jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 3:54:30 GMT -5
I sell carex's too ID is complicated "Carex is a vast genus of over 1500 species of grassy plants[2] in the family Cyperaceae, commonly known as sedges. Other members of the Cyperaceae family are also called sedges, however those of genus Carex may be called "true" sedges, and it is the most species-rich genus in the family. The study of Carex is known as caricology."
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Post by vegasjames on Aug 6, 2013 4:10:26 GMT -5
It would help to have a picture of the plant as it grows and preferably with the flowers or seed heads. Could be goldenclub, also known as neverwet. If used for perfume there could be a couple of different reasons. Some plants change odor upon drying. For example, the coumarin containing plants such as sweet clover and vanilla beans do not develop their characteristic vanilla odor until dried. Or the plant could be used for a certain "tone" or as a fixative. Not all perfume ingredients are used for smell though. For example, the very high end perfumes such a Channel use ambergris (whale poop) as a fixative. It is often incorrectly referred to as whale vomit though to make it sound less repulsive if that is possible. Ambergris has a very unusual, and what most would not call pleasant, odor. But it is a powerful fixative, which helps to hold the odor . This is why the really expensive perfumes have an applicator to apply just a tiny amount of the perfume that can last for days compared to the cheap perfumes, which people apply a lot more of and the smell quickly dissipates usually in a few hours. Too funny:). Perfumery and perfume bottles was my main obsession for decades:)! That plant James posted is pretty obscure for me not to recognize it on sight. And ambergris IS whale vomit... it just so happens that whales vomit their poop. You forgot civet cat... which is cat pee. For that matter, musk is a form of deer pee, it's what they use for marking territory too. All perfume fixatives are interesting subjects:). LOL! A lot of plants have similar looking leaves which is why seeing the whole plant helps. Does it grow straight up or in a rosette, what kind of flowers or seed pods does it have, etc. All of those can help with specific plant identification. I have to disagree on the vomit part. The ambergris is formed in the intestines. There is a valve that www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-whale-waste-is-valuableAlso read this: harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/why-whales"But watch a whale long enough, and you’ll see a different pattern. Many whales feed at depth and poop at the surface. (In case you were wondering, right whales often produce brown or red logs, which float at the surface before breaking up. Humpbacks and many other fish-eating whales tend to release broad plumes.) " And this one: chip.choate.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/Science/rgritzer/webpages/BI465/Student%20project/Fran%20final%20project/whale_digestion.htmThe vomit hypothesis runs in to a number of problems. First of all the three stomachs off the whale are separated from the intestines by a muscular valve. The ambergris is formed in the intestines, which as we can see are very long. In order for the ambergris to be excreted from the intestines through the mouth it would have be forced up from an extraordinarily long intestine, through the muscular pylorus then through the three stomachs. This would be virtually if not completely impossible. The only vertebrate fish I know of that can voluntarily empty its stomach contents to eliminate indigestibles are sharks. Also note that in the one article they mention "logs", which indicate more well formed concentrated fecal matter. This would not even be close to the case if the whales where vomiting this matter rather than defecating it. Civets are not really cats even though they are called cats. They are used in in perfume making and you will also see civet oil as an additive in cigarettes. Civet coffee is also a very expensive coffee made from coffee beans collected from the feces of civets. I have heard of this also being done with elephants which supposedly is the world's most expensive coffee. One of the projects I have been working on is making synthetic ambergris. Thee stuff smelled like a dead body for about the first year but finally mellowed out quite a bit. Still, you don't want to get it on your skin as it takes days of washing to get rid of the smell. The final step is to oxidize the material, which turns it white and mellows it out even more making it more valuable. Other uses of ambergris include its being used in food for "flavoring" and it is used in making an aphrodisiac.
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Post by vegasjames on Aug 6, 2013 4:12:55 GMT -5
You can probably find someone at the local university that can tell you right off what the plant is.
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rockpickerforever
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Post by rockpickerforever on Aug 6, 2013 8:51:14 GMT -5
Boy, that one sure went sideways... I thought it was about IDing the plant?? We definitely have a topic steerage problem here...
Nice pics, BTW James!
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 9:03:16 GMT -5
Not a lot of people study wetland plants. The University of Florida has the largest accumulation of wetland knowledge that I know of. Most of them need seeds/flowers to ID of course and that luxury is rarely available. Hopefully you and Helen will ID whale vomit/dung issue. Glad to see you guys switched from bull sh to whales sh. Good morning Jean ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png) :> :
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rockpickerforever
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Post by rockpickerforever on Aug 6, 2013 9:22:40 GMT -5
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 9:27:17 GMT -5
I need a boost this morning. Thanks.
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Fossilman
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Post by Fossilman on Aug 6, 2013 10:44:25 GMT -5
Its a car from the 20's,the parts could bring in some coin too,,,........I like the old building in the background too,great wood for projects! Cool looking coral too James..... As for the plant and its smell,its probably better than the animal urine they use for some perfumes,,,LMAO!!!
