Yes, you're right. I've no idea what the wild/feral plant is, other than it fairly clearly being a variety of Phalaris arundinacea (although, saying that, I haven't seen it flower yet and that could make all the difference). The purchased plants weren't exactly well labelled, either.

Where I found the feral patch I got the feeling that somebody had put it there on purpose.


I'll take a look at the Feesey flowers in the morning. If I can find any pollen with my microscope, it'll mean your idea holds water.

No pics of any pollen yet, but the nodes of the layered 'Feral' stems are rooting as expected:

Nice!!

I actually tried the same, when I realized that the horizontal stems built new leaves upwards at the nodes. But again it didn't work for me...they didn't build roots, when I covered them with a bit of soil.
But maybe I should just have put them into a bit of water instead? Or as it seems you even have them slightly above the water layer?
Do you have anything added to your water?

I also thought that this would be a perfect way to clone, if it works. But then got disappointed when it didn't work for me...

Seems like I have really bad luck with phalaris. Or just a bad hand at them...

Edit:
Back then I thought, if it would work, it would be an extremely easy way to clone: just bend the outer stems into the horizontal and put a small pot under each node.
But again, it didn't work for me, back then.
I asked myself if maybe it would be beneficial to slightly scrape them at the nodes, to promote growth???

BTW: Do your Picta flower?
My normal Arundinaceas started flowering quite early on, like also the wild ones do. But my Picta up 'til now doesn't make any sign of flowering yet.

This is the habit of the particular feral strain I found. The commercial varieties are less willing to shoot and root at the nodes. So your suggestion that this could be a wild hybrid from Feesey pollen may be correct.

The commercial plants have flowered (a little) but the feral/wild one has shown no sign of flowering so far. Perhaps it's trying to make up for this with its runners...

My water is just rainwater and the compost/mud/slime from the roots along with the mineral components described above. Although I did chuck in a handful of organic fertilizer granules, come to think of it. I can post a picture of the fertilizer tomorrow if you like.

No need. Thank you. I anyways couldn't get the same one here...

But interesting that they have a different behavior regarding runners.

My in vitro rooting solution arrived. But don't have any time this weekend.
So will start with tests next week.

So today I finally got the time to start the in vitro test.
MS solution with 2g/l gelrite and 30g/l sugar with additional rooting substances.
I cut off one Turkey-Red. It gave 6 nodes.
I planted them in different positions, to see if this makes a difference.
(node 1cm above surface, node just above surface, node slightly under the surface, flat, flat submerged)
The tops I just put into a solution standing. Maybe it works, maybe not...
Attached a pic:

Edit 12.7.2017, short update:
Doesn't look good. Saw yesterday some mold on some of them. So bought a fungicide and sprayed every glass.
Not a single one shows any sign of making roots yet.

Edit 13.7.2017, short update:
Still no sign of roots. But they started to grow, which some did faster than I thought of. So in one glass it already reached the lid and one of the flat ones is already longer than the glass is wide.
Probably next time I should rather put them in test tubes which are higher.

Edit 14.7.2017:
Doesn't look too good. Mold came back, and big, although I sprayed them with fungicide 2 days ago. Sprayed again. One seems to have already died due to fungus.
If I ever do another run, I will probably try to mix in some fungicide directly in the solution.

Edit 16.7.2017:
My heart really bleeds. They are really growing very good (no comparison with my experiments in soil), but still no signs of rooting.
But the mold is starting to completely take over. Even spraying them daily with fungicide is futile. It seems the mold grew into the solution and there the fungicide cannot reach.
Next time I really have to try adding fungicide into the base solution, although I have no idea how this will affect the plants.

Edit 1.8.2017:
They all died now...
Except for the one who immediately died in the beginning and the horizontal ones, all did grow to a size of about 25-30cm (from an initial 5cm cutting) and then started to die off.
None showed even the slightest hint of making roots

I did make one new glass with added fungicide. The one I used previously + a new one. But that didn't help. Also there the mold immediately came.
I'm really wondering why these normal fungicides from the garden story seem to have (almost) no effect on mold.
Probably they are for other types of fungi?
But then what should I take against mold fungi?

Hi guys since this is about phalaris i decided to post my question here, this is my second time trying to get dmt from phalaris arundinacea and i got same problem like last time, when i add NaOH some weird particles like snow appear and then when i shake solution with added naphtha a hard emulsion is created and i think that this particles are making it hard to settle, i tried to clear emulsion with hot water but it is not working. Do you guys have any recommendations what should i do and is this normal?

Yes, particulates will tend to cause emulsion problems! As to what the precipitate is, it might be insoluble mineral matter such as magnesium hydroxide. It may contain alkaloids as well, so don't throw it away! Phalaris is highly variable so you might get various betacarbolines - which are insoluble in naphtha. Or you might get gramine.

Also, hard water would lead to larger amounts of precipitate.

To avoid further emulsion problems you would have to filter your solution. Allowing it to settle first before carefully decanting off the clear liquid should make filtering easier.

Are you using a known strain of Phalaris? It could be annoying if you've grabbed a random patch of grass in the hope of it delivering the goods. Wild Phalaris is highly variable and time of harvest - both season and time of day - will affect the results. Preliminary testing with TLC would assist you in deciding whether to go to the effort of doing a full-size extraction.

