need help with a school speech identifying plants

[ob-noxious]

im a sophomore in high school and on october 20th i have to give a 4-7 minute speech informing my classmates how to identify different kinds of plants.
its not so much the identification part i need help with, but rather some interesting facts and myths about these various different species

heres a list of the plants ill be identifying (still adding to the list)

Calea zacatechichi
Psilocybin mushrooms (technically not a plant, but teach said i can use it)
Datura
Poppy
Ginseng
Guarana
Salvia divinorum
Green tea
Morning glory
Ginkgo bibloa
Cannabis hemp
Ghatti gum
Coffee
Tobacco

thanks! :weedman:

 

[Mycophile]

That's a pretty long list for 4-7 minutes.

For only mushrooms I already need at least 30 minutes and that's still the introduction...

But what do you want us to do? Do you have specific questions or do you want us to write your whole speech? I'm willing to write your speech, no problem, but only as long you promise you won't change one word...

 

[ob-noxious]

lol no ill write it thanks tho
i was just hoping to get a big list of some facts and maybe a few myths about these plants' uses, history, et cetera and then make the list or amount of facts bigger or smaller according to the amount of information i can get

Ive already read that 100,000 challenge thing, that'll prove useful.
but just basically a bunch of facts that you wouldnt hear anywhere else
Thanks

 

[Mycophile]

Well, you're in the US, right?

Cannabis...
- US declaration is written on Hemp paper
- Bush sr. wore shoes with parts of hemp in WWII
- George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were HUGE fans of hemp
- There was at least 60 tons of Hemp at the USS Constitution.
- Hemp fibers are a lot stronger, more absorbent and more mildew-resistant than cotton

Legalize!

You can throw that in the face of your teacher.

Or you can just say: fuck those 7 minutes, check all Jackherer.com. He says it better then me. I rest my case...

 

[Mycophile]

sorry for not really helping you by the way... But I just don't get exactly what you want. It's impossible to talk about 15 plants in 7 minutes. That's not even 30 seconds each plant...

isn't it better to stick to 1 or 2?

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

Christian Rätsch' books are full of interesting stories about these plants.
Some of those stories can be found in this encyclopedia:
http://azarius.net/encyclopedia/
The interesting anecdotes are usually mentioned in the first few sentences about the plant. The rest is chemistry, dosage etc.

Ginkgo biloba is the oldest tree species in the world, and individual trees can live to 1000 years and beyond. With its 200 million year history, ginkgo is known as a "living fossil." Ginkgo survived the last ice age only in China, from which it was brought to Europe and America in the eighteenth century. Since then the ginkgo tree has been widely planted in the U.S., particularly in large cities due to its hardiness.
Ginkgo has a remarkable resistance not only to time, but also to pollution, insects, fungi and diseases. A powerful demonstration of its hardiness is the fact that ginkgo seeds survived the atomic blast over Hiroshima and later sprouted, the only tree to survive. This tree can still be seen today standing near the epicenter of the blast. Ginkgo can grow 120 feet high and is easily recognizable from its unique fan-shaped leaves with two lobes ("biloba"), growing in clusters from a common stalk.

 

[Forkbender]

I love the Gingko's in my street.

 

[ob-noxious]

thanks all
maybe i will shorten it up a bit...

 

[Pariah]

wikipedia would be my first stop, but off of the top of my head:

Datura - tropane alkaloids used in medicine as well as to fight against the effect of some nerve poisons.

Poppy: look up opium wars, morphine, heroin.

gingsen: herbal remedy I forget the specifics: metabolism?

Salvia divinorum: contains psychoactive *diterpenes* - very rare as most psychoactives are alkaloids.

green tea - non oxidised tea leaves - antioxidants still present

morning glory: used to self medicate cluster headaches (look up cluster head aches - not pleasent), produces same variety of alkaloids as found in claviceps purpurea (see st. antony's fire, LSD)

Coffee - one of if not most important cash crop in ... south america? I forget.


Tabacco - nicotine as pesticide, use by native americans (north and south).



I did something similar at university a year ago, but it was a full length assignment to do with somewhere called the eden project.

a few minutes doesn't really do the subjects justice but should be interesting...

good luck