The toads next door plan on extracting the alkaloids from P. viridis leaves. They really do not care for extreme purity of the end product, nor do they care about which form (salt or freebase) they end up with. They plan on producing an extract to be used for an oral dose, so they aren't going for purity just they are trying to avoid eating a lot of leaves. Toads are carnivorous not vegetarian.

They plan on using 100 grams of powdered P. viridis leaves. This will be mixed evenly with 15 grams of edible lime. About 100-300ml of water will be used to get the mixture muddy but not enough to have water "puddling". In other words the toads will add just enough to get the entire mixture moist. This will be let to sit, for 12 hours. Then, 300 ml Limonene will be warmed in a hot water bath and poured over the mixture. The toads will let this sit for 12 hours. The green muck will be filtered to retrieve the d-limonene. The d-limonene will then be salted with 15-50 ml of white vinegar, 3-4 times. While salting the first batch of limonene, fresh limonene will be poured over the "old" leaf/lime mud. This will be allowed to soak until all of the first salting are completed. Then the two batches of limonene will be "salted and soaked" until they feel like "they are not getting any more." They are guessing to soak and salt just as many times as one would with cactus. The vinegar will then be dried under a food dehydrator on glass at 95F.

Basically the toads, are doing what they normally would with cactus. Is there going to be a problem, if they treat the P. viridis leaves the same as they do with the cactus? The limonene should be heated when doing the soaking, correct? Does anything need to be done differently. Any good tricks or tips to pass on to the toads next door? Is there a much easier food-safe method? Since purity of the final product isn't of real concern, should one simply use a hot water extraction and then evaporate the water at low temperature? This would take FOREVER to evaporate that much water, right?


P.S. The toads will definitely where protection when handling these substances. Food safe isn't good enough for toads, stuff goes right through their skin.

I'd just make it into a tea. It will be a lot easier to manage that way.

Just make a tea and evaporate off the water, right? This should be incredibly simple. I will let the toads think about that. It sounds like a good idea, since simplicity is the main objective. They can use a a/b on the next go around; this will give them some experience working with this material without going through an a/b.

Thanx, any other ideas?

P.S. 228g of viridis leaves were soaked in 6 gallons of spring water. The leaves were blended in spring water, then frozen and thawed twice. The leaves were filtered out and the tea collected. Yes, this was a heck of a lot of water. The resulting "tea" was evaporated in a glass pan at 35-68C. This resulted in 10.5g of a dark purple-brown powder.

The 10.5g of dried, cold-water extract was mixed with 10g of calcium hydroxide. Water was added to form a paste. The paste was thoroughly mixed and dried at 35-68C. The product went from brown to beige or white, as it dried. It was obvious too much lime was used. This was mixed with water again and dried a second time, just to be sure.

The 20g of dried lime/CWE, was soaked in 300ml of limonene. This turned the limonene a bright yellow. Now, the toads are salting with Fumaric acid saturated water. The saltings are evaporating and leaving a white fluffy powder with a tint of yellow. The toads don't have questions worth asking, just wanted to share how the extraction worked out.

pps. The product from the extraction was mixed with an equal amount of sodium carbonate and a very small amount of tap water. This was dried and then 3 pulls of acetone, left a dark red sticky product that wasn't active when smoked. A big fail