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Post by helens on Aug 6, 2013 10:50:38 GMT -5
Technically, you are right, the ambergris comes from a secretion produced from whale intestines (sperm whales) that protect their stomach/intestines from pointy squid beaks. It could come out either end. My understanding is that it is more frequently vomited simply because of whale anatomy. This is an interesting article about the question (that doesn't really answer the question): www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/2055/My understanding of whale physiology is that when they 'poop' due to the lengths of their intestines, what is expelled is a smelly brown liquid (think diarrhea). Ambergris is vomited as a soft solid, and requires decades of floating around in the ocean to purify into a nice smelling pale lump (white/grey being most valuable), rather than a foul smelling dark slimy poop smelling substance, most of which is decayed phytoplankton residue (think fish emulsion), with minimal ambrein. I would imagine comparable to human stomach bile. You will get a whole lot more pure green bile from vomiting than you will from collecting poop. Tho you would certainly get some in the poop. Bile doesn't get hard and chunky, but if it did, and the excrement portion were dissolved out, you'd have a smaller chunk in poop than in vomit. Thus ambergris is called vomit. When you say you're making synthetic ambergris... I've got several 'synthetic' versions of ambergris... one from a musk ambrette seed tincture I made (pft, not very fresh seeds, so it's not very strong), amber resin tincture (not very ambergrisy- more like deer musk), and 2 chem-synths, from Givaudan and IFF... both of which are simply ozony. There is no substitute today for real ambergris for longevity and the elusive scent elements, though some think they are close to the scent component that I know of. That said, I'm interested in your synthetic... the only thing that I know of that we can naturally make that takes a year to mellow (or much longer) is an orris root concoction (doesn't smell like ambergris, but is lovely and green and another great fixative). Is that what you make? I actually haven't blended for a few years. One thing that ends up happening with formulating is that you hit the 'perfect' formula, and then you end up reproducing it a bazillion times. When you commercialize anything, you lose the time and inclination to keep pushing the boundaries. But I've come up with some doozies. If I weren't worried about anosmia, I'd still be at it:). Here's an old pix of my blending table (organs take up too much space, I can store many times as many bottles in drawers under the table). I've got more than double the components you see there now, both natural and synthetic, but stopped in 2010 when I sold my last commercial product formulation and lost interest. Now I just keep my bottles in the fridge, or in the case of old patchouli, vetiver, oakmoss, pounds in aluminum bottles on shelves to age: ![http://www.zensoaps.com/sizedperfume/07-01-blendtable2.jpg](http://www.zensoaps.com/sizedperfume/07-01-blendtable2.jpg) JamesP... what does that plant actually SMELL like? Moldy? Green? Sweet? Could you describe it at all?
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 11:30:29 GMT -5
No. The smell is not easy. And I spoke for a while w/the about 65 year old man. I did not want to ask too much because he was very intent on his collecting and felt like I would be prying. When he left I looked for them and they were hard to find. They grow in same enviro as carnivorous plants(sarracenia). All that does not help a bit. That plant is clearly photographed but will be a challenge to ID. No one wants to perform taxonomy on wetland plants.
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Post by helens on Aug 6, 2013 11:35:08 GMT -5
Hrm. I think I've seen that plant before (with the red leaf base)... had no idea it smelled. Guess I'll take a whiff if I run across it again. If it were commercially valuable... someone would be growing it, not running around looking for it in a field to collect in the wild to dry. Something just seems odd about that, you sure he wasn't digging the whole plant up?
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 11:38:48 GMT -5
Ha , a dicot. I think I found it. After 4 inches of pages. Sumbich
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Post by helens on Aug 6, 2013 11:39:18 GMT -5
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 11:48:36 GMT -5
Looks like it could have been John Boy Walton's. I wonder if it has a rumble seat? Cool car, anyway. I've seen that leaf before, too. It's on the tip of my brain. I thinking it is related to a dandy lion. But, I don't know squat. OK Tela smarty pants. You were very close. And when you mentioned Dandy Lion it rung my bell too, mainly due to leaf shape and odor. This plant has been replaced by artificial compounds(as so many are). Anyone in fragrances would get this blindfolded(Helen). Even w/these great hints I feel like I will give you a whipping Helen.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 11:52:43 GMT -5
No, I used to sell plantago too. And it requires much wetter soil. It is not allowed on this farm as it seeds everywhere. Try again.
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Post by helens on Aug 6, 2013 12:10:41 GMT -5
Ill see what I find when I get home. For specific fragrance functions that's a stumper. What it looks like is a var of arrowroot...which is way too common and cheap to be as rare as you claim. Most useful smelly stuff out of bogs are lichen or worts. Other off top of head is a var of plantain. Another non smelly. The red seems like it might be rutabaga family. More non smelly. So puzzling.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using proboards
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 12:19:22 GMT -5
The southernmost habitat is Florida counties Citrus, Sumpter, Lake, your Orange and Brevard counties Helen. It grows in the SE US.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 12:30:29 GMT -5
Not not not arrowroot plantain rutabaga. Vegasjames ![???](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/huh.png) ? I found it in Hamilton County, but it is not in Suwanee county just across the Suwanee River. The coral is also on the north side of the river and not on the south side. ![](http://arcmapper.sc.egov.usda.gov/PlantMapper.asp?h=450&w=650&cmd=newmap&state=12&county=12001_12005_12007_12009_12013_12017_12019_12029_12031_12033&county=12035_12037_12039_12041_12045_12047_12059_12065_12067_12069&county=12073_12075_12077_12079_12083_12089_12091_12095_12097_12107&county=12109_12113_12117_12119_12123_12125_12127_12129_12131_12133&symbol=)
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2013 12:31:49 GMT -5
Dang! That's where I left my Essex. Thanks for finding it Jim. ![8-)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/cool.png)
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Aug 6, 2013 12:41:59 GMT -5
Where the %#$%%%&^ have you been Berkelite BOY?
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