Talk:Peganum harmala

Untitled
This page should be moved back to syrian rue. 9,000 hits for harmal -tell and 55,000 for syrian rue on google. i've never heard it called harmal. --Heah (talk) 22:41, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Harmal is what it is called in my botanical textbooks (they don't even mention 'Syrian Rue'). I consider such sources far more authoritative than a google hit count, which is widely cited on wikipedia as a poor means for making decisions. Harmal is also unique, distinct, and avoids confusion, while 'Syrian rue' could mean any species of Ruta found in Syria, not necessarily this species - MPF 23:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

botanical textbooks do not and are not meant to specify what a plant is most commonly known as. they are, after all, botanical textbooks. manual of style naming conventions clearly state that "the most common name" should be used when naming an article about a person or thing. in this sort of situation, the google hit count is clearly a more reliable indicator of what this plant is most commonly known as. when discussed outside the realm of botany- as it is, at least partially due to its use as an analog to ayahuasca- it is virtually always "syrian rue".

The page should clearly state (as it does) that Syrian rue is not a true species of rue, which should be enough to ward off any possible confusion. even in the unlikely event that someone typed in "syrian rue", curious as to what sort of rue grew in syria, the page would say that p. harmala is not a species of rue.

I beleive we had this conversation some time ago, and i deferred; however, i wanted to bring it up again and so left a message on the talk page so it could be discussed. its nice to discuss things before they are done, particularly when there is obviously a disagreement as to what should be done. I also brought it up at the WikiProject on Psychedelics, Dissociatives and Deliriants talk page, where it was agreed that the page should be moved back to Syrian rue. I'm moving it back pending discussion. (It's polite to discuss things first, ya know?)

--Heah (talk) 02:18, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Is it possible there should be two separate articles here -- one for botanists about the plant 'Harmal' and one for the Psychedelics,etc. project on the entheogenic use of the plant under the title Syrian Rue, with a link between the two? It seems like both articles serve somewhat distinct needs. Kit 03:20, 9 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The manual of style naming conventions|naming conventions also clearly state "Convention: Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things" (my emphasis). Syrian Rue, as a title, clearly conflicts with the standard meaning of Rue as Ruta species. See Naming conventions (common names): "In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading (For example: "tidal wave" would be a misleading title since these phenomena have nothing to do with tides), then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative (tsunami, for example)". This is clearly relevant to this instance.


 * Kit's idea has some merit, though personally, I think it makes more sense to keep the species and its uses together (as in the vast majority of plant pages); other similar examples (e.g. Coffee/Coffea) deal with vastly longer pages where combining would make the page too long. When there's less than half a page in total, splitting it isn't the best thing to do


 * PS "(It's polite to discuss things first, ya know?)", yeah, true, but I never saw the posting about it on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life . . . - MPF 11:22, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Harmal/Harmala is the species. Syrian Rue is a type within the Harmala species. The Family is Zygophyllaceae, the Genus is Peganum and the Species is Harmala and within that is a type called Syrian Rue. Now, how you want to name this article depends on what it is focusing on, the Species or the type which is called Syrian Rue?--87.194.3.52 01:53, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Application
Harmal is a drug with a real good effect. If you take a tea.spoon of this semen, the effect starts about an half hour later. The taste is very bitterly, so you have to mix it with honey or other similar food. The ectasy will happen for 6 hours or so. The beginning is suddenly, while the end is slowly. The mood is in this good till euphoric and you can laugh very often. By the next day you don`t have any side effects. But caution! It is a MAO-inhibitor. So you can not eat everything, before you swallow the semen. Following food you can not eat: cheese, alcohol, especially red wine, pineapples, yoghurt, bananas, chocolade, hewrrings and sauerkraut. All this things you have to avoid absolutely, else you get ill or even you can die! --Fackel 21:54, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * You forgot to mention soy sauce. Dont go out for thai food that night.  I once had thai food for dinner, not knowing it was cooked in the same pan that used soy sauce, and then I took a teaspoon of ground syrian rue 4 hours later.  I had an extremely bad panic attack, linked to the overproduction of epinephrine in my body.--67.71.178.193 03:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Farkel, I'm guessing you're not a native english speaker.. Semen in english refers to the fluid that contains sperm. Seed would be the word to use here.--Eloil 18:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Fackel I think you have no experience in the stuff. I have, once orally (made tea of the seeds) and never again. It was a bit like food poisoning, with blurred 'draggy' vision followed by some quite fantastic projectile vomiting. It was not caused by mixing it with anything else. It was vile. 78.144.71.167 (talk) 02:16, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Alkaloids
There is inconsistency in this section: "The seeds contain about 2-6% alkaloids, most of which is harmaline." and above that it says "Harmine 1.84%, Harmaline 0.25% and Harmalol 3.90%" so according to that there's at least two more dominant alkaloids than harmaline. They have different references and to me ScieceDirect seems a better source than Amazing Nature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahabvihrea (talk • contribs) 23:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Soon to be delegalized in Poland
This substance is on the list of

