Found an article that may or may not be of interest:

Baldim Zanin, J. L. et al. 2012. The genus Caesalpinia L. (Caesalpiniaceae): phytochemical and pharmacological characteristics. Molecules 17(7): 7887-7902. [Free full text]

A sixteen page review of the phytochemistry and pharmacology of the genus. Obviously not exhaustive considering how many species there are, but it talks about some of the species mentioned in the original post (C. bonducella, C. echinata, C. ferrea, C. paraguaiensis, C. pulcherrima).

No mention of visionary use. Lots of bioactive chemicals isolated from various species, but no alkaloids. Of course, a chemical need not be an alkaloid to be psychoactive, but this casts some doubt on speculation that Caesalpinia is a tryptamine-bearing genus.

The references in the paper are not very helpful in terms of locating information on traditional/ethnomedicinal use... they pretty much only cite pharmacological and chemical studies. The referenced papers would probably contain citations on traditional use if you have the patience to go through them.

Thanks for that!

Hi guys, I have recently acquired several kilograms of c. Pulcherrima and will be doing extractions on the leaves & stem/bark seperately in the next week. Will post updates!

I am doing an A/B on 50g bark and 25g seeds of C. Pulcherrima. Here are some pics 1 hour and 18 hours after acidifying.

Bark soak


Seed soak


Will post back color change after basification and yields after extraction (if any).

bump

Sorry, no yields on this one. I think the solution might have not been basic enough..

Darn! Well I hope you keep up the work looking into this species. If you try again, good luck!

I planted 8 seeds of Caesalpinia pulcherrima. One of them came up in my south facing window pots. I am excited. I read they use the root bark in Mexico as a dye.
I also acquired root and lower trunk of Caesalpinia gilliesii from a 20+ year old plant. I took half the root and replanted in a 5 gal jug. The other half of the root I did a powderization and crude extract. The end result was zero.
The part I planted is starting to grow well. Later I should have other parts to test. I was thinking I could maybe hybrid the to species and test that later as well. Fun fun fun
(((((Edit))))) I did pull something from the Caesalpinia gilliesii. I'm glad I didn't throw out the base yet

my wife just bought two healthy specimens of Caesalpinia pulcherrima, and I just bought a mass spectrometer.
These plants may be my first test experiments.

I can do experiments determining whether or not alkaloids of interest are present, and the effect of nitrogenous supplements on alkaloid concentrations in one plant, while using the other as a control.

@benzyme that would be awesome!

Did you ever get round to doing the test Benzyme?

This species grows all over the place where I live, I even have one in my garden ... I'm very busy at the mo, but will try and find time to do an extraction and see if I get anything ...

What would people suggest? Flowers? Bark?