Forgot about this a bit but my microscope is broken and needs a replacement part to be custom made. Anyhow, the boat's been missed until the summer as far as getting any pollen goes.

Aum_Shanti, sorry to read of your mould troubles! Interesting attempt nonetheless.

It is phalaris arundinacea 100% grown and raised
Anyway i have about 1 kg of frozen grass in the freezer so if i don't succeed this time i will try 2 more times.

I've procured a couple of rhizomes of AQ1.

I hear Phalaris is slow to spread, but AQ1 is an exception. Does anyone know how long it's going to take before I can get a useful harvest?

As I mentioned before, last year I planted some "Big Medicine", "Turkey Red" and some allegedly 5-MeO profile Picta in my garden.

I reported that they did spread very badly. But now although winter is not yet fully gone, and we still have minus temps during the night and a bit snow lying around, all three are already 5-15cm out of the earth. And what is astonishing to me: In a much wider area. Seems the spreading mainly happens during that phase.

Fascinating thread!! Replying to subscribe

A quick update: My AQ1 (outdoors in a pot) started sending young shoots from the soil away from the 'mother' plants, so I decided to divide it and distribute the plants across 2 pots.

And now, having started with 2 plants, I have 6 I feel it's going to be a fast grower and a fast spreader and now that the weather is slowly warming up, I may get my first usable harvest within a couple of months.

As for cold hardiness, it also looks very promising. I don't have much data on AQ1 as I only brought it outside this month (after the worst of the winter was over), but I kept a pot of unnamed P. aquatica (from seed) on the patio over the winter.
This winter was exceptionally cold. On one night the temperatures dropped as low as -6C (21F), and we had 2-3 days barely above freezing.
The unnamed aquatica did not only laugh off the cold, but actively grew throughout the winter. Importantly, it was in a small pot, which must have frozen thoroughly, which proves its rhizomes take freezing - at least for short periods.
I hope the AQ1 proves equally hardy.

Those living in colder climates may want to consider cutting it back before winter and mulching it.

Lol, I almost dropped on the floor reading this...

"Exceptionally cold" and -6C is something I wouldn't even have thought of comparing...LOL...

Here, in central europe -6C would be an exceptionally warm winter...

So I could well think that AQ1 works where you live, but probably many people don't live in such a climate. As dreamer reported (Link), AQ1 unfortunately doesn't seem to be able to withstand longer freezing periods. Therefore I'm really grateful about Appleseeds work, as these Arundinaceas are really tough (e.g. this winter even weeks -20C, and no problem at all).

After taking a look at my AQ1 I'm pleased to say it's just starting to send out some shoots now temperatures have crept back up (11°C the other day!)

It's therefore possible to confirm that AQ1 will survive being frozen solid down to a temperature of -12°C - and I mean frozen into a block of ice solid, for two weeks or more, although temperatures were mostly around -3 to -5°C during that period.

Both my bought 'Picta' and my feral 'Raspberries and Cream' are also showing signs that they haven't completely succumbed to the winter weather conditions. These specimens were frozen solid into large blocks of ice as well.

In a couple of weeks or so we may be able to see how their alkaloid profile has shaped up.

Everything is relative, Aum_Shanti

That's an even stronger data point on their hardiness, thanks downwardsfromzero.

On a different note, I suspect that AQ1, if allowed to spread in the wild, would produce offspring with a similar alkaloid profile. Being an aquatica it's less genetically varied than arundinacea, and unlike some other named varieties it wasn't selectively bred, but collected from seeds found in the wild. So it's possible that the entire colony in the area it was collected from (near Bologna, Italy) has a similar profile. When collecting random seed in the wild, it's unlikely you come across some sort of needle in a haystack... more likely a needle in a needle stack.

So maybe it's worth establishing an AQ1-descendent colony in the wild, especially where no other aquatica (and ideally no arundinacea, which it can cross with) grows - under the understanding that technically it won't be AQ1 anymore, but quite possibly a *much* better DMT source than your average wild Phalaris.

IIRC I've read on the Nexus that P. aquatica Australia breeds reasonably true to seed.

It snowed again, here's a couple of pictures. Spot the Phalaris shoots!

As Turkey Red breeds true to seeds, I made the following experiment:

Put a plastic bag over every single flower and closed it on the bottom. So that no foreign pollen can get there, and that the seeds remain in the bag. Like that I thought, it breeds true, and I get some Turkey Red seeds. Was quite a tedious work.

But I can state now: This does not work...





...if you have a dog!

When I got out in the afternoon, all the bags were widely distributed over the whole garden, torn to pieces...

Seems my dog had plenty of fun with them. Not a single one remained on the grass.

Aum_Shanti:

It's time for an update from me - the feral specimen suffered the most from the freeze. Interestingly, the single shoot that survived has lost most of its variegation. The store-bought variegated specimens are doing better than ever, and the AQ1 is doing modestly well. The swamp environment had a lot of nutrients washed away by the unprecedented amount of rain over the autumn/winter. These will be replaced by adding nettles cut from the surrounding area which soaked up all the runoff from the Phalaris containers.