this is super interesting
thanks~

biopsylo, second picture is definitely H. Physodes

cool, well there is certainly no shortage of that one!

cant wait to find out what its actives are

I think House is wrong in saying that the lichens act on cannabinoid receptors. No offense meant at all, but House do have a rather unique subjective response to psychoactives, according to himself too. None of the lichens I've tried were active at CB receptors, but they did have a sedative, calming effect, although still rather far away from cannabis. Both me and Hyperspace Fool agree on this. The lichen acids are the probable actives, but I don't know how they have their effect, only that it is highly unlikely it is on CB receptors. Both their chemical structure and their subjective effects point to this.

If you want a real cannabis substitute, I suggest you look to the Radula genus of liverworts, that actually contain an active cannabinoid - perrottetinene. Look at the earlier posts for more information.

I only speculate this because of the effects that occur upon smoking these things. Even if the chems in the lichens dont hit the CB's themselves, what's to say a secondary metabolite isn't?

Until we know for sure it's hard to say I'm just reporting what I'm experiencing.

And bio, I was under the impression h physodes was not psychoactive, it just contains a terpenoid useful in chemistry as a precurser that is said to be mildly psychoactive at best on its own. That's why I was very surprised I got stoned from smoking the h physodes look a like yesterday. For example, taking a hit and immediately having to pass a bunch of gas is an effect I observe all the time from smoked cannabis, and lichen does the same thing. To me I assumed this [as well as the small list provided on the last page] was a clear indicator of CB activity but what do I know.

...in other news, data on the melting point of a purified extraction on this h physode lookalike coming soon...

hehe im definitely not looking for a cannabis substitute. around here the flavors are plentiful and delicious. there is no sub for the real thing

i am just interested in the lichens and their actives (what ever they are)

Note on lichen propagation:

Smoked some of the same lichen house found that has an uncertain I.D.

Two hits in a small pipe. The effect's were pretty instantaneous, maybe taking place a few seconds after each hit. Taste's pretty nice actually . Sort of a cerebral depressant effect, slightly dreamy. Not quite cannabis-like, but pretty interesting. Nothing overwhelming but I did only take two hits. edit - my eyes get red after 30mg of cannabis has been smoked, and with this there is no evidence of red eyes. Infact they look clearer? Mild visual distortion as if there is a slight layer of fog between some objects of focus.

on the post by medicine hut :

it was Xanthoria parietina
Aegle gave it the love required to grow strong like bull
and it looked simmilar to this

There are few things more wonderful than cultivating your own lichen, much a kin to growing your own entheogens or mushrooms. They are truly fascinating to grow... I hope to try some psychoactive lichen soon...


Much Peace and Compassion

active moss graffiti would be nice

hey wira! sorry for the delayed response.

honestly i probably got that information from the Wikipedia 'Dictyonema' article, which cites

Davis, E. W. and J. A. Yost. 1983. Novel hallucinogens from eastern Ecuador. Botanical Museum Leaflets [Harvard University] 29(3): 291-295.

if D. sericeum is not specified in that leaflet, then perhaps the author inserted his own speculation on plausible species into the wiki-article...

somebody washed the plate it was drying on, need to do it all again : (

I currently have around 15-17 grams of h. physodes (probably some birch tree bark in it too) soaking in 300ml of methanol. Probably tomorrow im going to start evaporating the methanol off in room temp. and switch to acetone. I'll report my results when I get some

I found this on IamShaman and thought to post it here... only to remember that blue_velvet had already posted this back on page 1 of this thread. http://www.iamshaman.com...&ProductCode=STF-HOZ

However, no one seemed to register that a fairly well known supplier of ethnobotanicals (kind of expensive, but reliable enough and been around) is selling a psychoactive lichen they call "rock blooms."

Has anyone ordered this, heard from someone who has ordered it... or done any independent research on Parmotrema Menyamyaense?



In looking into this lichen business, I am surprised by how many different latin names a single species can be known by, as well as how differently some very similar looking lichen can be classified. It doesn't seem likely that the same lichen can belong to 2 or 3 different genus but this is the state of our relative paucity of knowledge on these strange and wonderful combinations of algae and fungus.

As a last note, I recently read that certain lichens grow ridiculously slow. Like a couple centimeters per century slow... with some specimen from Greenland being many thousands of years old.

I don't know the growth rates of the particular psychoactive species we have been discussing, but if the are anywhere near as slow growing, then this might not want to be information that gets widely disseminated lest we find our new lichen friends becoming endangered and hunted to extinction.

I can see hordes of punk kids scraping the rocks bare just to get f*cked up.

Anyway. Any comments about the iamshaman rock blooms would be appreciated.

Yeah we noticed this HyperspaceFool, but I guess just no one bought & tried any.
It would be nice if several Nexians bought this lichen and ingested it in several
different ways to analyse it on psychoactivity.

Good point BTW, about the hordes of ignorant kids hunting lichens to extinction.
That's why, if we find properly psychoactive lichen & means to extract their
goodies, this knowledge should not be spread far and wide.


BTW House, those pictures of those supposed Hypogymnia Physodes look awefully
similair to those lichens most commonly found around here on tree barks.

I'm now compelled to sample a little for myself. I'll try smoking a tiny bit for sure.
Maybe I'll try steeping a tea of the lichen and drinking that, as well as quidding some.
Think I might take a hike to the artificial forrest near my house in just a minute to collect
some of the abundant, pale green lichens from the treebarks.

I'll report back results or lack thereof.
In the meanwhile keep this fascinating investigation going.

My first extraction attempt was a complete disaster, the methanol didnt evaporate properly and started growing something nasty. I'll be doing another attempt later

blue lunar light - the paper describes the Dictyonema sp. as an undetermined one, but the brief description given does seem to visually match the pic on the wikipedia page, so it seems like a good possible i.d. for that one. As far as I know no one has formally made the connection - funny how some of these things get reported as uunidentified specimens of interest decades ago, and even now no one has followed up and properly identified them

I found a ton of Hypogymnia krogiae today.
Anyone know if it's useful for anything?


Here is a link to a lichen forum I found I will start using for ID
http://www.botanicalgard...s/forumdisplay.php?f=237


Here is a good link for Hypogymnia species http://lichens.digitalmy...olichens/Hypogymnia.html
^Up close pictures and names