Ttg53 (talk) 14:14, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

ITIS reference is not good
The ITIS page that is currently cited for common names is not a good source. It gives no information about what language each of those names is. Names in other languages would be handled by the interwiki and wiktionary. (There is another problem too, the ITIS page says that the distribution of the plant is North America, but this page says Eurasia.) I'm deleting the common names section. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:21, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Requested Move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved to Peganum harmala Mike Cline (talk) 18:21, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Harmal → Peganum harmala – There was a previous discussion regarding titling this page Harmal or Syrian Rue. The scientific name appears to be more widely WP:UCN used than either of these vernacular names. Per WP:FLORA, scientific names are preferred for most articles about plants.Plantdrew (talk) 02:25, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support - no single English name. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:35, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support this is a logical move. JoJan (talk) 14:34, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support as the most commonly used name, and the one used most widely geographically. First Light (talk) 15:57, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Merged Esfand svanta
No discussion occurred about the proposal to merge these two pages. Since they are clearly both about the same plant species, I have replaced Esfand svanta with a redirect to this page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:57, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Peganum harmala. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20091101230149/http://leda.lycaeum.org:80/?ID=360 to http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=360
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.fortlewis.edu/anthro/ethnobotany/Dbase/images/Documents/SW_DYEPLANTS_2.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 18:23, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Iranian Red
The red color is known as "Iranian red", not Persian red. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zzziiiaaa (talk • contribs) 04:15, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Rewriting this article
As time and interest allows, I'm rewriting this article. It appears to have been primarily written by experimental recreational drug users. Sources often don't seem to corroborate the statements, or the editor misunderstood the source. The medical section is a puff piece, the lethal dangers of this species are not even mentioned. There is nothing on poisoning and death in domestic livestock whereas this is a major problem in many countries. Folk beliefs are not described per locality -traditional usage is different per culture and the text makes it seem as all those uses/superstitions are universal. The lede is sourced to low quality sources (sellers of recreational drugs) which are simply wrong. Allusions are made to likely non-existent rituals without elaborating. Normal botanical information on distribution and morphology is sparse.

For example, "seeds ... have seen continual use for thousands of years in the rites": no one knows for sure if this is the soma mentioned in Zoroastrian works, the earliest unambiguous mention of this plant is in Islamic Arabic sources, Galen likely mentions it but confuses it with an onion and doesn't mention "spiritual rites", Dioscorides and in a lesser degree Theophrastus make mention of a plant which might be this but their writings are none too clear (and all these Greeks only mention the root being used not the seeds), it has never been identified in ancient Egyptian papyri nor have traces turned up in archaeology in Egypt to my knowledge, the single possible mentions in the Bible and Josephus are not positive (although it is unclear if they mean rue or this). Unambiguous European mentions of this plant start in the late Middle Ages as a medicinal plant, not a recreational drug/religious ritualistic drug -and again, in Europe it was the root which was deemed important. My knowledge of India is less deep, but I would require some better proof than just assuming people over there have been getting (religiously?) high on this stuff for millennia, because other places have been ruled out.

Thus I will be removing or rewriting much of this. Cheers, Leo86.83.56.115 (talk) 18:17, 6 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Removed this from the article:

"In Iran and Afghanistan, as well as some countries in the Middle East, including Azerbaijan, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, dried capsules mixed with other ingredients are placed onto red hot charcoal, where they explode with little popping noises in a way similar to American popcorn. When they burst a fragrant smoke is released. This smoke is wafted around the head of those afflicted by or exposed to the gaze of strangers while a specific prayer is recited. This tradition is still followed by members of many religions, including Christians, Muslims, and some Jews. The burning is often accompanied by a prayer which mentions the Naqshbandi Sufi prayer "Bi Haq Shah Naqshband" (By the right of Shah Naqshband). Shah Naqshband was the eponymous founder of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order. The prayer is often mistaken to be from a Zoroastrian king, however this is erroneous as there is no historic figure named Shah Naqshband other than the Naqshbandi founder and the prayer Bi Haq Shah Naqshband is commonly used by Naqshbandis. "
 * Problems are that most of the info is not in the sources. Furthermore, the first (extremely poor) source is clearly getting its information from the second source, and the second source is extremely poor -the writer claims a well-known historical Sufi saint is actually a Zoroastrian deity. She seems to have gotten all her information from 5 Californian woman of Farsi/Dari heritage she interviewed and a no longer functional and rather ridiculous Tajiki personal website about magic -then she seems to have synthesized/fabricated her own conclusions from this. Besides the idiotic confusion about Shah Naqshband (come on, that's like saying Richard the Lionheart was a Celtic god) there is too much ignorance/errors to summarize. Some editor who noticed this tried to correct the text, but it is now no longer sourced, and the information stays epistemologically questionable as it is still relying on a crappy source. If better sources can be found parts of the above can be re-added. Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 22:58, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

'traditional medicine & superstitions'
I object to this title. why are those two topics together in the same section!? It is misleading. The supposition that writers are primarily 'recreational' drug users as a basis for rewriting a whole page is questionable. The focus on exterminating what is considered a "weed" is also false, since it is clear that there is medical research carried out that point out positive traits of the plant. Any plant or animal, in fact, contributes a role in the BALANCE of NATURE (of which humans obviously understand VERY LITTLE). Stjohn1970 (talk) 07:52, 9 July 2022 (UTC)