harmala seeds that I discovered in my drawer. They have been sealed in a plastic bag in that drawer for at least five years and probably closer to ten.
I'm going to try to germinate one or two plants - anyone think it will work?
You could give it a go. Expect lower germination though! The thing with peganum harmala plants is not that it will not sprout, it will! Most people report difficulty retaining the plant alive past few months, let alone having it flower and produce meaningfull amounts of seeds. In a nutshell thats what you will hear around in forums. Personally i have seen flowers in peganum harmala plant grown in a pot : a single flower that failed to develop to seedpod.
There are other ways though, if you plant seeds outside or grow them in pots and transplant them. Check this thread :
Notes on Growing Peganum Harmala (Syrian Rue) - The Ethnobotanical Garden - Shroomery Message Board . I consider it personally one of the most illuminating threads on peganum harmala cultivation : simply put, most "jetsam and flotsam" you will find floating around in the waves of the internet reiterate the same old sources, almost like a gospel where "the older it is the most trustworthy it is", whereas new information is hard to find. In the last page of the thread it shows that some Greeks have cultivated peganum harmala outdoors. It keeps popping up everyyear and dropping rather generous amounts of seeds, and it all started from a handfull of seeds.
EDIT: I had no trouble germinating it ,although i do a full night soak in warm water and sometimes i added phytohormones in ,in the likes of ascophylim nodosum (its fertiliser from seaweed). I suggest trying a water soak first. Here , one could even hit two birds with one stone : If someone wants to germinate a large amount of seeds to seed an outdoor area, the seeds could be soaked overnight and the water kept to be added to a future peganum harmala extraction. You get both some of the alkaloids and seeds to plant!
