10mo ago

Scientists Found a Cannabis Compound Inside a Totally Different Plant

www.sciencealert.com

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The team found CBD in the fruits and flowers of a plant known as Trema micrantha blume, a shrub which grows across much of the South American country and is often considered a weed, molecular biologist Rodrigo Moura Neto of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro told AFP last year.
- considered a weed
  huehue
- team found CBD
  Meh, someone call me when it's THC lmao
  
  Right? I can buy CBD at Wawa.
This shouldn’t be surprising. There are only so many ways to productively arrange organic compounds, and convergent evolution is well-known.
Given similar environmental pressure, immeasurable responses will be tried, and the most effective ones will self-select.
Did they find chlorophyll in it too?
- Chlorophyll? More like BORE-ophyll!
  
  No I will not make out with you!
totally different plant
But it's literally in Cannabaceae, the same family that contains Marijuana (as well as the Hackberry tree). It makes sense that similar compounds would arise in related species, as that is how phytochemistry works. I'm sure cannabinoids are in the foliage of hackberry trees, too.
They are acting like they found cannabinoids in, like, a grass or something.
- They are acting like they found cannabinoids in, like, a grass or something
  I don’t get people who smoke grass without cannabinoids.
  (I’m sorry)
- I think there is another family of plants that does have them though? Like liverworts or something
  
  That would be interesting if liverworts contained them too. They're very very unrelated to the hemp family, and in fact they're not really closely related to any flowering plant families, but I'm not saying that to say that you're wrong, I've actually never looked into that before. I just think it'd be interesting if cannabinoids developed in liverworts, because that would imply that those compounds evolved independently.
So my friends in middle school weren’t too far off when they started taking random weeds from the yard and started rolling them up and smoking them 🤔

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