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UV fluorescence of active acacia bark (and maybe more?) - help wanted!

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ThresholdExplorer

ThresholdExplorer

Rising Star
Hey gang! Thanks for the promotion - big love!

I thought that I would stick this information in a more relevant location so that it might draw some attention from the community and maybe get some others on board for a bit of testing. Personally, I think that this is a HUGE find and could greatly aid in identification / sustainable harvesting of active acacias.

I have done a fairly detailed write up of my findings over at my introduction essay so if you want the full detailed story and a bit of perspective head over here:


In short, I have found that active A. Obtusifolia bark when scraped down to a certain layer glows bright bright blue under UV light. I'm suspecting this is concentrated DMT as no inactive acacia that I have tested glows this way nor does any other tree that I have checked.

I've also found that this is a great way to ID dead, fallen material & trees leading to a much more sustainable form of gathering material. It seems that the phyllodes even glow in the dead of night - some more than others (potentially indicating a higher alkaloid content?)

Moving forward what we need is more testing! I'm calling out for anyone growing active acacia that's able - get a UV light and lets gather some data! The UV light that I used was just a cheap 365nm torch from eBay but I expect anything close to that wavelength would be fine.

I'm also not sure exactly what layer of the bark this technically is. It seems to vary in depth and sort of form "veins" that flow much deeper at some points. Looking at a detailed breakdown of outer bark it could be the Phellogen, Pheloderm or Phloem layer.

Another test that I want to do is to seperate this blue layer and do an extraction on only that material and see how it compares to the rest of the layers. Does anyone have any knowledge as to what exact layer contains the dmt? All of them to some degree?

I've attached some pictures so that anyone not wanting to go and read my very long post can visually see what I'm on about.
 

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This is amazing! I think I will jump on board and give this a go.

Would a 390-400nm UV torch work?

In your previous post, you mention extractions that you did on A. Confusa, A. Acuminata. Did you check the fluorescence on these?

If it holds true for other species this will save so much time and resources when testing for potential local actives.
 
Does DMT even glow blue?

I have a jar of ACRB alk acetates extracted with naphtha and all I can see is a pale green glow. It could be harmala contamination, as harmalas (maybe even only harmaline) glow at very low concentrations and all my kitchenware must have traces of it.
 
My dmt doesnt glow under uv light, I've tested my whole kit of white crystal and full spectrum from mimosa and acacia confusa.

However. Benzyme has dmt oil which glows under uv. Maybe it has to be in solution? I know this is true with say glowing harmalas for instance.
 
A few things.

390 - 400nm should work but this probably needs testing. Sadly I had not yet played around with UV when I did the Confusa and Acuminata extracts.

In my experience dmt does seem to glow blue in a reasonably saturated solution. Maybe others aren't seeing this due to the specific wavelength? I'm not sure. My pure white crystals don't glow when dry, but when I took a fair amount of that same dmt from initial dcm pulls in to a clean "backsalt" that was quite saturated (1L with just around 7G in solution) the clear solution glowed brilliantly blue - much lighter than what you see in the bark. Saturated naptha pulls after basing were much brighter again.

I've seen the same glow from an oily acuminata extract so I expect you're right there Tony. I noticed there seem to be a lot of raving posts on reddit relating to dmt fluorescing in solution - might be worth a search over there.
 
Wow 5iver,
This will be a game changer for noobs like me. It would save people a lot of time and money.
Thanx for the info will def be trying this out.😁
 
I've been playing with some chemistry on the side and found that melatonin also glows under UV. Very similar blue to DMT in solution. Could it be that anything with a tryptamine ring structure glows?
 
5iver said:
I've been playing with some chemistry on the side and found that melatonin also glows under UV. Very similar blue to DMT in solution. Could it be that anything with a tryptamine ring structure glows?
Click to expand...
Yes, the indole bit glows. So will tryptophan, and gramine for that matter.
 
i have always wished there was a UV light type solution for finding mushrooms. never actually experimented with it though.

watching this thread out of interest. thank you for the info
 
Having seen the fluorescence of obtusifolia myself I was a little surprised that it seemed every acacia I tried didn't fluoresce. I tried a few extractions to see if I had to extract the dmt first but being a bit lazy I left the plant material in. What I found was just soaking plant material in a strongly basic solution (sodium bicarb doesn't work) the plant material started glowing.

As I have tested more and more acacias I have found this to be a very effective test. It also seems you can tell the quantity of dmt in the material based on the amount it fluoresces.
 

