Common names

Common names used for peyote or names that have been applied to peyote

azee (’azee’) [14], ’azee’ diyiní [14a], ’azee’ yit’aalii [14b], ’azee’ ch’íidii [14c], bacánoc [37], the bad seed [27] (an erroneous name), bayote [63], bee-sugar [33], beyo [17], biisung [1, 7], biote  [37], biznaga [43], cactus [27],  cactus buttons [27],  cactus-puddingcamaba  [37], challote (once a trade name in Starr County, Texas), chaute, chief [27], chiee [37], ciguri  [37], devil’s rootdiabolic root, the divine cactus, divine herb [37], dope beans [69], dream buttons [46], dry whisky, dumpling cactus, foutouri [8, metaphorical name meaning “flower”], gicuri [21], green whiskey [27], hahaayanx [2], hick-o-kee/hick-oke/hic-o-ke [68], hicoli [21], hicore, hícori [8], hícouri [8], hículi  [37], hícuri [8], híkoli [21], híkori [21], híkuli [8, 21], híkuri [8], hikúri [37], hi-kuri [51], hi-kuri waname [51], ho [13], holy chew [62], hos [13], ho-as [11], hoos [36], hoos [36], hoosh [74], houanamé [21], houatari [6], houtari [6], huaname [21], huatari [6], huñka [25], hus [35], icuri  [37], Indian cocaine [59], Indian dope [58], jag beans [61], jícoli [21], jícori [8], jículi  [37], jicuri  [21], jicurite  [37], jíkuli, jikuli [55], jíkuri [21], joutori [21], joy beans [56], kamaba [22], kamba [22], kóp [5], likuri [45], L.S.D. cactus [29], makan [1, 15], mascale beans [57], medicine, medicine of God  [37], medizin [37], mescal, mescal beans [32], mescal button, mescale, (all names including ‘mesc-’ or variants are erroneous. See 32.), mescalito [27], mezcal buttons  [37], moon [27], Mr. William’s Echinocactus [54], muscale buttons [41], muscle buttons [70], natáinoni [1, 9], naw-tai-no-nee [1, 9], nesac’ [24], nezats [24], nicouri [30], nonc-gáiεn [23], o-jay-bee-kee [1, 17], ololiuqui (An erroneous name), opium buttons [75], P [27], pajé [3], pee-yot [9. Now also means “medicine”], peiotl, peodi [47], peote, pejori [16], pejote, pejuta  [1, 37a], pellote, peotl  [37], peyiotl [44], pie-o-ke [66, 67], peyori [18], peyote bean [60], peyot [64], péyotl, peyotlkaktus  [37], peyotlevye (?) [52], péyotl xochimilicensis [42], péyotl zacatecensis [40], peyotyl [49], pezote, pie-o-ke [74], piote, piotl, piule (An erroneous name), piyot [9], plejotl [71], raíz diabólica (By Ortega), Rauschgiftkaktus  [37], the sacred mushroom [28] (An erroneous name), schnapskopf [31], sei [10], seni [10], señi  [37], sugar [33], teocomitl ahuitzyo [26], teonanacatl [28] (An erroneous name), topi [27], tuna de tierra, turnip cactus, ubadama/ubutama [34], uocoui  [37], vegetable whiskey[66], wakoare [65], walena [1, 20], waname [51], wanamo [51], wanamu [51], watara [6], whiskey barrel cactus [38], whiskey cactus, whiskey root[66], white mule, William’s aloëcactus [53], William’s Echinocactus [54], wo-co-wist [4], wohoki [4], wokow [4], wokowi [4], wok-wave/wokwave [75], wokwi [4], the wonderful herb [50], woqui [4], xícori [8], xwucdjuyahi [12], xucladjin-dei [36], xucladjinłndei [39], xos [74].

Also can be encountered in Chinese as cuì guān yù, 烏羽玉 [Wiki] and as 乌羽玉.  
These make *great* search terms for imagery.

 

1. Pre-peyote word meaning “Medicine”, currently used to designate Lophophora williamsii.

2. Arapaho

3. Coahuilteco [More properly, Pakawan; this name was given in Garcia 1760.]

4. Comanche (wokwi and wokowi were said by Mooney to be generic terms for cacti. Stewart similarly gives w gwe i-a as a word for ‘cactus’.)

5. Comecrudo or Carrizo of Tamaulipas

6. Cora of the Tepic Mountains [Rätsch 1998 also gives “chiee” as a Cora name for peyote]

7. Delaware

8. Huichols of Jalisco (and Nayarit)

9. Kickapoo

10. Kiowa (Sei is said by Mooney to be generic for all cacti originating as an older name for prickly pear cacti.)

11. Kiowa Apache

12. Lipan (meaning “pricker one eats”)

13. Mescalero Apaches

14. Navaho (The word ’azee’ means medicine and is used by traditional Navajos to refer to any medicinal substance or material used in a curing ceremony)

14a.  Navajo name meaning “Holy medicine

14b. Navajo name meaning “chewing medicine”; name is used by nonpeyotists

14c. Navajo  name meaning “Ghost medicine” ; derogatory name is used by nonpeyotists. Translated as “Devil medicine” in 1940 Tribal Council hearings. [See Note 10]

15. Omaha

16. Opata

17. Otomi

18. Pima of the Gila River region.

19. Shawnee

20. Taos

21. Tarahumare of Chihuahua

22. Tepehuane of Durango [Rätsch 1998 spells “camaba”]

23. Tonkawa of southern Texas

24. Wichita of Oklahoma

25. Winnebago of South Dakota (“The Father Peyote”)

26. Said to have been used by the ancient Aztecs; Schultes 1937b cited Martinez 1928

27. Said to be names used by drug users in the late 1970’s, by Anderson 1980 and/or listed as a street name by Marnell (ed) 1997. The latter also gives “buttons” and “tops” as names for the drug.

28. This is in error but is still occasionally encountered in literature, probably originating with William E. Safford’s mistaken proposal, (among other places in Safford 1916a) that the identity of teonanacatl, the sacred mushrooms, (at that time not yet rediscovered by Western scholars since the persecution of the Catholic Church had driven their use to exist only in secrecy), was in fact dried peyote buttons.

Safford’s reasoning was that, despite peyote and mushrooms being mentioned separately as two obviously different plants, the latter specifically said to be a fungus, they were probably confused by a writer who had never seen the fresh plants [Note 12] The person who was confused was Safford who inexplicably rejected abundant evidence that was available to him. 

29. Given as a synonym in Rowley 1978. Gordon Rowley is the only person that I am aware of who has ever used this name.

30. Said by Anonymous 1959 to be used by “the Huichols of Jalisco and the Tarahumares of Chihuahua.”

31. Rauh 1978

32. This name has been, and still is, far more commonly applied to the red seeds of Dermatophyllum secundiflorum (AKA Sophora secundiflora), a small leguminous shrub or tree, than to peyote but it arises from neither one.

Confusion on this point is widely encountered. The etymology of the word “mescal” is clearly associated with the Agave “century plant” as it comes from a Nahuatl word “mexcalli” meaning “cooked agave” so the jump to peyote and then to the red bean is a curious one worth pondering.

All variants of these names (whether given as mescal, muscale or mascal, or similar spelling, and whether it was as buttons or beans) appear to have been saddled onto peyote by Christian reformers as part of a deliberate attempt to present it to the public as a dangerous intoxicant during their intensive activities aimed at achieving prohibition laws against it. See the 2017 presentation by Trout at ESPD50.

Contrary to some popular assertions, the origins of the word mescal have nothing to do with the red bean. Borg 1937 inexplicably claimed it came from a word for fungus but I have not yet found additional support for that.  Borg MAY have been confused by W.E. Safford’s confusion.

Two separate theories have arisen as to how the ‘red bean’, as it has usually been called, came to be called the ‘mescal bean’, in one version it was used as an additive to increase the strength of mescal,  the other has it arising from a separate etymological origin. Interestingly, peyote was similarly employed as an additive to mescal, it was occassionally mashed with water and ‘fermented’ on its own, and the red beans were added to brewed peyote by a handful of tribes.

Mooney’s assertion that the Mescalero Apaches derived their name from mescal (due to their use of peyote) is pointed out by LaBarre and others to be in error as the Mescaleros were already known by this name well before they became aware of peyote or began to use it.

33. Said by LaBarre to have been the names used by John Wilson (Caddo-Delaware).

34. Japanese name for peyote in Fujita et al. 1972. Ubudama appears to be a misspelling. en.bab.la gives as ペヨーテ.
Wikipedia does as well but also gives Lophophora williamsii as ウバタマ.

Ubutama is also the name of a famous Japanese confectonary that is said to be a bitter red bean paste sweetened with sugar and wrapped in a layer of agar jelly. The name is believed to refer to its shape. It is not clear to me which application of the name came first, the plant or the treat.    

35. Given as a name for peyote by Stewart 1987, page 360, in entry 63. Origin is not clear in his note.

36. Given as names used by ‘Apaches’ (Mescalero?). xucladjin-dei is said to be an aboriginal name that has fallen into disuse. Boyer et al. 1968 [in Harner (ed.) 1973]

37. Listed as names by Rätsch 1998: page 327. Rätsch listed many other names that are also in this list. I made note only when his list contained names that were not already included.

37a. Said to be a Dakota word for medicine.

38. Given as the common name by Schneck.

39. xucladjinłndei is given in Castetter & Opler 1936 as the name used by the Mescalero Apache meaning “cactus which they eat”.

40. Name used by Francisco Hernandez and its first binomial.

41. Erroneous name encountered in some of the early literature.

42. Another name used by Hernandez; thought by Anderson 1980 to refer, instead, to Cacavalia cordifolia.

43. Word meaning “carrot”: a generic term used for many cacti.

44. Word used in a French language publication by Benzi 1969.

45. Word given as a Huichol name. Evans 1979.

46. Name used in a 1941 New York Sunday News article

47. Name used in a 1938 Gardenerville Record-Courier (Nevada) article

49. Spelling sometimes appearing in Bulletin on Narcotics articles

50. Name used by Hoebel 1950

51. Names given in Thord-Grey Tarahumara-English Dictionary

52. Russian version of A. Gottlieb’s book has title “Peyotlevye Kaktusy”

53: Name given in Rümpler 1886

54: Name given in Hooker 1847

55: Name given in De Félice 1936

56: Name given in United Press 1909

57: Spelling given in Anon 1908, 1909 & 1911

58: A name used in some pejorative accounts such as Tranter 1942.

59: A name used in 1922 news accounts (examples: Hope Pioneer, 26 October, page 12, Yorkville Enquirer, page 7 and the Washington Evening Star 19 June, page 4).

60: A name used in the 1922 Washington Evening Star, 19 June, page 4.

61: A name used in the 1909 Yakima Herald, 16 June, page 2.

62: A name used in the 1913 The Washington Times, Final Edition, page 7.

63: A name used by Augustine Alba, a Mexican detective, quoted in the 1918 Free Trader-Journal (Ottowa, Illinois), 28 October, page 3.

64: Spanish name given in Jose Arlegui 1737 (1851) Chronica de la provincia de N.S.P.S. Francisco de Zacatecas.

65: Name used by Kiowa; given in Hugh Lennox Scott’s Ft. Sill ledgers.

66: Purported “Indian” name for “whiskey root” given by “The Colonel” in 1857 in The Times Picayune, (New Orleans, LA), 30 September, page 1. This may be the first report in the English language of peyote being referred to as an intoxicant, although the author alludes to the occurrence of an earlier round of correspondence with the editor.

67. Purported “Indian” name for “whiskey root” as given in 1857 The Carolina Spartan, (Spartanburg, SC), 22 October, page 1, and many other papers during 1857 and 1858.

68. Purported “Indian” name for “whiskey root” as given in 1858 Cooper’s Clarksburg Register, (Clarksberg, WV), 7 May, page 1; 1858 Sunbury American, (Sunbury, PA), 24 April, page 4 & 1858 The Abbeville Banner, 4 March, page 4.

69. Name given in 1909 The Salt Lake Tribune, 2 May, page 3.

70. Mis-spelling appearing in Lewin 1888 and persisting into the modern Parke, Davis & Co., company archives.

71. Spelling appearing, in Polish, in Łyko & Piątkowska-Chmiel 2020.

     72. Name appearing in Lophophora williamsii entry at Ilife.com.

73. Attributed to Chiricahua in Slotkin 1955. Slotkin expresses some doubt if the Chiricahua were a correct attribution for the word hooshe. This information was derived from JH Jones 1899 A condensed history of the Apache and Comanche Indian Tribes.  A contemporary informant names H. Hoijer told him xos meant primarily thorn or cactus but had a secondary meaning of peyote.

74. South Texas circa 1857. Letter to editor of New Orleans Picayune from “The Colonel” in 1857.

75. Said to be called wokewave on the Comanche, Kiowa and Wichita reservation but opium buttons was the name preferred by Clark. Clark 1888. 

 

Common names were collected from many sources, the list above being far from complete. Most are included by Schultes 1937b. Some are simply different spellings (orthographic renderings) of the same name given by people from different linguistic backgrounds. Names with no reference given were encountered in multiple sources and usually had no locale of usage attributed to them (most are English or Spanish).

Peyote is the name that is most frequently used by tribes in the United States and by some in Mexico. Its origin is not clear and various explanations have been proposed. (See Schultes 1937b above, LaBarre 1989 and Anderson 1980 for good discussions. Peiotl is the name used by Fr. Bernadino de Sahagún when describing its use by the Mexican Chichimeca Indians in 1560.

Erronous names were a result of confusion with morning-glory, psilocybin mushrooms or, in the very first example (the “Bad Seed”), possibly Datura.

Atropa belladonna fruit is also called “Moon” (or “Moon pods”) in street vernacular and it is unclear if this drug parlance misnomer is a result of a similar state of confusion or if it is in reference to peyote’s association with moon rites. During the 1970s I encountered ground Datura stramonium seeds being sold ‘on the street’ as dried peyote [Note 11]. Sacramental drugs do not belong in the black-market.

Names equating peyote with alcohol or other drugs are usually derogatory and were generally coined by opponents who were ignorant concerning its actual effects and/or had specific depreciatory intent associated with the promotion of prohibition or drug law activities.

 A number of names appear at the Indiana Prevention Resource Center 2008 as purported street names for peyote: Bad seed, Britton, Half moon, Hikori, Hikuli, Hyatari, Nubs, P, Seni, Tops, Topi. I have to wonder just how widely peyote has actually been available as a street drug under some of those names.

 

Other names encountered in connection with Peyote

Chiculi hualala saeliami: Said by A.V. Frič to be the name used by the Tarahumara for the rare red flowered peyote he encountered in the Sierra Bola, near San Pedro, Coahuila. [Believed to be the same population of plants that were much later named Lophophora fricii]. Frič believed this plant was what had been referred to as “Híkuli walula saelíame” which would be interesting if true since it seems likely to be inactive to sedative if it was actually ever ingested.

 Ear-eating: Said by LaBarre to be a term used by some Anadarko Delaware for peyote eating.

 Grandfather or Grandfather Peyote: Sometimes used to speak in reverence of the plant. Often used to refer to a large consecrated peyote that is kept in a prominent and sacred place during the peyote ceremony (frequently referred to as the ‘chief peyote ’ or the ‘peyote chief‘.) Normally it is never eaten. So far, only one reference has been encountered to them actually being eaten. This was in an African-American peyote church that once existed. [see Smith 1934.] Stewart 1987 includes Voget’s mention of a Montana Crow stating that he thought the Chief Peyote could be eaten but did not know of any instance when it was.

Hogimá: A Shawnee name for the “peyote chief” (a special button or plant which is used in ceremony, also as a fetish or for power acquisition but rarely if ever eaten.)

Hatzimouika: Huichol tutelary deity for peyote (female).

Híkuli walúla sälíami: Hikuli of great authority. An especially large peyote surrounded by smaller plants, viewed by the Tarahumari as its servants. Special reverence is paid to these plants in deference to their peyote deity (male). [see Lumholtz 1902] Possibly the same as Thord-Grey’s Hi-kuri waru-ra seriame. Said to be the most powerful peyote and to grow buttons up to 12 inches in diameter. Thord-Grey suspected it was a mythical plant.

Hi-kuri owa-me: “Peyote medicine” peyote prepared as drink by Tarahumara shaman [Thord-Grey], owa-me is the Tarahumara word meaning “medicine”

Hi-kuri waname: [Thord-Grey], [Also given as Híkuli wanaméThe Superior Peyote” by later authors] Tarahumara name thought to refer to an especially powerful peyote but it is also thought by others to refer to a Mammillaria or another cacti. [also encountered as Híkuli houanamé; Híkurí-íkuríwa is thought to mean the same.]

Hi-kuri wikara-re: Peyote song (Tarahumara)

Mother Hurimoa: Thought to refer to the Cora peyote goddess.

Seimayi: Kiowa peyote goddess (meaning “Peyote woman”)

Rhaïtoumuanitarihua-hicouri: Huichol differentiation of one of two “kinds” of peyote; this one is thought to have less physiological effects. Meaning “Peyotl of the Goddesses

Tzinouritehua-hicouri: Huichol differentiation of one of two “kinds” of peyote; this one is thought to be more active and more bitter. Meaning “Peyotl of the Gods

According to Aberle the following three Navajo terms are used in ceremonies to refer to the peyote:

ni’iln’íí’ sizínii “that which stands in the middle of the earth”

yak’ashbąąh doo bínii ’ohí “nothing is hidden from it from horizon to horizon”

nihook’eh doo bínii’oh “nothing is hidden from it (even) in a storage crypt”

 

Numerous other plants are also called peyote or by the local native name used for peyote. Some are cacti but many are not. None are known to be hallucinogenic but many are toxic. Not all are active or even used by people for any purpose.
Good discussions or a listing: See Bye 1979, Bruhn 1973, Bruhn & Bruhn 1973, Ott 1993, LaBarre 1989, Ochoterena 1926, Rätsch 1998, Schultes 1937a & 1937b, Slotkin 1955 & Smith 1998/2000.

Many other cacti are equated with peyote or held in similarly high regard. None are known to contain proven hallucinogenic substances unless at exceedingly trace levels. See Bye 1979, Bruhn 1973, Bruhn & Bruhn 1973, LaBarre 1989, Schultes & Hofmann 1980, Smith 1998 & 2000, & Trout Cactus Chemistry By Species 2014 Light for ethnobotanical information on other cactus species thought to be potentially active.

Mescal [Note 13]  is a distilled drink prepared from the sap of some Agave species. It arises from the Náhuatl word Mexcalli; for the cooked Agave which is used to make the alcoholic drinks pulque since early times and was distilled into mescal after the Spanish invasion. Mescal buttons as used for peyote arises from early confusion of the effects of peyote with that of alcohol. The word mescal has most often been used in reference to the cooked agave hearts which are eaten as a food.

As Ott 1993 points out, in Europe they certainly had nothing else they could describe it in terms of, and many of the early common names used equated its action with alcohol, such as ‘Dry whisky’, ‘Whisky cactus’, ‘Whiskey root’ or ‘White mule’, a post Civil War name for the plant, which Ott mentions refers to ‘moonshine’ or home-made liquor [Note 14]. Similarly, Rauh’s word: ‘Schnapskopf’ means ‘liquor head’.

Schultes 1937b accurately points out that many native users resent the use of the name mescal, as the associations with alcohol and its attendent evils are totally inaccurate. He also mentions that most of peyote’s opponents have objected to its use due to a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of its effects based on the mistaken presumption that they were similar to alcohol. [Similarly have been presented, by its opponents, the absurd notions that it was variously marijuana, cocaine or opium-like. Sometimes, as was the case with alcohol earlier, this arises from a “tastes-like-chicken” phenomenon when someone is trying to describe something lacking any frame of familiar reference by its comparison with their closest known experience. However, in these cases, this is often chosen with deliberate pejorative or dismissive intent as the intended audience is typically programmed to respond in predictable ways to words like “morphine,” “opium”, “dope” and “hashish”. 

It should be suspected that use of the name “LSD cactus” was intended to similarly cast undeservedly perjorative connotations by linking the cactus to the wild oversensationalism and demonification of LSD by the press. Whoever coined the word obviously had no experience with either peyote or LSD.

Mescaline is ‘LSD-like’ only in the same sense that beer is ‘whisky-like’ or opium is ‘heroin-like’; perhaps even less so. While there may be some underlying truth on a generalized and superficial level, this is a deliberate mischaracterization certain to cause a gross misunderstanding of its effects by the uninitiated.

 

 

Lophophora williamsii

Lophophora williamsii (Lemaire ex Salm-Dyck) Coulter

Charles Antoine Lemaire on Salm-Dyck‘s behalf (1845) Allgemeine Gartenzeitung, 13: 385-386. See also Cels (1842) on Lemaire’s behalf in Annales de flore et de pomone (1841-1842), vol. 10; p 354, as Echinocactus williamsii.
John M. Coulter (1894) Contributions from the US National Herbarium, 3 (3): 91-132, as Lophophora williamsii.

Lophophora williamsii in Jim Hogg County

Lophophora williamsii in Jim Hogg County, Texas

Peyote has experienced many names in its history but the important older ones to be familiar with are Echinocactus williamsii, its confused moonlight appearance as the brief-lived Anhalonium lewinii and as Anhalonium williamsii (outside of a brief period of problems produced among some ethnobotanists, chemists and pharmaceutists by the appearance of A. lewinii.)
More details are in the Anhalonium lewinii commentary.

Mescaline is present in highly variable amounts.

Lophophora williamsii echinata tuft Presidio County

A peyote “tuft” in Presidio County

Lophophora is known to mean “I bear crests” (in reference to the hairy tufts) [from the Greek; lophos: “crest” and phoreo: “I carry”. Pizzetti 1985].

A peyote bearing its "crests' in Jim Hogg County

A peyote bearing its “crests’ in Jim Hogg County

The name williamsii was claimed by Rümpler (in Förster 1885) to be in honor of C.H. Williams, who was said to have traveled in Bahia, Brazil.
According to David Hunt (2006), C.H. Williams was a former British ambassador to Bahia.
dict.leo.org disputes the certainty of this, offering instead Theodor Williams, a Vicar of Hendon with a large garden in Middlesex that was noted for its many cactus specimens.
dict.leo.org also noted that another claim exists asserting it was named for botanist J.W. Williams; the Williams they refer to appears to have been a botanist in the USA with an interest in forensic science so it makes no sense as a choice of whoever assigned the name.
Any rationale underlying the specific name choice for any of those proposed names is unclear to this author. Especially so as Rümpler 1888 mentioned that its country of origin was unknown to him at that time.

people-Williamsii

Salm-Dyck, Coulter & Schumann
They all look
so serious.

The person who actually selected the name is not entirely clear. I would assume that would have been Charles Lemaire despite there being a question raised about that.
A reader kindly brought to my attention that in the 1842 description by F. Cel’s (page 354) was clear attribution to a cactus collector  near London named Williams (“Echinocacte de Williams, Echinocactus Williamsii, Lem., dédié à M. Williams, zélé amateur des environs de Londres.”)
Whether this is the same person as either C.H. or Theodore Williams is presently unclear to me.  I have been unable to learn more about this individual but he was clearly the namesake. It seems probable that this was in reference to Reverend Theodore Williams (1785 —1875) who lived in North London but I lack certainty about that.
The description in Cels 1842 also clearly gives its country of origin as Mexico so the reason for Rümpler’s unfamiliarity in 1888 is unclear to me.

Cels 1842

Cels 1842

Among the many names worn by the peyote plant, one is particularly convoluted. It was for a time commonly known as Anhalonium lewinii due to a strange twist of fate caused by a drug company, a handful of botanists, a couple of pharmaceutical chemists and a following of unquestioning ethnobotanists. See a detailed discussion and references herein under Lophophora diffusa and, more pointedly, under Lophophora lewinii.

See also Anderson 1980, Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974 or Ott 1993.

Lophophora williamsii

Terrell County

Terrell County

Common names used for or names applied to peyote

Description & characteristics of Lophophora williamsii

Occurrence & Distribution of Lophophora williamsii

Human uses of peyote

Archaic peyote, some beans and a rock

Flora often associated with Lophophora williamsii

Analysis reported for Lophophora williamsii

Suggested reading on peyote

Peyote Music & Icaros

Inquisition Law

Suggested reading (rock art, entrainment & entoptic imagery)

Endnotes

Lophophora-williamsii-StarrCounty-1

Starr County

Lophophora williamsii description

Description and characteristics of Lophophora williamsii

Plants are typically low growing, sometimes almost flush with the ground. (Sometimes occurring as low mounds.) Rains and resulting water flow can rearrange the top surface of the soil leaving peyote plants with up to several cm of exposed stem or they can become completely buried by several cm. They are specialized at growing on some degree of sloping erosional surface.

Lophophora-williamsii-StarrCounty

East of Rio Grande City in Starr County

Jim Hogg County

Jim Hogg County

soil-PresidioCounty-6

Presidio County

Lophophora-williamsii-habitat-Wirikuta-Hjeran-6

In habitat at Wirikuta.
Photo by Hjeran

Jim Hogg County

Jim Hogg County

During times of drought, and in preparation for winter, peyote can pull itself into the ground. New growth will occur as soon as favorable conditions return.

hunkered down in Presidio County

A welcomed rain following drought in Presidio County

Peyote has a deep taproot that is napiform (fat carrot or ice-cream cone shaped in general outline), tapering slowly from the above ground portion’s diameter, and weakly branching mainly at the distal end. It can be seen in instances such as Henning’s Anhalonium williamsii illustration that roots can sprout from almost anywhere on a cut peyote plant after it has been replanted.

peyote with root

Lophophora williamsii roots
Cactus Conservation Institute image

root of a peyote

root detail: Terrell County

Especially towards the top there are greyish or brown coarse barky rings, formed by the shriveling of the outermost row of areoles that are becoming the top part of the nonchlorophyllaceous stem.

