Potency

[Salvianaut]

Hi, I was just wondering about potency, and by that I mean concentration of Salvinorin A.  From what I have read before (articles on extracting pure salvinorin) I am guessing around 1% by weight.  Does anyone know the actual average potency, and if any strains have shown higher levels (it would be encouraging to know that whatever breeding has been going on outside of the usual cloning had produced some increases in potency; some of the stuff I've seen about findings of fossilized Salvia indicates that the long years of cloning have made the "cultigen" salvia we know today much weaker than its wild ancestors).

[Paradoxic]

Yeah, you are the second person on here to post about a wild ancestor of Salvia being much more potent. The other person who mentioned it said he heard it was as much as 15% salvinorin    Do you have any links about this? Where did you hear this?

About potency variation among strains, here is some data found in this paper:
http://sagewisdom.org/phytochemical.html

[Salvianaut]

Hmmm.  Interesting figures.  Wonder why they didn't do the same amt of samples for each group?

I'll look for the article.  I dunno where I found it linked from, but 15% might have been the number.  Whatever it was, I remember them saying that considering the state of decay and age (Salvia isn't the best keeping drug after all) it had probably been much more potent than it was when found.

[Paradoxic]

Hmmm.  Interesting figures.  Wonder why they didn't do the same amt of samples for each group?

Oh they did, yeah you kinda have to read the paper to understand that. Those other numbers below are the concentrations in different plants of each stain. For testing they used equal sample sizes.

Hmm, I'd really like to see this article, its got me really interested now. I actually read that salvinorin A keeps quite well as it is very stable (same reason it takes such a hot temp to vaporize).

[Salvianaut]

I've always heard that it lost its potency quickly if left in the light or heat.  Guess I could be wrong though.  Either way I'd imagine that it would lose quite a bit of its potency over long time periods (the fossil find was old, I want to say over a thousand years, but I'm not sure)  I'm looking for the article, but it was quite a while ago that I read it, right when I first started experimenting with salvia.  Kinda hard to track it back down again.  I read a billion sites about Salvia before I ever tried it.

[DrYRHead]

Salvinorin A is degenerated by UV light, so it is light that decreases the potency of Salvia divinorum. Some people oven dry the leaves, and then smoke them. Thus, heat is not what would destroy the Salvinorin A.

[Dominaduro]

Salvinorin A is degenerated by UV light, so it is light that decreases the potency of Salvia divinorum. Some people oven dry the leaves, and then smoke them. Thus, heat is not what would destroy the Salvinorin A.

Everything DrYRHead said.....and heat will destroy Salvinorin A when in solution. When in leaf/extract form (in other words: solid), it's pretty resistant to heat.

[hermit]

So if UV light destroys/degrades Salvinorin A, then wouldn't the fact that it's on a plant in the sun degrade it in the first place?  I wonder if that would lead to an ideal time to harvest based on time exposed to UV vs age of the leaf/plant...

[Arcygenical]

Just to chime in here, although it's a bit late, Salvinorin A is chemically fixed to the plant by another means... This same phenomina leads to salvinorin A being washed from dry-leaf, with water, even though the pure form of the chemical isn't technically soluable in water.

Additionally, it's recently (?) been revealed that most of the Salvinorin is contained in the underside of the plant, which would be relatively unharmed by UV.

[MstryShovel]

Just as a point of speculation about the "wild SD being more potent than harvested" It could be that wild SD is continually genetically mutating(setting seeds ect) and keeping up with such things while our H&W or Blosser strain cuttings are essentially the same mother plant generally unchanged over the 50 years its been cultivated. My thinking on this is that the mutating and changing SD is more"fresh" geneticaly IE the stem-seed cells are over 30 years old in more than 90% of distributed plants, while these wild, more fresh plants are getting the treatment like how cross modifying pot often makes it more powerfull.  Thats my hypothesis at least.

[Paradoxic]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by harvested because leaves must be harvested to be tested for salvinorin A, wild or not. Also it is thought that SD no longer exists in the wild (if it even was ever wild) because it has only been found on human plantations. All the plants that were growing in Oaxaca, Mexico (native location) are likely to be identical clones of each other.

[MstryShovel]

what I mean by wild v. harvested is: "Wild" original cuttings made from the mexica plants appon discovery. and "Harvested" cuttings that have been with us through out this time, i.e a copy of a copy of a copy (this is what I mean by the 50 year old mother plant.) the signifigance being, I once grew a banzi tree made from a cutting of a ornamental fig tree (semi tropical overall easy to grow and maintain) the mother tree was already 15-20 years old by the time i had harvested. anyways, the plant did fine for years untill one day it just started to drop leaves and die (as did a second cutting taken from the mother plant that had just been planted.) now ruling out foul play or anything else this was very weird as i was keeping it well maintained in a good environment. then I found out that mom had put the mother plant out to pasture semi recently, or at least that winter...IE she left it outside in the cold november weather.

So getting to the point. i kinda circumsized my point. anyways wondering if the age of the original plant stays with the latter clones (IE if the clones know they are 50 years old or if the genetic info inside the plant refreshes itself occationaly to stay alive. Im thinking what if SD of the original plant tops out at like 100 years of constant growth(because on specualtion SD doesnt have a dormant phase, on top of hardly ever setting flower (sans seamacs experiments) normally I would figure you know these fleshy type plants grow real tall, set seed then die in the winter, but of course ive never had anythnig to do with these kind of plants before.) ANYWAYS (i always ramble in parenthesis)what happens when the genetic life expectancy of the original SD clones tops out at 100(or whatever) years? will the clones just start to die off, no matter how healthy the plant is?

Just speculation here, I get tangents in my mind and follow them. If anything at least we've got some good guys growing us up some nice seedlings.

[Jupe]

.......another rambler like me sef!! haha.....Some more thoughts: no one that I have "read" about has done any tests involving
A :potency versus plant parts (tops, middle leaves, old leaves, young leaves)
B: time of harvest (summer, winter, fall spring)
C. soil types etc
D. growing conditions (sun, shade, indoors, outdoors...flouros versus halides etc.)
E. drying conditions (natives dry under shade cloth? in sun?...unknowns?)

Potency is already one of the strongest in the plant world......'cept for the nasty plants, like datura or others.

The only personal contribution I can make, is that some younger plants, in spring..absolutley STINK of Salvinorin A....as they were young, I didn't care to kill them to test theory.  Just smelling them was kinda scary....

We need some saliva soluable salvia.....that oughta do it.

[slackjaw]

we need someone with the skillz to take our leaves and analyze them, then organize that data.

[JD1stTimer]

What does Salvinorin A smell like?  I recently learned to identify what the smoke tastes like, although I  can't seem to describe the taste, I just know it when I taste it.