So are you saying that felniks tree is autum olive then? Not Russian olive?

Dorge, I would say that is a good possibility.
Take a look at the close-ups of the leaves in Felnik's photos and compare it to the leaves in the PDF I posted on the last page. They are both more oval shaped than elongated, and both are less silvery/grey than the Russian Olive images.

Tonight I went to a location that I found it documented that the Russian olive was growing.
The trees matched my second specimen except they were much older and had fully established branches.
They also had some fruit hanging down (not sure if it was recent or left over from last year, but it matches the look of the olives).

The fact that Felnik is getting an active product from what may be Autumn Olive is very promising.

The following image is of the documented Russian Olive tree.

interesting, the plot thickens . the bark on the tree i'm dealing with is not rough like the last picture.
the picture i have of the lower portion of the tree is very distinctive of all of the ones growing around here.
it really is growing everywhere here. I 'm attempting more extractions at the moment.

Update:

100g of bark was ground to a powder, then 3x 45 minute boils were done in 1L water each, with a small amount of vinegar.

The solution was strained and volume was reduced to just less than a litre. A solution of 5g NaOH and 50ml water was slowly added.

Unlike the caapi, no precipitate appeared to form, but more time will tell.
The mixture will be left to sit and will continue the tek to see if anything yields, though it seems unsuccessful at this time.

While I know others did not get results with simply basifying to start, I wanted to see for myself.
Perhaps performing a manske is the best choice at this time.
Are the harmalas in Russian Olive not very similar to caapi? Is there any reason why they would not come out of solution in the same way it does with caapi using Gibran2's tek?

i think i mentioned somewhere that i tried that caapi tek using NaOH and couldn't get it to work, nothing precipitated out. It was the manske salt tek used for rue that seemed to extract the most active stuff so far.


i found this

http://www.springerlink....ntent/f586780x03011631/


http://www.google.com/im...=8Iz5TcatHcyugQfv6_T_BA


it seems as though what i'm dealing with here is Autumn olive. Elaeagnus umbellata ,
thats interesting

No issues with the caapi tek with NaOH (on Caapi). Worked great!

Hmmmmm I agree Russian olive has silver leaves.... This is autumn olive that felniks got... Which means it's really active if his results are duplicatable... Which I bet they will be... But if you get the same results from Russian olive that will be interesting as well.

Autumn olive has silver leaves as well...the undersides glitter. The only alkaloid I've seen reported for umbellata is serotonin. I'll try a manske on some of the umbellata around me, but neither my water nor my alcohol extraction fluoresced, whereas felnik's did if i'm not mistaken.

Hmmm starting to narrow things down slowly.... Sounding more and more like Russian olive still...

There must be more than serotonin at work here. Waiting on another salt extraction.
i'm wondering if fresh bark has anything more to offer. We will get to the bottom of this soon.
trying an A/B on a another batch of leaves see what happens.

i'm curious to see the caapi extraction results, sounds promising.

the bark texture is not a big difference, young russian olive has smooth bark, when it gets older the bark fissures and splits and becomes rough looking, the bark can look totally different on trees of different ages. The flowers and fruit are perhaps the best way to ID these things.

It turns out that there are many plants out there with poor to no chemical study. It is a myth that we have explored our world well. Often a chemical study does not test hundreds of specimens of a single species and yet claims to be conclusive. The literature regarding plant alkaloids is by no means conclusive or well informed in most cases. It is unwise to read chemical data as conclusive or even indicative.

Felnik, when I mentioned that the caapi extraction worked great, it was with caapi...
what should have happened is once basifying, a precipitate would form. But as a few of us have seen, it doesn't.
As gibran2 informed me, it could be that there are simply not enough alkaloids to clump together and form a precipitate.
Perhaps reducing the brew a great deal would help?
Another possibility is that it is similar to MHRB in that simply basifying does not precipitate the alkaloids, as something is holding it in suspension.

Now, my chemistry knowledge is quite limited.
With the idea of taking my basified solution back to acidic in order to try a manske, I added as close as I could calculate, sufficient HCL acid to neutralise the NaOH and then a little extra. (My HCL acid does not give an exact % - somewhere between 20-30%).

Upon doing this a thick precipitate immediately formed.
The NaOH and HCL should react to form sodium chloride, right? Could this have produced a manske type effect?
Thing is, there is lots of it, and it is taking a while to settle out but it is beginning to.
There was some fine matter at the bottom prior to basifying, but it was filtered quite well.

Any thoughts?

Edit: image after settling, may not settle much more.

Now assuming there are at least some harmalas in hcl salt form in there, a next step would be to either filter or siphon off the liquid and do repeated washings of salt saturated water (in order to keep them in an insoluble state), correct? Any other suggestions, or is it likely there is little of value in there???

I,m confident there are alkaloids to be had in there .

I had the same feeling when I attempted the caapi tek .
It felt like the bark solution was not suficiently concentrated enough
For anything to precipitate .

I,m waiting for a filtered salt solution to dry on the filters
To see if my experience is repeatable.
My chemistry knowledge is very limited so I,m not much help.
I can only trial and error here .

The tea I boiled up from some trunk bark glows a bright green/blue under black light. Is that sufficient evidence that I've got some beta carbolines in my brew?

The tree I'm using looks like a Russian Olive but there are no thorns to be seen anywhere. Could those be dependent on environment/season/maturity? This tree looks pretty old. It's got rough bark on the trunk and older branches with reddish smooth bark on its new growth. The outer bark on the trunk is grayish and the inner bark is rust colored. The leaves are silvery on one side and greener on the other, the flowers are off-white to yellow.

The attached picture is the spitting image of the tree I harvested bark and leaves from. This pic is from a site that seems to know what they're talking about and it's identified as Eleagnus Angustifolia.

-JM

I'd say you have a positive match, compared to my own, and the documented trees I located. I have noticed that some of the branches do not have thorns, or at least not many, while others have quite a lot. Maybe check other branches. The thorns are commonly from 1 to 2.5" long, so it is easy to mistake them.
The observation of the younger bark being reddish is accurate too, some of the thorns are this colour too.
If your leaves are elongated like your picture, and are not very glossy and wavy on top (like Autumn Olive), then you should be good to go!
(This from someone who mixed it up with a buffalo-berry, but it made me look much closer, so I am confident in identifying it now... )

Even then, it is sounding like Autumn olive may contain some goodies too.

Yes, and that is clearly Russian Olive that you depict.

agreed


The scientific literature and my own experience contradict this...not saying it can't be, but I don't think this is the case.

Which points us back to Russian olive... Which is good

Any more bioassays fellas?