Lophophora-williamsii-rootbark

Lophophora williamsii stem-bark in Jim Hogg County

 

The roots are usually 8-11 cm long (4.) 3-5 inches long (5.) with a large zone of storage tissues surrounding the vascular bundle.

cross section of a stem

Cross section of the base of a pup

broken crown

Crown broken by passing traffic showing a cross section of the stem, the vascular bundle and a look at the barky outer layer

Only with substantial age will the roots on rooted cuttings get tap-root like. Cuttings can never reform the single fat root peyote is noted for but each of their pups can go on to form their own tap roots, especially after their mother was decapitated. In this latter case the rootstock of the mother may eventually be sucked dry of life as the pups go on to become independent plants.
The roots that form are often whitish to tan, fleshy and weakly branching.

Lophophora-williamsii-deadcrown-pups-roots

pups forming separate roots following crown death (due to rot) of the mother Cactus Conservation Institute image

Roots that form tend to branch primarily at their base and only sporadically and weakly as this partially uncovered young plant illustrates. Notice how similar the branching of this seedling is to the branching of the solitary herbarium specimen that was shown earlier.

Young plant with the underground stem and roots largely exposed

Grows as, often dwarf, solitary heads. Occasionally budding at the base to form pairs or clusters. Budding occurs rarely in young plants and is more frequent in older plants. Many plants remain single, even if large. Small intact plants of double heads are sometimes encountered. One that initially looked cristate within several years had divided into two perfect heads.
Many times plants can be found joined underground. This is especially noticeable on plants which have pupped due to flush cut harvesting. As the wound heals, the cactus shrinks into its root and the pups form from an old areole on the subterranean stem,  this most often occurs underground. Notice how far this pup had to grow before reaching the surface of the soil. The original stem had pulled into the earth after the crown was removed.

Lophophora regrowth following crown removal

regrowth after crown removal


It must be mentioned that people can cut the plants below ground level and obtain clumps as a result. It is clear the mortality goes up but how much has seen very few studies. The lower the cut occurs, the less stored tissues remain for the period when the plant is recovering. If the cut is above the subterreanean stem there is almost a certainty of regrowth. If it occurs below that transition and leaves just root tissue there is no chance of regrowth as the requisite areoles were removed. If the cut falls someplace within the nonchlorophyllaceous stem itself there is still a chance for regrowth but the mortality goes up as the stored food reserves goes down; adding an increased susceptibility to extremes of drought and weather. It should be obvious that when a crown has been removed the plant has to rely on its stored reserves until it is able to regrow new crown(s) capable of resuming photosynthesis. (See the studies of Terry & Mauseth 2006 for details on morphology and Terry et al. 2011, 2012 & 2014 for details on post harvesting regrowth and mortality.)

One factor interfering with an adequate perception (and assessment) of loss by harvesters is that when deep cutting kills a plant the carcass most often decomposes under the earth leaving no visible evidence unless it is excavated.

Lophophora-williamsii-areole-newgrowth-JimHoggCo

Harvested Lophophora williamsii with a new pup emerging at base

The base of pups not induced from injury only occasionally send out, mainly weak, roots of their own. Often in previously harvested rooted heads, there is no independent formation of roots by the resulting pups and they rely on the vascular system of the mother. Unless forcibly divided [Note 18] the pups remain connected as a part of the parent. In cases where the mother plant has been compromised or dies the pups can and do go on to form new tap roots.

Lophophora-williamsii-pups-independent-roots

Pups forming independent taproots following the crown death of the mother plant

In clumps, there is often one plant far larger than the rest unless clumping was induced by injury. New plants forming from injury, especially partial decapitation, are usually produced from the healthy and intact areoles peripheral to the injury, and, if multiple, will normally be of the same size. All variations of growth can normally be found in a large population of old plants.

Pupping is enhanced greatly by injury, especially if to the terminal portion of the head (apical meristem).

Lophophora-williamsii-JimHoggCounty-regrowth-postharvest

Regrowth after removal of the original crown

Occasionally peyote forms large mounds with great age. Mounds over a meter in diameter have been reported by many different reliable sources. Weniger says “often clustering to form up to 50 [heads] in one variety.” The following plant has around half that many.

A plancha

What an untouched peyote plant can potentially look like (in Jim Hogg County)


These mounds are rarely encountered in Texas anymore. It was not always this way.

Lophophora-williamsii-JimHogg-clump

Jim Hogg County

The heads are rounded and usually more or less flattened on top. The center of the top is depressed and filled with woolly hair. They may be globose or somewhat cylindrical but all have depressed centers except when severely etiolated [Note 19] (6.).

Peyote infrequently forms crests [Note 20] but these are not infrequent in major cactus and succulent collections as they are highly sought after by cactus collectors.

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-TerrellCounty-crest-closer

Terrell County

It is probable that crests can occur in any wild population of any Lophophora species. Occasionally, they are offered for sale as horticultural specimens that can sometimes exceed a foot in the longest direction. Belgian seed suppliers have offered seeds from cristate plants but it is doubtful crests would develop on the offspring. They showed no germination, in contrast to the ready germination of their other “species” and varieties.

Pictures of a crested specimen can be found on Page 2904, fig. 2732 of Backeberg 1961 and on page 178 (# 738) in Hirao 1979 and also on page 1298 of Lamb & Lamb 1978 and on the back cover and pages 44 & 45 (as in-habitat color photos) in Grym 1997 and also in the black & white plate facing page 177 of Martin et al 1971.
A very useful search phrase for locating some amazing images is “烏羽玉綴化” (Lophophora williamsii cristata).

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-crest-wild

Terrell County

Lamb & Lamb commented that peyote crests grow quite well on their own roots so that grafting is not necessary (unlike many crests which are slow growing and rot prone.) Grafting of peyote crests is a common practice though as it is how most crests are multiplied for commercial propagation.

Lophophora williamsii echinata from Val Verde County with a crest starting

Lophophora williamsii echinata from Val Verde County starting to develop a crest. Cactus Conservation Image

Plants are firm and very succulent. Said by Lamb & Lamb 1974 and Weniger 1984 to be soft but I have found them only to be soft when in poor health or wet such as after heavy or prolonged rains, especially if during cool weather. Normally they are turgid and firm as a green tomatillo, but with an almost velvety feel. The friendly ‘touchability’ of this plant may be a part of its allure for many otherwise mainstream cactus growers.

Lophophora-williamsii-JimHogg-turgid

Jim Hogg County

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-LTR-7

Val Verde County

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-ValVerde-2011-4043

Val Verde County

The flesh of peyote, like many other cacti, typically has a gritty or sandy texture due to the presence of oxalate crystals as can be observed exposed by a predator in the image below. (In some cacti such as Echinocactus horizonthalonius oxalate can comprise 60% of the dry weight of the entire plant!)

Lophophora-williamsii-eaten-showing-interior

Lophophora williamsii in Jim Hogg County showing oxalate crystals inside of its flesh.

Peyote may be blue-green, greyish-green, bright glaucous green (usually only seen in bloated overfed cultivated plants), chalky blue and occasionally appearing reddish-green. All usually have a pronounced grey glaucescence or haze on their surface unless it has been abraded off by rough handling. This haze on their surface is due to a layer of small flakes of waxy material. Brown areas can develop during droughts and reddening or even purple coloration can be added by cold and freeze stresses.

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-boquillas-4046

Boquillas, Mexico (in cultivation)

echinata_skin_texture

Val Verde County

texture

Val Verde County

Anderson notes that a brown corky layer of unknown origin sometimes develops on cultivated specimens. This was encountered this once in a wild population in southwestern Zapata County. It doesn’t seem to hurt the plants but when present, sometimes spreads and becomes unsightly. I’m at least assuming this is what Anderson refers to:

Val Verde County (under cultivation)

Val Verde County (cultivated wild plant)

There are no leaves except microscopically during early development. (2.)

Literature gives sizes usually falling in the 4-12 cm. in diameter and 2-8 cm. tall range.

Weniger says Lophophora williamsii var. williamsii reaches 3 inches and var. echinata reaches 5 inches (5.)

In previous editions of Sacred Cacti I mentioned seeing larger – huge – many-ribbed Lophophora williamsii in the late 1970s. I now believe this was in error and that ALL of those plants were actually Lophophora fricii. I now believe that I was being lied to by the collector concerning their point of wild-collected origin.

Plants over 4 inches have always been of rare observance and do not appear to occur in typical L. williamsii. Weniger comments that “var. echinata” can reach five inches in the longest dimension of its crown. Bohata et al. 2005 also pointed out the existence of some interesting larger Lophophoras in Mexico. They appear to need some study.
Normally Peyote reaches somewhere towards 3 or 4 inches and then fluctuates in size seasonally, occasionally by as much as an inch in all directions, for the rest of its life. It will continue to grow larger only in the sense that the root will continue growing into the earth, the crown will continue to replace most of whatever tissue is lost due to local environmental extremes and predatory challenges, and, in many cases, pups will be produced by the original stem.
Notice the extremely long roots in this next image (modified from Bravo 1937). It must have taken a long time for the plant on the right to go from being a seedling to having its roots that deep in the earth. Hopefully the viewer noticed how the diameter of the plant itself did NOT steadily continue to grow larger during that process.

Bravo-1937-roots

In the neighborhood of 8 ribs is what is most often thought of with peyote but the number is highly variable in any population. Anderson 1980 says 4-14 ribs. If a peyote has more ribs than 14 it should be suspected to be Lophophora fricii.

Jim Hogg County, Texas

Jim Hogg County, Texas

Boquillas, Mexico (cultivated)

5 ribbed plants are rare past somewhere around one inch in size. Only occasionally do they not soon go on to form more ribs. While some authors have stated that it is simply a juvenile form of the plant, 5 ribbed plants do occasionally reach at least 3 inches in diameter and other 5-ribbed plants will sometimes stay tiny even with age.

Lophophora-williamsii-JAV-Starr-6974

seedlings from Starr County seeds (Cactus Conservation Image)

Starr County

Starr County

The ribs are defined by furrows which are easily divided in a cut plant, and may be straight or in spirals. Sometimes the ribs are irregular or even indistinct. Usually they are broad and rounded and have shallow transverse furrows, forming tubercles or podaria. Schultes & Hofmann 1980 refer to them as “more or less regular, polyhedral…” and Benson 1982 calls them “irregularly hexagonal”. They may bulge outward but especially in older tubercles they tend to flatten out and become low, broad and rounded. They can reach an inch in “diameter”.

 

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-Brewster-8986

Brewster County

 

The ribs and tubercles or podaria are highly variable in appearance from individual to individual, as well as seasonally. Part of the reason for this is that the ribs on cacti serve an important function as they enable their body to swell or contract in response to the available water.

 

Lophophora-williamsii-WestTexas-dehydrated-ribbing-2009

Drought-stressed in Presidio County

Lophophora-williamsii-ribbing-wet

Rain-soaked in Jim Hogg County

 

The highly variable nature of peyote’s appearance underlies the problems it gave some botanists in Europe who had never seen an actual population first-hand (it has also caused many problems even for those who had field experience).

Lophophora williamsii  grown from Jim Hogg County seeds

Lophophora williamsii grown from Jim Hogg County seeds (ISI)

Areoles are usually arranged linearly along ribs or at the apices of the hump-like tubercles or podaria. They are set from 1/2 inch to 1 inch (1.3-2.5 cm) Lamb & Lamb, 0.9-1.5 cm Anderson, 12-25 mm Benson, apart. The areoles are flat and round. They range from 2 to 4 mm in diameter.

The areoles in peyote only bear flowers when young.

Lophophora-williamsii-JimHogg-spines_seedling

wild seedling in Jim Hogg County

During the first year of growth each areole bears a dense tuft of white and more or less silky hairs to 7-10 mm long. (2.)

tuft

Val Verde County

Chihuahua, Mexico

Chihuahua, Mexico (under cultivation)

Later, each mature areole bears a dense, cylindroid tuft of soft trichomes (woolly hairs), 8-15 mm apart, 1-5 mm in diameter. (1.)

Val Verde County (under cultivation)

Val Verde County (under cultivation)

The persistent tufts of hairs are usually equally spaced on the ribs. (4.). They usually feel silky and may stand erect and matted or have the ends bent or broken off entirely.

Lophophora-hair-Bravo

Wool is yellowish or whitish, usually turning grey with age and it is sometimes broken or worn off.

Lophophora-williamsii-seedlings-Anonymous

Lophophora williamsii seedlings.
Photo by Anonymous

Spines are usually absent except in very young seedlings which bear a few weak bristle-like, usually white, sometimes yellowish, spines on their crown.

seedling of Lophophora williamsii echinata

While this is what is easily observed, Mauseth 1983b points out that peyote does in fact “…have spines, but they are so short that they do not even reach the top of the depression in which the areole is located.” However, occasionally tiny spines can show up noticeably on wild L. williamsii.

A known exception concerns those plants referred to as L. jourdaniana which normally show some longer & quite noticeable spines, especially on young areoles.

Lophophora-jourdaniana-JM-clone-3

Lophophora jourdaniana

Lophophora williamsii in Jim Hogg County, Texas

Jim Hogg County

Both flowers and fruits form on young areoles, near apex of stem, [borne at umbilicate centre of crown, (4.)], each at apex of a low new tubercle in a felted area adjoining the spine-bearing part of areole and partially merging with it. A circular scar persists at the site after the fruit has fallen. (2.)

Flowers are normally solitary but occasionally there will be several flowers either rapidly following each other or blooming together. 5 is the most I have ever witnessed first-hand. They couldn’t open fully because they were so close together. See photo of 3 in McLaughlin 1973 and in Schneck. See Mount 1993 for a picture with 5 blossoms open at one time.

Flowers are 1 cm to 2.5 cm in diameter, and 1-2.4 cm long (3 cm long. 2.). The floral tube has been described as “rotate-campanulate”(4.), “funnelform”(2.), and “bell shaped”(5.). Each flower is surrounded by a mass of long hairs.

Val Verde

Val Verde County

Flower size, color and petal shape can be variable even within single populations. Pinkish, whitish blushed pale pink or rose (5.) are the most common flower colors. Dirty white, pure white, or pale yellow are very rarely encountered.

Populations observed in Texas usually were light pinkish with a darker pink mid-stripe on each petal or whitish with a pink mid-stripe. More rarely they were whitish sometimes having a faint greenish mid-stripe on each petal that is most colored on the outside.

Lophophora-williamsii-JAV-Starr-2544

grown from Starr County seeds (JAV)

 

The flowers in Weniger’s echinata have so far have had some shade of light pink petals with a darker pink midstripe. (6.) They have tended to be a bit more oval rather than round (this is often also true of the plants).

Outer perianth segments and scales ventrally greenish, callous tipped (4.) Outermost perianth segments greenish with entire edges (5.)

Sepaloids with greenish middles & pink margins, largest narrowly oblanceolate, 9-15 mm long, to 3 mm broad, acute and strongly cuspidate, the margin entire. (2.)

Jim Hogg County

Outer perianth segments have greenish midribs and greenish-pink or whitish margins, the largest ones elliptical, 3-12 mm. long, 1-3 mm broad, mucronate, marginally minutely ciliate distally (1.)

[Outer perianth segments = sepaloids = sepals]

Presidio County (Chinati)

Presidio County (Chinati) under cultivation

Terrell County

Terrell County

 

Inner perianth segments pink, pinkish-red, or white, often with a darker midstripe, the largest ones are typically elliptical, 8-22 mm long, 2-4 mm broad, mucronate or occasionally attenuate, margins ciliate or entire. (1.)

Inner segment almost linear, pale pink to rose, white or yellowish. (5.)

Lophophora-williamsii-flower-WestTexas-petalclose

Presidio County

Petaloids often pink in their middles, pale to nearly white at margins, largest oblanceolate, 12-15 mm long, to 4 mm broad, acute and cuspidate, entire; filaments pale, more or less 2 mm long. (2.)

[Inner perianth segments = petaloids = petals]

Flowering will usually begin around 5-6 years of age (or when they reach around 1 inch in diameter) from seed. It can begin much sooner if they are grafted; often within a year after making the graft even if starting with a young seedling.

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-flower-close

Presidio County

The style is white, tinged with pink, reddish or rarely magenta, to 9 mm (2.) [5-14 mm (1.)] long, more or less 1-1.5 mm at greatest diameter;

The (3-)5-7 lobed stigmas are naked, linear, thin and flattened; 2 mm long, 1+ mm broad, and can be reddish, pink or yellowish;

Ovary is small, naked and surrounded by hairs (to 12 mm long). “Ovary in anthesis [is] turbinate”, 3-4.5 mm. long, smooth, not scaly. (2.)

Filaments are whitish, or rarely magenta (1.) and shorter than perianth segments (4.).

Presidio County

Presidio County (same population as the preceeding image)

 

They bear 3-7 yellow anthers, 1-1.4 mm long.

Lophophora-williamsii-flower-JimHoggCounty

Jim Hogg County

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-ValVerdeCo-9631

Val Verde County

The stamens of L. williamsii are thigmatropic so respond to touch (by bending into an arc). A toothpick was used to gently touch one side of the anthers in the photo below.

The pollen in L. williamsii is highly variable in size, shape and aperture. The grains are more or less spheroidal (around 12 different geometric shapes), 0-18 colpate, and is (14.9-) 26-63.4 mm in diameter (averaging 40 microns) (1.) [Image]

NW Starr County

NW Starr County

[See also Anderson & Stone 1969]

Normally flowering from March through September (1.)

There are usually two peaks of flowering, one in spring and one in summer, generally these are following rain.

Cultivated plants have been observed to flower both earlier and later and can seemingly occur any month of the year if the conditions are right (6.)

Pizzetti 1985: entry #154. Has picture of a plant with a flower and pups.

Innes & Glass 1991 Also features a nice color picture in flower; on p. 150.

Color pictures can also be found in Grym 1997.

Fruits are small, slim, elongate, nude and clavate (club-shaped), or nearly cylindroid and enlarged gradually upward, (12-)15-20 mm (1, 2.) (3/8-3/4 inch) (5.) long, more or less (2-)3-5 mm diameter (1, 2.) The umbilicus is large or the perianth parts persistent, and the fruit emerges rapidly from within the trichome at maturity.(1.)

They are red to pale pinkish when ripe. Fleshy and indehiscent at first, they become  dry and brownish-white, or eventually blackish, at full maturity. Seeds are released by the pods drying and breaking.

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-seedpod

ripe & drying

Lophophora-williamsii-ripeseedpods-7030

Ripe & dry

full of ripe seeds

full of ripe seeds

The fruit walls are thin, transparent when fresh, and bare, without tubercles, scales, spines, hairs or glochids, although a few small hairs can rarely persist on the end of the fruit.

Fruits mature 9-12 months after fertilization. (1.) It is common to find fruit emerging around the same time as the flowering periods. Gerhard Koehres (who has extensive experience with commercial seed production using grafted seedlings) has commented that fruit can form from the early flowers within around 8 weeks but has also found that the fruit for the later blossoms often do not emerge until the following year.  Clearly this subject is apparently not as cut and dried as was presented by Anderson and merits some study.

Seeds are usually are spread by water and possibly sometimes with the help of ants. It is almost certain that ants harvested the seeds from this Lophophora fruit in Presidio County.

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-PresidioCo-fruit-2010-6659

Characteristic hole made by ants

Whether they are what is responsible for the placement of these two plants with their crowns at an almost vertical orientation is a matter of fascinating speculation.

Presidio COunty

Presidio COunty

Seeds are black, tuberculate-roughened (4.), (verrucose) pyriform (1.), densely papillate (2.), longer than broad, 1-1.5 mm. (2.) [“about 1/16 in.” (5.)] long, 1(+) mm broad, 0.8 mm thick; with broad whitish basal hilum (large, flattened, depressed and sometimes v-shaped), enlarged upward from the hilum, resembling those of Cereus (2.), Ariocarpus and Obregonia (1). [Image]

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-loose-seeds-2531

Check out all those seeds. You can actually see the shape of the hilums clearly in the larger viewing sizes!

They set seed readily even in cultivated plants. It is not uncommon to find seedlings growing in with older specimens.

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-boquillas-4041

Spontaneous seedlings (Boquillas, Mexico)
(under cultivation)

Cotyledons coalescent (1.), accumbant, not foliaceous. (2.)

Chromosome number 2n=22

The closest living relative to Lophophora williamsii, based on the molecular cladistics of Rob Wallace, is Obregonia denegrii.

Obregonia denegrii

Obregonia denegrii

Description adapted from (1-5 include pictures.)

1. Anderson 1980: pp. 179-181.

2. Benson 1982: pp. 680-683.

3. Lamb & Lamb 1974: pg. 196.

4. Schultes & Hofmann 1980: pp. 221-222.

5. Weniger 1984: pp. 138 -140.

6. Personal observation.

Useful search terms for locating additional imagery (mostly at Chinese language websites):

 烏羽玉 & 乌羽玉(Lophophora williamsii

子吹乌羽玉(Lophophora williamsii f. caespitosa

乌羽玉缀化(Lophophora williamsii f. cristata)

大型乌羽玉(Lophophora williamsii “var. texensis“)

 

 

Many thanks to the Cactus Conservation Institute and to the assorted cultivators who permitted me the opportunity to acquire & present these photographs!

Inquisition law: peyote use

A portion of the first Inquisition Law against Mescaline Containing Plants (Peyote)

Issued on 29 June, 1620.

“…Inasmuch as the use of the herb or root called Peyote has been introduced … for the purposes of detecting thefts, of divining other happenings, and of foretelling future events, it is an act of superstition condemned as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic Faith. … neither the said herb or any other can possess the virtue or inherent quality of producing the effects claimed, nor can any other cause the mental images, fantasies and hallucinations on which the above stated divinations are based. In these latter are plainly perceived the suggestion and intervention of the Devil, the real author of this vice, who first avails himself of the natural credulity of the Indians and their tendency to idolatry, and later strikes down many other persons too little disposed to fear God and of very little faith. Because of these efforts the said abuse has increased in strength and is indulged with the frequency observed. As our duty imposes upon us the obligation to put a stop to this vice and to repair the harm and grave offense to God our Lord resulting from this practice, we, after consultation and conference with right minded persons, … admonish you and summon you to obedience by virtue of your submission [to the Church] and under penalty of anathema latae sententiae trina canonica monitione praemissa, and other pecuniary and corporeal penalties within our discretion. We order that henceforth no person of whatever rank of social condition can or may make use of the said herb, Peyote, nor any other kind under any other name or appearance for the same or similar purposes, nor shall he make the Indians or any other persons take them, with the further warning that disobedience to these decrees shall cause us, in addition to the penalties and condemnations above stated, to take action against such disobedient and recalcitrant persons as we would against those suspected of heresy to our Holy Catholic Faith….”

Licenciado D. Pedro Nabarre de Isla [Bold face was italicized in Leonard.]
Translated by Irving A. Leonard 1942.

 

(The full text is given by Leonard and he also presents it in the original Spanish.)

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-PresidioCo-2011-9439

Presidio County

 

Leonard also includes a brief discussion of the motivations behind such a ban, noting both that in such a ban, as worded above, is inherent the observation that, even then, the use of peyote was not limited to “indians” and more importantly for our discussion, that the banned practice among “nonindigenous” people in the Americas will long outlive the historical progression of Inquisitions.

The use of peyote existed long before the foundation of the Catholic church and it will certainly outlive the existence of the Catholic church. No valid form of religious expression has been destroyed by outlawing it, unless accompanied by the outright murder of every practitioner, their families and their children.

The modern versions of similar inquisition laws can be found in the laws of many states which prohibit possession or cultivation of the plant and prescribe punishments of serious fines and actual imprisonment.

The peyote faith lives in spite of its persecution. The faithful have never been and will never be dissuaded by the bigoted decrees of opposing faiths. Religion and spirituality is not a legislatable matter, it is a deeply personal one. In my case, part of being able to be of service to the plant meant willingly stopping and avoiding all consumption of it more than twenty years ago. I believe that the peyote still lives inside of my heart and that, even though I will never eat another peyote plant in my lifetime, it continues to guide my actions on its behalf.

No valid religion has ever been removed by simply forbidding it. The Catholic church succeeded in destroying many religions in Europe only because they were willing and able to commit the wholesale slaughter of the faithful as well as maintaining iron fisted subjugation of the survivors for generations. This is still ongoing but is not confined to activities of the Catholic church and the mainstream judeochristian majority has instead codified religious biases directed against different religions and spiritual practices into what are presented to be public health and safety laws.

In spite of their efforts, the descendants of the unjustly murdered are once again reclaiming their spiritual heritage as humans. This is a matter of spirit and is following the natural practices which were created during the same processes producing OUR species. This is one form of the Original True Communion. All of the pogroms, legislative restrictions and violent efforts possible cannot change that simple fact that accessing this sacred state is a human right given to us by virtue of our birth. The modern Inquisition laws are as wrong and just as much in error were the first ones.

Any proposal that the government has any business controlling or regulating what people experience spiritually or how they feel or what they think in the privacy of their own minds is wrong. It most especially has no place in any democracy.

