That's a good rough figure, in my notes there are 64 isoquinolines and phenylethylamines listed. Although the reference is missing, this was probably from one or more of Shulgin's books. It does make me wonder whether L. williamsii has benefited from a particularly thorough set of analyses which highlight the plant's biochemical prolificness. Presumably many of the trace components are produced only under particular conditions.

In "Cactus Chemistry by Species" (2014) Trout lists 65 alkaloids (from numerous analyses) in total but four of these he considers questionable.

Peyote the divine cactus by Edward Anderson is the book that has a nice list and structures of the molecules.

Just for the reference, first extraction result for the most bitter peruvianus from Koehres...

what a thread!

ive often thought the bitterness (sensation of tasting alkaloids) was indicative of alklaoids...

it would make some sense, one would think. however, ive been disproven by experience in both ways.

i had a cactus tea (albeit it was semi rotting plant from a 4 rib i found in matucana) that had 0 flavor. realizing it wasnt bitter i thought surely this is devoid of medicine and so i apologized to my friends for wasting their time, but to be sure we all drank another cup to finish the brew as it was ENTIRELY free from being bitter.

it was one of the strongest experiences of our lives. i was greatly inspired to eat fruit to try to ground and bring my brain back online, whilst others got taken. it was wild.

Ive also used the taste testing in wild plants to assess if theyre worth exploring, and mostly it is effective. once in a while it turns out the plant is incredibly impotent. usually the impotent ones ime of the peruvian andes have +high rib count +snottiness +soap flavor

Well, it is hard for me to imagine how tasteless cactus migh turn to be very active. It seems to be very unlikely if the active component is mescaline, as the only explanation would be presence of some other chemical causing negation of the bitter taste or maybe there is so little mescaline that the cactus tastes plain and there is another chemical(s) (MAOI?) increasing it's effects.

The taste preselection method is losing all specimens of the first case. Losing specimens of the second case is not a problem, because I am targeting just pure mescaline and another chemicals would be likely lost in the extraction/purification process anyway.

So the biggest danger is likely the case when I get strongly bitter cactus and it turns to be weak. I believed this is very rare, but recent experience indicates it is rather more often.

As a result I will probably change the strategy. Till now, when I identified strong specimen, I have cut the scion into 15-20 pieces, grafted and waited next half year to get many identical ~180g scions that would be used for larger-scale extraction. From now I will take the initial scion, cut off about 100g of middle part and use it for smaller extraction to get some real number of its potency. Remaining bottom and top parts will be used as scions if the numbers are positive.

tastless one only once in the last 11 years, semi rotted. nuetral / without flavor. very potent. super atypical but because it happened to me im forced to acknowledge it

I can second that in my experience with T. bridgesii, no real detectable bitterness, at least no more so than usual and yet it ended up being terribly potent.

I would like to utilize your experience. It might help a lot.
How many cacti have you tried with pre-tasting before ingestion? If I understand well, you see some correlation between the bitterness and potency, though it is not a rule. What do you think is the probability(%) of having very bitter cactus being weak?

Could you specify on my scale?

0.5 - is it bitter? or not? Yeah, it is, but bitterness is felt very little and takes time to realize

Are these genes still available? If so, it would be nice to check the chemical profile...

Unfortunately not, but as far as I know it was standard bridgesii (not a named strain), and I think the seed stock was originally sourced from Sacred Succulents. I'd guess that the taste test probably isn't a completely reliable measure of potency though as Hordenine (dimethyltyramine) and other components can be bitter.

Yes, that's very likely true, being bitter doesn't imply high potency. This makes sense.
But how can tasteless cactus be extremely potent, that is weird. Having such specimen and checking its chemical profile is likely the only way how to get the answer.

Pete, the bright side is that once you have satisfied your current phase of research in cataloguing the bitter candidates with significant alkaloids, you can re-run your experiments with a purposeful isolation of those with little bitterness to see what/how exceptions to that line of research are revealed
First research the hypothesis, then research the anti-hypothesis!
I love science!

Yes, but I am far from being satisfied atm.

Honestly I wouldn't say I am currently convinced the taste pre-selection is the right way for me. I am currently doing some tests on my cacti and they should provide some information whether this method is of use and how much. The correlation between the taste and potency has to exist at least to some level, otherwise this method is useless.

There is a part of me that wonders if the perception of bitterness could have something to do with the unique water/fat content ratio in the flesh being sampled-- or maybe in concert with mucilage concentrations--these variables could lock out or hide the alk bitterness from the taste receptors in plant matter that could actually contain a good amount of alk activity. These same factors could result in weakness of effects if the digestive system can't break open enough of these cell walls to release the joy contained.

