03-29-04 02:18
No 497908
nz whole earth catalog summer '72
Cineraria
This is a member of the snunflower family. Confusion is possible hera s some Senecio species are sold as Cineraria. It has yellow flowers and blue-green velvety foliage. Africans smoke the leaves as an intoxicant and as an anticongestant and vasodialator for acute asthma and tuberculosis. The active ingredient is unknown. Cinerarias are common in New Zealand gardens and packets of "Yates Large-Flowered Branching" can be bought.
Some New Zealanders claim that the leaves of the sunflower itself are well worth smoking, the effect being about one-third as potent as marijuana. If this is so then other members of the family could be similar, - Jerusalem Artichoke for example.
and from a website i found searching for cineraria:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_
Chemistry
The heartwood, contains sugars, five flavonones, fatty acids, and tannins (Burkart, 1976). Fresh leaves (ZMB) contain 15.3% CP, 17.5% CF, 10.0% ash, 3.2% EE, 54.0% NFE, 2.65% Ca, and 0.24% P (Gohl, 1981). Wealth of India reports that leaves contain 2.9% N, 0.4% P2O5, 1.4% K2O, and 2.8% CaO. The flavone glycoside patulitrin has been isolated from the flowers (C.S.I.R., 1948–1976). A novel variant on the piperidine-3-ol alkaloid recently reported is spicigerine (Jewers et al., 1976).
spicigerine... recently as in 1976...
heh, and 1972... that nz whole earth catalog was a wealth of interesting leads for novel plant drug sources to explore, there's a number of others, but i'm particularly interested in this one because it is a stimulant that might be related to the piperazines.
(Moderator)
03-29-04 12:22
No 497961
Molecule: spicigerine ("O[C@@H]1[C@H](C)N[C@H](CCCCCCCCCCCC(O)
Ref: http://yakushi.pharm.or.jp/FULL_TEXT/121