 

A peyote garden forced into hiding in a closet.Photo by Anonymous

A peyote garden forced into hiding in a closet.
Photo by Anonymous

Occurrence of Lophophora williamsii

Occurrence and distribution

From 50 meters in Texas to nearly 1850 m in the state of San Luis Potosí.
Anderson 1980; occurrences along the Rio Grande near Reynosa, Taumaulipas are less than 50 m while occurrences in San Luis Potosí exceed 1800 m Anderson 1969; Below 3000 ft (1,000 m) usually. Lamb & Lamb 1974; At 150-1200 ft (50-400 m) Benson 1982 

Peyote grows isolated or in groups. It can occur as very dense populations, sometimes including large clumps, or be widely scattered as individuals. It is found in calcareous deserts or subdeserts, on rocky slopes of low hills, ridges, alluvial fans or in dried river beds.

soil-StarrCounty-2

east of Rio Grande City in Starr County
Lines showing this white mottling continue to do so in horticulture.


soil-JimHoggCounty-2

Soil surface in Jim Hogg County

Often they are found in limestone, flaky limestone or partly limestone soils; on slopes of small hills, especially if overlying rocks are caliche. Also, found in gravel or stony soils. Morgan 1983 found populations to be more abundant on east and south facing slopes.

Peyote occurs in many soil types. These are typically limestone soils or contain limestone, and may be rocky or even gravely. Soil types in Texas are discussed by Morgan 1983: “All tend towards upland shallow to moderately deep, calcareous, clayey loams.” LaBarre notes that in the northern portion of its range it occurs in primarily calcareous and argillaceous soils of the Cretaceous formations.

soil-PresidioCounty-4

Soil in Presidio County


soil-TerrellCounty-4

Soil in Terrell County


soil-PresidioCounty-1

Soil in Presidio County

Widely distributed in Chihuahuan Desert and Tamaulipan Brushland of the Rio Grande Plain, of Texas, also south of Shafter, and, prior to its damming, at the mouth of the Pecos River, and from Laredo southeastward to McAllen. (Almost to Brownsville according to Anderson 1995 but this refers to a photo in Britton & Rose that is a certain error. Peyote has never occurred “near” Brownsville as both the soil and the terrain is wrong.)

In Texas; originally near the Rio Grande from highly localized spots in Presidio through Starr Counties, historically occurring as far south as the edge of far western Hildago Co although that area has been so intensively agriculturalized it is hard to imagine there are *any* populations left anywhere in Hidalgo County. They have seemingly been reported near Brownsville but this is surely in error. (See fig. 97, page 84 in Britton & Rose 1922 who probably chose Brownsville simply as their closest known landmark), and eastward into parts of Jim Hogg Co. It was once so abundant in Starr  and Jim Hogg county that portion of the Bordas Escarpment has been referred to as The Peyote Gardens (leading some authors to assume cultivation occurred there). The vast majority of that land has been cleared at least once so peyote is now gone.
The featured image at the top of the page shows a view across the Bordas Escarpment AKA the “Bordas Scarp”. The image below was taken on the Bordas Scarp looking west across an area of prime peyote habitat.

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Habitat in Jim Hogg County


Habitat in Jim Hogg County

Habitat in Jim Hogg County


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Soil in Jim Hogg County


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Soil in Jim Hogg County


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Soil in Jim Hogg County

 

Plants have been reported or claimed from Brewster, Cameron, Crocket, Culberson, Dimmit, Hudspeth, Jeff Davis, Jim Hogg, Kinney, Maverick, eastern Medina, Pecos, Presidio, Terrell, Tom Green, Starr, Sutton, Uvalde, Val Verde, Ward, Webb, Winkler, Zapata, and Zavala counties. Its historical presence in all of those counties spans the range from certain through doubful to implausible. 

Most of the remaining populations are in Starr, Jim Hogg, Webb & Zapata Counties. Several other counties still have small and scattered populations, while the rest are certain to be errors or may have once held populations that have been extirpated. While plants may have been reported from those areas in the past, its actual range of occurrence is now far smaller.

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soil in Starr County (notice the nearby crust communities)


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Soil in Starr County (again notice the presence of a crust community)

In Texas, its highest concentrations seem to be contained within a narrow band no more than 30 to 40 miles from the Rio Grande.

The vast majority of its native habitat in Texas has been destroyed by root plowing and land conversion for agriculture and pasturage. It has been considered an endangered member of Texas flora by the Texas Organization of Endangered Species (TOES) since the late 1970’s for this reason despite not being categorized as an endangered species at the federal level.

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Sheltered by palo verde in Starr County

According to Morgan 1983; it is most common in Texas along the western margins of the Bordas Escarpment, the Aguilares Plain and in the Breaks of the Rio Grande.

Occurrences along the Pecos River (an area of numerous fine examples of shamanic rock art) are in many case gone due to the formation of Amistad Reservoir. Even if populations survived above the water line, it might be wondered just how well peyote would adapt to being a lake-side plant. Schultes & Hofmann 1992 note peyote remains found in this region’s rock shelters and dry caves show its use to be present for 3000 years or more.   Weniger commented on not being able to locate it growing there in 1970.

It has been reported at scattered locations throughout Trans-Pecos Texas.  The few populations I am aware of are all small and sharply defined. A site may contain its entire population within a zone that is no more than 30 feet by 200 feet.

Some of the occurrences in the TransPecos have been the results of deliberate plantings by indigenous people including one planting that was done in volcanic ash rather than limestone. Interestingly the mineral content and pH was not too far off from a limestone soil and what few plants survived have managed to produce a few successful seedlings. A collector gathering a couple of dozen plants would entirely wipe out the entire tiny population. Around half of the known plants at that site were in fact lost when someone collected them within just the last several years.

Plants have been claimed from as far north as New Mexico, south of Capitan Mountain, but this commonly experiences the lowermost limits of their winter temperature tolerance so it is doubtful that any populations exist in either New Mexico or in the northern part of Trans-Pecos Texas. In the US, Weston LaBarre considers Deming, New Mexico to be its northern limit (!?) and Corpus Christi to be its southern limit (!?). Both of which are not realistic to believe. In Texas, peyote has been reported from as far west as Hueco Tanks where those plants, now long gone, were believed to have been planted by indigenous people.
Occurrences have also been claimed in the Davis and Guadalupe Mountains which seem to also have climates that would challenge any of the known populations.

I think (as do a number of others) that climatic changes may have substantially reduced peyote’s natural range from where it once was and that the sporadic northern populations in Trans-Pecos Texas are hardy remnants of this earlier distribution.  It is also probable that postglacial megaflood events shaping the landscape played a role in removing both entire populations of plants and their natural habitat.  Much of that gravel interestingly enough ended up in South Texas creating a home for many of the present day Lophophora populations. One element which is easily overlooked is that not only did west Texas see massive land removal during the post-glacial meltings but prior to that during the last period of glaciation West Texas was relatively mild (certainly not any worse than it has been after the end of glaciation) and had more moisture due to the influence of the ice masses on air currents in North America. (See the youtube video Keeper Trout 2011 Lophophora A genus in Decline and a forthcoming book chapter in Labate & Cavner 2015 Peyote & People, for more details of the above facts and speculations.] 

Some such as Hueco Tanks, extirpated in historical times, and in Big Bend, known to consist of only a very few plants, likely were the hardy survivors of plantings made by the ranging peoples who regularly moved through the area or perhaps by the Jumano who farmed many crops in West Texas and had extensive trade networks with their neighbors — at least prior to the arrival of the Apache. A friend in Midland successfully grows peyote in an unprotected outdoor garden and has seen them covered with snow several times with only small losses.

However, in any population of slow growing plants, even small losses, if recurrent, may completely wipe them out of an area over a period of many years. Stresses like injury from harvest greatly increase the threat of death from cold and wet or prolonged drought.

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Soil and stressed plants in Presidio County


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A closer view of that cold-stressed plant


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Soil in Presidio County

Anderson dismissed ALL of the northernmost reports of occurrence.

It should be emphasized that, like Anderson, Stewart 1987 disputed ALL extensions of distribution beyond those given by Anderson, basing this on his inability to find any demonstrable evidence of peyote’s occurrence in those regions.

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Habitat in Val Verde County

Stewart is largely right (with some exceptions) but he heavily based his opinion on landowner’s responses to questionnaires and interviews with peyoteros. [Note 15]  Field work has shown his conclusion to be premature but understandable. Its easy to imagine many ranchers and landowners could own property all of their life and never have reason or opportunity to see what few and scattered groups of a few plants might be on that land.

It actually is certain that Stewart is largely right but that he is partially wrong if making that as a blanket statement. A feature that probably contributes with the Trans-Pecos populations is what was just noted: they are small in size and widely scattered. This seemingly grows more true as one goes farther north but I do not know the issue has been studied in depth by anyone. It has been the case in the only two northernmost ones I have seen that their entire populations was contained within an area that of only 10-20 meters by 75-150 meters.  One in Val Verde County was at the lower end of that and one in Terrell County was on the upper end of that. The one in Val Verde might not have contained enough plants for more than a single modern peyote meeting. Relatively small areas containing any density of plants seem to be the norm even farther south in West Texas.

Lophophora comingling with lechuguilla and candelilla

habitat in Presidio County

One possible contributing factor to Stewart’s questionaire not producing better results is the simple fact that many landowners would not WANT anyone to know there is peyote on their land even if they knew about it. In that case there would have had no problem not cooperating with Stewart’s inquiries. Choosing to avoid potential problems due to going “on the map” for having a peyote population is a reasonable response. There is no doubt actual wisdom in that as contributing to there being an accurate map of peyote distribution would serve little purpose outside of perhaps enabling more harm to be done to peyote populations.

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Wirikuta. Photo by Hjeran

They are widely distributed throughout the central highlands of northwestern Mexico and extend southward from the border in a broad area across the basin regions between the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Sierra Madre Oriental, extending south until just south of Saltillo where the range is narrowed by mountains.

It then expands again west into part of Zacatecas and eastward into the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, into central Mexico as far south as north of San Luís Potosí. The range is separated from the more southerly high desert L. diffusa by rugged mountains.

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Lophophora williamsii habitat at Wirikuta. Photo by Hjeran

LaBarre describes its range in Mexico as being defined by the Tamaulipecan Mountains in the east, “the watershed of the affluents of the right bank of the Rio Grande de Santiago and the Rio de Mezquital” in the south and “the foothills of the Sierra Madre, the Sierra de Durango and the Sierra del Nayarit” in the west.

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soil at Wirikuta. Photo by Hjeran

In Mexico, scattered populations have been found in Aguas Calientes (proposed to have been established through wildcrafting by the Aztecs), Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Hildago, Jalisco, Nuévo Léon, Querétaro (according to some; this is likely mistaken), San Luis Potosí, Sonora (according to Rouhier), Tamaulipas and northeastern Zacatecas. Possibly the most famous area is in the Real del Catorce, below the once thriving silver mining town of Catorce. Another reknown ancient collection site is the Cerro de Peotillos near San Luis Potosí.

Bohata et al. 2005: “Typically, the centre of distribution is the place of greatest plant density for the species. This centre for L. williamsii is in the northern part of the state of San Luís Potosí, the south-western part of Nuevo León, and the south-eastern part of Coahuila.”

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soil at Wirikuta. Photo by Hjeran

[Anonymous 1959, on page 22, includes Sonora. They cite as their source, Rouhier 1926 who they state drew his information from a pamphlet published in 1913 by the Instituto Médico Nacional de México. This is an implausible location but suggests a possibility of confusion with some other plant held sacred by local people?]

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Lophophora williamsii at Wirikuta. Photo by Hjeran

While populations have been decimated in many areas of Mexico from habitat loss or harvests [for ornamental purposes [Note 16], sacramental use, mescaline manufacture and also for mass destruction in petroleum distillate soaked burnings as a perceived evil threat against the Christian faith], there are still many remote and rugged areas in Mexico. These generally have poor, and often no, road access and should hold good reservoirs to ensure peyote’s survival as a species regardless of the pressures which humans have placed upon it. In my thought, the survival of the species is more important than anyone’s access to it.

The best treatment of the subject I have yet seen in print and one I would recommend reading is the Bohata et al 2005 Kaktusy Special Lophophora issue.
The above was written primarily long before its publication and would no doubt never have been written had it appeared a few years earlier. It incorporates a really impressive view of the genus Lophophora in its home.

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Lophophora williamsii habitat amidst Larrea at Wirikuta. Photo by Hjeran

 

Distribution and occurrence comments were adapted from:

Anderson 1980 & 1995

Benson 1982: 683

Morgan 1983

LaBarre 1989

Lamb & Lamb 1974

Schultes 1937a

Schultes & Hofmann 1980

Personal observations and discussions with peyote collectors.

See also:

Morgan & Stewart 1984 for a fascinating history of peyote harvesting in Texas.

 

archaic peyote, some beans & a rock

Archaic points of potential interest

See page 194 in Schultes & Hofmann 1980 concerning the claims of Adavasio & Fry 1976 related to archeological finds of peyote in rock shelters and caves in the Cuatro Cienegas Basin in Coahuila, Mexico. 
This is a fascinating article that is often mentioned in conjunction with their proposal that, over the millennia, sacramental plants were progressively replaced by safer ones. While it is a tantalizing notion to entertain, it needs to be understood that Adavasio & Fry did not include adequate evidence to support either of their assertions; a) that the use of Ungnadia preceeded that of Sophora and b) both were eventually replaced with Lophophora.
Three points need to be made:

First, any evidence presented for the sacramental use of the Mexican Buckeye (Ungnadia speciosa Endl.) is circumstantial at best, being primarily based on its form of packaging being similar to that of the Texas mountain-laurel (Sophora secundiflora (Ort.) Lag. ex SD), their occasional co-mingling, and was bolstered with only one lonely second-hand detailless reference suggesting it to be a euphoric plant. There does not appear to be any accounts of or archaeological evidence for it actually being used for human ingestion ceremonially. And there are no other comments from anywhere else, before or after, that this toxic material has ever been used by anyone as a euphoriant. This is not a small point to overlook since people reading such accounts often include reckless bioassayists.

Ungnadia speciosa leaves

Ungnadia speciosa leaves

Ungnadia speciosa flowers

Ungnadia speciosa flowers

archaic: Ungnadia speciosa seeds

Ungnadia speciosa seeds (seed pods are the ‘featured image’)

Second, Sophora itself is not known to have ever actually been used as a sacramental hallucinogen per se. It was employed in a highly dangerous form of a vision quest to gain animal spirits as guardians, protectors or familiars. Granted, it was incorporated into the peyote drink as prepared by several tribes and it is reasonable to assume that to be an ancient practice. It has been closely associated physically with peyote rites, strung as beads, as well as reported to have been used medicinally, ritually and as a “narcotic” (a word that has been so misapplied, misconstrued and misused anthropologically as to have little, if any, reliably discernible meaning).

Note: The Texas Mountain Laurel AKA Sophora secundiflora saw a nomenclatural revision to Dermatophyllum secundiflora. We are preserving the older name to enable search engines and indexing services to function effectively.  Loss of search engine access to a large portion of the existing published literature is an underappreciated side-effect resulting from the sweeping revisions which are ongoing based on new molecular work.

Sophora secundiflora flowers

Sophora secundiflora

Sophora secundiflora leaves

Sophora secundiflora

I do not dismiss Sophora‘s sacred stature, nor would I want to dispute its long association with the peyote ritual but it is important to keep in mind that its use (or effectiveness) as a hallucinogen has never been adequately demonstrated. It certainly is not supported by any of the published human bioassays involving either the plant or its pure alkaloids. 
Descriptions of its effects were given years ago, in an upper division University of Texas at Austin anthropology class taught by Dr. William W. Newcomb (ANT 322M: “Indians of Texas”). Newcomb presented the stage of interaction with animal spirits to occur while the subject was in a deep coma-like stupor. Their successful entry into this state was said to demonstrated to onlookers by their unresponsiveness to a toothy gar-fish jaw being raked across their flesh. After intense headache, profuse vomiting and violent convulsions, a “coma” ensued that was said to last for several days. [That commentary is not included in his book Indians of Texas but rather was taken directly from my class notes.]

Sophora secundiflora seeds

Sophora secundiflora

Dr. Newcomb clearly presented it as being used ritually but not as a ritual sacrament or hallucinogen in the sense of peyote.
[See Schultes & Hofmann 1980 & 1992 for a broader discussion and also Hatfield et al. 1977 for chemical study and a discussion of the reports of ethnological use. LaBarre 1975 also includes a fascinating discussion.]
Ott 1993 mentions that despite claims by a number of people that the use of the ‘Red bean’ was the predecessor to and replaced by that of peyote, this was thoroughly challenged in a monograph by Merrill 1977.
I only know one person, requesting anonymity, who incredibly decided to see what ingestion of Sophora seeds would do for them. Their comment is noteworthy: “The red beans just made me puke and not much else“. I have never ingested the seeds but have smoked dried Genista canariensis (canary island broom) leaves which are reported to contain the same toxic alkaloid cytisine. It was a pleasant-tasting smoke and had an action that felt very similar to nicotine although it was not as pleasant. I am a former tobacco-smoker and want to remain one so I have no further desire to experiment with this alkaloid.
I have had some very curious interactions with this plant; none of which involved its ingestion. It is definitely able to interact with people, and to a surprising degree to direct and influence their behavior to gather its seeds. I also believe it to be a sentient being based on my experiences with it as a living plant. It is not surprising that it was highly venerated by any people who knew it. It is also not surprising that they would gather its seeds in large numbers and store them in a special context. I’ve noticed that this still occurs although I am guessing modern containers of beans are maintained entirely for their decorative value.

Finally, my main objection to the conclusions of Adavasio & Fry is concerning peyote as they only selectively mention one solitary occurrence of the plant found by an earlier worker [Note 30]. 
It is very peculiar to attempt the support of such important conclusions with a single data point. Perhaps they also encountered additional examples but did not mention the details in this article. It is a puzzling omission considering their core assertion was one of safer plants being sequentially adopted.
Campbell 1958 had flatly asserted that it was not possible to demonstrate the priority of mescal beans over peyote based on the available evidence so something more is required to be able to accept the claims of Adavasio & Fry.

It might also be added that there is a lack of evidence suggesting any continuity of culture in which a sequential series of sacramental replacements *could* occur but this seems trivial by comparison to the three points brought up above.

No futher evidence was presented by Adavasio & Fry.
Disturbingly, the only find of peyote mentioned by Advasio & Fry in the same context as Sophora and Ungnadia was that of ONE string of dried peyote buttons dating from several millennia after peyote is known archeologically to have been employed by humans. 
[See also the comments in Boyd & Dering 1996 concerning Ungnadia.]

The omission by Adovasio & Fry of any reference to additional known archaeological material is puzzling but it is far from being the only instance of cherry-picking that one can encounter in this area.  
Schultes & Hofmann 1992 commented that peyote has been thought to have been in use for at least 4000 years. Dry cave and rock shelter finds in Texas are also said to have yielded dried samples of peyote that were three thousand years old and one find was purportedly dated to 7000 years.  Those refer to specimens in the Witte Museum that have been claimed to be of that immense age (more on this in a moment.)
Oddly, until recently the entirety of the radiocarbon dating surrounding peyote has almost been characterized by missing information. 
Let’s take a look at what is known concerning ancient peyote dating.
There are five reports where peyote was mentioned as being recovered from archaeological sites but material for only two of these can be located within the known collections. (See Terry et al. 2006 for details and references.) 
One of these was from Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila, Mexico. This is a burial site from the transition between the Late Archaic and the Late Prehistoric Periods.
The account of Bruhn et al. 1978 gave its age based on Thompson’s dating of a mat thought to be associated with that single set of 8 strung and remarkably well preserved peyote buttons (which interestingly had all been harvested in alignment with modern best-known harvesting practices of carefully taking only the green crown). Three mats had been dated with a range of 810-1070 AD (uncorrected values). 
Due to the burial being a secondary interment, Martin Terry dated one of the actual Cuatro Ciénegas’ peyote specimens establishing its age as 835 ± 35 14C years BP.
Shumla Cave (No. 5, 41VV113) in southwest Texas on the other hand was an inhabited residential site (with intrusion of several burials.) The peyote was believed to have been deposited in the Eagle Nest subperiod of the Middle Archaic Period.
The exact provenience of the materials removed from the caves was not recorded but it is clear that they did mention recovering “a single mummified example” from Shumla Cave No. 5. This later became mistakenly presented as “petrified”. There was clearly more than one such artifact recovered from those excavations as three remained at the Witte for the removal of samples following the consumption of several others for earlier radiocarbon analysis. Terry et al. 2006 also reported their dating of the Shumla Caves’ peyote to 5195 ± 20 14C years BP.

 

Summary of earlier dating accounts:

Peter Furst was the first to report a date of 7000 BP for the Shumla cave material but due to several reasons the actual test data is said to be either lost or irretrievable. It is therefore not possible to know anything further about the work or the claim. That claim oddly only appeared as a passing mention within a book review written by Furst. His date was repeated by Schultes & Hofmann and now appears stated as a fact throughout the literature.
Bruhn et al. 2002 presented a letter to the editor of Lancet in which they asserted establishing peyote use for 5700 years after dating the Shumla material (Furst’s 7000 BP). They repeated the claims in DeSmet  & Bruhn 2003 citing Bruhn et al.  2002 as their primary reference.
El-Seedi et al. 2005 reported dating the Shumla Caves’ material to 3780-3660 BC.
Jan Bruhn  (in a personal communication with Martin Terry) reported this was a weighted mean of 4952 ± 44 14C years.
Further investigation by Terry suggests that the discrepancy was most likely due to a failure of Bruhn to remove residual humic acid prior to radiocarbon dating. (See Terry et al. 2006)

Before leaving the subject of Sophora and Ungnadia completely, one point which must be considered is that world wide people have often venerated plants known to be deadly or exceedingly dangerous, with no intentions of using them for ingestion unless perhaps for the purpose of inducing death, or sometimes when ascertaining the guilt or innocence of a person by ordeal poisoning.
Many other ritual purposes besides hallucinogen use exist for plants. As the authors point out, the quantities found far exceed what would be needed for ingestion purposes. [Issue might be taken with their regarding a “crazed” state as being one conducive to, much less equated with, any ritual or sacred act. If anything it reflects a common culture-centric dismissal of what is viewed by that culture as representing a ‘more primitive’ mindset.] 
The most common usage of the red bean is that of ornamentation in the form of beads. The Mexican Buckeye would also make fine beads although none were mentioned as such. 
Apparently the finds of both seeds consisted primarily of small caches of them, sometimes mixed together, which were sealed in plaited or twilled baskets which had to be torn to access the contents. Both seeds also make a very nice sound, with good high frequency components, when shook or stirred. In quantity; the sound is absolutely mesmerizing. Such containers might have been musical instruments?
In some sites, Sophora seeds and pods were found scattered throughout the cultural deposits. 

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Sophora secundiflora seedpods

Those twilled containers could also represent power objects used just as they were. We know between almost nothing and nothing about these people’s religious and spiritual beliefs. Some people who later used the beans believed they needed to be roasted until yellow, or forcefully struck and crushed, to ‘kill’ them before use. Since the seeds recovered in those finds were apparently being stored intact perhaps they were intended to assure protection after death, or at least to be available after death.
It may be noteworthy however that in the Murrah Cave many of the individual Sophora seeds were described by Holden 1937 as being “parched”; perhaps indicating preparation for potential drug use. Alkaloids can sometimes be altered using heat so parching can be reasonably suspected to indicate preparation for some type of human use.
It is not clear how many of these finds were in funerary context as was the case for the string of peyote and how many were found in residences (suggesting their employment by living people). The context can be complex as it is clear that burials occurred that intruded into older residential remains.
Their hypothesis is intriguing though; further work should be done to evaluate it even if it turns out to be a blind path. 
A systematic review of the contents of rock shelter and cave excavations in the Chihuahuan Desert might prove a valuable avenue for anthropological studies of the religious and spiritual beliefs of people in this area before the invasion and occupation. The creation of small painted rocks and large pictoglyphs featuring shamanic themes are among the unique elements left by the archaic people who once lived around the mouth of the Pecos River.

 

A fascinating analysis was performed, by Bruhn & workers, on the aforementioned specimen of Cuatro Ciénegas peyote (the string of buttons) which was found by Taylor in 1941. 
Bruhn et al. 1978 found 2.25% alkaloid in the Cuatro Ciénegas’ material in spite of it being thought to be from around 810 to 1070 AD. Their analysis was reported to show it to contain mescaline, lophophorine, anhalonine, pellotine and anhalonidine present in measurable amounts.
Phenolic alkaloids formed 35% of the total. It was noted that this is substantially lower than the 8% total alkaloid and 64% phenolic fraction which they observed in recently prepared peyote buttons.
They used tlc and GC (both with known reference samples) to determine this.   See Bruhn et al. 1978 for more details.
A peculiar assessment was more recently presented by Bruhn et al. 2002, also DeSmet & Bruhn 2003 and also El-Seedi et al. 2005 where it was being noted that the total alkaloid content was lower in the far older Witte material from the Shumla Caves. They then went on to assert that while only 2% alkaloid was present there was no alkaloid other than mescaline that was detectable. That was intriguing enough but was not the end.

Bruhn then made the peculiar proposal that the reason they could only detect mescaline could be due to mescaline being more stable than the other peyote alkaloids. Reasonable enough on the surface yet it is noteworthy that in this that Bruhn failed to mention or consider any of his own previous work which contradicts this claim. Clearly something is in need of closer inspection. This claim about the Shumla specimens needs consideration in the light of his 1978 Cuatro Cienegas results. There was also his earlier report concerning degradation of peyote alkaloids in the study of 87 year old peyote buttons published in Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974. In particular, their determination in that paper clearly reported that the mescaline content apparently decreased faster thanhe  trate of decomposition of many of the other alkaloids. The cherry-picked selective presentation of facts within their 2002, 2003 & 2005 accountings appear to have been overlooked by Bruhn’s peer reviewers or at least they dropped the ball in terms of what peer review is meant to accomplish. That is all actually fairly however when trivial compared to what they AND all of Bruhn’s team missed.
The most interesting aspect of this so-called ‘mummified’ material in my mind is that, unlike Bruhn, Furst or Taylor,  Terry & coworkers recognized that the specimens were not dried peyote buttons at all but rather were manufactured effigies of peyote created from some type of doughy material. (See images of both the Shumla and Cuatro Cienegas materials in Terry et al. 2006.)

