It's hard to rid your extracts from gramine. It shares some chemical characteristics with spice.
I think what needs to be done is simply phalaris cultivation. A real enthousiast or group of people would by selection, be able to cultivate a real potent strain of phalaris.
Look at it this way; where i live (netherlands) in the 60's they where growing weed, but of lousy quality. Simply because the dutch climate wasn't perfect for growing good marihuana. But through a proces of selection, sorting the best seeds from every new generation of plants, marihuana has become the major exportproduct in the netherlands.
This could be done with phalaris too. Imagine it becoming 10 times more potent!

You are exactly right!!!

Super strains!!!

Yeah im def into this phalaris breeding thing thing, i live on the pacific coast of canada and phalaris grows like crazy here, i have some growing in my garden now that ive collected wild. Im trying to get perfect conditions for it to produce desired alkaloids as content does change with environmental factors. I tried crude extract of the grass from around an ounce of the stuff and got what looked like a few hits... took one hit and ended up on the floor thinking I was dying, with a wierd swirling redish tint to everything and felt like i could see or feel blood pumping around inside of my body. No nausea was present so i ruled out bufo as im faily familiar with the effects of smoked yopo. In retrospect I think I just got a big hit of mainly 5meo but wont rule out gramine just yet, or other beta carbolines.
I think more bioassays are warranted here...

Oh and this was arundinacea by the way.

well SWIM has some grass..and he has some alcohol...so he is gonna get on that extract right away...he was wondering though if you knew any details about how the dude went about doing it



SWIM may also try this...if a crude alcohol extraction could work...it may make this whole process veerrry easy

I have a crude extract I made about 2 weeks ago with about 2 ounces of grass in some iso i had sitting around. I did another vinegar water extraction I cooked for around an hour that I am currently defatting with naptha but i doubt I even have enough naptha to remove half the oils... anyway i will post again once I try the iso extraction.

Just a heads-up for those who are interested and might not have seen this:

A couple weeks ago, an Ecuadorian poster on the Ayahuasca forums offered to make and ship cuttings of Chaliponga.

(link to the referenced thread at Ayahuasca forums)

Hi y'all,

I know this chaliponga thread has kind of morphed into a phalaris thread, but on that note...

It seems like Phalaris brachstachys and Phalarus aquatica (the good strains...AQ1, Big Medicine, Australis) are the species worth researching. From what little research and personal experimentation there has been with these species, it seems Phalaris arundicea is a lot more variable in both the good alkaloid concentration (DMT, 5-meo), as well as the nasties (hordenine, gramine), and so more unreliable to work with.

It seems like this species has beem used for the bulk of experimentation, and this may be why Phalaris has a dodgey name in many circles.

Phalaris brachystachys...seemingly the most reliably potent species, and with apparently the cleanest alkaloid profile seems to have been researched least for some reason.

I would maybe suggest that anyone who wished to research Phalaris as a viable alkaloids source perhaps research these latter two species as oppose to P. arundicea.

Jorkest - keep me informed with you P. brachstyacys grow, will be staring some P. brachystachys and P. aquatica next week.

PS Worth growing a B. caapi from seed or cutting by the way, a surprisngly tough and adaptable plant...here in the UK anyway.

http://www.erowid.org/li...2_phalaris_strains.shtml

SWIM actually has some P. arundicea about 1.5 feet tall that is growing outside...it came back after a VERY cold winter...good sign...but he has yet to try any sort of extraction from it..and hes not sure he wants to seed because he doesnt want it to contaminate his P. brachystachy...

the brachy has just been planted...its in a little green house with a plastic cover over the pot its in...hes got more seeds..but no more good dirt!

so once the brachy comes up hes going to start working with it...he thinks hes going to use possibly a STB with d-limonene..and then salt out any goodies with some FASW(fumaric acid saturated water) and see what comes out...

or..he may use a grass juicer...add some base..and then extract with d-limo...will see what happens

Off-topic, but SWIM's been itching to try this on phalaris. He'll likely try it in August.

^^Ditto. Seems like a worthwhile area of investigation...

Defo. Just found this article: http://deoxy.org/phalarisdmt.htm
{edit} also: http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=8478

Would be very interesting to find a locally growable source of spice