Hi all
I’ve been thinking about looking locally for magic plants. I’m in the north east us, cold winters, so the usual suspects except maybe Phalaris don’t survive around here. I’m looking for advice on how to even start the process of elimination. My first thought of approach would be getting a bunch of tlc plates, doing a/b on several plants, and see if anything shows up on the plates. I of course would report all my findings, but does anyone have advice on this, or a more methodical way to tackle this? Or am I outta my league, and leave this to the pro botanists and chemists?
What sparked all this was I found a fern that had similar foliage to mimosa. Maybe a relative or something. Also I enjoy science and projects, so I wanted to work on something that can actually contribute.
Thanks in advance for any replies
~Morpheus

Your idea is reasonable, but no need to do a fullA/B, just do STB and with small amounts just to test.. Id recommend starting out with looking for species, or at least genus, that have been shown to contain DMT. But you could also do it on random plants and you might get lucky and find something novel for the community. Id try at least to identify the plants before and search for literature to see if anything was published on those plants.

Here are two relevant FAQ links:

https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...ng_plants_in_my_area_.3F

https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...is_plant_contain_DMT_.3F

Whatever you test, whether results are positive or negative, please post here, it is very useful information for the community.

Also, if you can, as a parallel work, I suggest growing plants with alkaloids of interest.

Good luck

Thank you endlessness, I figured there was something here. There is just so much to go through, I was hoping an elder nexian could cut out some time for me. I try not to ask generic questions that can be found here already.
It is this community that has driven me to do this research. I had a thought while partaking in the magic the other day, that I would like to contribute actual value to the forum, instead of just using it for info and friendly communication. Trip reports are nice, but I want to do some work that will stand the test of time for the community. So, of course I will post any and all findings.
~M-M~

What are the left two lanes in the third and fourth pic?

I'll go back through my notes but I think that bufotenine did stain the plate even without UV. Bufotenine I think was at very similar height to DMT in that particular TLC eluent but you could see a slight difference if you put DMT at the same lane.

So for example you could do a plate:
1- DMT reference (known dmt-containing plant or extract)
2- Possible bufo-containing plant that might be mistaken with DMT
3- Same as 2 but with a bit of the DMT reference added on top on the same lane.

You could see if it does form 2 spots or not.

Another thing you can do is add reagents to the spots on the plate, I will check back on my notes but im pretty sure pdmab-ts / hoffman reagent could tell dmt and bufotenine appart.


Another thing is that yopo is generally found with bufotenine only, not dmt.. seems d. pulchellum is also mostly bufotenine, so it would make sense the visible spot in both and similar DMT height.

5-MeO-DMT too was at similar height but also was slightly different so you could see the two spots just above each other.

You need to have your sample diluted so that its not forming a very big spot that probably will "mask" the two different alkaloids since they have similar Rf's, specially in the pulchellum case.

I don't have pure bufotenine at hand but I do have some pure 5-MeO-DMT that I could use to test solubility and test for degradation in different conditions. What should be tested?


Btw thanks a lot for doing these experiments and posting the results, this is def very cool to see

Sorry I was mistaking Desmodium caudatum for pulchellum.

Pulchellum does have 2 tests that say it has more DMT than bufotenine, and another couple of tests without quantification, according to the sources referenced in Trout's Notes.

I'd still think that the brown spot in your pulchellum is bufotenine based on my past experimentations, maybe a mix of bufotenine and DMT in an unknown ratio. I never tested bufotenine in TLC with callibrated amounts to know how big a spot it forms as compared to the same quantity of DMT, thats another area to research. Might be it tends to form a bigger spot hence seems like more bufo than dmt but its the other way around ?

So many questions and potential experiments to answer these questions...

Anyways lets keep this rolling!

BTW, to prevent forgetting what was in the plate from no note-taking, I suggest writing a label with a pencil on the plate itself below each lane, summing up what the substance is. That way when you look at pics its easy to know whats what. Dont use a super-sharpened pencil or one of those automatic pencil thingies with thin tips because it can scrape the silica off the plate. Writting softly with a normal pencil works perfectly.

Be well!