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Love this! This is a super nice quick test for potential tryptamine content/indole ring.. Am also noticing that from the same tree I can pick two phyllodes no more than an inch appart and one might glow, the other might not at all...

Does this mean some phyllodes are active while others are not? Lots to ponder!
 
Woolmer said:
This is amazing! I think I will jump on board and give this a go.

Would a 390-400nm UV torch work?

In your previous post, you mention extractions that you did on A. Confusa, A. Acuminata. Did you check the fluorescence on these?

If it holds true for other species this will save so much time and resources when testing for potential local actives.
Click to expand...
I have noticed that purple blue gland violet seem to be nature's way of showing us where the trips are i.e. baby woodrose the blue of psilocybin the mimosa root. Just an observation..
 
A. Acuminata goo.
I noticed while processing and attempting to get solids from this, not literally this dish here, but another where i had tried leeching components away with carefully washing with IPA, that when it got close to crystalizing, it formed clear concentrated blobs of oil which glowed brightly, surrounded by almost completely unreactive opaque goo, so there was physical seperation occuring just not pushing through to crystal.

Anyway, hopefully some finds this useful.
note: my oil here is highly polymerized and also contains an absolute crapload of non-dmt triptamines. Even as the fumarate salt it formed a goo haha (i later confirmed no issue with dryness of the FASA and FASI using a pure source of freebase)
1740913098512.jpeg

I will go inspect my local maideniis, and see if anything can be noticed on them, this would be fantastic for field-identification of active maidenii, most of what grows around here matches the currently circulated descriptions of almost/totally inactive maidenii. otherwise i was going to try and figure out a way to do quick extractions in the field so i could do reagent tests without having to bring the samples home just to know if it had anything or not.
this is awsome.


As for how to seperate layers of bark, if you can break it apart all crumbly and chunky, you can polish the bark down incrementally based on its hardness/abbrasiveness. in a ball mill using the bark itself as the media. problem is, the hardest barks will grind down everything softer. only a little ordering will be observable since if you have 4 layers with distinctly different compositions, from soft to hardest, if the touching surfaces is bark 1 and 2, 1 gets ground down until its layer 2 on 2. 2 can only grind 1. 3 can grind 2 and 1, and 4 can grind 1 2 3. so eventually youll have just fine powder + the outermost layer. also if you periodically collect the bark, the softest material may be collected at the start, and the hardest towards the end, but there will be a huge overlap, at best you can probably expect a mix of all the bark 1 and 2, if bark 2 is what you want, with a little bark 3.
if that makes sense, that may be one way to at least somewhat refine the bark. this assumes you can process it however into cake-layered chunks whatever size that may be, which are of the size needed such as that it only needs to shrink to expose and grind away each given layer.

the use of grits, or perhaps efficiently and selectively grinding away soft material so the active layer is the softest one remaining with no overshoot, could also be the way to go. in theory ball media only slightly harder than the layer you wish to remove, would prevent much bark on bark abrasion resulting in very selective grinding. it might also be possible to use soft grits that have the opposite effect, lubricating against the harder bark. if theres a way to do that, then you should be able to grind only one specific layer away at a time reliably.

Anyway, look into ball mill science.

there are other kinds of ball mills besides tumblers, shaker-style mills dont require gravity since it shakes up/down back and fourth. tumblers can only run as fast as the media can fall down and tumble by gravity, shakers on the other hand have no limit but arent quite as convenient/easy to make at scale.

instead of isolating the active bark, also consider finding ways to seperate all but a large group of inactive bark. full isolation might be a bit of an ask here, but the softest, or very hardest bark, lightest/heaviest, the outer fringes, these are things you can deal with, with quite some selection.


Last suggestion: if you can just plainly grind it down into like, a flour or something close to that, it might be possible to put it in a column soaked in naptha as a slurry, and vibrate until it re-arranges by density. if this is able to work or not, youll be able to spot it by UV at least. the material each layer is made of should be specifically different and as long as it lights up you should be able to identify if your given method is working.
 
i have a question; why does everyones UV light photos look like its practically invisible, or white light, wheras mine is distinctly purple?
Im pretty sure UV doesnt go sky-blue until you go well past 300nm, which is not possible with LEDs, thats the color my germicidal lamps look like, at a wavelength that turns oxygen into ozone.
In the OP they say they took the photo using a cheap 365nm torch but, i got some 365nm LEDs the other day and, while it can make concentrated DMT glow, its not very good, and has zero effect on my ACRB powder.

Anyone who has been able to observe anything in the leaf matter, could you post pictures of the lights you used? Im specifically wondering just how far you can go with just LEDs for this
 
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