15 replies to this topic

[cheech]

i found a vendor in the us that sells fricii seeds at a reasonable price.
after searching the web and here at 'topia i've been unable to find out conclusively if l. fricii contains mescaline in amounts comparable to williamsii.
does anyone here have any first (or second - your cat maybe?) hand info?

[smacked12]

alot of cactifiles believe fricci is really a variation of williamsii. it's usually classified as Lophophora williamsii var. fricci.

personally, i don't have enough williamsii or fricci to do a proper comparison, but i can say mine contain mescaline.

[Leary's Ghost]

i found a vendor in the us that sells fricii seeds at a reasonable price.
after searching the web and here at 'topia i've been unable to find out conclusively if l. fricii contains mescaline in amounts comparable to williamsii.
does anyone here have any first (or second - your cat maybe?) hand info?

does that imply that there is no law against fricii?

[cheech]

alot of cactifiles believe fricci is really a variation of williamsii. it's usually classified as Lophophora williamsii var. fricci.

personally, i don't have enough williamsii or fricci to do a proper comparison, but i can say mine contain mescaline.

while probing the net i've seen fricii as being both a variation of diffusa and williamsii. to my untrained eye it looks more like a willie.

thanks for the info. i plan to order those seeds and in 5 or 6 years i'll give y'all a trip report ;-)

[cheech]

does that imply that there is no law against fricii?

from what i read on the web fricii is considered to be a diffusa and therefor legal. if the issue did come up and my imaginary fricii were tested and found to contain mescaline i would guess that they would suddenly become willies in the eyes of the law.

[Myc]

from what i read on the web fricii is considered to be a diffusa and therefor legal.

I saw fricii seeds being sold by a local vendor here in the US. This leads me to believe that they are legal.


Seedlist January 2007 - Cacti Eriocereus to Maihueniopsis

scroll down to item #548

[smacked12]

while probing the net i've seen fricii as being both a variation of diffusa and williamsii. to my untrained eye it looks more like a willie.

when you get into it the whole issue is a bit confunsing. especially when you're trying to make sense out of documents that are as interesting to read as a phone book. it doesn't help when many of those documents provide conflicting statements presented as fact.

if the issue did come up and my imaginary fricii were tested and found to contain mescaline i would guess that they would suddenly become willies in the eyes of the law.

that's my belief on how things would be handled.

[Kadass]

it just isn't known. Trout said they are studying the entire genus (DNA, not fucking around this time!).

the reason you see them in the states is because no one REALLY knows whether fricii is a variety, sub-specie or even a separate specie of Lophophora. you can find equally logical opinions regarding them being either williamsii or diffusa.

they have pink flowers, like williamsii (diffusa is white) and their skin resemble sit as well.

williamsii is self feritle, diffusa is not. Fricii is also NOT self fertile.

to be honest i find that koehressi and fricii share a lot more physical charecteristics than any fricii and williamsii or diffusa....especially with flower shape and reproduction.


long story short, no one knows, therefor its a gray area and you can raise a huge stink if prosecuted. the only reason they are listed in the USA is due to bad taxonomic classification at this time :) this will change shortly once tehse tests and studies are finished.

[Leary's Ghost]

well, san pedro contains mescaline right? and popies contain opium? they are legal still depending on the grower's intent. so i wonder why the fricii would be handled different?

[Kadass]

poppies are not legal..in many countries. And Lophophora williamsii are illegal in the USA....because it is unknown whether fricii is williamsii or not may make it illegal...too much confusion to know without testing.

[PsychoDrogue]

I just got my copy of Alexander Shulgins "The Simple plant Isoquinolines" and i think some of the info it has to offer might help with this discussion.

diffusa:
anhalamine
anhalidine
anhalonidine
anhalonine
lophophorine
pellotine

fricii
identicle to diffusa

williamsii
contains all of the above and many more with a total of 36 different compounds. I could list them all but its seriously tedious work with all the funky spelling i'm not completely used to. i will do it if people are really interested though...

in any case. it appears that chemically, at least according to shulgin, fricii is more similar to diffusa than williamsii.

these are just the isoquinolines. which is why mescaline isn't listed... many of these compounds have been shown to be the cacti's own precursors to make substances like mescaline. it appears fricii wasn't supplied with the goods to make much useful product on its own.

[rocketman]

Yes actually if you can do a side by side of the common lophs it would be a great bit of information to add to the boards.

Thank You:bow:

[PsychoDrogue]

williamsii
N-acetylanhalamine
N-acetylanhalonine
anhalamine
anhalidine
anhalinine
anhalonidine
anhalonine
1,2-Dehydroanhalamine
1,2-Dehydroanhalididinium quat (quat is a naming reference. could be expressed many ways)
1,2-Dehydroanhalonidine
1,2-Dehydropellotinium quat
N-Formylanhalamine
N-Formylanhalinine
N-Formylanhalonidine
N-Formylanhalonine
N-Formyl-O-methlyanhalonidine
Isoanhalamine
Isoanhalidine
Isoanhalonidine
Isopellotine
Lophophorine
Lophotine Salt
Mescalotam
O-Methylanhalonidine
O-Methylpellotine
O-Methylpeyoruvic acid
O-Methylpeyoxylic acid
Pellotine
Peyoglutam
Peyophorine
Peyoruvic acid
Peyotine iodide quat
Peyoxylic acid

also listed is loph jourdaniana which is also identicle to diffusa and fricii... and loph gatesii which contains only isopellotine and pilocereine.

