Hi, a friend of mine lives in South-Africa, and has read up on wikipedia (probably not the most reliable source) that at least 3 species of local Acacia trees contain dmt. The problem is there are about 52 speciec of Acacia in South Africa, and most of them pretty much look the same (it's also not flowering season there so it's even harder to tell).

He really doesn't want to waste a lot of time and effort and money to do some fancy extraction method on something that much likely doesn't even contain dmt. He was wondering if someone could help him with a simple, cheap, easy extraction method, with which he can test the local trees to see which ones (if any....HOPEFULLY ...) contain dmt. He says he doesn't really care about a harsh, low quality smoke (as long as it doen't kill him, or the simular) as long as he would just be able to determine for certain if the extract contains any whatsoever dmt (he is hoping to do some fancy quality dmt extractions after this has been established).

For god's sake please help the poor fellow, he really is hopefull.

Also he was wondering which part of the Acacias he should try extracting, the wiki page on Acacias (Wikipedia on Acacias) says it is in the leaves, but he has read somewhere in some forums that somebody suggested the bark, saying that the bark has the most dmt, the branches less, and the leaves the absolute least. So I... whoops, I mean He doesnt know.

Thin layer chromatography would probably be the easiest most effective way of screening plants for DMT. However if you don't know anything about it its going to be kind of difficult to explain unless you are really motivated and interested in doing this.

well you could make make a tea out of leaves,or bark(try bark 1st IMO and do seperately) it combine with an maoi(rue,or caapi) see if it has any activity do a somewhat low dose though only if your feeling experimental,or risky. Looking over this listsouth african acacias(very briefly)acacia mellifera,nilotica,polyacantha look like the documented active ones.

TLC is your best bet aside from actually doing an extraction. There are a few other color reagent based tests that are possible although require strange and hard to obtain reagents. TLC is not very hard to do and is your best bet. One just needs an initial investment to buy equipment some plates, stain and solvents. Solvents can use alcohol and plates can be obtained just look around. Trout's Notes in some simple tryptamines is a great source for info on TLC (Rf values, solvents systems, stains.)

A small scale extraction may yield crystals but they could be a variety of things. One should test these via melting point or TLC or some other analytical tech prior to bio-assaying them.


Good Luck but SWIY should be very careful when bio-assaying unknowns. This is extremely dangerous and can cost one their life. Proper ID of plants and extracts are very important.

SWIM doesn't really know much about chemistry, but he was thinking more along the lines of taking about about a glass full of leaves from different specimens (a glass each) and kind of skipping directly to the naptha step.

So he grinds the leaves, use the naptha to dissolve the dmt and other molecules, lets the naptha dissolve, and is perhaps left with some scethy sort of sticky ressidue. Then smoking some of it (a little at first and then if it doesn't work more) in a bong with some other plant material.

What he is concerned about is that he doesn't know if the naptha will dissolve the dmt, something about freebase, salt, ph, that he doesn't really know much about.
He is not really concerned about the other chemicals because he highly doubts that it could do any serious harm (he has read up about Acacias on a variaty of sources (also it's a local plant that grow EVERYWHERE in parks, gardens, sidewalks, etc. so he thinks that he would have known if it was toxic to any large extent).
The amount of dmt concerns him some, because it could range anything to 0.01% to 0.3%, but weighing and smoking a little then some more should not cause problems.

TLC looks promising, but it also looks expensive (and complex), does any one have a way that SWIM could do this using the as little money as possible (SWIM has a problem with that at this stage). Also he can't order things from the web, becuase he has to use his father's account. If you have a easy step-by-step TLC method, please do post!

SWIM has been doing a lot more reading on Thin Layer Chromatography and has realized that it is by far the best solution. He does have some questions about it though. He doesn't know if this will be the best forum to get answers, so please redirect him if neccesary.