It seems nothing short of peculiar that all previous workers, despite their apparent familiarity with peyote, somehow failed to recognize that these were human artifacts and not dried plant parts; as they lack all of the anticipated and requisite botanical features that would characterize a dried peyote button.

 

Shumla_Terry_et_al_p1019_fig_3

Shumla peyote effigy

There are only the partial and hollowed out remains of three of these effigies are left due to the destructions of the rest of the materials during chemical analysis and radiocarbon dating. They were formed as a mixture of cactus materials combined with some sort of unidentified fibrous noncactaceous plant material and the resulting dough shaped by hand to vaguely resemble a living peyote cactus top. There was apparently at least two different makers of these artifacts over a period of some years as both their compositions and their dates varied. The most recently manufactured effigy had used entirely cactaceous materials.
More remarkable would be the assertion by Bruhn & coworkers that was just mentioned that this material contained 2% mescaline by weight *and* that only mescaline was detectable. Intriguing if true but in light of Bruhn & Holmsted previously establishing the deterioration of mescaline over time occurred at a faster rate than the deterioration of most of the other alkaloids I am left with far more questions than answers. It is obvious that we need to remain skeptical of Bruhn’s  claim, no matter how intriguing it may be, as we proceed.
One thing that is clear, these ‘buttons’ were clearly manufactured artifacts. To be able to retain 2% mescaline after 5 millennia would require it to have once have had a far higher alkaloid content. The presence of ONLY mescaline would not be a result of some magical selective degradation process omitting mescaline but would absolutely require the involvement of some type of purification process. Or perhaps there are missing elements of this tantalizing puzzle that are presently defeating our understanding of exactly what has been established in these studies. 
Did these prehistoric people really know of a route for purifying or at least greatly concentrating mescaline?  It would certainly be interesting if true but establishing that Bruhn’s analytical results were actually valid has to be the starting point for answering this peculiar question and the burden of proof for establishing their validity is on the authors of that work. 
Were these potent effigies a prepared drug form that were created for sacramental use rather than for simple use as effigies? No matter how they were prepared and no matter what their alkaloid content, they are clearly both deliberate and sophisticated in their preparation.
Are Bruhn/El-Seedi/DeSmet’s reported analytical results simply needing to be questioned? 

 

“Petrified” peyote buttons

The first reference to ‘petrified peyote’ was a misnomer in reference to the Shumla Caves’ adulterated & reconstituted 5 millennia old peyote effigies that were mentioned above. (See Terry et al. 2006 for details.)

More recently ‘petrified peyote buttons’ have been offered for sale (and finding at least one buyer) at a large southwestern Gem & Mineral Show and probably elsewhere.

 

petrified-peyote-front

Sold as petrified peyote button (front)

petrified-peyote-back

Sold as a petrified peyote button (back)

These do appear on first glance to vaguely resemble dried peyote buttons but are without a doubt either an agate or another form of chalcedony with a fine drusy quartz coating on one side. They lack the critical features (such as ribs, the distinctive apex and areoles) that are typically found in peyote buttons (see below).

Schultes 1937 peyote buttons

peyote buttons

  The purported “petrified peyote” are amazing natural treasures but clearly are not of botanical origin.

Lophophora williamsii analysis

Analysis reported for Lophophora williamsii

An interesting objection to peyote cultivation has been raised based on the assertion that peyote in cultivation may not express all of the alkaloids reported from wild plants. Something which was missed in this claim is that the minority of peyote alkaloids have been reported from wild peyote and the majority, including all of the known trace alkaloids, were found using elaborate gc-ms trapping experiments and other approaches intended to capture short-lived intermediates and trace alkaloids. All of those studies used peyote plants which had been grown from seed and cultivated in greenhouses, primarily in northern Europe. rather than wild harvested plants. 

Mescaline content of Peyote

As is true for the alkaloid level of any plant, the mescaline content of peyote exists as a range that is influenced by at least several factors. The following simply summarizes the literature. Only some type of actual analysis or bioassay can say something accurate concerning a plant in front of a viewer. Literature should be viewed with caution and regarded to be only  guidelines suggesting potential values.

“Arthur Heffter, a German pharmacologist of the nineteenth century estimated that there are about 4.6 to 5.8 grams of mescaline in every kilogram of dried peyote.” (Anderson 1980)
Heffter reported a maximum recovery in his work of 6.3% mescaline, 5.3% anhalonidine, 3% anhalonine, 0.5% lophophorine, 5.3% anhalamine.
Späth later reported having much lower yields working with old material.

Mescaline has been reported from L. williamsii with a min and max value of 0.10% and 6.3%. A range of 0.9-6.0% by dry wt is what is generally given.  [Anonymous 1959, Heffter 1896a, Lundström 1971b, Martin & Alexander 1968, McLaughlin & Paul 1967 & Siniscalco 1983);
Anderson 1980 cited Kelsey 1959 (0.9%), Bergman 1971 (1.5%), Fischer 1958 (3%), Heffter 1896a (4.6-5.6 %[-6.3%])

Crosby & McLaughlin 1973 commented that mescaline content in dried peyote can reach 6% but rarely exceeds 1% in dried whole plant.

6% appears in Anderson, Kapadia & Fayez, Lundström 1971b, Martin & Alexander 1968, and Reti 1950. These are all second-hand accounts of that 6% value; referring to its publication by Heffter.

0.1% dry wt is the lowest value in the literature; reported in Siniscalco Gigliano 1983.

  Ott 1993 estimated 2.4-2.7% mescaline by dry weight (~400 mg. per 16 grams of dried cactus) citing Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974 and Lundström 1971b. 

Friends with extraction experience found fresh plants to average 0.2% mescaline from fresh plants and 1-2% from dried material. This refers to peyote originating from South Texas during the mid-1970s. This work was always done under fairly primitive and inefficient conditions. 2% is usually cited as an estimate in counterculture drug manufacturing literature. (50 grams of dried peyote per gram of mescaline recovered.).

Recently, a meme of “1% max” has been circulating; perhaps reflecting the current decrease in the average age and size of harvested plants due to careless overharvesting and harvest practices?

75-125 mg of HCl was recovered from 70-140 gm plants greenhouse grown in northern Europe. Lundström & Agurell 1971b (This approaches 0.1% by fresh weight; ; 0.1 to 0.2% by fresh weight is a commonly reported range.) [Also in Habermann 1978a & 1978b (from Štarha nd)] 

Mescaline has been reported to comprise around 30% of the total alkaloid content of L. williamsii: Lundström 1971b. 

Container grown plants in Italy were reported to contain 0.255% by fresh weight (2.55 mg/gm fresh was an average value derived from two specimens; estimated using HPLC). They also reported an average of 1.75% by dry weight. (Ed.: Note the obvious discrepancy)
Gennaro et al. 1996; 

As L. williamsii var. typica Croizat:
0.709% (± 0.032) dry wt. Habermann 1978a (from Štarha 1997)

Variations across range:

Starr Co.: 2.77%;
Jim Hogg Co: 3.2%;
Val Verde Co: 3.5%;
Presidio Co: 3.52%.
(Averaged % by dry weight:  Used batched samples.
Hulsey et al. 2011.

Regrowth:

3.80% mature crowns,
2.01% small regrowth crowns (4 year after the prior harvest).
(Jim Hogg Co. Averaged % was by dry weight: – Used batched samples.)
Kalam et al. 2012 & 2013.

Batched samples were used to deliberately create an average value and lessen the possible contribution from potential high or low outliers. Comparison of Hulsey with Klein’s paper shows the wisdom in choosing that approach even if it does deprive us of an understanding of the max/min values.  The ideal approach is a screening using batched plants followed by a more detailed look at a set of the individuals.
One peer reviewer suggested that batching in Kalam invalidated their results, which if true would invalidate the results of almost all published analytical work appearing in the history of phytochemistry.

Almost all workers analyze multiple individuals to minimize the influence of potential outliers, the only actual difference between the acceptable approach of those workers (including in the same journal) and what was complained about with Hulsey or Kalam is the earlier workers did not REFER to their batched samples as being a batched sample.

 

Distribution in the peyote plant

Janot claimed to have established that alkaloids were largely produced in the peripheral green parenchyma of the crown. As this was during the 1930s the identification would have been established using microchemical methods. 

Todd 1969 found mescaline in the tops to be substantially greater than in the roots (using co-TLC).  (See Note B) 

Anonymous 1959, citing Rouhier 1927 “Le Peyotl”, gives the following percentages of alkaloid content in different parts of the cactus (% by dry weight unless otherwise stated):
Upper slices dried 3.70%
Lower slices dried 3.43%
[The above refers to the practice sometimes employed of horizontally sectioning the top of the cactus into two parts prior to drying.]

Peyote head dried 3.14%

Fresh peyote head 0.41%
Roots dried 0.73%
Fresh roots 0.244%
Rouhier’s roots would have included both the subterranean stem and the roots.

A closer look using 13 individual plants divided into three parts (crown, stem & root) that were then each analyzed separately:
1.82-5.50% in crown tissue,
0.125-0.376% in subterranean stem tissue,
0.0147-0.0520% in root tissue.
(Starr Co.; Analyzed individually. All % by dry wt.)
Klein et al. 2013 & 2015.
Notice that there is an order of magnitude decrease from crown to stem and again from stem to root? 

 

Growth conditions

Siniscalco Gigliano 1983 reported his isolation of mescaline as:
0.10% from well irrigated plants,
0.93% from his grafted plants, and
up to 2.74% dry weight after 6 months of dry conditions.
All from peyote plants being cultivated in Italy.

Dried plant is said to have 3% Roland Fischer but Fischer claimed that only if chewed well or ground finely can this be extracted. He presented a study as indicating that less than one percent is obtained by chewing and swallowing. While finely grinding or chewing well is important for obtaining the best possible absorption (especially if using dry material) it must be pointed out that Fischer’s reasoning had some problems.
Fischer was able to get 3% mescaline from dried peyote by grinding it to a powder before beginning his extraction procedure. He found that if this dry grinding was omitted and the buttons rehydrated by soaking in water for two hours and then ground before extraction he could only recover 1%. 
He went on to conclude “The only safe conclusion would be that the chewing of peyote and the swallowing as a bolus are certainly less thorough extraction procedures than our “wet grinding” procedure which recovers only about 1% of mescaline.”There several major flaws in Fischer’s reasoning and procedure, in so far as applying it comparatively to humans. 
The more trivial of the two concerns Fischer basifying the buttons after soaking in water and then grinding, filtering, washing and adjusting the pH to 3.4 to 4. 
In the stomach the chewed buttons are repeatedly macerated and massaged by peristaltic contractions in a dilute but fairly strong solution of hydrochloric acid (normally pH 1.5 to 2.5) which converts the rather poorly soluble mescaline base into the exceedingly water soluble mescaline hydrochloride. This means that the acidity used in human in vivo extraction is several orders of magnitude greater than that used by Fischer. (The effects of the digestive enzymes in the stomach do not contribute much as they consist primarily of pepsin which is specific for proteins.)
A more significant point was Fischer’s choice of base. When recovering 3%, he had used sodium hydroxide to bring it to pH 8.6, which is nearing the lower limit for good mescaline extraction as the free base. (97% at pH 8.6 according to Woods et al. 1951; 100% extraction is said to occur at pH 9 or above.). When he recovered 1%, for some reason he had decided to use sodium carbonate instead. This base is a good choice for many alkaloids. (It would have been acceptable if, for example, he was isolating DMT.) His bringing the pH to 8.8 might have enhanced his yield a trivial amount but mescaline has a tendency to form an insoluble carbonate, whether the carbonate source is in air or solution. This may have decreased his yield. [This may also have caused Reti some loss with Trichocereus terscheckii as well. This is just a hunch as rigorous evaluation has not been conducted. I should add that the presence of CO2 is also said to be critical for crystallization of mescaline to occur; according to LaBarre 1989.]
Although in agreement with the idea that chewing well or fine grinding is important to the best absorption, any direct comparisons of his findings to human rates of internal utilization need questioning.
While direct measurements of internal absorbence may not be possible, it would be feasible to administer known dosages of mescaline and subjectively compare them with known amounts of mescaline in cactus material. If a series of such bioassays were performed using experienced users a rough estimation could be determined which would be at least as accurate as Fisher’s extrapolation. It may also be possible to determine the percent of absorbence by monitoring the initial rise in blood levels during the early stages. This also would require the use of pure mescaline to establish a baseline. It also would require repeated evaluations using both different and the same individuals to be certain that biochemical individuality did not affect the results.

There are two additional accounts in the literature that are important to be aware of:

Sasaki et al 2009 and Aragane et al. 2011 published details from an interesting study of Lophophora demonstrating that genetic and chemical differences exist between L. williamsii and L. diffusa.

They additionally included three specimens of L. fricii but apparently renamed it based on what they found in publications by Edward Anderson, by Yoshio Ito & by H. Hirao. Aragane presented it to be a nonmescaline variant of L. williamsii. Earlier, Sasaki had said they had reidentified it as L. williamsii var. decipiens.
It is clear without any doubt that those three specimens were Lophophora fricii

Aragane noted them to differ from their Lophophora williamsii
1) by the word grey appearing only in the descriptions of their body color and not in those of any of their L. williamsii,
2) bearing large protuberences on the epidermis rather than small ones,
3) 2 of the 3 were noted to have a darker pink flower,
4) The primer sets were different from all of their L. williamsii (and closer to what was noted for diffusa),
5) They were purchased identified as Ginkangyoku (which is the Japanese trade name for L. fricii).

I’ll quote from those two papers as their contained comments provide more than adequate support for my line of reasoning:

We identified the materials according to Anderson’s morphological classification.” Sasaki et al 2009.
The pertinent point being that Anderson recognized both Habermann’s Lophophora fricii (and wild plants he had encountered of Lophophora koehresii) to be L. williamsii. His view that only two species exist (L. diffusa and L. williamsii) is the basis for Aragane & Sasaki’s name assignment.

Although the presence or absence of mescaline can easily be checked by chromatography, it is difficult to identify the species because not all L. williamsii contain mescaline. Chemotaxonomic identification of L. williamsii seems insufficient. DNA sequences of chloroplast trnL intron region in Lophophora plants were revealed to be beneficial for identification and showed a good correlation with mescaline content.” Sasaki et al. 2009.  

These samples were identified as L. williamsii in this study but were identified as L. williamsii var. decipiens in the literature.” [citing two illustrated cactus books by Y. Ito and by H. Hirao) Sasaki et al. 2009

Interestingly, although Lo-14, Lo-15, and Lo-16 were identified as L. williamsii in this study, these three samples were also identified as L. williamsii var. decipiens in previous literature. 16,18
Sequence alignments in the trnL intron region of those three samples were different from those of Lo-2 to Lo-11. Moreover, another study of ours revealed that Lo-14, Lo-15, and Lo-16 contained no mescaline (Table 1). Using this method, we can distinguish mescaline-containing Lophophora plants from mescaline-free ones if the reaction is stopped at 65 min.”
Sasaki et al. 2009 (Lo-14, Lo-15, and Lo-16 were their Lophophora fricii specimens. Lo-2 through Lo-11 were all L. williamsii.)

morphology of Lo-14 to 16 was similar to that of L. diffusa (Lo-17 to 20).” Aragane et al. 2011

It was reported that L. williamsii contained mescaline, but that L. diffusa did not [15, 16]; however, it was unknown whether that L. williamsii was within the wide classification that included L. fricii. In this study, we clarified for the first time that there are two groups of L. williamsii, one with mescaline (group 1) and the other without it (group 2), and that L. diffusa contained no mescaline.” Aragane et al. 2011

It is fascinating that they did not grasp that they had just produced might could be considered to be adequate proof that L. fricii merited recognition as a species separate from L. williamsii rather than being considered to be a nonmescaline form of L. williamsii.

Aragane et al. 2011 reported mescaline concentrations in their Japanese horticultural specimens to range from 1.27-4.83%. (The concentrations reported for those 13 averages to 3.2%.) This is a range AND an average value that is quite comparable to what has been reported from wild plants. 

Their presented sources produced some questions. In Sasaki et al. 2009 their plants were said to have been obtained from the “Medicinal Plant Garden, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health“. In Aragane et al. 2011, most were listed as having been acquired through the “Internet” with all of the remainder coming from “Market (Mie Pref.)“.
Whether Aragane’s comments on dates and sources referred to the origin for the plants that Sasaki listed as being from the “Medicinal Plant Garden, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health” or if Aragane’s comments were intended as a correction to Sasaki is not made clear.

These are the results from Aragane et al. 2011 concerning their specimens that were actually Lophophora williamsii:

#MescalineNameDateSource
Lo-13.72%Ubatama4-2005Internet
Lo-24.83%Ubatama4-2005Internet
Lo-32.22%Ubatama1-2005Market (Mie Pref.)
Lo-44.27%Ubatama1-2005Market (Mie Pref.)
Lo-53.85%Ubatama1-2005Market (Mie Pref.)
Lo-62.62%Ubatama4-2005Internet
Lo-73.82%Ubatama4-2005Internet
Lo-82.46%Ubatama4-2005Internet
Lo-92.94%Ubatama4-2005Internet
Lo-103.07%Ubatama4-2005Internet
Lo-113.54%Ougataubatama4-2005Internet
Lo-122.5%Kofukiubatama3-2005Internet
Lo-131.27%Ougataubatama4-2005Internet

Alkaloid content of Peyote:

Of the total alkaloid content:
30% is present as mescaline; 17% as pellotine.
Schultes & Hofmann 1980: 221.

Total alkaloid reported:
8.41% in dried “buttons”; 
0.47% in fresh whole plants;
0.2% in fresh roots
0.93% in fresh tops. 
Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974.
See more farther below.

Lewin was the first to isolate an alkaloid from peyote but it turned out to be both inactive entheogenically and a mixture of several alkaloids.

Heffter isolated 3 alkaloids from Lophophora williamsii and published his results and pharmacology in 1898. He named the active compound mescaline; determining it to be the active alkaloid by personal bioassays. [Heffter 1898a] Heffter named the other two alkaloids Anhalonidine and Lophophorine.

In 1976, 50 alkaloids had been observed;
(29 as substituted phenethylamines and 23 as tetrahydroisoquinolines): 
Shulgin 1976 cited Kapadia & Fayez 1973

A total of 35 isoquinolines had been reported prior to 1986, according to Menachery et al. 1986.
The number of compounds now mentioned in the chemical literature as actually being detected in the plant is 72. Of which some are questionable inclusions, some are clearly errors and a number alkaloids still need a second-party confirmation by someone. At the moment the presence of 63 alkaloids has been established.
No doubt new trace alkaloids in peyote will continue to be found in the future so long as people devise more sophisticated techniques and/or continue to look for them.
It should be pointed out that any and all recent finds of alkaloids have been in trace quantities. Most have been identified using elaborate ‘trapping’ techniques for identifying short-lived biosynthetic precursors. Which also means it is a bit of a stretch to consider those components in the alkaloid fraction since normal extraction processes will not be able to recover them.
Any alkaloids discovered in the future will similarly be of purely biochemical interest rather than pharmacological contributors to the action of peyote.

In an incredible move suggested more than a small level of ignorance (and, at best, a serious lack of factual information), in 1997 Congress made law a provision declaring every alkaloid contained in peyote to be a Schedule One controlled substance.
Since several of these are normal components of human body fluids (including blood, CSF and urine) and many are present in a wide variety of plants, what this actually means remains to be seen.
It is more than a bit disconcerting that there are now AT LEAST a handful of normally present endogenous substances that are presently considered Schedule 1 (potentially as many as 9 different compounds); placing every human on the planet in measurable and perennial violation of US federal law.

According to Anderson 1980, Todd found little variation in the alkaloid concentration between roots and tops of plants except for hordenine which he found to be present only in the roots. This is misleading as stated.
Todd 1969 analyzed two populations of Lophophora williamsii (and also L. diffusa from Querétaro) collected during June, [a time considered to be poor for mescaline and good for isoquinoline effects.] His collections were made by Anderson near Monclova, Coahuila and El Huizache, San Luis Potosí.
Todd found lophophorine to be present at higher concentrations than mescaline in the plants collected from both locations. [It has been noted by other workers that N-Methylated compounds, such as Lophophorine, are higher during summer than winter. See below.]
Anhalamine and anhalonidine were present at nearly the same concentration as mescaline in plants collected in Coahuila and at the same concentration as mescaline in plants collected from San Luis Potosí.
Anhalonine and anhalinine were present at about half the concentration of mescaline in both populations.
While pellotine in the tops was present at lower concentrations than mescaline in the Coahuilan population, it was present at roughly equal concentrations to mescaline in the San Luis Potosí population.
Mescaline concentrations were found to be substantially higher in the population collected from Coahuila.
The difference in mescaline concentration between the roots and tops was found to be far greater in plants from San Luis Potosí than Coahuila. The mescaline concentration in the roots of Coahuilan plants was equal to the concentration of mescaline in the tops of the San Luis Potosí originating plants. Only traces of mescaline were observed in the roots of the San Luis Potosí originating plants (the Texas ‘Peyote Gardens’ population is believed to be similar).
Pellotine was found to be equally distributed between roots and tops in both populations but was present in higher amounts in the San Luis Potosí population.
Anhalamine, anhalonidine, and anhalonine were found to be equally distributed between roots and tops and were present in similar concentration in both populations.
Anhalinine and lophophorine were found to be equally distributed between tops and roots in the population at San Luis Potosí and less concentrated in the roots of those from Coahuila. Concentration in the tops of both populations were the same.
I suspect that it was the collection during June that caused the marked differences between his results and those of other investigators. A similar examination should be made using collections taken at two month intervals during December through mid-May, the usual time of indigenous people’s collection for use. The isoquinoline content proportional to mescaline, as reported by Todd, is far higher than is normally mentioned in the literature. [All of Todd’s concentrations were estimated by co-tlc with known amounts.]
The Coahuilan population is considered to be a stronger variety or even a separate species by some. Chemically there may be justification for this [Note 21] and it should be targeted for propagation. Plants originating from the Texas “peyote gardens” are believed to be similar to the San Luis Potosí population.
Todd’s descriptions do not allow comparison with the published descriptive differences between var. williamsii and var. echinata.
Lundström 1971b reported that the N-methylated alkaloids (such as Lophophorine) were highest during summer in greenhouse maintained plants. N-Demethylated compounds were found to be higher in fall and winter than N-methylated derivatives.
This corresponds well to Peyote using peoples traditionally gathering plants from November through April or mid-May (actual period of harvest varying from group to group but largly falling within this time frame with thre being at least one group of Huichols harvesting in October) and also with subjective observations that December through early March are the times for the best psychological effects and the least somatic distress. I believe that January and February are the most ideal months of the year.

Siniscalco 1983 reported that keeping cultivated peyote plants under arid conditions for 6 months substantially increased their mescaline content. Their corresponding reported values differed as 0.1% compared to 2.74% by dry wt. That is a 27.4X difference which is highly significant as taking a plant from fresh to total dryness only increases the concentration ~10X.

In whole fresh plants of L. williamsii, a total alkaloid content of 0.47% was found. (Of this 60% was present as phenolic alkaloids and 40% as nonphenolic alkaloids.)
The fresh roots had a total alkaloid content of 0.20% (67% phenolic/ 33% nonphenolic). The fresh tops had a total alkaloid content of 0.93% (58% phenolic / 42% nonphenolic)
Plants were harvested in ?? (they mentioned that L. diffusa was harvested in June).
[They added that Lundström 1971b found 0.4% total alkaloids in whole plants of which 57.5% was phenolic and 42.5% was nonphenolic alkaloids.]

 

Analysis of old materials

Dried peyote buttons, freshly prepared, had a total alkaloid content of 8.41% (64% phenolic versus 36% nonphenolic).
87 year old peyote buttons (sent to Watson by Rusby in 1887) had an alkaloid content of 8.86% (65% phenolic and 35% nonphenolic).
The mescaline content of the 87 year old buttons was much less than the new ones but they did not have enough variables to account for the difference. Only minor differences were observed with regards to most of the other alkaloids. Anhalinine was also markedly lower in the old material. Hordenine and 3-Hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine were almost completely lacking from the old material. The latter of these had been noted earlier by both Späth 1922 and Agurell & Lundström 1968 as being rather unstable.
Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974

Percentages of alkaloids reported in peyote:

Ott 1993 gave a nice summary; citing Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974 and Lundström 1971b:
8% Total alkaloids in dried peyote buttons, of which:
30% is mescaline (= 2.4-2.7%) (~400 mg. per 16 grams of dried cactus)
17% is pellotine (peyotline) (= 1.4-1.5%)
14% anhalonidine (= 1.2-1.3%)
8% anhalamine (= 0.6-0.7%)
8% hordenine (= 0.6-0.7%)
5% lophophorine (= 0.4%)

Alkaloid percentages according to Kapadia & Fayez 1973.
References cited are theirs. (All percentages of total alkaloid content are from Lundström 1971)

Mescaline 6% (30% of total alkaloid content.)
 Anonymous 1959

Pellotine (peyotline) 0.74% (17% of total alkaloid content.) 
Heffter 1894b [This may have been from L. diffusa.]

Anhalonidine 5% (14% of total alkaloid content.)
Heffter 1896a

Anhalamine 0.1% (8% of total alkaloid content.)
Heffter 1901
(Späth & Becke 1935b also reported 0.1%.)