I think about how adding a fatty acid (cream) to coffee or tea is known to absorb/disguise/trap/amplify a range of alkaloids and oils present in the coffee resulting is a very significant taste difference-- as coffee has both oils and water-based flavors that are received by the tongue very differently (or in different "packages" so to speak) when a fat source is added to them vs. in their straight water-based form. Also, temperature has a dramatic impact on tast of coffee, because the hotter it is, the more likely the oil-based flavors are to slide over the tastebuds rather than bind to them when the coffee cools.

Cactus flesh could also simply vary in the exposed cellular surface area that would allow the "taste" of their interior-- think the difference between an orange and a pomegranates for example-- the goods are all there, but trapped more effectively from taste if only one cut were made through the center.

None of this is anything anyone hasn't said before-- but I think that the anecdotal evidence of non-bitter activity in the wild proves that bitterness alone is only one element of the puzzle-- your efforts are sincerely appreciated in this research!

This whole thing seems to be very complex, maybe too complex to grasp. There are so many unknowns about the alkaloid content in the cacti and with taste testing we bring even more complexity and unknowns into the mix.

I will take 20 randomly selected cactuses and try to evaluate them for taste and proceed with mini-extraction for each, so we can check how strong the correlation between the bitter taste and alkaloid content is, if there is any.

Whatever is the result of this, I´d like to thank you for doing all these tests and keeping us informed, and for everybody who contributes with their anecdotes

Everybody is welceme here. This is my hobby, so it would be shame not to share the results.

So, let's go with the testing and results...

I have decided to test 20 commerically acquired clones from various entheogen vendors.

These were 30-40cm long and 6-10cm wide when bought and were rooted through spring/summer 2018 and grown till the autumn. Then they were dormant till spring 2019 and cut when first signs of growth were apparent leaving rooted part in the dirt with about 20cm above the ground.
All cuts were tested for bitterness, giving readings between 0-3 on my bitterness scale. The worse half of them was discarded and the more bitter half was extracted giving O.6mg/g(raw) of alkaloids.

The bases were left growing through the summer 2019, all of them having two or more pups.
One clone of these 20 specimens (#77) was in very bad condition and was not willing to root, so I decided to put it aside. This is the first (highest) result in the results graph.

Few days back the new growth (from pups) was cut, providing 100-135g of fresh material for tests.
Every specimen was tested for bitterness and rated on my bitterness scale.
Then it was extracted with just one pull of quite large volume of 75ml of toluene. The toluene was titrated by 1.85% HCl with nitrazine. Volume of one acid drop is 0,064516129ml and it salts 8,298926mg of mescaline. Drops are counted until nitrazine turns yellow.
Usually 3 pulls are necessary to extract +90% of alkaloids, so remaining gain was estimated although second and third pulls were not done.

Accuracy :

These tests are indicative and are just trying to provide some information for the correlation between bitterness and alkaloid content. There is no need to get everything out of the cactus, as far as all samples are treated the same way. Therefore only one pull is done.

Every sample has got at least one drop of acid, so the value "HCl drops" should be evaluated first. If there is the value : 1, then there may be lack of any alkaloids, as we are within the error given by one drop (see above for the mesc content). The value "Gain mg/g*10" is working with count of drops, so it already contains the error. When I see the nitrazine color is still lightly blue, but likely not for whole drop, I use 0.5 for next drop rather than 1. Therefore some drop counts may not be whole numbers.

The value "Gain mg/g*10" is of course taking into account the entry material weight is in the range 95g-135g.

Results :

I haven't made any conclusions yet. It was quite a work and I need to take some rest. Moreover the results are quite low. I thought the alkaloid content values will be much higher. Which is sort of disappointment for me, I hoped there will be some highly potent piece that I could use. After the disappointment from my most bitter specimen grown on the peres and its lack of alkaloids, this is second punch and I am really frustrated and having no energy to continue with these endeavours.
But that's what the life is like, I have to take it as it is.
If anyone can look into it and tell me what can be read of these data, please go ahead!

The sample #77 is an exception - it is not fresh growth, this is the damaged clone stored for more than one year before extraction.

Just one interesting note - if you compare the average gain for the most bitter half of the samples (0.28mg/g(raw)) with previous extraction result of the same plants that were cut after dormancy (0.6mg/g(raw)), you can see the results are significantly higher.

Excellent data Pete-- I wonder if a good branch of research using this information would be for you to begin stressing the clones you have now tested in various ways and then re-testing them. We know that stress/age is a huge influencer on M levels. Perhaps the perfection of your micro-environment is actually causing the M production to be mlder than it would be in less ideal conditions!

You have established baselines for these, and also indicated with #77 that stress jacks up your levels.

Run with that.

You're in a unique position compared to most people in that you have many clones of the exact same plant-- perhaps the optimization lay in the exact conditions (or maybe mistreatment) of them to elevate the available actives. You are doing great work-- I hope you do not lose your wonderful enthusiasm-- it is appreciated