Now if he got this right TLC is the following:

1) Cover a TLC plate in sorbant (Can any sort of glass, plastic or metal plate be used? What
should be used as sorbant for DMT?)
2) Put the some of the sample plant material on pencil baseline about 1cm frome the bottom of
the TLC plate (Should this just be some of the ground up plant material, or must it first
be dissolved in something, or something like that?)
3) Fill a glass jar about 1-2mm with solvent (What solvent should be used for DMT(straight
from the plant, so I dont know if it is in freebase or salt form)?)
4) Put the TLC plate upright (or /ish) in the jar with solvent and seal tight (This seems
easy enough right,... right?)
5) When the solvent has moved almost all the way to the top, remove the TLC plate, make a
mark of where the solvent was, and let it dry (Once again seems easy enough, any helpful
tips would be appreciated)
6) Then when the TLC plate has been dried, test for DMT (How should I test if it contained
DMT, should I use UV or some other chemical, also what colour would it be, and how high?
Please keep in mind that I have never done TLC before and know very little about it)

Some resources on TLC: (TLC Link 1); (TLC Link 2); (TLC Link 3).

Any help will be appreciated (especially when I smoke my first DMT bong ).

That is really dangerous. You could be concentrating all kinds of hazardous compounds.

Any concerning your TLC question.



The sorbent (solid phase) is the material that molecules of your sample interact with as the eluent (mobile phase) passes over the plate. By covering a TLC plate you are covering a relativily inert hard surface like aluminum (not foil but a thick harder piece) or glass with a sorbent the most common is silica gel. The size of the silica gel particles is very important and must be uniform to get reproducible results. Making your own TLC plates is complicated.

I am not exactly sure where someone who is not a researcher could obtain them but there must be a an easy way. I typically buy them from chemical supply companies. I often use silica gel on aluminum or glass because its cheap and it works for the compounds I study. It should work with dmt but references need to be looked over.



Yes the plant material must be crudely extracted. Many solvents could be used alcohol or methanol would be the easiest and cheapest. Basically you make a crude extract of plant material and then place some of the material on the plate let it dry and then you do whats call developing the plate.



This needs to be looked up. The literature should be available. You can develop your own solvent system but that takes theoretical knowledge on chromatography.



Its very easy. Its one of the easiest way of analyzing plant material for substances.

Basically you put enough solvent to cover the ground of a glass chamber that fits the TLC plates but not so much as to touch the part of the TLC plate where your sample was spotted on. Then you let the chamber saturate by sealing it for a few minutes. Then add the plate and you will see the solvent moving up the plate. When it reaches the sample it will "pull" the compounds with it and depending on how the compounds in your sample interact with the sorbent and how much it wants to be in the solvent will determine how far it travels on the plate.

After the solvent has traveled x number of centimeters (depends on size of plate). You take out the plate and mark the distance in traveled.



So yes after you take the plate out you can test for alkaloids. There are different reagents that make alkaloids turn into certain colors. However some of them are a bit nasty and use some acids and stuff. But another way is the use UV light. But for that you need plates that have a flourescent tag so when you shine UV light on them they glow (need UV safe glasses!) and then the part of the plate where compounds that absorb UV light (like DMT) are show us as black spots which you can circle.

I can post some recipes for various spray reagents that react with alkaloids specifically tryptamines.

But the final thing to do is calculate the rf value which is the distance from the bottom of the plate where you spotted your sample divided by the distance the solvent traveled (not counting the distance between the bottom of the plate and your sample but the distance from when it first touched the sample). If its the same as dmt and it reacts with the spray reagent the same as dmt it could be dmt. Proving that its dmt beyond a shadow of a doubt requires more work but this is the best way to screen plants for a simple chemical substance.

I know a lot about TLC and using it for plants. I have wanted to develop a simple technique for anybody to screen plants for certain alkaloids but haven't really had the time. But if you are interested seriously in doing it I can explain more and find some time to do some experiments to figure out the hard parts.

Some excellent chemistry teks, including two comprehensive videos on TLC, are found here.

Thanks lots! I'm checking if I can get any TLC plates here in SA without importing them. I'll post if I do!

there is a south african Delosperma nubigenum with dmt in it