Wish I could help, my guess is that there are many different types of crab grass. It seems that you are kind of a pioneer in this area. Interesting looking extract though, I would be very curious to know what exactly it is. How much plant material was that extracted from?

hmm maybe 1/5th-1/4 of a small shopping bag or so of fresh grass.

Jamie, I sent you a PM about this. I attempted to recreate important parts of a couple dichotomous keys (including 1 on Digitaria) within a plant taxonomy book I use.


I hope this helps.

Got a book on grass identification on the way Ill try to scan the relevant parts and post.

just an update..I am nearly certain the grass I used for that extract on the last page was quackgrass and not crabgrass..and so I have no idea that the extract contained.

Has anyone else done any work over the last year with digitaria species?

jamie i believe the flowering grass in the pictures you posted is Anthoxanthum Odoratum.

aka

Sweet Vernal Grass


From 'Wetland Plants of Oregon & Washington"-Guard
"Sweet Vernal grass gives off a sweet fragrance when it is crushed or burned"

This post is about my observations from two of the cats who most enjoy the grass. I think think they enjoy the psychoactive effects. My following post will explain my experience with consuming it.

Living in South Africa with a fully indigenous garden; Crabgrass is something that I have come to have a fairly strange-if-good relationship with. While it is slightly invasive, it is very easy to control (pulls out fairly cleanly in moderate dry soil conditions) and strangely enough does not seem to fight much with other low growing plants until a fair few tufts are growing in close proximity. Since they are not too much of a hastle I leave them, purely because the cats absolutely love eating the leaves. I find crabgrass compelling for some reason, it's clearly been a friend of animals for a long time.

I am unsure of the exact taxonomy/name/details of the common variety here; However will try find that out in a few weeks time from a professional friend.

Plant conditions/locations : The plants in my garden are in a wide range of conditions, usually only on the fringe of paths or borders, which makes them easy to observe, and for the cats to eat. Exposed to harsher conditions (or lack of some direct light), the leaves tend to become blue, sometimes developing an almost dusty grey-green-blue appearance, the cats do not eat this. Overwatered they sulk and turn a yellow colour, root damage I'm sure; this too the cats avoid, even after they recover it seems. Some insects seem to damage the leaves and occasionally slugs will take a bite, usually resulting in a purple-red colour on the leaf, eventually the whole plant follows suit; cats will not even consider them.

The best plants are ones on the borders of rich soil, but with a more sandy consistency underfoot. Watered enough to have a damp->dry transition every day or two. Filtered canopy light or 1-2 hours of direct. These grow prolifically and are the ones most enjoyed by the cats (as seen by them seldom having many intact leaves!). Spring/cool summer is when they seem to be most attracted to the plants with their rich green transitioning to lighter green at the tip.

Now lets explain the whole cat thing; It's odd. If you take a 'branch' of leaves from the plant (they snap off nicely if growing well) and show it to a cat who knows; they will recognise it from ~10m away (I recently taught a friends cat with a 'branch' of 5-6 large healthy leaves from a plant my cat had been muching on, the next few days I tested how much he really enjoyed it ), once close they tend to sniff along the leaf margins to find leaves that contain what they want (i.e if they have not noticed the leaf is damaged, they will smell it but seem to not find what they are looking for, or if there are some blue leaves mixed in, and skip that specific leaf). Once finding a good green leaf, they will eat the top half of it. Only the top half of the leaf is eaten. Every now and then they will eat the green seeds, but they don't smell them or seem especially interested. The leaves have sharp margins, so a cat takes a few weeks to develop a good method of biting off the exact portion they want.

During winter they also seem to enjoy the leaves, but once summer gets too hot and the plants suffer a heat stroke or something, they will not be too enthused about them (but if you find some crunchy fresh leaves, they will happily much them after a quick sniff). A medium sized, very healthy cat seems to like 20 medium-large leaves before deciding to stop. If only given a few leaves, they will try to get me to follow them to other plants in order to give them easy access to more. While many people seem to think that they only eat 'grass' when ill, they actually seem to eat less crabgrass, while when happy and healthy they will actively pursue much larger amounts!

Now that I sound slightly nuts... on to the experience post!