Lophophorine 0.5% (5% of total alkaloid content.)
Heffter 1896a

Anhalonine 3% (3% of total alkaloid content.)
Heffter 1896a

Anhalinine 0.01% (0.5% of total alkaloid content.)
Späth & Becke 1935a & 1935b

Anhalidine 0.001% (2% of total alkaloid content.)
Späth & Becke 1935a & 1935b

Hordenine 0.004% (8% of total alkaloid content.)

N-Methyl-4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine (<0.5% of total
alkaloid content.)

N,N-Dimethyl-4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine (0.5-2% of total alkaloid content.)

3-Demethylmescaline (1-5% of total alkaloid content was found in fresh material by Lundström & Agurell 1971)

N,N-Dimethyl-3-demethylmescaline (0.5% of total alkaloid content.)

N-Methylmescaline 0.002% (3% of total alkaloid content.)

O-Methylanhalonidine (<0.5% of total alkaloid content.)

Isopellotine (0.5% of total alkaloid content.)

Peyophorine (0.5% of total alkaloid content.)

Isoanhalidine (trace)

Isoanhalonidine (trace)

Isoanhalamine (trace)

Tyramine (trace)

N-Methyltyramine (trace)

Epinine (trace)

3,4-Dimethoxyphenethylamine (trace)

3,4-Dihydroxy-5-methoxy-phenethylamine (trace)

N-methyl-3-demethylmescaline (trace)

[All others found by other workers were also trace components.]
For more information on isolations and dates see elsewhere here.

 

Lundström 1971b found a total alkaloid content of 0.4% w/w to be present in the fresh buttons and noted that 0.41% had been determined by Rouhier (as cited by Anonymous 1959). 

First pharmacological study of peyote was published in Lewin 1888a & 1894a.

An Abbreviated Chronology of the Identification of the Peyote alkaloids

The first report of alkaloids in peyote was the laboratory report of F.A. Thompson at Parke-Davis but Lewin was the first to publish. (Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974)

1888
Anhalonine (crystalline but not a pure compound)
Lewin (1888) Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archiv fur Experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie, 24: 401-411

1894 
Pellotine This probably was from L. diffusa  rather than L. williamsii. [The source of Heffter’s material is not known as this apparently came from German collectors with no identification of locality. Considerable trade of peyote collected from the locality of L. diffusa existed in early times and it was not differentiated from L. williamsii so it is probable that pellotine was not actually isolated from L. williamsii by Heffter. He referred to the material in this analysis as Anhalonium williamsii rather than A. lewinii, the latter being his source of mescaline below. See Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974 or the A. lewinii discussion herein.]
Heffter (1894)b Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 27: 2975-2979.

1896 
Anhalonidine
Lophophorine
Mescaline
Heffter (1896)a Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 29: 216-227.

1899

Anhalamine

    Kauder (1899) Archiv der Pharmazie und Berichte der Deutschen Pharmazeutischen Gesellschaft, 237: 190-198.

1935 
Anhalinine
Späth & Beck (1935) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 68 (3): 501-505.
Anhalidine
Späth & Beck (1935) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 68 (5): 944-945.

1937 
N-Methylmescaline
Späth & Bruck (1937) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 70 (12): 2446-2450.

1938 
N-Acetylmescaline
Späth & Bruck (1938) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 71 (6): 1275-1276.

1939 
O-Methylanhalonidine
Späth and Bruck (1939) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 72 (2): 334-338.

1965 
Hordenine
McLaughlin & Paul (1965) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 54 (4): 661.<
(Confirmed in McLaughlin & Paul 1966 Lloydia, 29 (4): 315-327.)
See Todd 1969 Lloydia, 32 (3): 395-398.

1966 
Tyramine
N-Methyltyramine
Candicine (Identified by tlc. Presence in peyote is in question, see Kapadia et al. 1968 Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (2): 254-262.)
McLaughlin & Paul (1966) Lloydia, 29 (4): 315-327. (In addition to hordenine)

1967 
Peyonine
Kapadia & Shah (1967) Lloydia, 30: 287. (Proceedings.)
See also Kapadia & Highet (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57: 191-192

1968 
3-Hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine
Agurell & Lundström 1968 The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 1638-1639.
(Confirmed by Kapadia et al. (1969)a Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 58 (9): 1157-159.)
N-Acetylanhalamine
N-Acetylanhalonine
N-Acetyl-3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine 
N-Formylanhalamine
N-Formylanhalinine
N-Formylanhalonidine
N-Formylanhalonine
N-Formyl-3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine 
N-Formylmescaline
N-Formyl-O-methylanhalonidine 
Mescaline maleimide
Mescaline malimide
Mescaline succinamide
Mescalotam
Peyoglutam 
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
Peyophorine 
Kapadia & Fales (1968)b Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (11): 2017-2018, and Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications,24: 1688-1689.
Anhalotine (as iodide)
Choline
Lophotine (as iodide) 
Peyotine (as iodide) 
Kapadia et al. (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (2): 254-262.
3,4-Dimethoxyphenethylamine 
Lundström & Agurell (1968) Journal of Chromatography, 36 (1): 105-108.

1969 
Peyoxylic acid
Peyoruvic acid 
Kapadia et al. (1969) Paper presented at the 116th Meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association, Montreal, Canada. May 18-22, and Kapadia et al. (1970)b Journal of the American Chemical Society, 92 (23): 6943-6951.

1970 
Mescaline citrimide 
Mescaline isocitrimide lactone
Kapadia & Fales (1970)a Lloydia, 33 (4): 492. (Proceedings.) (Paper presented at the “11th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Pharmacognosy (Vienna, Austria) July 1970)
Peyoglunal
Kapadia et al. (1970)a Lloydia, 33 (4): 492. (Proceedings.)

1971 
Mescaloxylic acid
Mescaloruvic acid
Kapadia et al. (1971) Paper presented at the 118th Meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association, San Francisco, California, March 27-April 2. “Some newer synthetic cactus alkaloid analogs.” and Kapadia and Hussain (1972) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 61 (7): 1172-1173.
Dopamine (3,4-Dihydroxyphenethylamine)
Epinine (N-Methyl-3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine)
4-Hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine 
N-Methyl-4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine 
N,N-Dimethyl-4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine 
N-Methyl-3,4-dimethoxyphenethylamine
3,4-Dihydroxy-5-methoxyphenethylamine
Lundström (1971) Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 25 (9): 3489-3499.
N,N-Dimethyl-3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine 
N-Methyl-3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine 
Lundström (1971) Acta Pharmceutica Suecica, 8: 485-496.

1972

6,7-Dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolinium inner salt

1,2-Dimethyl-6,7-dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolinium inner salt
1-Methyl-6,7-dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinoline
2-Methyl-6,7-dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolinium inner salt
Fujita et al. (1972) Yakugaku Zasshi, 92 (4): 482-489 (this inclusion may not belong here as this might not have been L. williamsii.)
Isoanhalamine
Isoanhalidine 
Isoanhalonidine
Isopellotine 
Lundström (1972) Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 26 (3): 1295-1297.

1973 
O-Methylpeyoxylic acid 
O-Methylpeyoruvic acid 
Kapadia et al. (1973) Journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry, 10 (1): 135-136.

1977 
Pellotine determined to exist in optically active form in the cactus. (This had been an unresolved question for many years due to rapid and ready racemization)
Cymerman Craig et al. (1977) Journal of the American Chemical Society, 99 (24): 7996-8002.

1996 
Serotonin was claimed; using ion-interaction HPLC. Its identity was never actually proven and it was not isolated. It presently lacks confirmation.
Gennaro et al. (1996) Analytical Letters, 29 (13): 2399-2409.

2008 
3,4-Methylenedioxyphenethylamine (Homopiperonylamine)
3-Methoxy-4,5-methylenedioxyphenethylamine (Lophophine) 
N,N-Dimethyl-3,4-methylenedioxyphenethylamine (Lobivine) 
These three compounds were reported but this needs to be taken with caution as their actual isolation and characterization was never performed. All identifications relied entirely on the spectral data of the extracted alkaloids and their corresponding derivated forms. The actual presence of these alkaloids still needs to be independently confirmed. A number of comments from this paper also need questioning, especially concerning their peculiar speculative assertions of their contributions to activity and their baseless allusions to MDMA or designer drug activity. (It was incredibly entitled “Ecstacy analogues found in cacti.” as if the activity of MDMA analogs did not require alpha substitution.) In a personal conversation, shortly after the appearance of this paper, Shulgin described the inclusion of his name as an author to be an “embarassment“. 
Bruhn et al. (008) Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 40 (2): 219-222. 
Shulgin had however voiced his anticipation, in PIHKAL, that someday someone WOULD find 3-Methoxy-4,5-methylenedioxy-phenethylamine in a cactus and that it was a surprise that it had not been reported already.

Mrs. Anna B. Nickels, a long-time collector of cacti, is generally given credit for bringing peyote to the attention of Parke-Davis. [Safford 1908 is the first source I can find which claims this.]
Slotkin 1955 dismissed this on three counts: 
1) Parke, Davis and Co. was unable to find any records concerning Mrs. Nickels,
2) Peyote from Parke, Davis and Co. was used by Lewin, and was said by both sources to have originated in Mexico; Mrs. Nickels lived in Laredo.
3) Mrs Nickels referred to peyote as mescal buttons.
Slotkin presented some circumstantial evidence that J.R. Briggs may have been the one who brought peyote to the attention of pharmaceutical science:
1) Briggs’ brother lived in Mexico and supplied him with peyote. 
2) Park, Davis’ files on peyote begin with a clipping of a Briggs article. 
3) Both Lewin and Briggs used the unusual name of muscale buttons.

Mrs. Nickels did bring the fact of this plant having medicinal use among native people to the attention of John M. Coulter (around 1892-3). She referred to them as “mescal buttons”.
It might be added that Mrs. Nickels had a large cactus exhibit in Chicago’s 1893 Colombian Exposition and was noted by Liberty Hyde Bailey as having published the first catalog of cacti published in the US (as the price list issued for her cactus retail business ~1876)
A couple of points arise concerning the claims of Slotkin; neither of which am I able to resolve:
Omer C. Stewart was furnished (By G.A. Bender) with a copy of a letter that Mrs. Nickels had sent to Parke-Davis and Company in Detroit dated 11 July 1888. 
In this letter, she referred to Anhalonium Williamsii as Piotes.

Stewart also presents her as the cactus supplier who provided J.R. Briggs, and hence Parke-Davis, with peyote when Brigg’s first supplier failed to provide what they needed.
Bender 1969 presents a somewhat different view of the same account and presents Parke-Davis as becoming aware of mescal buttons due to reading J.R. Briggs’ published account of his ingestion. In Bender’s account, Briggs was contacted by Parke-Davis and requested to procure some mescal buttons on their behalf, which he eventually accomplished. Interestingly, Parke-Davis apparently lacked any understanding of the nature of their source plant so they sought outside help at identification. One of the dried buttons they had mailed to Lewin in Germany is what ended up in Hennings’ hands and became Anhalonium lewinii.  

Effects of peyote summarized

See more details under Mescaline pharmacology (in the book PDF Part C The Cactus Alkaloids) or briefly in the following section.
Perhaps the best summation of peyote’s overall effects to-date was made in 1940 by Richard Evans Schultes:
Because of the physiological activity of these constituents of the cactus, peyote is capable of inducing an intoxication which is characterized by a feeling of ease and well-being, by control of the limbs and senses, by absence of violence, and occasionally by visual and auditory hallucinations and abnormal synaesthesiae. There are seldom uncomfortable after-effects among users. As a result of this remarkable type of intoxication, peyote has come to be regarded by many Indians as the vegetal incarnation of a deity.” (page 177)
The sustaining and stimulating properties of Lophophora Williamsii which enable the user to do an excessive amount of work without feeling fatigue are hardly separable from those properties which may be called curative.” (page 178)

Prentis_Morgan_Anhalonium_HCl_fig3_2wide
Anhalinine HCl crystals from Prentis & Morgan

 

Pharmacological overview of the non-mescaline alkaloid content of peyote

    No hallucinogenic activity has yet been demonstrated for any peyote alkaloid other than mescaline. [There is one mention of hallucinations experienced with a very large dosage of pellotine and at least one claim of a hallucinogenic experience resulting from the ingestion of L. diffusa but they stand in contrast to all other observations.]
Pharmacology of mescaline and more details concerning the rest of the alkaloids can be found in the book PDF Part C The Cactus Alkaloids. Only a relative few of the peyote alkaloids are mentioned in this section. 
Those listed have some nature of activity or lack of activity reported in the literature. Other alkaloids present in peyote, such as anhalinine are unlikely to contribute substantially, if at all, to its effects. This is due to their inactivity pharmacologically and/or, most often, to their extremely low concentrations.

Anhalamine

Found to be hardly active as anticonvulsant, tranquilizer or muscle relaxant by Brossi et al. 1966

Anhalidine

Found to be hardly active as anticonvulsant, tranquilizer or muscle relaxant by Brossi et al. 1966

Anhalonidine

Probably does not contribute to the pharmacology as it is one fourth as active as pellotine. Shulgin 1973
Heffter found doses of 20-25 mg of the hydrochloride produced narcosis in frogs followed by increased excitability. Complete paralysis was produced by larger dosages. A curarizing effect was caused by dosages of 30 to 50 mg. No significant effects were seen in mammals. Heffter 1898a
Said to produce slight sleepiness and a dull sensation in the head. LaBarre 1975 citing Rouhier’s Monographie pp. 227-232.
Found to be hardly active as anticonvulsant, tranquilizer or muscle relaxant by Brossi et al. 1966.

Anhalonine

Heffter 1898a found 5-10 mg injected into frogs produced an increase in the reflex excitability after a phase of paresis. Similar action was noted in rabbits but hyperexcitability was predominate. (Heffter also described other effects.)

Hordenine

Active as a stimulant [Bruhn & Bruhn 1973] but a 100 mg. dose was found by Heffter to be inactive. [Ott 1993] Hordenine may potentially contribute some activity as a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor: Barwell et al. 1989. However, the extent of its actual contribution remains to be studied.
As Todd found this present only in the roots it may be doubtful that it contributes to the pharmacology of peyote although the claim from some users that they get mroe when eating the roots might merit evaluation. It is presently unknown whether the reported presence of hordenine in peyote buttons by other researchers reflects its occurrence in the tops during normal times of traditional harvest (perhaps before use as a biosynthetic precursor) versus Todd’s analysis occurring during June or whether it is due to the presence of roots or partial roots on the plants these other workers analyzed. (Some other workers did analyze WHOLE plants during their work.
See McLaughlin & Paul 1965, 1966 & 1967 and Rao 1970.
McLaughlin & Paul 1965 purchased their material from Penick.
McLaughlin & Paul 1965 was cited by McLaughlin & Paul 1966 for their procedure in processing the plants. In their 1966 work on biosynthesis they used plants obtained from Mexico which were maintained in a greenhouse.]

Found to cause paralysis of the CNS in frogs without previous excitation by Heffter 1894a.
Small doses have no effect on blood circulation but larger ones cause hypertension and accelerated pulse. Very large doses cause death by respiratory arrest.
Pressure effect is not of central origin but is due to stimulation of cardiac muscle. [Rietschel 1937a & 1937b]
Less active than adrenaline, more similar to ephedrine than adrenaline.
Other researchers reported a nicotine like action [Raymond-Hamet 1933a, 1933b & 1939 and Ludueña, as cited in Reti 1959]
Large doses decrease or reverse the hypertensive action of adrenaline. [Raymond-Hamet 1936]

Reported highly antiseptic and to have inhibiting effect on some soluble ferments. [Camus 1906a-d]
Comments partially adapted from Kapadia & Fayez 1970

The antibacterial and wound healing reputation of peyote and other cacti has been attributed to the presence of hordenine. See:
McCleary 1960 who studied the effects of a water soluble crystalline material extracted from peyote, which they named peyocactin, in vitro on 18 penicillin resistant strains including Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus pyogenes. It inhibited all strains.

McCleary & Walkington 1964 found inhibitory effects in vivo on
mice inoculated with toxic strains of S. aureus. Found that other cacti were effective on some strains but none were as widely effective as peyote.

Rao 1970 showed that peyocactin and hordenine were identical.
Hordenine has well known antibacterial properties and was generally assumed to be the reason for the bacterial inhibition observed by McCleary above. It should be noted that in spite of peyote’s greater activity in this regard, other cacti they evaluated have been found to have higher hordenine contents. While most people have assumed that the activity is due solely to hordenine, this suggests that the matter is not yet cut and dried and some study might be worthwhile.
McLaughlin & Paul 1966 also found in vitro antibiotic activity against a broad range of microorganisms but were unable to document any significant in vivo activity.

Effects of Lophophorine on blood pressure in a cat (Dixon 1899)
Effects of Lophophorine on blood pressure in a cat (Dixon 1899)

Lophophorine

“…is highly toxic and produces strychnine-like convulsions at 12 mg./kg. doses but it produces nausea in human being at much lower doses.“ [Ott 1993 citing Anderson 1980] 
Heffter 1898a “found a 20 mg. dose of lophophorine to produce vasodilation and headache.” [Ott 1993]
Shulgin 1973 & 1976 noted that all toxicity data and the assertions of its “highly toxic” nature is based on animal studies and human evaluations limited to Heffter’s single published report.
Administration of the alkaloid was said to produce an accentuated sickening feeling in the back of the head after 15 minutes, accompanied by hotness, blushing of the face and a slight slowing of the pulse. The effects are said to disappear after 40 minutes. [LaBarre 1975 citing Rouhier’s Monographie 227-232 who was referring to Heffter.]
Heffter found that 0.25-1 mg of injected hydrochloride produced a lengthy tetany in the frog. The increased excitability may last for several days but the animal recovers. (He noted no apparent action on the isolated frog heart.)
In rabbits hyperexcitability and accelerated respiration were noted at 7 mg/kg. Tetany was induced at 12.5 mg/kg and death at 15-20 mg/kg.
Intravenous injection of 2.5 mg increases blood pressure but higher doses are hypotensive, lacking a specific action on the heart. [Heffter 1898a]

Pellotine

Sedative effects at 50 mg. levels in adult humans. From Ott 1993
Temporary convulsion were caused in frogs, dogs and cats by dosages of 5-10 mg. [Ott 1993 citing Heffter 1898a]
Said to reduce the pulse by approximately a quarter in about an hour. Reported to cause heaviness of the eyelids, sensation of fatigue and an aversion to all physical and mental effort. [LaBarre 1975 citing Rouhier’s Monographie pp. 227-232]
Believed by some to be useful in man as a relatively safe narcotic. [Kapadia & Fayez 1970 referred to authors cited by Joachimoglu & Keeser 1924]
It was found to be hardly active in animals as anticonvulsant, tranquilizer or muscle relaxant by Brossi et al. 1966

Sasha Shulgin & out-of-this-world friends circa 2003
Sasha Shulgin & three out-of-this-world friends circa 2003

 

 

Alkaloids identified in peyote

More than 70 alkaloids have been published in the literature but some of those are clear errors, others have been questioned or lack confirmation. Only around 63 of those are actually confirmed. 
Candicine and O-methylpellotine are disputed, the first as other workers were unable to identify it and the second as it apparently is in L. diffusa but not L. williamsii.
One could also question 1,2-Dimethyl-6,7-dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolinium inner salt as it was was identified entirely by UV and comparison with similar structures.

The following list was organized after Anderson but has been updated and expanded to include a summation of the available reports for each alkaloid. 
For physical data: please see the book “The Cactus Alkaloids

Mono-oxygenated phenethylamines:

Tyramine

tlc
McLaughlin & Paul (1966) Lloydia, 29: 315.
(0.001% dry wt: McLaughlin & Paul 1966; trace: Lundström 1971a.
Also in Habermann 1978b (from Štarha nd)

N-Methyltyramine

tlc, mp, mmp, ir
McLaughlin & Paul (1966) Lloydia, 29 (4): 315-327.
(0.012% dry wt: McLaughlin & Paul 1966; trace: Lundström 1971a.

Hordenine

tlc, mp, mmp, ir
McLaughlin & Paul (1965) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 54 (4): 661.
 (Confirmed in McLaughlin & Paul (1966) Lloydia, 29 (4): 315-327.)
(0.6-0.7% dry wt: Lundström 1971b; (0.008% dry wt.) McLaughlin & Paul 1966; Todd 1969 found it only in roots (tlc).
[Also in Habermann 1978b (from Štarha nd)]
[8% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b]

Candicine

(tlc) Presence in peyote is in question
McLaughlin & Paul (1966) Lloydia, 29: 315-327. (Suspected presence based on tlc.) 
Kapadia et al. 1968 could not confirm. Found other quaternary alkaloids but were unable to find candicine. Nor could Davis et al. 1983

Dioxygenated phenethylamines:

Dopamine

glc, gc-ms<
Lundström (1971)a Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 25 (9): 3489-3499 
(trace: Lundström 1971a)

Epinine

glc, gc-ms
Lundström (1971)a Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 25 (9): 3489-3499 
(trace: Lundström 1971a)

4-Hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine

(3-Methoxytyramine)
glc, gc-ms
Lundström (1971)a Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 25 (9): 3489-3499 
(trace: Lundström 1971a)

N-Methyl-4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine

glc, gc-ms
Lundström (1971)a Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 25 (9): 3489-3499 
(trace: Lundström 1971a; <0.5% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b]

N,N-Dimethyl-4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine

glc, gc-ms
Lundström (1971)a Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 25 (9): 3489-3499 
(trace: Lundström 1971a; 0.5-2% of total alkaloid content: Lundström
1971b)

3,4-Dimethoxyphenethylamine

glc, gc-ms
Lundström & Agurell (1968) Journal of Chromatography 36 (1): 105-108. 
(trace: Lundström & Agurell 1968 and Lundström 1971a. Also in Habermann 1978b: from Štarha nd)

N-Methyl-3,4-dimethoxyphenethylamine

glc, gc-ms
Lundström (1971)a Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 25 (9): 3489-3499 
(trace: Lundström 1971a)

3,4-Methylenedioxyphenethylamine

(Homopiperonylamine)
HPLC
Bruhn et al (2008)
(Reportedly observed but lacking isolation & characterization and independent confirmation.)

N,N-Dimethyl-3,4-methylenedioxyphenethylamine

(Lobivine)
HPLC
Bruhn et al (2008)
(Reportedly observed but lacking isolation, characterization and independent confirmation.)

Trioxygenated phenethylamines and related amides:

3,4-Dihydroxy-5-methoxyphenethylamine

glc, gc-ms
Lundström (1971)a Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 25 (9): 3489-3499 
(trace: Lundström 1971a)

3-Hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine

(3-Demethylmescaline)
gc, gc-ms
Kapadia et al. (1969)a Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 58 (9): 1157-1159.
Agurell & Lundström (1968) The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1638-1639. 
(5% of total alkaloid: Agurell & Lundström 1968; 1-5% of total alkaloid content in fresh material: Lundström & Agurell 1971b. Also (identified) by Kapadia et al. 1969a and Agurell & Lundström 1968)

N-Methyl-3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine

gc, gc-ms
Lundström (1971)c Acta Pharmaceutica Suecica, 8 (5): 485-496
(trace: Lundström 1971c)

N,N-Dimethyl-3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine

gc, gc-ms

Lundström (1971)c Acta Pharmaceutica Suecica, 8 (5): 485-496

(0.04% dry weight i.e. 0.5% of 8% total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971c; 0.5% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b)

N-Formyl-3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine

(N-Formyl-3-demethylmescaline)
gc, gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

N-Acetyl-3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine

    (N-Acetyl-3-demethylmescaline)

gc-ms

Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.

(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

3-Methoxy-4,5-methylenedioxyphenethylamine

(Lophophine)
HPLC
Bruhn et al (2008)Lacking isolation & characterization. In need of confirmation.

Mescaline (3,4,5-Trimethoxyphenethylamine)

mp, mmp
Heffter (1896)a Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 29: 216-227 (original isolation) but the structure was not actually determined until Späth (1919) Monatshefte fuer Chemie, 40: 129-154.
([0.10-]0.9-6.0[-6.3]% dry wt. has been reported [Note 22] [Anonymous 1959, Heffter 1896a, Lundström 1971b, Martin & Alexander 1968 & Siniscalco 1983); 
Anderson 1980 cited Kelsey 1959 (0.9%), Bergman 1971 (1.5%), Fischer 1958 (3%), Heffter 1896a (4.6-5.6%[-6.3%])]; 
2.4-2.7 % dry (~400 mg. per 16 grams of dried cactus) Ott 1993 citing Bruhn & Holmstedt 1974 and Lundström 1971b 
[Crosby & McLaughlin 1973 stated peyote can reach 6% but rarely exceeds 1% (dry wt.)] 
[Tops>>Roots; Todd 1969 [Note 23]] 
Siniscalco 1983 reported the isolation of 0.10% (well irrigated),
0.93% (grafted) and up to 2.74% dry weight (after 6 months of dry conditions) from plants cultivated in Italy; 0.1 to 0.2% by fresh weight is common

Friends with extraction experience found fresh Texas plants to average 0.2% during 1970s

75-125 mg of HCl was recovered from 70-140 gm plants greenhouse grown in northern Europe. Lundström & Agurell 1971b (This approaches 0.1% by fresh weight) [Also in Habermann 1978a & 1978b (from Štarha nd)] [30% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b]

[As L. williamsii var. typica Croizat: 0.709% (± 0.032) dry wt.
Habermann 1978a (from Štarha 1997)]

N-Methylmescaline

mp, mmp
Späth & Bruck (1937) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 70 (12): 2446-2450. 
(0.24% dry wt., 3% of total alkaloid: Lundström 1971b)

 N-Formylmescaline

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.

