Psychoactive Plant Seeds: Mescaline Cacti, Poppies and Tobacco

First thing to clear up: nothing here is a "Smart Seeds" cultivar. It's our name for a shelf of species seed, sold to be sown, raised and collected. The seed is fresh, the binomial is on the pack, and the rest of the smartshop sits one click away if seeds aren't what brought you. Worth saying too that none of the products on this shelf are fungi, so if you landed here after reading about magic mushrooms you want a different shelf entirely. What follows is soil, seed trays, sunlight and a long wait.

Echinopsis pachanoi, Lophophora williamsii and the mescaline cacti

Mescaline is the alkaloid this group of cacti is known for, and their long documented use in Andean and Mexican ritual is part of why they are so widely grown. That is a fact about the species and about the ethnographic record, nothing more. As garden subjects they split neatly into two camps: fast columnar species and painfully slow globular ones.

The columnar Trichocereus group

San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi) is the one most people arrive looking for. It comes from the Andean slopes of Ecuador and Peru, roughly 2,000 to 3,000 metres up, where rain is seasonal but the air is far from arid. It is the fast one: a blue-green ribbed column with six to eight low ribs and short spines, capable of 30 to 50 cm a year once established, and reaching several metres over decades. Large white night-opening flowers come only on mature plants. The seed is fine and dark, needs light to germinate, so it is pressed onto the surface of a peat-based cactus and succulent mix rather than buried, and it wants proper humidity under a cover or bag at around 20 to 25C. Sprouts appear in one to three weeks as tiny green spheres with a fringe of bristles, and they stay that way for months before the column starts to form. A deep pot on the sunniest windowsill in the house will do for the first two or three years, though a greenhouse or conservatory gets you thicker, better coloured growth. If you would rather not wait, we also sell San Pedro as a rooted living plant.

Peruvian Torch (Echinopsis peruviana) is its western Peruvian cousin, more heavily glaucous, with longer honey-coloured spines and a slightly stockier habit. Bolivian Torch (Echinopsis lageniformis) comes from the dry valleys of Bolivia, has four to eight prominent ribs and a distinct frosted blue cast, and is every bit as vigorous as San Pedro. Echinopsis macrogona (Trichocereus macrogonus) is the heavyweight of the four, darker green with fewer, deeper ribs and a thicker column. Each of these is sold as 20 seeds, and all four germinate and are raised in exactly the same way, so a beginner tray with a couple of species in it is a sensible experiment. Established specimens of the Peruvian Torch as a living cactus and of the Bolivian Torch are stocked separately on our plant shelf for anyone who wants a head start of several years.

Lophophora williamsii and Aztekium ritteri, the slow globulars

Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) goes the opposite way. It is a spineless, pale blue-green globular cactus of limestone scrub in the Chihuahuan desert, from southern Texas down through San Luis Potosí, and it grows a fat carrot-like taproot far larger than the visible button. Small pink-white flowers open from the woolly crown. Growth is measured by the year rather than the month: a seedling may be the size of a pea after twelve months and a few centimetres across after five years, with flowering plants often a decade old or more. It wants full sun, a very mineral substrate and a dry, cool winter rest with no water at all. Because that timescale defeats a lot of growers, we also offer Peyote as an established plant. Aztec Cactus (Aztekium ritteri) is slower still, a gypsum-cliff specialist from a tiny area of Nuevo León with wrinkled, concertina-like ribs and a mature size of only a few centimetres. It is firmly a collector's cactus, unforgiving of damp and best kept in a shallow pan under glass. The Prickly Pack bundles the Echinopsis group with Peyote and cactus nutrients, which is the tidiest way to start both camps at once. If you want something that visibly climbs inside a couple of seasons, we'd take San Pedro over Peyote every time.

Gritty mix, warmth and a lot of patience

Substrate and temperature

Cactus seed wants mineral soil. For Peyote we use roughly 50% sand, 25% grit or bims and 25% regular potting soil, a minimum of 10C, and as much direct sun as the plants can get. The columnar Echinopsis are less fussy and will take a standard cactus mix loosened with extra pumice. Everything germinates faster and more evenly with bottom heat and a covered tray, and seedlings should be weaned off that humidity gradually over several weeks rather than uncovered in one go, which scorches them.

Sowing depth and germination times

Sow shallow across the board. Green Mormon Tea (Ephedra viridis) goes no deeper than 5 mm in sandy, well-drained soil and usually sprouts in about two weeks, though germination is irregular, so don't bin a tray that looks empty for a couple of months. Poppy seed is the easy end of the shelf, scattered onto fertilised soil, barely covered, up in about a week. The mints in the Leonotis group are quicker still at 20C, while woody tropical climbers such as Celastrus can sulk for six weeks before anything shows.

Where batches go wrong

The main way to lose a batch is overwatering, which brings fungus and rot faster than any pest will. Water from below where you can, keep air moving over the tray, and use a lid to hold humidity rather than a permanently soaked surface. Damping off takes seedling cacti in a day. The second most common loss is impatience: repotting a cactus seedling before it has a proper root system, or feeding it in its first winter.

