Dose - 13yrs old peyote cactus

[Adam101]

swim has a 13yr old peyote plant he was considering consuming. It's about 2", maybe a little more, and 3/4" thick. Is it worth it for swim?

[SullyGuy]

Cant SWIY just harvest the buttons?

[Adam101]

what do you mean? He's started a new crop with the seeds, and he wants to consume it.

[Drats]

Swiy has to be very careful when harvesting the button. Swiy shouldn´t damage the root when cutting the button, so the cacti continues to live and creates a new button. Also the new button will come much faster than the old old one. SWIM currently does not know if the new button will be of the same strength than the old one.

But SWIM also mentioned one button is not enough, even if the cacti is allready 13 years old. So SWIY better should harvest a Trichocereus Pachanoi or Peruvianus. SWIM tried to harvest allready 3 Peyote which had been 25 years old, only 2 survived. Also the 3 big buttons gave SWIM a kick which is similar to 400-500 grams of fresh Trichocereus Peruvianus. Regular SWIM prefers a dosage of 600-700 grams fresh Trichocereus Peruvianus.

So to answer the question in a short way: no it´s definetly not worth harvesting the Peyote.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good answer, informative

[Potter]

At the very least make sure the new seeds germinate and get past their first few years.

Might consider application of hormones to get the button to put out pups. Haven't a clue what one would use to do this, but will do some research in the next few days and see what come up. It might be worth trying to make 2 or three small cuts into the plant (don't know where though, that will be more research some cati pup at the base, some at the top...) of the plant to try and stimulate pups too, say inserting a sterile x-acto blade a 1/4 inch in, then dusting the wound with sulpher, abstain from watering for a few weeks to let it heal.

As far as harvesting, you could slice the top off as long as you don't damage the root, but as above, it's risky. It's been 13 years, whats another year or two? Try to get it to pup first. Not to mention a 13 year old peyote cactus is a rare and valuable plant in the US, lots of folks would give their left nut to have something like that in their collection. Grow them seeds, graft them, let them mature and eat those in a few years, save the old plant and keep it healthy.