Description
Which of the following does not belong in this group?
Erythroxylum coca. Papaver somniferum. Lophophora williamsii. Cannabis sativa. Dendrobium nobile.
If you guessed Dendrobium nobile, you’d be wrong.
The clever reader will have figured out that this list of plants has something to do with getting high. Blow, poppies, payotea, weed…But a Dendrobium orchid?
Yep. That most noble of Dendrobiums, ancestor of a thousand hybrids, father of the Hawaiian orchid industry, looks like it is packing some pharmacological potency.
How do we know this? Well, on the fringes of the internet, before you get out to the Dark Web of illicit activities, there are sites where the intelligent and insane intersect, where folk discuss means of achieving altered states in great detail. It is a strange but fascinating place that shows how people will try anything to get stoned.
Who wakes up one day and decides to smoke a Den. nobile flower? A German guy, of course. Apparently a dried flower from his Den. nobile dropped, and whether by accident or desperation, he popped it into his pot pipe, lit up, and..took a trip. The high was very similar to pot. Later he tried mixing the nobile flower with some pot, and got even more “enhanced” results. Excellent, duuude… (Obviously, more research is required.)