(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

N-Acetylmescaline

mp, mmp
Späth & Bruck (1938) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 71 (6): 1275-1276. 
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689. 
(trace: Späth & Bruck 1938 and Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

Tetrahydroisoquinolines and related amides:

Anhalamine

mp, mmp

Kauder (1899) Archiv der Pharmazie und Berichte der Deutschen Pharmazeutischen Gesellschaft, 237: 190-198.
(0.1-0.7% dry wt. has been reported: Späth & Becke 1935b and Lundström 1971b; Also in Habermann 1974a (from Štarha nd); 8% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b)

N-Formylanhalamine

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.

(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

N-Acetylanhalamine

gc-ms

Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.

(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

Isoanhalamine

gc, gc-ms
Lundström (1972) Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 26: 1295-1297. 
(trace: Lundström 1972)

Anhalidine

mp, mmp
Späth & Beck (1935)b Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 68 (5): 944-945.
(0.001% dry wt: Späth & Becke 1935b; 0.16% dry wt. i.e. 2% of 8% total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b)

Anhalotine (4° amine isolated as Iodide)

ir, nmr, uv
Kapadia et al. (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (2): 254-262.
(0.0003% dry wt: Kapadia et al. 1968)

Isoanhalidine

gc, gc-ms
Lundström (1972) Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 26: 1295-1297. 
(trace: Lundström 1972 & 1971b)

Anhalinine

mp, mmp
Späth & Beck (1935) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 68 (3): 501-505.
(0.01% dry wt: Späth & Becke 1935b; 0.04% dry wt., 0.5% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b)

N-Formylanhalinine

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689. 
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968)

Anhalonidine

mp, mmp
Heffter (1896)a Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 29: 216-227. 
(1.12% dry wt., 14% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b; Also
in Habermann 1974a: from Štarha nd)

Pellotine

mp, mmp
Heffter (1894)b Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 27: 2975-2979. 
Kauder, E. (1899) Archiv der Pharmazie und Berichte der Deutschen Pharmazeutischen Gesellschaft, 237: 190-198.
(±)-Pellotine
UV, IR, NMR
Kapadia et al. (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (2): 254-262.
(-) Pellotine
UV, CD
Cymerman Craig, J. et al. (1977) Journal of the American Chemical Society 99 (24): 7996-8002. 
1.36% dry weight: Lundström 1971b;
Also (%?) Habermann 1974a, 1978a & 1978b: from Štarha nd;
17% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971;
As L. williamsii var. typica: 0.296% (± 0.065) Habermann 1978a: from Štarha in Grym 1997.

Peyotine  (4° amine isolated as Iodide)

Pellotine methiodide
mp, UV, IR
Kapadia et al. (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (2): 254-262.
(0.00015% dry wt: Kapadia et al. 1968)

N-Formylanhalonidine

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

Isoanhalonidine

gc, gc-ms
Lundström (1972) Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 26: 1295-1297.
(trace: Lundström 1972)

Isopellotine

gc, gc-ms
Lundström (1972) Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 26: 1295-1297. 
(0.04% dry weight, 0.5% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b)

S-(+)-O-Methylanhalonidine

O-Methyl-d-anhalonidine
mp, mmp
Späth & Bruck (1939) Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 72 (2): 334-338.
(0.04% dry wt., <0.5% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b)

N-Formyl-O-methylanhalonidine

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689. 
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

O-Methylpellotine

gc, gc-ms (using L. diffusa)
[Bruhn & Agurell (1975) Phytochemistry,14: 1442-1443.]
Presence in L. williamsii is in doubt. It is included by Mata & McLaughlin 1982 but they do not list individual references for the compounds. 
Bruhn & Agurell believed that it is unique to L. diffusa but it was later it was found in Pachycereus weberi.
I am still reviewing Mata & McLaughlin’s references in case someone found this as a trace component in peyote but that does not presently appear to be likely. Štarha did not detect it in L. fricii or L. jourdaniana but DID report it in L. koehresii. Obviously Štarha’s work was not available to Mata & McLaughlin in 1982

6,7-Dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinoline

mp, UV, IR, NMR, MS
Fujita et al. (1972) Yakugaku Zasshi, 92 (4): 482-489.
(Journal of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan)
(0.0008% fresh weight: Fujita et al. 1972; as L. williamsii var. caespitosa – note: this might not have been L. williamsii.)

2-Methyl-6,7-dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolinium inner salt

mp, uv, IR, NMR, MS
Fujita et al. (1972) , 92 (4): 482-489.
(Journal of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan)
(0.001% fresh weight: Fujita et al. 1972: as L. williamsii var. caespitosa – note: this might not have been L. williamsii.)

1-Methyl-6,7-dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinoline

mp, UV, NMR, ms
Fujita et al. (1972) , 92 (4): 482-489
(0.0001% fresh weight: Fujita et al. 1972: as L. williamsii var.
caespitosa – note: this might not have been L. williamsii.)

1,2-Dimethyl-6,7-dimethoxy-8-hydroxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolinium inner salt

 UV
Fujita et al. (1972) , 92 (4): 482-489.
(0.00008% fresh wt: Fujita et al. 1972: as L. williamsii var. caespitosa – note: this might not have been L. williamsii.)

Lophotine (4° amine isolated as Iodide)

ir, nmr, uv
Kapadia et al. (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (2): 254-262.
(0.0002% dry weight: Kapadia et al. 1968)

S-(-)-Anhalonine

mp, mmp
Heffter (1896)a Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 29: 216-227.
UV, IR, NMR
Kapadia et al. (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (2): 254-262
(0.24% dry wt., 3% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b)

S-(-)-Lophophorine

mp, mmp
Heffter (1896)a Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 29: 216-227.
UV, IR, NMR
Kapadia et al. (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57 (2): 254-262.
(0.4% dry wt: Lundström 1971b;
0.5% dry wt: Heffter 1898c.
[Also in Habermann 1974a (from Štarha nd)]
5% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b;
Appeared to be the major alkaloid in 2 sorts of summer collected plants: tlc by Todd 1969)

N-Formylanhalonine

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

N-Acetylanhalonine

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

Peyophorine

tlc, gc, ir, ms, mp
Kapadia & Fales (1968)b Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences,. 57 (11): 2017-2018.
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a; 0.04% dry wt., 0.5% of total alkaloid content: Lundström 1971b) 

Conjugates with Krebs Acids:

Peyoxylic acid

gc

Kapadia & Fayez (1973) cites Kapadia et al. (1969) 116th Meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association, Montreal, Canada. May 18-22. “Identification and synthesis of 3-demethylmescaline, a plausible intermediate in the biosynthesis of the cactus alkaloids.”
Kapadia & Fayez (1970) cited “Kapadia, Rao, Leete, Fayez, Vaishnav and Fales, to be published.” i.e. Kapadia et al. (1970)b Journal of the American Chemical Society 92 (23): 6943-6951.
(trace: Kapadia et al. 1970)

O-Methylpeyoxylic acid

mp, NMR
Kapadia et al. (1973) Journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry, 10 (1): 135-136.
(trace: Kapadia et al. 1973)

Peyoruvic acid

gc
Kapadia et al. (1970)b Journal of the American Chemical Society, 92 (23): 6943-6951.
(trace: Kapadia et al. 1970)

O-Methylpeyoruvic acid

mp, NMR
Kapadia et al. (1973) Journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry, 10 (1): 135-136.
(trace: Kapadia et al. 1973

Mescaloxylic acid

tlc, gc-ms, synthesis, NMR, MS
Kapadia & Hussain (1972) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 61 (7): 1172-1173.
Kapadia et al. (1971) 118th Meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association, San Francisco, California, March 27-April 2. “Some newer synthetic cactus alkaloid analogs.”
(trace: Kapadia & Hussain 1972)

Mescaloruvic acid

tlc, gc-ms, synthesis, NMR, MS
Kapadia & Hussain (1972) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 61 (7): 1172-1173.
Kapadia et al. (1971) 118th Meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association, San Francisco, California, March 27-April 2. “Some newer synthetic cactus alkaloid analogs.”
(trace: Kapadia & Hussain 1972)

Mescaline succinamide

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Highet 1968)

Mescaline malimide

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

Mescaline maleimide

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689. 
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

Mescaline citrimide

 gc-ms, and ir, nmr and ms of synthetic
Kapadia et al. (1970)a Lloydia, 33 (4): 492.
Kapadia & Fayez (1970) cite Kapadia et al. “11th Ann. Meet. Amer. Soc. Pharmacognosy (Vienna, Austria) July 1970, To be published.” i.e. Kapadia et al. (1970)a Lloydia, 33 (4): 492.
(trace: Kapadia et al. 1970)

Mescaline isocitrimide lactone

 gc-ms, and ir, nmr and ms of synthetic
Kapadia et al. (1970)a Lloydia, 33 (4): 492.
Kapadia & Fayez (1970) cite Kapadia et al. “11th Ann. Meet. Amer. Soc. Pharmacognosy (Vienna, Austria) July 1970, To be published.” i.e. Kapadia et al. (1970)a Lloydia, 33 (4): 492.
(trace: Kapadia et al. 1970)

Peyoglutam

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

Mescalotam

gc-ms
Kapadia & Fales (1968)a The Chemical Society, London. Chemical Communications, 24: 1688-1689.
(trace: Kapadia & Fales 1968a)

Pyrrole derivatives:

Peyonine

 gc, ms, ir, nmr, tlc, glc, uv, mmp, synthesis
Kapadia & Shah (1967) Lloydia, 30: 287. (Proceedings.)
Kapadia & Highet (1967) Lloydia, 30: 287-288 (Proceedings.)
Kapadia & Highet (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 57: 191-192.
(trace: Kapadia & Highet 1968

Peyoglunal

gc-ms, ir, nmr, ms, color reactions, synthesis
Kapadia et al. (1970)a Lloydia, 33 (4): 492.
(trace: Kapadia et al. 1970)

Other alkaloids:

Choline

tlc, gc, ir
Strongly alkaline viscous liquid. 123 mg from 2.3 kg dried peyote. 
Identified by mp and mmp of picrate and IR,
Kapadia et al. (1968) Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences,. 57 (2): 254-262.
(0.005% dry wt: Kapadia et al. 1968

See Anderson 1980 pages 191-203 and Menachery et al. (1986) (THIQ); both have line drawings of structures. (See also Cactus Chemistry By Species)

Two other inclusions appear in some listings of peyote alkaloids:

N-(3,4,5-Trimethoxyphenethylamine)-alanine

[Synonym for Mescaloruvic acid; See Kapadia & Hussain 1972a]

 

N-(3,4,5-Trimethoxyphenethylamine)-glycine

[Synonym forMescaloxylic acid; See Kapadia & Hussain 1972a]

Do not confuse either compound with the
3,4,5-Trimethoxyphenethyl-glycine which Sethi et al. 1973 synthesized
for use as a reference standard but were unable to observe in the
plant. 

[Note:    3,4,5-Trimethoxyphenylalanine 
3,4,5-Trimethoxyphenethylglycine.]

Other compounds reported from Peyote

Serotonin was claimed in hplc by Gennaro et al. 1996. This identity was never conclusively proven and it has not been confirmed.

Glucaric acid (saccharic acid) (tlc by Kringstad & Nordal 1975).

Calcium oxalate (the forms and degree of hydration have not been established)
Users of fresh peyote have observed it as well due to it being readily perceived as sand or grit present inside of the flesh. Oxalate is sometimes present in appreciable quantities.

Rouhier 1926 observed the presence of oxalate crystals in his histological study of the plant. These are labelled “O” in the drawing below; “C” is said to indicate the shards created by the action of the microtome when making the thin section slice.
Oxalate appears to be present in the form of druses (whewellite?), crystal sand and as additional forms. Rouhier commented on “oursins d’oxalate de chaux [weddellite?] et vaisseaux spiralés” being present in the flesh in addition to “macies d’oxalate de calcium“.
Spiky crystals inside of cacti are often Weddellite (CaC2O4•2H2O) and the rounded druses Whewellite (CaC2O4•H2O) but the nature of the biominerals that exist inside of peyote flesh apparently remains unstudied. (Weddelite is extremely rare in nature outside of cacti biominerals and as a component of kidney stones but it is common in both of those.)

Alexandre-Rouhier-1926-Monographie-du-Peyotl-fig-26
Alexandre Rouhier 1926
Monographie du Peyotl, fig. 26
Oxalate crystals in peyote's flesh exposed by rodent activity
Oxalate crystals in peyote’s flesh exposed by rodent activity
 

Biosynthetic studies

Studies and route proposals for mescaline and peyote alkaloids(s):

Agurell & Lundström 1968 
Agurell et al. 1967
Basmadjian & Paul 1971
Battersby et al. 1967 
Kapadia & Fayez 1970
Khanna et al. 1969
Leete 1959 & 1966
Lundström 1971a & 1971b
Lundström & Agurell 1968b, 1969, 1971 & 1972
McLaughlin & Paul 1967
Paul 1973
Paul et al. 1969a & 1969b
Reti 1950
Rosenberg & Stohs 1974 [Comparative utilization studies for tyrosine in protein and alkaloids biosynthetic pathways. They determined the utilization of tyrosine for incorporation into alkaloids is three times the rate of incorporation into protein.]
Rosenberg et al. 1967 & 1969

Peyote alkaloids other than mescaline:

Battersby et al. 1968
Kapadia et al. 1970b
Khanna et al. 1970 [Radiolabeled precursor incorporation studies.]
Leete & Braunstein 1969
Lundström 1971c & 1972 [the latter is not a biosynthetic study per se but does offer some supportive evidence]
McFarlane & Slaytor 1972a [A point on biosynthesis of anhalonidine] & 1972b [Biosynthesis of 3,4-Dimethoxyphenethylamine]

For a review of tetrahydroisoquinolines in peyote and other cacti see pp. 256-276 in:
Jan Lundström (1983) “Simple Isoquinoline Alkaloids.” pp. 255-327 (Chapter 6) in: Arnold Brossi (Ed.) The Alkaloids. Chemistry and Pharmacology. Volume 21.
See also:
Mary D. Menachery et al. (1986) Journal of Natural Products, 49 (5): 745-778. “Simple Isoquinolines” (for a review of physical data and distribution.)

Archaic peyote, the red bean & more.

Lophophora lewinii

A dive beneath the waters that floated the names Anhalonium/Lophophora lewinii

Let’s take a really deep breath first…

Will the real Lewinii please stand up?
Wait a minute, that’s not a real plant, that is Frankenstein!

The following is a summary of the reasons why Bruhn & Holmstedt (1974 Economic Botany, 28: 353-390) believed that Anhalonium williamsii was really Lophophora diffusa — and correspondingly that Anhalonium lewinii was really Lophophora williamsii

1. Altamirano 1905 had noted that peyote (referring to it as a single species, A. lewinii) was an item of commerce (12 cents for approximately 300 plants) and (among other areas) collected from the locality now known for the L. diffusa population in Querétaro. This area is the closest population to Mexico City and has probably been collected from many times. This shows that this locality was known and suggests that the plant was apparently an object of extensive trade. When Bruhn & Holmstedt collected L. diffusa they found it was still being called peyote. [They noted that J.N. Rose accompanied Altamirano on his trip to Querétaro and that a photograph of a plant which he collected had appeared in Safford’s 1915 work as representative of the ‘southern form’ of peyote.]

Lophophora-diffusa-safford-1915

2. Several early chemical investigations of peyote (Bravo and also Robles & Gómez Robleda) were only able to isolate pellotine, having collected around Querétaro.

3. Pharmacological study by Jaensch, using dried peyote, found results in some of their volunteers which more closely resembled the action of pellotine than mescaline. (See more under L. williamsii.)

4. Heffter’s analysis showed A. lewinii to contain mescaline, anhalonine, anhalonidine and lophophorine; while A. williamsii only yielded pellotine for him, in Heffter 1898b. Notice that close to a decade elapses between the creation of Henning’s Anhalonium Lewinii and Heffter’s results. During that same decade is when both Coulter and Thompson were studying Anhalonium, and when Lophophora was borne (creating an era with a peculiar density of name changes including a strange inability of many authors to correctly assign the actual describers to the binomials.)

5. In Heffter’s first paper on peyote, his colored illustrations of A. williamsii and A. lewinii show more prominent ribs and tubercles on the latter and the same difference in coloration which has been noted by those who later described the two species of Lophophora as separate. (i.e. yellowish green for A. williamsii [and L. diffusa] and bluish green for A. lewinii [and L. williamsii].)

Heffters_drawings

Heffter’s image: Anhalonium williamsii left; Anhalonium lewinii right

 

The plants in points 2 & 3 certainly appear to be Lophophora diffusa but a link for them representing Lewinii and “Williamsii” is not included so it is actually a bit of a stretch to present this as supportive evidence. Especially as MOST peyote in that era would have been referred to as A. (or E.) williamsii with A. lewinii being regarded as a variant form only from 1880s onward.

The first three of the above are on shaky ground for consideration as evidence since what is being claimed actually all revolved around Heffter’s results, indicating to him there were two different plants involved, and the subsequent attempt to force fit his observation onto Lewin/Hennings’ pronouncement of there being two species. One of those it is crucial to recall was the rather frankensteinian “A. Lewinii” that had been created from a Parke-Davis peyote button.

Which makes those three points rather circular.

The mistaken assertion launched during that period, namely that “Lewinii” was the drug form used by Native Americans and was different from “Williamsii” seemed to assume a life of its own after that point and people almost scrambled to find and provide the drug plant.

The error began when Lewin and Hennings published their conclusion that Parke-Davis’ “buttons” came from a species other than Anhalonium/Echinocactus williamsii. This seems to have become additionally complicated and set in stone when the analytical results of Heffter, concerning what would eventually become Lophophora diffusa, were overlaid on the pronouncements of Lewin and Hennings. Prior to this it is important to keep in mind, both diffusa AND williamsii were considered to be A./Ewilliamsii. Once Anhalonium lewinii plants started entering horticulture, the fiction that A. williamsii really referred to what is now L. diffusa and not L. williamsii, became firmly established as if it was a fact rather than a limited case. Interestingly it only lasted until the 1920s.

Their error is mis-represented by Holmstedt & Bruhn as being the larger picture of the day despite it being the picture only in the far more restricted world of the chemists/pharmaceutists Heffer and Lewin and what few botanists & toxicologists were working with one or the other. It may be pertinent to note that Hennings was a mycologist rather than a botanist but fate placed his employment in the botanical garden at Berlin. The reality was that neither Heffter nor Lewin knew what they were talking about and made grevious errors of identification based on their analytical results. They can hardly be blamed as neither one was a botanist. It should not be made to appear more than it really was though. It needs to be recognized that those two workers (and the rest of medical and pharmaceutical science) were actually immersed in a state of confusion concerning peyote as a ceremonial drug plant. Those synonyms should therefore be understood to be a short-lived case of mistaken identity that has left persistent problems in nomenclature.

Most botanists held exactly the opposite view even in the 1890s and beyond. The antithesis of Heffter’s view however apparently did not percolate outward far enough to recreate A. Lewinii as a name successfully applied to L. diffusa until the early 1920s. (Notice also, that Paul Henning’s original drawing of Anhalonium williamsii in the collection at Berlin appears to be of a deeply-cut and then rerooted Lophophora williamsii rather than of Lophophora diffusa.)

Hennings-1888-Anhalonium-Williamsii

Hennings 1888 Anhalonium Williamsii

Jim Hogg County

Jim Hogg County


Despite an initial acceptance of Hennings’ name, Schumann (and the core of the German cactus specialists of the day) rapidly became openly dismissive of the new species and Schumann proposed the concept of there being different chemical races within a single species in order to explain away Heffter’s results.

Once Lophophora diffusa entered into the picture as living plants of *A. Lewinii* there was no simple fixing of the pre-existing mess as the recognition of Lophophora diffusa provided a nice and neat answer to the identity of the “two” species. As long as no one wanted to dig too deeply and ask the question as to why TWO different A. Lewinii had appeared in European horticulture during those years.  

While we are still on the subject of Bruhn’s “The Anhalonium lewinii controversy” it is probably the appropriate point to diverge for a moment to reflect on the next image from Croizat who redrew Henning’s drawing of a peyote plant said to be A. lewinii. This image from Hennings is perhaps the single most important image on this page if it is understood correctly.

Based on this drawing, Croizat made the peculiar attempt to equate A. williamsii with Epithelantha micromeris that seems only worth mentioning as something odd which occurred and then move back to reflecting on this specimen as Lophophora. The reason that Croizat’s a proposal can be so simply dismissed out-of-hand is that not only does Hennings’ drawing lack any of the features that would be present on Epithelantha but it was clearly described as being produced from a peyote button that had been provided by Parke-Davis.  The idea that a button of micromeris would have been prepared and then somehow become part of a lot of “mescal buttons” in the hands of Parke-Davis stretches beyond what is credible. Croizat’s proposal seems to entirely revolve around oft-repeated comments appearing in Lumholtz 1902 that Epithelantha micromeris had been used as a stimulant drug plant by the Tarahumar and was considered to be a form of peyote called mulato.  There does not appear to be any additional evidence indicating its actual use as a drug plant (or that it existed as a trade item) in the accounts of later authors who cited only Lumholtz.

Croizats_drawings 

 Readers might want to evaluate Croizat’s proposal by comparing that drawing with some actual Epithelantha micromeris plants growing in Presidio County.

Charles Henry Thompson 1898 had commented that Paul “Hennings, in his original description in Gartenflora, used a boiled-up dried specimen as the subject of his illustration” and referred to the results as being unsatisfactory.

The “specimen” of Lewinii producing so much lasting controversy was actually a dried peyote button that Hennings had received from Lewin (who had obtained it from Parke-Davis). Depending on which account is accurate, either Lewin or Henning had boiled the dried crown in water attempting to rehydrate and hopefully reconstitute the original form of whatever plant which had created the button. (It is illuminating to recall that Parke-Davis did not even know that their drug came from a cactus plant when they set out to learn more by providing samples to multiple scientists in the USA and in Europe. They were simply pursuing John Brigg’s published account of a drug with a mind for its possible pharmaceutical development.)

The swollen mass which Hennings showed as resulting from that abused peyote button was the entire basis for his new “species” Anhalonium Lewinii. It was fueled with Parke-Davis’ assertion that *this* was the species of the plant used for drug purposes.
Similarly to Croizat, Thompson had found the central wooly mass in Hennings drawing to be confusing but, unlike Hennings and Croizat, Thompson wisely stopped at that point and did not engage in further conjecture.

 

Henning-1888-a

Hennings 1888 Anhalonium Lewinii

 

I apparently am not so wise as Thompson.
This is an image of a peyote button from Schultes below followed by another of an apparently dead peyote plant in West Texas of a form that is similar to what Coulter examined as examples of Lewinii growing near the mouth of the Pecos River.
One wonders what either one might look like after being “boiled up” until swollen?

 

Schultes_1937_peyotebutton

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-PresidioCo-dead-9320

After a hard freeze in Presidio County

 

 

I would propose however, that if one views Hennings’ drawing not as representing a plant but as being just a “boiled up” peyote button created from a perfectly good species that was already recognized, a lot of the smoke in this historical account of botanical confusion can be made to vanish. Simply by understanding that what was mistakenly being declared by Hennings to be a novel species was actually an entirely fictional creation.

Almost incredibly, Anhalonium Lewinii was soon becoming known in Europe as living plants not just Hennings’ “boiled-up” peyote button. We humans are certainly an interesting species.

Paul Arendt 1891 produced a drawing that appears to be the first illustration of the new, ahem, species; including a description that clearly gives Anhalonium Lewinii‘s flower color as pink (“blassrosa“).

Arendt-1891-Anhalonium-Lewinii

Arendt 1891 Anhalonium Lewinii

In all those cases, except obviously for Croizat & Hennings, the arguments presented would seem sound but its also clear that not all early workers agreed with each other what was lewinii was. Botanists ascribed a rose/pink color (sometimes noting white as well) to the flowers of both species following their initial appearance in Europe.  

It was only because of the drug company Parke-Davis entering the picture when trying to learn an identity for a new crude drug they had acquired that the concept of Anhalonium Lewinii ever appeared. That is quite a fair evaulation as Lewinii could never have existed without that specific input accompanied by the idea being presented to Lewin that it was, for some reason, different from Anhalonium Williamsii. It seems peculiar that Brigg’s somehow would have missed peyote buttons as coming from a well-known botanical source since the indigenous use of Williamsii for ritual purposes was a fairly widely and well known phenomenon to *most* of the cactus botanists of the day.  (Bender 1967 noted Briggs complained about difficulties in procuring a supply for Parke-Davis; these might suggest that Briggs encountered the same nature of source-protection that was mentioned by Johnson in 1909?) I’m still in the midst of collating the early opinions but what is presently clear is there was a lack the solidarity of opinions which is implied by what was selectively included in Bruhn & Holmstedt.  I would propose that had Heffter not initially produced results indicating that two different plants existed, Henning’s new species would not have been accepted and would have rapidly been understood to be Anhalonium williamsii.

Bruhn & Holmstedt seem, for examples, to somehow have either missed or trivialized Thompson 1898 with his illuminating pair of images that are copied below, There is also the 1930s labelled version of Fric’s photograph of Lewinii (see at the beginning of this section) that is so strikingly similar to a typical L. diffusa. I would hate to imply those were omitted by Bruhn & Holmstedt due to not supporting their assertion? It certainly seems like a strange omission since Croizat makes direct reference to Thompson’s images.

In this case though, the point they missed sheds some interesting light on a possible identity that was jumped on quite early for “Lewinii. (Recall that the early A. Lewinii all had pinkish flowers?) Take a look at these two images from Thompson and notice in particular the plant of “lewinii”. Just for now, try to resist making it yellowish in your mind and try to picture a grey body color. Keep in mind that these are those same two Anhalonium species according to the view of Thompson in 1898.