Vines, daggas and dry-country shrubs

Climbing vines and legumes

Hawaiian Baby Woodrose (Argyreia nervosa) is a woody twining perennial from the Indian subcontinent, and despite the name it is a naturalised import in Hawaii rather than a native. It carries big heart-shaped leaves with silvery felted undersides, mauve trumpet flowers on mature plants, and large fuzzy brown seeds that are easily the biggest on this shelf. Given warmth it grows quickly and needs a stout trellis or a conservatory wall, since it is frost tender and unhappy below about 10C. The Madagascar variety sits beside it. Velvet Bean (Mucuna pruriens) is a fast annual legume from tropical Africa and Asia, a scrambling climber of several metres in one season with trifoliate leaves and drooping purple flowers, and as a nitrogen fixer it is genuinely useful in a bed. Its pods are packed with fine hairs, the species name means "itching" for good reason, so handle the pods with gloves and keep your hands away from your eyes. Black Oil Plant (Celastrus paniculatus) is an Indian and Southeast Asian climbing shrub known in Ayurvedic writing as the intellect tree; it is measured out in grams, germinates slowly and irregularly, and makes a large woody vine that needs a frost-free spot.

The mint family daggas

The mint family brings Wild Dagga (Leonotis leonurus), Klip Dagga (Leonotis nepetifolia) and Marihuanilla (Leonurus sibiricus). Wild Dagga is a South African shrub to about two metres with narrow willowy leaves and whorls of furry orange tubular flowers up the stem, half hardy and superb in a large pot or a sunny border, cut back after flowering. Klip Dagga is an annual or biennial from tropical Africa, taller and coarser, with spherical spiny flower heads and orange blooms, and it self-seeds readily. Marihuanilla is a biennial from Siberia and eastern Asia with deeply cut leaves and pink-purple whorls, the hardiest of the three and content in ordinary garden soil.

Dry-country shrubs and jointed stems

For dry-climate oddities there's Khat (Catha edulis), Ma Huang (Ephedra sinica) and Green Mormon Tea. Khat is an evergreen shrub or small tree of the East African and Arabian highlands, glossy leathery leaves, slow growing in a pot, needs a frost-free winter and reasonably fresh seed. The two Ephedra are gymnosperms rather than flowering shrubs, all jointed green stems and scale leaves rather than proper foliage. Ma Huang comes from Mongolia and northern China, sprawls low and takes hard frost; Green Mormon Tea comes from the Great Basin of the western United States, stands more upright with brighter stems, and is exceptionally drought tolerant once rooted. Both want gritty soil and full sun, and both resent wet feet in winter.

Poppies

Poppy (Papaver somniferum) is a hardy annual reaching about a metre with grey-green lobed leaves and red, purple, pink or white flowers followed by the familiar ribbed capsules. It hates root disturbance, so direct sowing beats transplanting, and it self-seeds cheerfully once happy. California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is the drought-tolerant one, 13 to 152 cm of feathery blue-green foliage under bright orange, native to the American west coast, and it copes with poor sandy soil far better than most annuals.

Succulents, shrubs and a fast climber

Kanna (Sceletium tortuosum) is a low creeping succulent from the Karoo of South Africa, fleshy leaves with translucent veining and fringed white to pale pink flowers, ideal in a shallow pot or hanging basket with sharp drainage and a bright windowsill. Its seed is fine and surface sown. Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) is a grey-green branching shrub to about 1.5 m from India and the Middle East, easy and quick from seed in warmth, and it carries orange-red berries in papery calyces; it holds a long reputation in Ayurvedic writing as a tonic and natural aphrodisiac. Morning Glory (Ipomoea tricolor) is a Mexican annual climber, the fastest thing on this page, three metres of heart-shaped leaves and sky-blue funnels by late summer if given netting and a warm wall. The Trippy Garden Pack rounds the group out for anyone who wants a spread of these in one go.

Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana rustica, two very different tobaccos

Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) and Aztec Tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) both come as 20 seeds, and both are grown here as garden plants. N. tabacum is a South American species of Andean origin, a tall soft-stemmed annual of one to two metres with huge sticky leaves and pale pink trumpet flowers, and it needs a long warm season, so it is best started under glass in late winter, pricked out into individual pots and set out only once frost has passed. N. rustica is the older Mexican and South American cultigen, shorter and stiffer at around a metre, with rounder, thicker leaves and yellow-green flowers; it is quicker to finish, tougher in a cool summer and the better bet in a British garden or a large tub. The seed of both is tiny, so keep it right at the surface, press it in and mist rather than soak, otherwise it washes away or never sees light. Germination takes one to two weeks at about 20 to 22C, and the seedlings are grass-fine before they suddenly bulk up.

New to all this? Sow Papaver somniferum in an outdoor bed between September and April and put a pot of San Pedro on your sunniest windowsill. The poppies will have flowered and died back twice before that cactus is worth photographing.