Expert: Maureen - 2/6/2011

Question
QUESTION: after several days of hard freeze in  s.west tx. about 10-12 3-4' tall san pedro cactus seem to be dead or dying. can i salvage any of the  pulp for later use from these plants?  i live in swest texas not far from mexico. min. temp this yr 10 max 105. peace ty

ANSWER: Dear John,

Do you have a picture of the plant? Why do you think it's dead? San Pedro (common name for more than one plant)are cold tolerent from 8b-10.  MUCH higher than 10 degrees will kill the plant I suspect. I don' think you can do anything with the mushy columns which are dead.  You my want to cut the plant back to the base, and see if that is still viable, keep it completely dry and bring it inside till spring if you can or cover it against cold if you can't.  It doesn't need light or water as it is dormant.  When the weather warms up you can gradually expose it to the sun again and se if you get new shoots. If so great.  if not it means that the roots also froze and it's a gonner.

Good luck and let me know if you have any other questions.

Maureen

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QUESTION: hello again maureen
























hi again maureen, sorry mam  my bad! let me rephrase the question, is the mescaline in the mush still viable and extractable? peace ty again

Answer
Dear John,

I'm no expert on psychedelic properties of cacti (to my  great regret).  I suspect it is viable and you can extract it as you normally would.  How is that done?  However, I am going to refer you to another site that has a ton of info. It is www.erowid.org.  It's all about medicinal uses for plants and other things and has your echinocereus first thing under cactus.  You can also write to on the site someone with more knowledge. It's quite an amazing site.

Let me know if you have any luck.

maureen