Anhalonium-williamsii-greyscale

Anhalonium williamsii

Anhalonium-lewinii-greyscale

Anhalonium lewinii

I’m also including images of wild L. williamsii growing in West Texas to perhaps provoke some thought.
Lophophora can be extremely variable in any population. We will come back to this elsewhere under “echinata” but it seemed appropriate to include these next few images following those from Thompson.

lewinii: Lophophora-williamsii-echinata

wild Lophophora williamsii echinata in Presidio County, Texas

Let’s drop the color out of that image:

lewinii: Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-Terrell-2011-greyscale

 

&  can add some more in order to compare the ribbing:

Val Verde County

Val Verde County

I’m not trying to present any of these images as being a typical form for any entire population but all are examples of what exists in nature. This is also a good example of how easy it might be to draw wrong conclusions when trying to extrapolate individuals in single photographs as representing entire populations. Despite that, I would suggest that these images bear a striking resemblence to Thompson’s Lophophora Lewinii. At least as much as does a diffusa.

Thompson’s “Lewinii” was growing at the Missouri Botanical Garden and was surely among the living specimens that Coulter used as his basis for Lophophora Williamsii var. Lewinii. (Thompson’s comments about intergradation suggests that he examined multiple specimens at the Missouri Botanical Garden prior to describing Lophophora williamsii.) Coulter based the varietal name on what was previously published in MfK but he adds comments on examining additional living specimens variously collected by a “Wm. Loyd of 1890”, from near the mouth of the Pecos River, plants provided by Mrs. Nickels in 1892 & 1893 and a specimen that had been collected on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande near Laredo in 1894. (At least some of that is for certain what Del Weniger referred to as L. williamsii var. echinata.)

 Coulter’s specimens were growing in the Missouri Botanical Gardens in 1893 so it seems safe to think that it included the same material which Thompson 1888 had showed as a specimen of Lophophora Lewinii. Coulter favorably comparing this to peyote from near the mouth of the Pecos would seem to rule out Lophophora Lewinii sensu Thompson being a Lophophora diffusa. 

Lophophora-williamsii-echinata-ValVerde-2

Lophophora williamsii echinata in Val Verde County

lewinii: Lophophora williamsii echinata Terrell County

Lophophora williamsii echinata in Terrell County

Is “echinata sensu Weninger” what Coulter meant when referring to Lophophora williamsii var. Lewinii as:  “A much more robust form, with more numerous (usually 13) and hence narrower and more sinuous ribs, and much more prominent tufts”?

These next three plants came from Val Verde County and were growing in two different research collections.

This could suggest that originally “Lewinii“, as a plant not the boiled peyote button, did refer to Lophophora williamsii and was possibly more specifically varietal for the West Texas and northern Mexican plants.  (The most glaring problem with this being of course that since “Lewinii” a fictional creation of Hennings, all subsequent identifications were the result of people’s attempts to find, or create, that plant.)

Coulter summarized what fueled everyone’s persistent problems quite well when writing, “The extreme specific and varietal forms seem worthy of specific distinction, but abundant growing material in Mo. Bot. Gard. showed such complete intergradation that a specific line of separation was found to be impossible.”

A new name is needed for this form/variety/subspecies as Weniger’s application of “echinata” appears to be wrongly and confusedly applied, and “lewinii” is also hopelessly compromised by prior confused applications. While recognizing “echinata” needs a replacement, for now I’ll continue to perpetuate “echinata” in tribute to Del Weniger’s contributions. Let me know when there is a new name and I’ll gladly start using it.

<strong>Val Verde County

Val Verde County (under cultivation)

Let’s get back to Anhalonium/Lophophora Lewinii, the plant. There is one major problem with this name that negates whatever follows its appearance. That is the simple fact that the name refers to a plant that never actually existed. Sure people like Thompson tried to make sense of it based on examples they could *find*, and a couple of different plants seem to have entered horticulture under that name at one point or another, but the reality is a little more stark and impoverished.

The peyote buttons which Briggs organized to reach Parke-Davis and which Parke-Davis sent to multiple scientists worldwise were most certainly dried Lophophora williamsii. It is possible they came from West Texas plants but it does not seem likely based on the typically small populations which occur in the more extreme parts of Lophophora‘s range. When those dried L. williamsii reached Lewin, and then after being subjected to a good boiling by Hennings, the surely misshapen and swollen result became Anhalonium Lewinii. As Anhalonium Lewinii never actually existed, all subsquent plants arising with that name, first with pink and then later with yellow flowers, are the result of well-intentioned but erroneous attempts to respect the belief they held in the writings and thoughts from other authorities. A blind respect for those published accounts of their peers has recurrently caused problems in the story of Lophophora nomenclature.

Heffter’s analysis and near discovery of Lophophora diffusa obscured this by helping solidify A. Lewinii into a sort of fictional pseudoentity by assuming (as did Bruhn & Holmstedt) that if A. Lewinii was the drug plant (now L. williamsii) then it must mean that A. Williamsii was his pellotine plant, namely what is now L. diffusa.

It is fascinating how fast people found living examples of it to bring it into horticultural reality but it is perhaps important to recall cactus collection has long been the sport of kings and the idle rich so many well organized and highly-motivated professional cactus collectors have existed for several centuries.
Keep in mind that Hennings published his new species name in 1888. 1891 & 1894 saw the first two published illustrations of Anhalonium Lewinii appear; followed by an actual photograph in 1898. In 1912, both “species” were available as offerings in the Knippel catalog. 

The recognition of multiple forms or species, with a lack of agreement on the actual details, lead to there being a parallel Lophophora diffusa due to some people experiencing the same sort of problems that others have had with williamsii.

In 1929, the Friedrich Adolph Haage, Jr. catalog listed
Lophophora Lewinii Hen” (I would assume that by 1929 Haage’s L. Lewinii had yellow flowers?)
Lophophora ritteri Böd “(prices on application)”
Lophophora williamsii Lem.
Lophophora ” var. luteiflora” 

While yellow flowers came to predominate what was regarded to be L. Lewinii in European (and other) horticulture, the picture could not neatly segregate along the lines of pink versus yellow flowers as the two correspondingly different lineages, including the early pink flowered L. lewinii, obviously continued to exist in European collections.

In John Borg’s 1937 Cacti,  (Lophophora entry is pages 263-264):
     Lophophora Williamsii flowers: “pink or pale pink or almost white with a darker midrib.” 
    Lophophora Lewinii “Often considered as a variety of the preceeding. Different chiefly on account of the plant being larger, with more numerous and more pronounced but narrower ribs, with more prominent tubercles and larger tufts of wool. The flowers are pale pink or very pale yellow with far less tendency to sprout. 
    Lophophora Ziegleri Werd. Mexico. Still very rare in cultivation. Stem mostly solitary, very galucous and very smooth, with about 8 ribs just marked out by lines or slight furrows. Tubercles very low, with small tufts of white or whitish matted wool. The stem is more rounded, and hardly depressed at the centre, and the flowers are pale yellow.”


    This persisted even after Bravo cleanly defined L. diffusa. The resulting synonyms that had appeared during those early years can still be encountered in horticulture.

 

Thompson's view of Anhalonium Williamsii (L) & Lewinii (R)

Let’s refresh this with Thompson’s view of those two Anhalonium species again

Some history for the names Lewinii and Williamsii

Let’s look at some more of the older botanical descriptions and images of peyote with a mind for evaluating what people of the day actually regarded to be Williamsii and later as  Lewinii.

The first botanical description of Peyote lacked an illustration and was in Charles Lemaire 1845 Allgemeine Gartenzeitung, 13 (45): 385-286 (I won’t include Hernandez despite that being much earlier as it lacks a mention of the flower color).
It was actually written by Friedrich Otto & Albert Dietrich.
The flower color was given as “roseis“. 

The first appearance of an illustration of Echinocactus Williamsii was in Hooker 1847 Curtis’ Botanical Magazine; plate 4269. In this description the flowers were said to be “white, externally tipped with pale green, and having a rose-coloured line down the centre“.

Hooker-1845-EchinocactusWilliamsii

Hooker 1847 EchinocactusWilliamsii –
Illustration was by T. Guerke

The second appearance of an illustration was Pfieffer (and Otto) 1846-1850 Bluhende Cacteen Volume 2; plate 21. The flower color of Echinocactus Williamsii was said to be “roseis“.

Echinocactus-Williamsii-Pfeiffer

Echinocactus Williamsii in Pfeiffer

In Salm-Dyck 1850 (ennumerating what was in his collection in 1849), Link & Otto describe the flower color of Echinocereus Williamsii as “pallide roseis” with a “rubra” midstripe on the petals. 

In Förster 1888: the name Anhalonium Williamsii appears described as having a flower color of “blassrosa, aussen mit einer dunkleren Mittelinie “.

In 1888, A. Lewinii is borne from a “boiled up” dried peyote button (of A. Williamsii) and declared to be a new species by Paul Hennings.

As was mentioned (with illustrations) earlier, live plants of “Lewinii” that had begun appearing in Europe served as the basis for a published illustration by Paul Arendt in 1891 and another by Karl Schuman in 1894. Charles Thompson added a photograph to the literature in 1898.

Coulter 1892 gives the flower color of Lophophora williamsii as “whitish to rose” but does not mention a flower color for his “var. Lewinii“. He does indicate that he thinks Thompson’s Lophophora Lewinii at the Missouri Botanical Gardens is synonymous with plants he examined from near the mouth of the Pecos River.

Both species also became available for sale within not many years. I’m only guessing that Knippel’s Echinocactus lewinii in the drawing below had pinkish flowers and was NOT a Lophophora diffusa

Knippel-1912-Echinocactus-2

 

In Schumann 1921 Echinocactus williamsii is shown with pale pinkish flowers possessing a darker pink midstripe. 

Schumann-1921-Echinocactus-williamsii

Schumann dismisses all other species (and never embraced either Anhalonium or Lophophora).

It appears to be in Isaac Ochoterena 1922 Las Cactacees de Mexico where a yellow flower first became attached to the name “Lewinii” but I am still digging through that rather horrific mass of verbage that is regarded to be the early peyote literature. (The Lophophora entry is pp 96-100.)
At any rate, Lophophora Williamsii was said by Ochoterena to have white or rose flowers (“blanca o color de rosa“); Lophophora Lewinii to have yellow flowers (“flor de color amarillo“). Pertinent to our analysis, he includes Thompson’s pair of potted peyote images as his examples for Lophophora Lewinii and Lophophora Williamsii rather than generating his own examples based on wild Mexican plants.

Frič (in Kreuzinger 1935), was no doubt influenced by this as he similarly gives Lophophora lewinii‘s flower color as “blaßgelb” and, in his label on an image of what appears to be L. fričii, listed L. williamsii as having “blaßrosa” flowers.

lewinii: Lophophora from Kreuzinger

Frič’s view of Lophophora in 1936

 

  I   Lewinii (Hennings) blaßgelb Blüten”.
  (In Frič 1924 this was originally designated as sp. lutea Fric and was noted to be from Queretaro.)
In Backeberg 1961, this same image appears renamed as Lophophora lutea (Rouh.) Backeberg. 

  II    texana” In Backeberg 1961 this is L. lutea texana (Fric ex Krzgr.) Backbg.

  III  Williamsii (Lem.) blaßrosa Blüten”
(In its earlier appearance this was Anhalonium sp. fl. rosea Frič – Frič 1924 & 1925. It was said to have come from Coahuila.)
In Backeberg 1961 this  became “L. williamsii v decipiens Croiz (Altersform?)”

     IV            caespitosa (San Luis)”

 V   jourdaniana (syn. violaciflora) violetrosa Blüten”
(In 1924, Frič gave this as A. Lewinii from Chihuahua.)
Backeberg 1961 preserved this as jourdaniana.

 

We have already noted earlier that Borg 1937 was continuing to recognize pink as a potential flower color of L. Lewinii

W. Taylor Marshall & Thor Methven Bock 1941 Cactacae 138
Lophophora Lewinii (Hennings) Thompson, while described in 1888, has recently been introduced in the trade as a species.
The color is a yellowish-green and the tubercles are fewer and larger than in L. Williamsii and the tufts of wool not so pronounced; flowers white to cream.
Lophophora Tiegleri Werd., seems to be identical with the preceeding species of variety.” 

L. Chavier (1953) Cactus France 38: 255, under:
Lophophora williamsii et Tiegleri” gives as synonyms: Lewinii, Tiegleri, Ziegleri and says they have a very pale yellow flower.
The photograph shown is clearly diffusa despite being too poor to reproduce.

P. Fournier (1954) Les Cactées et les Plantes Grasses 
Gave the body and flower colors as yellow for L. Lewinii with the flowers for L. williamsii as being pale rose with darker pink midstripes.

the Peyote Crisis and some Suggestions – Revisited

It appears to be a ripe time for reevaluating the article entitled “the Peyote crisis & some suggestions“.
This was variously positioned as Chapter 2 or Chapter 3 in the revisions of the book Sacred Cacti.
That chapter, as written, is greatly in need of revision & updating; and some additional questions being asked about *its* suggestions. Our use of the word “I” in this article simply means we want to say this with one voice. Use of the word “we” refers to the reader and ourselves.
This commentary, as written, is meant to serve the great need for better accurate public education and has been constructed primarily for clarity of presentation of the contained material. It has not been created with the same density of in-line references such as would be the case for a work that was intended for print publication in a peer reviewed journal. It is hoped that adequate documentation and references are included for the benefit of people wanting to learn more but if YOU want to learn more or need any additional clarification or supportive documentation please drop an email to keepertrout at gmail and ask.
Accompanying this information is the feeling that there is some urgency in it being released. It is therefore being made available for public inspection and comment without further delay.
The plants of tomorrow begin with the seeds that are planted today.

Commentary & thoughts
by Keeper Trout, Blake Edwards & Martin Terry

I also went to survey the gardens in February [1998]. The situation is sad, intolerable, several parcels hunted completely clean. On inquiring with the dealers, I was able to hand sort well over 10,000 dime sizers, most w/roots. They are picked that way because the payment is per unit. […] those 10,000 plus babies are now growing. My idea is to purchase all the babies we can for their eventual re-planting in Texas.”
Leo Mercado 6 July 1998 (personal communication).

Those same plants were later seized (as part of a dump-truck load containing more than 11,230 living peyote plants) and destroyed by a “multijurisdictional task-force” of law enforcement officials despite Leo at that time having been found in court to be in compliance with Arizona state law permitting the sincere religious use of peyote. In the aftermath of what can only legitimately be described as a terroristic home invasion, Leo posted a notice online that he had replanted the 200 or so peyote plants that had been missed or dropped during the raid.
No charges were filed, which fact was likely to prevent a return of his peyote as had occurred after the first time that they seized Leo’s peyote. Instead Leo’s landlord found himself being threatened with the seizure and forfeiture of his property if he did not evict Leo and his family. The basis of that threat was his supposedly renting to a “known illegal drug dealer”, namely Leo!
Apparently Leo’s living example as a human of only modest means successfully propagating and cultivating large numbers of peyote plants outside of Texas was too powerful of an example to be allowed to exist. At the very least, his Kearny, Arizona shade-house and gardens had to be seen as an awkward truth running counter to the lies actively being propagated about it being impossible to grow peyote outside of its native habitat.
From Ch. 3 in Sacred Cacti 3rd edition (with some edits).

 

Lophophora-williamsii-threatened-by-knife

Cutting crowns flush at the level of the ground has been established to be the best known harvesting technique for peyote. This approach to enable sustainable harvesting has been known of and employed by peyote consumers in Mexico for millenia. The archaeological peyote specimens discovered strung on a cord at Cuatro Cienegas are more than a thousand years old; the Shumla peyote effigies are over six thousand years old.

 

First, concerning the “crisis”….

One suggestion, really, is all that is required; assuming that it can be heard, without prejudice, where it matters.

Cultivate the Medicine.

It is really simple yet that simple truth of the matter has been almost completely buried, if not forgotten or deliberately obscured, in rhetoric that has at times variously been self-serving, manipulative, deceptive, disingenuous, confused, based on misunderstandings, culturally bigoted, or sometimes even entirely delusional. There really was not any delicate way to put that so I apologize for trodding on anyone’s conceptual toes.

Some people might ask:
If peyote is a pressured species, why isn’t it cultivated?

The question, “why isn’t it cultivated?” is a really good one. You and I will be exploring its answers in some detail.

We should start by clarifying some things and being certain that we all have a good grasp of an unnecessarily convoluted story.

 

The conservation status of peyote

Peyote is most certainly not extinct as some people strangely seem to believe and are even willing to say openly as if it were a fact. It is not yet really even an endangered species as more than a million living peyote crowns were no doubt harvested in South Texas again this past year by the licensed peyote distributors (I have to say probably as the numbers are not yet available).

A perception that the pressure from peyote harvesting is endangering the species is nothing new. While it does not appear on any federal listing of endangered species, peyote WAS declared an endangered species by the Texas Organization of Endangered Species (TOES) according to Morgan 1983: 83-84. Despite having a long history of cost sharing with land owners for brush removal and clearing of land, since the late 1970’s the U.S. Soil Conservation Service has refused to do so in any area containing peyote, as the SCS recognizes it to be a potentially endangered member of Texas flora (Morgan 1984: 292). Their lack of financial contribution has not slowed the clearing of land in the development of South Texas.

Only recently was peyote actually finally recognized as having adequately dwindling numbers to merit being assigned a status of “vulnerable” and being placed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2. [http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/151962/0].

Debates as to whether it should or should not be placed on the Red List had been going back and forth for some years, Oddly, what seems to have tipped the balance of opinion was the appearance of cosmetic/pharmaceutical industry products known as Pomada de Peyote. [Link 1] [Link 2] [Link 3] [Link 4] [Link 5].
I’m not including these links to suggest that any should be patronized but simply to note what came up in a Google search for “pomada de peyote” on 1 November, 2014.
Here are images of five of the products that were found to be offered on the first search results page.

 

Pomada-de-Peyote

 

It is certain that as both a liniment and an ointment, similar formulations have existed for a very long time at the folk level, and more recently as products of a local cottage industry. These products have likely achieved visibility only when the distribution venue was moved from local yerbarias to online marketing.

The use of peyote is traditional among some Hispanics in South Texas, too.
“When I was younger, you could buy it at the market in Nuevo Laredo, or at any of the local yerberias (herb shops),” [Salvador] Johnson said.
His wife, Vicenta, said that elderly Hispanics still use the drug as a cure for a variety of ailments, including as a rubbing lotion to treat arthritis when it is mixed with alcohol.
Grant 2000 Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Sunday, 23 January.

One of the companies now producing pomada de peyote is an established business that is substantial in size and has previously developed other successful product lines. The future development of this product will be interesting to watch. It may be noteworthy that the number of different producers showing up as hits on the first Google search result page went from two to five within the past year.

Peyote is not endangered as a species for a variety of reasons. The most notable being that there are large expanses of the Mexican peyote populations left. The secondary reason is that not all peyote is accessible for harvest. In some cases, harvests are deterred by a lack of road access but in at least one instance a local population (in Mexico) is protected by the resident humans who interestingly do not use their local peyote for any purposes other than as an external analgesic applied to burns, bruises and aching muscles & joints.

In Texas it is a different story. The vast majority of its peyote populations have long since been removed during the course of the modern-day occupation/development of South Texas real estate and the collateral development of its assorted resources. Some peyote finds protection on large ranches with tall fences designed to retain game animals that are hunted for a hefty fee. When the owners of such large tracts of brush also do not permit peyote harvesters to access their land those properties form unintentional peyote reserves. The land that is left as accessible is heavily impacted by the existing peyote trade. In addition, the commercial peyote harvest has been insufficient for meeting NAC needs for some time.

There are two distinct but inseparable subtopics within this main topic of the threats to peyote, whether those threats are due to habitat loss or over-harvesting or any of the other known challenges that peyote faces.

One is the future of peyote as a species and the other is the future of the NAC as a Medicine-based spiritual organization that has both adequate and uninterrupted access to its Medicine.
We will examine both of those subtopics separately as this overview unfolds.

 

What has happened to create dwindling peyote populations?

Reading the popular press or listening to people talk, one would think that overharvesting by Native Americans or “hippies” is the cause. One or the other or both typically gets the most common and most vocal blame. This is true, despite it being absolutely clear that the vast majority of peyote’s obliteration, both in terms of absolute numbers and in total acreage, has actually been the incidental destruction of populations during the process of land conversion. All other factors combined pale by comparison.

There have been many reasons for this; the development of land for various projects, such as construction projects, shipping centers, parking lots and tract communities, or as a result of the brush suppression methods that enable ranchers to use their land for agriculture or ranching. Once a piece of land has been converted, peyote does not return.

 

peyote gardens today

Aerial view of a portion of the Peyote Gardens in Starr County showing extent of the land use and clearing. Photo clipping came from a topographic map from the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Most of peyote’s habitat in South Texas is covered with a tangle of dense thorny brush. To make their land available for agriculture or cattle, it was once a common practice for landowners to root-plow the soil due to the tendency of the thorny brush to come back with an aggressive vigor after being cleared.
Root-plowing severs the roots below the soil surface thereby weakening whatever of the roots can’t be uprooted and suppressing their ability for good regrowth. Or at least suppressing it for longer than might be the case without it. Repeating the process a few times does help but it is noteworthy that what actually becomes most suppressed is the diversity of life while the actual species that were attempted to be eradicated often go on to become the predominate vegetation.

 

rootplowed land

rootplowed land

Land in Maverick County that was root plowed several decades ago. The ranch foreman claimed that peyote was here before that occurred.
Their most likely intended target for eradication was the Acacia rigidula which comprises about a third of the plants seen in the lower image above.

 

Root-plowing has been determined to have lasting adverse impacts when used in dry regions. In arid environments with abundant limestone, in this case it is present as a calcareous gravel, rainwater dissolves the carbonates and other soluble ions but there is insufficient volume of water to carry what is dissolved more than a fairly short distance into the earth, accumulating and eventually creating a bed of ‘caliche’ at the depth of maximum moisture penetration. Due to rainfall being variable in the total amounts delivered per storm, this eventually forms an irregular gradient of alkali concentrations existing between the caliche and the surface ; with the surface obviously being the most life friendly. The layer of decomposing organic materials at or near the surface adds to the ability of the soil to support life.
This natural zoning develops over long periods of time with whatever level of moisture they DO have accessible. As it becomes increasingly basic with increasing depth this also means that that the surface is most amenable to supporting life. Accompanying that is the observation that, as rains moved part of the soluble alkali into the earth, that action helps make the surface more life friendly.
This fragile balance becomes completely undone with the mixing of the top half meter of soil during root plowing.
In this process, the more basic material that has been migrating away from the surface is partially returned to the surface during the mixing process. Recovery is typically slow since the reduction of the alkalinity at the surface level relies on repeated water percolation over time. The resulting increase of surface alkalinity leads to a die-off of small cover plants following seed germination and adds prolonged difficulty in reestablishing the normal flora. In adjacent areas that are used for agriculture due to being more sandy loamy than gravelly, and additionally due to the topography of the land being flatter & less sloping, this creates problems with blowing dust.

As a result root-plowing is now discouraged for those soil types and when it becomes needed specialized implements are used to selectively remove single plants.
The important thing to understand about root-plowing is that unlike the thorny brush that the root-plowing is intended to eradicate, a single thorough root-plowing will generally permanently exterminate all of the existing peyote on that a given piece of land.
If you want to gain a really solid grasp of this technology and a better understanding about why it would impact peyote so adversely, visit http://YouTube.com and search for “root plow” or “rootplowing“. Nothing describes the process better than watching a root-plow in action.

Other brush-clearing methods are not less destructive to peyote but they do impact the soil and ability of the land to recover less than root-plowing. YouTube can provide looks at modern techniques of “brush clearing in South Texas” as well.

 

root plow

 

Root plow Those fins are designed to force the severed roots to the soil surface and into the sun to dry and die.

 

The root plow is a tool for removing vegetation by cutting it below the soil surface […] killing brush and light vegetation by undercutting it […] at depth from 20 to 50 centimeters (8-20 inches). […] The advantage of the root plow is that it cuts the vegetation below the bud ring, killing brush that would normally resprout if cut at ground level.
US Army 1974 Tactical Land Clearing, p. 3-6

 

root plowing

Trunnion-mounted root-plow in action.
Both scanned photos came from a 1974 US Army
training manual entitled “Tactical Land Clearing”.

A new threat to peyote in South Texas are windfarms which choose the highest points in the Bordas Escarpment for their placement. These of course need an access road permitting both construction and maintenance. Those roads potentially carve through some of what few undisturbed peyote populations still remain in South Texas.

 

What do we actually know about the harvesting of peyote?

Surprisingly little study has been done on the impact of harvesting itself. As far as I am aware, only one organization, a nonprofit group named the Cactus Conservation Institute, has taken the time to learn more despite the immense need for this information as regards both the NAC and peyote conservation. It is clear that the peyote plant is a resilient species or it never could have permitted mass harvests to continue for so many years in the face of diminishing habitat. There are many articles that are available concerning the harvesting of the peyote plant and about its habits and habitat.

It IS known that the best way to cut peyote is at ground level. Cutting too deeply increases mortality and weakens those plants which do manage to recover.
The one existing study on the subject was published in Terry & Mauseth 2006. Using a histological evaluation, it was established that only the stem tissue was capable of producing new growth. Root tissue could only grow roots. A visible clear and sharp line of division was noted to exist between the two tissues.

Peyote harvesters often use a shovel with sharpened edge or a machete. Both of those tools can work great for cutting at ground level or they can be mis-employed and produce a deeply angled cut.