On the first really obvious spring day last year (the plants were all shouting it), I decided to see what my cats saw in this very healthy looking crabgrass. The idea was since my diet is almost entirely devoid of vegetables and greens, to make some kind of 'spring vegetation shot'

I took 100 odd large healthy leaves from the plants that I know my cats love. Washed and then cut them in half as they do. Further cut them into small pieces as to avoid the sharp edges.
Mixed with a handful of red shooting leaves of spring growth from a birds eye bush (Ochna serrulata) for no particular reason other than something in my head told me it was a good idea and I know that they are safe.
Bruised, mushed and crushed the combination in a mortar until I was happy.
Added a little distilled water and tiny bit of fresh fynbos honey for fun.
Left the combination covered in a cool dark cupboard for two days for no apprent reason (I had been reading about natural fermentation).

I consumed this questionable tasting concoction, smolked a bowl of mj (my last for a few weeks) and went on with my day not expecting anything. Two more days elapse and I'm feeling good, spring is lovely and the plants are really looking good. On the fourth day... things got interesting.

Since this strange drink/soup was the only thing out of the ordinary, and I have never experience something like this before or since, I'm fairly certain it is in some way connected.

It felt like a low dose of LSD, the world seemed a bit distant, emotions seemed stronger and the colour red was captivating (the only thing missing was that feel of infinite recursion). Reading things or watching documentaries I would find myself lost looking for hidden meaning. This lasted another three days before slowly returning to baseline. However during that period it was almost impossible to watch docs or series, read a novel or even talk to friends of family. I felt like I was being constantly tested by some kind of external force.

For the last two days of this, I holed up in my place and worked on some code I had been dealing with, because it was extremely difficult to not get a bit overwhelmed by things. For example on the first day I was walking home from buying a few groceries (which took forever, I had not noticed how strange things were!), someone crossed the road ~600m ahead of me, all I could see was a throbbing glow of their red trainers in the sunlight. A red car passed me a few minutes later with a wake of heat distortion behind in its wake.

Dealing with people was extremely strained, trying to not think they were hiding something or trying to impart some kind of secret knowledge.

All in all, it was very odd, the duration and latency seemed to me to perhaps be the result of some kind of metabolic product of whatever is in crabgrass. Reading that there is some active oil in the leaves seems to make sense to me, as the cats smell unbroken blades to see if they are worth eating. However it could very well have been completely unrelated...

On the edge of my seat, ferris. That's some cliffhanger...

It was not that thrilling, sorry! Just wanted to put my experience somewhere that someone might find it interesting.

Sadly I won't be trying to recreate the experience again as it left me mentally drained for a good two weeks, even now looking back; while I feel stronger for it, but dread another 3-4 day threshold trip. Left me doubting my sanity. I can appreciate those nutmeg/space paste trip reports now.

I will perhaps try an extraction, need to cultivate the plants a bit to get the required yield for reasonable chance of success. Plenty of other local plants that could do with some formal extraction testing too

Quackgrass? That's super endemic where I live

The rhizomes make a very healthful tea.

Ferrisfel, that 3 days off-kilter thing sounds familiar; it can be hard to know what normal was/is sometimes. Dale Pendell's emphasis of what he calls Ground State Calibration seems of importance to mention here (I could do with some myself). It helps in working out what's going on when faced with these "it does something - but what??" situations aka "well, it doesn't do nothing, but..."

Interesting stuff.

Has anyone done any further work with D. sanguinensis in the last few years? I work as a landscaper and I pull so much of this stuff out of people's gardens, it's all over the city. I've been collecting clippings to dry on a nice sunny day and if I make any progress with this I will update the thread.. After reading this I transplanted a few of the little stands of grass into my garden to be pampered and cultivated. Very interested in persuing this further.

I was talking about this plant only yesterday! No progress in my quarter to date but with luck I should track some down soon. I've been praying that it already grows in my garden

Here's an ancient thread (mostly about Delosperma) where Digitaria sanguinalis was mentioned. It's buried deep in the "Advanced/enhanced chemistry" section - I think really it belongs somewhere else.

And here's a link to a pdf of a study showing that D. sanguinalis contains around 0.6% alkaloids - not qualitatively analysed, and their methods were crude to the point of questionable veracity - but another hint none the less.

Thanks man! I've been doing some experimenting of my own which I'm about to post about, I'll put a link in this thread.