[rocketman]

Thanks PD. Archive material

[Kadass]

i am not so sure about the being identical part....but i have never tested them. i was not aware that those were even thoroughly tested....

some good reading. read the whole thread, but here are some highlights.

Kaktusy special loph taxonomy revision - The Corroboree

I haven't seen the publication, but I am dumbfounded as to on what grounds L. fricii would be placed in with the "Diffusae." L. fricii grows in the northwestern range of L. williamsii populations, far from the southern growing L. diffusa, and on simple morphology clearly falls in with L. williamsii more than L. diffusa. Habermann of course found chemical similarities of L. fricii to L. diffusa, but I have always questioned the plant material Habermann was using and if it was in fact L. fricii from the locations we cite the plant as existing in today. Even if seed similarities exist this doesn't necessarily mean that they occur because of direct relationship. Independent evolution of similar traits among disimilar species has been known to occur in nature, and this could be cause for both seed and chemical similarities of L. fricii to L. diffusa (if such an association is unchallengeable). Plant observation and plant location indicates to me that L. fricii is closer in relation to L. williamsii than to L. diffusa. I'll start from this position and look for data that challenges this view and which has data that is verifiable.

~Michael~

If fricii is being accepted (by some) as willy, then I would love to learn more about these two location/collections of fricii.

The more I look the more I see two fricii phenotypes, one very diffusa like, the other very willy like.
I wonder what Mike makes of this? Have there been multiple chemical studies of fricii that agreed?

I am very interested in Lophophora fricii var. albiflora and L. fricii f. gigantea.

The genetics work hopefully should be able to be published before too long. I know for a fact the DNA was field collected (from the wild populations) and purified. It is now in the US and good microsatellites were established. Its well underway.
There is a huge amount of soundness in that line of separation.
Fricii is not a williamsii that is certain.

I'll post the details and a reference as soon as I am permitted to.

Those divisions seem to be valid.
koehresii and williamsii's ranges partially overlap but they do not grow together as they like totally different soil types.
fricii is clearly not a williamsii despite it's habitat being so far north.

The work is still underway but I'll post details of wherever it appears as soon as I can learn more.

Echinata is a sad mess.
Leon Croizat and some oddness from Backeberg and European growers are the factors to thank for that.
When he wrote his detailed but problematic treatment of Lophophora Croizat used the words echinata and diffusa in one single plant name mentioning his plants studied came from Texas. Backeberg included this in his also largely problematic treatment of the plants.
European growers seem to have caught only the first part somehow ignoring the fact that there is no diffusa population near Texas. Perhaps they assumed Texas was a mistake or typo? Echinata is now regarded as a synonym of diffusa by most people obscuring the very interesting plants that Croizat actually intended.
Croizat was not discussing what we now regard as diffusa but rather the lower growing, grey-green not blue-green and significantly higher alkaloid Lopho that occurs in far west Texas (for instance around Shafter) and in northern Coahuila. It tends to grow in scattered small populations in rocky open limstone hills so is easily overlooked and largely unknown.
Thanks to that odd combination almost all echinata present in horticulture are actually diffusa and the west Texas plants have been nearly forgotten. They do exist in some private collections but there are mainly in the US.
In his book Texas Cacti Del Weniger has some nice images of this compared to the normal williamsii (he calls it var. echinata)

decipiens is also a sad mess but beautiful plants.
That particular rib formation can be witnessed on the odd individual in any large enough population in south Texas (in williamsii). I know this as I have witnessed it back when I still ate and picked peyote many years ago. Some other nonwilliamsiis in cultivation also express this lack of ribs and it is more common there. The Lamb's showed an interestingly similar example of in their odd diffusa (aka echinata var diffusa) image in vol 5 of their Cacti and other succulents (p 1297)
Srge Batov claims to have found a population in Mexico he purports to be what Croizat discussed based on the projection of the flower being higher than normal. He has not though managed to actually link his find with Croizat's plants and really can't do so since Croizat has no locality information at all concerning his plants.
The rules of nomenlature forbid the recycling of previously used names so Batov's use of the name is invalid unless he can somehow be proven to be right. Batov may be right but its going to be hard to prove. Drawings make lousy type specimens.

Identifying the Lophophora Genus - The Corroboree

Despite the assorted conjecture appearring in print about jourdaniana over the years its worth recalling this was a flower color variant that originally appeared in horticulture after being culled out of large lots (note the use of the plural) of wild collected williamsii that had already been shipped to Europe. It was selected based on flower color and nothing is known about its actual origin. Its been in cultivation for the better part of a century.
It likely does occur in the wild, probably as a bud mutation as no populations have ever been found. Whatever it is it is not a species in horticulture but rather a cultivar.

Fricii was reported by Haberman and by Starha to have a diffusa type alkaloid profile. Koehresii is likely to be the same. Despite its range partly overlapping with the lowermost williamsii populations it grows in different soil and not with williamsii.

The casepitosa is a form not a variety. The Japanese looked at pumped up grafts.

All need better work.


Most modern researchers outside of horticulture now recognize williamsii, diffusa, fricii and koehresii. Inside of horticulture exists much nonsense.

here is my sites photo guide to some commonly seen Lophs types:
Kada's Garden-Lophophora williamsii for sale (Peyote)

[PsychoDrogue]

oops. i meant identicle to the diffusa list. i guess i should have clarified. its too late to edit so consider this the correction.