 

a cut peyote

Peyote plant after the crown has been removed

 

What do we know about the impact of peyote harvesting on wild populations?

A simple overview:

More complete details concerning the items in this list can be gleaned at the Cactus Conservation Institute website or in Kalam et al. 2013, Klein et al. 2015, Terry et al 2011, 2012, 2013 & 2014.

1) Peyote harvest causes a small increase in mortality.

2) If harvesting is repeated too frequently, this rate of mortality increases.

3) Harvesting also reduces the amount of harvestable biomass of sacrament per plant.

4) The aforementioned observation (3) is initially obscured by the increase in numbers due to the common occurrence of multiple regrowth. However, the sum total biomass of head (crown) tissue per plant, even after 4 years of uninterrupted regrowth, was still significantly smaller than the biomass of the original single head that had been harvested four years before. The study to determine the minimum sustainable recovery period after harvesting is still not complete, but it now clear that the time required for recovery from a single harvesting event is greater than six years.

5) Analysis has also shown that even after four years the regrowth had regained only half the potency of the original crown. It is not yet known how long it takes for the original potency to be re-established in the regrowth buttons.

6) Current and future seed production contributions to the local population are lost along with the harvested plants. The typical fate for peyote seeds following a harvest is into the trash or compost.
During the late 1990s, Leo Mercado was able to successfully recover (and plant) many thousands of seeds from the piles of hairs and tufts that accumulated from the peyote cleaned in preparation for a large ceremony. That event, at an annual NAC meeting at Mirando City, consumed more than a thousand crowns. (Information from a personal communication with Leo in 1998.)

7) The oldest and largest plants have been selected for by their environment as those are the plants which are best suited to survive the peak adverse periods of weather. These are commonly preferentially harvested – precluding any future contribution they might have made to the genetics of the population.
This last point may be subtle but played out over a long time can become significant. Following the removal of these genetically superior products of natural selection, future adverse periods of weather will likely begin to produce an increased adverse impact on the remaining population.

 

multiple regrowth

Peyote plant with multiple regrowth

 

Recovery

Let’s go over through that overview again but this time from a slightly different angle of thought and consider those factors in terms of recovery.
Recovery after harvesting is a core concept for this subject as it interweaves an impact assessment with a determination of sustainability. If the harvesting of a natural renewable resource is not sustainable, both harvesting and availability are temporary and transient phenomena with an inevitable end point involving either the loss or increased scarcity of that resource. /span>
There is nothing mysterious or unclear about what is being witnessed. A dramatic multiplication of undersized individuals is in fact the classical model resulting from harvesting activities involving an overexploited natural resource, be it fish or ginseng roots. (See Terry & Trout 2013. This link is a PDF file.)

Recovery is best understood not by looking at recovery of the individuals which are involved but of the health of local populations which are composed of many individuals.
Recovery of a population will accordingly have several factors based on what we looked at in our overview:

1) Replacement of the plants which die as a result of harvesting. (Replacement in this case is being considered only in terms of the natural recruitment of new seedlings although cultivation and wildcrafting would also enter the picture in this area. Wildcrafting is the conscious planting of seeds or return of plants in such locations where the plant formerly occurred naturally or could have occurred naturally.) This decrease in survival is thankfully a fairly low rate but it is not insignificant if a field is revisited as each subsequent visit may result in the reharvesting of plants which are still drawing their sustenance from the original reserves of the remaining taproot fragment from their mother and have not yet had time to manage to grow a replacement taproot.
The rate of mortality has increased with each time that reharvesting occurred in what limited study of the topic has occurred so mindfulness is needed not just of how deeply a plant is cut but also when it was last cut. Until after the point that a plant can regrow a taproot it is vulnerable to outright death from loss of its photosynthetic tissues as occurs in harvesting. This subtle but simple fact is somehow often either missed or trivialized: when the crown tissue has been removed the peyote plant loses its ability to use the sunlight. This remains true until after a new crown can be made and it reaches the surface of the ground where it can absorb sunlight to once again photosynthesize and feed itself. Repeated cutting too frequently forces the plant to exhaust its limited reserves and interferes with good regrowth and survival.
Plants that have been harvested need adequate time to replace their missing storage tissues (by photosynthesis in the crowns of the regrowth pups) before being reharvested or their death rate increases; eventually requiring their actual replacement.

2) Regrowing new crown tissue to replace the harvested crown with its equivalent prior to reharvesting.
Even though multiple crowns commonly result following harvesting, it takes some point greater than six years for their combined total weight to match that of the original crown. (The study to determine how long it takes for the sum of the regrowth buttons to equal the weight of the original harvested crown is still ongoing.)
Harvesting prior to following that point of recovery will provide smaller and steadily decreasing volumes of harvests. This is a practice which feeds into the spiral towards smaller, weaker plants with higher loss rates.

3) Recovering the original level of alkaloids.
After four years the average alkaloid level of new growth was only half that of the original crown. It is presently unknown how long it takes for the preharvest alkaloid level to be restored. Harvesting prior to following that point of potency recovery will provide an inferior quality of harvests, requiring consumers to ingest more plants, which also feeds into the extinction vortex towards smaller, weaker plants with higher loss rates.

4) The population also has to recover from the impact of however many years it would take seeds from those harvested plants to be replaced by new seed-producing crowns, and this must be taken into account if wanting to accurately assess the impact of harvesting. Every plant which is taken means that many less seeds are available for the local population for at least a handful of years. This is not insignificant as wild peyote in nature primarily reproduces via seeds. Removing a plant means removing all future seed contribution by that plant.
If older plants are preferentially harvested and as numbers dwindle the age of first harvest also decreases, it rapidly produces a situation where the only plants to harvest may have flowered only once or twice or not at all, creating a huge seed production deficit for the local population.
In the event of adverse weather (whether prolonged drought or beyond average freezing) causing an above average loss rate, this adds to the risk that the local population may not recover.

I’ll let you, the reader, do the math for yourself.

 

reharvested L. williamsii

This plant was previously harvested multiple times and the severed crowns sold through the licensed distributors. While the harvesting was conservative enough to not lose the original taproot, this individual strains the concept of “sustainability“. Also notice the steep angle showing careless cutting during two previous harvests.

 

What about the sustainability of harvesting?

Peyote harvesting appears to be a sustainable practice, at least in potential or in theory. In its present-day application however, the slow attrition process leading to the endangered species path has already clearly begun. It is clear that the consumers of peyote still have plenty of peyote to last for some years to come. Maybe even for the rest of our lifetimes, especially if you are middle aged like me.
Sustainability is not something defined by the here-and-now though. A commonly cited definition of sustainability is found in the 1987 Brundtland Report for The United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
As Kimberly Cover pointed out in 2005, that report’s definition is curiously similar to the Iroquois concept of thinking with responsibility for the next seven generations.

Much more study is needed to better define what was seen in the limited harvesting studies that exist but this is how it looks at the moment: The increased rate of mortality that results from a one time harvest is low enough so as not to adversely impact the long term survival of a population. That only appears to be true when adequate time is permitted between harvests. Some period greater than six years is all we can say about that number pending future data emerging. If enough plants of adequate size and potency exist to fill the anticipated needs of the active NAC membership and those plants are being reharvested no more often than they can regrow and return to being what they were prior to the point when they were first cut, harvesting appears to be sustainable.
Anything which creates an average result that achieves less than that, such as is presently the case, is not a sustainable practice.

 

So, let’s come back to our question, “Why ISN’T peyote cultivated?”

Probably the single most important element as to why cultivation is not already a part of the picture is the simple fact that none of the non-NAC people who are legally involved in the supply side have actual legal protection permitting them to cultivate peyote. They are in general law-abiding respected citizens who want to stay out of any trouble. Additionally, the peyote distributors can lose their licenses for violating the law.
As the licensed distributor Mauro Morales told Franks in 2007 . You have to make sure you don’t have a problem with the law, you know?

The portion of South Texas where peyote occurs naturally is commonly referred to as the Peyote Gardens, despite there being a complete lack of historical peyote cultivation. There are presently at least two pertinent stumbling blocks preventing this land from actually being used for creating a real peyote garden (or otherwise addressing the fatal long-term flaws that are inherent within the existing distribution system). Those are located within the Texas DPS (Department of Public Safety) regulations concerning peyote harvesting:

One for the Distributors:
Ҥ13.42. Peyote Distributor Registration. (d) Activity not authorized. A distributor registration does not authorize the distributor to: (1) manufacture or cultivate peyote; (2) ingest or use peyote; (3) deliver to an individual who is an Indian as the term is defined in AIRFA, unless the individual is also an Indian as the term is defined in this subchapter; or (4) import or export peyote except as permitted by federal law.

&
Another for the Ranchers has two pertinent features of interest:

“§13.55 adopted to be effective July 18, 2001, 26 Tex Reg 5266 (only a part is being included below) Nothing in this subchapter affects the ability of a landowner to: […] (2) burn or clear land for purposes unrelated to harvesting, cutting, collecting, or possessing peyote.” and within that same subsection, (b) Prohibited. Unless registered as a distributor or reported to the director as a current employee of a distributor, a landowner may not sell, harvest, cut, collect, transport, or possess peyote. A landowner does not possess peyote in violation of the Act or this subchapter if the peyote is unharvested and growing in its natural state.”

Landowners are permited to charge access fees for peyote harvesting but interestingly there is another clause in this same regulation that adds:
“(d) Harvest fee limitation. Unless the landowner is registered as a distributor, the director will deem the landowner to be selling or distributing peyote if the landowner bases the fee charged or collected under subsection (c)(1) of this section on the amount of peyote harvested, cut, or collected by the Indian using or entering the land”

Notice that this is a dysfunctional “one-price-regardless-of-harvest-size” scenario that actually encourages the maximum possible harvesting to occur per visit. Since the law further sets the retail price as being per piece (i.e. per button) and not by weight there is just as much financial motivation to harvest tiny plants as older ones. Increasing difficulty in gaining access adds additional motivation to maximize the harvests recovered on every visit.

Many ranchers don’t like peyote or peyote harvesting or peyote people and express a familiar bias directed against them. A not untypical attitude is Sahagun’s 1994 quote of ranch owner Robert East. I don’t want them here. That’s all there is to it. I think it’s a dope business, that peyote.” Racism and bigotry often still exist close to the surface in South Texas, in all directions. When talking with ranchers, several times I’ve heard it said that the cause for the disappearance of peyote wasover-grazing by the Indians.”

While that degrading analogy blames the “Indians” there is actually a highly valuable insight if we look at what IS actually real within that notion — namely, as is also true for a rancher’s grazing animals, the NAC is in fact being constrained and provided with its Medicine in a regulated and controlled manner rather than having the freedom to do as they choose. Blaming Native Americans for the, ahem, “over-grazing” problem is about as sound as a rancher blaming their grazing animals for “eating too much” rather than, in this case, correctly recognizing that any “overgrazing” was the direct result of negligent planning, counter-productive activities and incompetent management on the part of the ranch manager.

Similarly the fees charged by ranchers for access are high enough to stimulate maximizing the harvesting per visit as well. Johnson has mentioned ranchers’ greed raising access costs from what once was a pittance to something more significant.

Grant gave a 2000 estimation of it then typically costing $1,500 or $2,000 a month for a peyote lease; which provided a small work crew with access to locate and harvest crowns that were then being sold at the retail level for around $0.15 each.

There is no question that the public perception of the peyote trade being profitable contributed to that increase in peyote lease fees. Not everyone shares completely identical motivations. Sahagun 1994 described rancher Rick Walker as being fed up with trespassers. But he suggested another reason for guarding the peyote gardens on his land. Peyote, he said, may one day become a hot commodity – for ranchers.”

There is at least one rancher in South Texas, the identity of whom is being withheld, who has discovered a unique way to legally make money from his peyote and still protect them from any harm. Instead of leasing his land for the harvest of peyote buttons, he instead “showcases” his peyote plants. He permits organized “eco-tours” to bring visitors onto his property in a bus as part of a fee-based tour. They are allowed to visit his property under tightly controlled circumstances in order to witness and photograph his healthy population of peyote plants. The tour bus also takes the visitors away at the end of the visit so there is no risk of theft.
That population is, just as importantly, also located far enough away from the nearest road to ensure that none of their visitors will be able to return on foot.

While this may sound cynical, one other highly significant factor in the perpetuation of the status quo is that the peyote distributors actually derive a very good living from their trade.

Despite the low cost per button, it is actually a moderately lucrative profession in what is historically an economically depressed region of Texas since the three remaining peyote distributors combined now typically report a total sales of a little under a half million dollars per year ($530,230 in 2013, $434,609 in 2012, $466,590 in 2011, $459,699 in 2010 and $493,834 in 2009 according to DPS records). This reflects their combined totals so in reality it is split into uneven thirds based on how much they actually sell. Each distributor’s total sales pays for their lease fees, their expenses and is also what they pay to the small group of their ’employees’ who help them harvest peyote. In most cases their employees are their relatives.
Unlike the ranches, the distributors are authorized to pay and charge a fee on a per-button basis. Resale prices to their consumers had risen from around $0.09 in 1990 to $0.15 in 2000 and to $0.33 per button in 2011. (A hidden cost factor within that is that the rise in cost had been accompanied by a decrease in size and potency which meant people were required to eat more buttons. See Terry et al. 2012. Link goes to the PDF at CCI’s website.)
A perceived threat to their income and livelihood is no doubt going to be an important motivating factor and can add some illumination to the larger picture and help us to better understand why there is such resistance to change at the distributor level.

Sahagun 1994 quoted Johnson as saying,

I love what I do, enjoy the hell out of it. But hey, you don’t get rich picking peyote.

It is not a huge amount of money but in a region where relatively few other alternative options for similarly lucrative employment opportunities exist it is certainly something that the people involved are going to care about. Relatively few of the distributors and harvesters could successfully turn into peyote growers without investing resources and time in buying land and/or learning skill sets they do not presently possess. Even if they decided to take that path, it would put them on equal footing at the starting gate along with their new competition only if they had the same level of interest, education and skills as a professional gardener or nursery operator.

While the state law that was mentioned previously as granting the distributors their licensing specifically prohibits the distributors from cultivating peyote, the federal law also recognizes that the NAC, or anyone else who is producing peyote for the NAC, has a need to “manufacture” their Medicine (21 CFR 1307.31). [The regulation says “Any person who manufactures peyote for or distributes peyote to the Native American Church, however, is required to obtain registration annually and to comply with all other requirements of law.” That potentially open door for cultivation would apply to any person, NAC or otherwise. There is no special restriction to NAC members in this regulation.] Manufacturing a plant obviously requires growing it or else modern technology has become much farther advanced than I am aware.

Congress has further added an affirmative clause that suggests NAC cultivation was at least being envisioned as enough of a possibility that its regulation needed inclusion.

(b) Use, possession, or transportation of peyote
(1) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the use, possession, or transportation of peyote by an Indian for bona fide traditional ceremonial purposes in connection with the practice of a traditional Indian religion is lawful, and shall not be prohibited by the United States or any State. No Indian shall be penalized or discriminated against on the basis of such use, possession or transportation, including, but not limited to, denial of otherwise applicable benefits under public assistance programs.
(2) This section does not prohibit such reasonable regulation and registration by the Drug Enforcement Administration of those persons who cultivate, harvest, or distribute peyote as may be consistent with the purposes of this section and section 1996 of this title. (In 42 USC § 1996a.) [Again, this applies to all persons, but it certainly includes the NAC.]

Which, at the very least, suggests that the road to the future cultivation of peyote by the NAC appears to be open as an available option that is protected by federal law. As AIRFAA treats cultivation in exactly the same manner as it does distribution, and because regulated distribution requires a long-standing registration process that functions daily before our very eyes, it would seem to be obvious that Congress intended cultivation to be not merely a hypothetical possibility, but a real option that should be realizable by the act of registration (to be defined and regulated, of course, by DEA).

 

peyote-buttons-Safford-1916

Dried peyote buttons from Safford 1916

 

 

Robledo 2006 included a thought-provoking comment that was left unexplained but touches on an often overlooked contribution to peyote harvesting by the NAC:

Out of the approximate 5 million buttons sold legally each year in the U.S. and Canada, deep South Texas provides about 2 million, with Salvador and his team of peyoteros providing at least 1 million themselves.
What is not mentioned by Robledo is what source provides the other 3 million of those buttons. It is noteworthy that the amount being estimated as procured independently of the activities of the licensed distributors exceeds their total output by 50%. It is reasonable to assume that he refers to the peyote that is being provided by the independent NAC members who are harvesting their own peyote. This brings us to another element in the story that we will return to again later – in the second part of this chapter.
Before moving onward this also is a great example of how much of the current “wisdom” about the peyote trade is based on untraceable rumor rather than documented fact. In the case of Robledo’s intriguing assertion of an actual numeric value for the unregulated peyote trade there are two glaring and inescapable facts that might be easily overlooked: 1) The claim lacks mention of its actual source or providing any indication about where or how this information came into Robledo’s awareness, and 2) it is an absolute impossibility for anyone to keep track of, much less tally with accuracy, the actual extent of the peyote trade occurring independently of the licensed distributors.

 

In 1988, after interviewing the active licensed distributors, John Morthland commented:

Dealers worry constantly about running out of stock, so they keep sources secret from outsiders and even from each other. They are also afraid that if Indians ever discovered the choice growing areas, they might try to bypass the dealers.”

An actual attempt by some peyote distributors to control the peyote trade and deliberately try to prevent cultivation by their customers actually goes back a very long time. Some comments from BIA Special Agent “Pussyfoot” Johnson were featured in an intriguing account by his supervisor that appears in a 1909 issue of the Indian School Journal, entitled “History, Use and Effects of Peyote.”

About twenty-three years ago a white man appeared at Laredo from the Territory in quest of peyotes.
He learned from the Indians up north that in a range of hills about forty miles east of Laredo, these peyotes could be found, He employed Mexicans to gather a supply, which he took north with him. He came in contact with a shipper by the name of Villegas, founder of the house known as L. Villegas and Company. Villegas then began buying these peyotes of ignorant Mexicans and shipping them north to the Indians. This house has been doing this for more than twenty years, but the business has been kept as secret as possible. Villegas has always refused to give the Indians any information as to the source of supply and has also refused all these years to supply Indians with the whole plant, fearing that they would transplant them and thus establish their own source of supply. Half a dozen years ago a member of the firm named Wormser withdrew and established the house of Wormser Brothers, of course taking the secret of the peyotes with him.
These two houses very craftily called these peyotes by the name of Japanese buttons, and created the impression locally that they were for some mysterious use by the Japanese.
These two houses, in this way, have built up a commercial monopoly in peyotes for the whole United States, practically.
About forty miles east of Laredo and four miles from the Texas-Mexican Railway, is an ancient Mexican town of about fifteen families, called Los Ojuelos. It has a graveyard larger than the town itself. It is located close to the edge of some rough, rocky graveled hills, on which these peyotes grow wild; none are cultivated anywhere. They grow wild under the shelter of a bush on these rocky ledges.
[…]
The Mexicans who gather the plant do not pull it up by the roots, but merely cut off the tops, leaving the potato itself in the ground. The top part of this potato then rots. The lower roots then grow and three or four peyotes often thereby appear where there originally was but one. It requires from one to two months’ time properly to dry these peyote tops for the market.
In this village, Los Ojuelos, are two small stores run by V. Laurel and Bro., and the other by Gayetasio Ochoa, the latter being postmaster. The villagers gather these peyotes and turn them into these two stores for supplies, getting about $2.50 a thousand for them. An industrious worker can not gather more than two hundred per day.

 

Modern workers appear to be able to harvest faster.

It used to be you’d go out for a couple of hours and you’d find 500 to 1,000 plants,” he said. “Now, you go out for six hours and you don’t come back with much.
Mauro Morales in Roebuck 2004.

In three hours his two brothers gathered about five potato sacks, some 4000 buttons in all.”
De Cordoba 2004 speaking of his time with Salvador Johnson.

 

Some statistics from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)

Year

# of Buttons

Reported Sold

Total Sales

($US)

Price per Thousand

($US)

Notes

1986 1,913,212 $149,307.52 $ 78
1987 1,766,409 $137,046.30 $ 78
1988 1,575,766 $129,051.01 $ 82
1989 1,572,102 $129,619.62 $ 82
1990 1,772,126 $156.607.29 $ 88
1991 1,859,189 $182,544.02 $ 97
1992 1,886,434 $192,695.25 $102
1993 No data. No data. na [data from DPS in 2005]
1993 1,978,646 $210,247.60 $106 [data from DPS in 2011]
1994 No data. No data. na [data from DPS in 2005]
1994 2,184,739 $246,632.94 $113 [data from DPS in 2011]
1995 No data. No data. na [data from DPS in 2005]
1995 2,252,174 $234,750.20 $104 [data from DPS in 2011]
1996 2,258,993 $278,579.50 $123
1997 2,317,380 $274,500.62 $118
1998 2,076,167 $277,119.71 $133
1999 2,093,335 $335,823.02 $160
2000 2,057,020 $310,722.10 $151
2001 1,934,600 $360,676.00 $186
2002 1,820,847 $422,289.50 $232 [data from DPS in 2005]
2002 1,703,914 $404,859.50 $237 [data from DPS in 2011]
2003 1,779,170 $416,727.00 $234 [data from DPS in 2005]
2003 1,781,170 $416,727.00 $234 [data from DPS in 2011]
2004 1,658,195 $393,572.50 $237 [data from DPS in 2005]
2004 1,304,691 $304,002.50 $237 [data from DPS in 2006]
2004 1,669,806 $393,572.50 $236 [data from DPS in 2011]
2005 1,565,534 $407,789.50 $260
2006 1,619,115 $463,714.75 $286
2007 1,605,345 $474,321.80 $296
2008 1,475,469 $463,148.00 $314
2009 1,604,623 $493,834.00 $308
2010 1,483,697 $459,699.00 $310
2011 1,413,846 $466,590.50 $330
2012 1,106,209 $434,609.00 $393
2013 1,363,978 $530,230.00 $389
2014 1,128,787 $426,300.00 $378

The above reflects the reported activities of the licensed distributors (and their employees) based on figures provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).

There are presently three peyote distributors and this has been true since 2006. Four licensed peyote dealers were still in operation in 2003-2005. Prior to that there were five and before that there were more. I have heard that a fourth has submitted her paperwork to DPS.

It is an interesting point of clarity that the licensed distributors who sell peyote prefer to be called “peyote dealers” rather than peyoteros.

Math in the fourth column is mine so any mistakes there are mine.

The late 1990s is when the average size plummeted for the buttons showing up in NAC meetings in central Texas. In the late 1990s sacks of Mexican peyote became more common.

 

It is very easy to see that a lot more peyote populations exist in Mexico than are inside of the USA.

The distribution of Lophophora williamsii

map-Anderson-Koehres

The suggested distribution of peyote
Composite map created from Anderson1980 & Koehres

Concerning this map:
It is important to be aware that peyote grows only in soils that are acceptable to it. This is true within any region it occurs, and therefore this map suggests there is a far more substantial distribution and many more populations than really exist (or have ever existed) within the shaded zones.

Anderson created this map by placing the reported herbarium collections, some of which are now known to be erroneous, as dots on a map and then drawing a line encircling them all.
For those reasons reason it is extremely doubtful that any peyote actually lives within large sections of the indicated areas. To put it another way, the presence of a solidly shaded area does not imply a continuous peyote population anywhere within it. It certainly does not indicate a lawn of Lophophora.

Koehres created his map similarly but incorporates his own field information which is superior to that of Anderson.

 

How difficult is peyote to grow?

It is easy to find it said that peyote is difficult or even impossible to grow.

After interviewing peyoteros in 1988 John Morthland wrote,

Indeed, peyote is almost impossible to cultivate. Once a seed germinates, the plant takes five years to grow big enough for picking, and the root of a harvested peyote takes nearly that long to bloom again.

 

Morthland’s “almost impossible” estimates are actually optimistic despite being shorter than reality. A professional cactus cultivator would consider them to be more typical than impossible and would simply take those numbers in stride in his or her production planning.
The reality is that peyote is among the easiest and the most forgiving of the cactus species to grow from seed.

Peyote, like any other cactus species, is fairly slow growing which is why what is developing contains the elements of a crisis-in-the-making. After cultivation begins in a meaningful way, more than a decade can be expected to elapse prior to the first acceptable harvest.

The widely circulated meme that cultivation is somehow either a difficult challenge or an absolute impossibility is probably just simple propaganda that conveniently serves licensed distributors, law enforcement and the powers-that-be alike.
Cactus cultivators have not reported similar results as the image of what is largely Lophophora diffusa in the next photograph should illustrate. These seedlings shown below are growing in Prague.

 

diffusa-in-prague

It is also surprisingly common to find it said that peyote cannot be cultivated anywhere outside of its natural ranges. People like Leo Mercado who, in theory, have proved this to be in error have actually proven just how right Voltaire was when saying:

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”

At least, we now understand WHY peyote cultivation is considered to be impossible: not because of any technical issues but rather because the federal, state and/or local police will come and destroy the peyote plants if they learn of their existence.

The Peyote Foundation 1998

The Peyote Foundation 1998

Leo’s “impossible” shade house in 1998.
Taken with Leo’s permission from their newsletter

 

That is only the beginning of this story as it is clear that the cultivation of peyote is easy. Cultivation of someone else’s spiritual sacrament, however, rapidly becomes a quite different subject altogether.
The one very significant hurdle for the cultivation of peyote is a lack of acceptance by more than a relatively few members of the NAC.

This will be explored in more detail when this commentary continues.

 

More is still to come with part 2.

 

Related Reading Off-Site – Cactus Conservation Institute’s website

 

Additional Related Reading Off-Site – Edward Anderson’s thoughts on the Peyote Crisis.