Subclass of Alkaloids

Other Alkaloids

Alkaloids outside the main structural families, including the Equisetum and Lycopodium types.

Overview

About Other Alkaloids

This page is the catch-all for alkaloids whose skeletons fall outside the main structural families — not a chemical family in its own right, but a working home for a large number of genuinely important compounds that share only their nitrogen and their potency.

It is worth browsing rather than skipping: some of the most toxicologically significant plant compounds in the materia medica land here, simply because their ring systems are one-offs.

What Lands Here

The main structural types collected under this heading:

Pyrrolizidines: senecionine, symphytine, echimidine (comfrey, coltsfoot, borage)
Quinolizidines: cytisine, sparteine, lupanine, anagyrine (lupins, blue cohosh, broom)
Piperidines: lobeline, coniine, piperine's relatives
Steroidal alkaloids: solanine, tomatine, the Veratrum alkaloids
Purine-adjacent and diterpene alkaloids: aconitine and the Aconitum group
Lycopodium alkaloids: huperzine A

Pharmacological Importance

Cytisine is a partial nicotinic agonist and one of the most cost-effective smoking-cessation drugs in the world, used across central and eastern Europe for decades before Western trials confirmed it. Huperzine A is a potent, reversible acetylcholinesterase inhibitor studied in cognitive decline.

Sparteine has a distinguished place in pharmacology history: variability in its metabolism was the observation that led to the discovery of CYP2D6 polymorphism and, with it, the birth of pharmacogenetics.

Toxicity & Safety

The pyrrolizidine alkaloids are the most consequential safety issue on this page and among the most important in all of herbal medicine. They are metabolically activated in the liver to pyrroles that damage the small hepatic veins, causing hepatic veno-occlusive disease — cumulative, dose-dependent, sometimes fatal, and the reason comfrey is restricted to external use and coltsfoot is limited or PA-free-cultivar only in most jurisdictions.

Beyond them: aconitine is a fast-acting cardiotoxin responsible for repeated fatal poisonings; anagyrine is the teratogen behind "crooked calf disease"; coniine is the hemlock poison. Alkaloids in this bucket should be assumed potent until shown otherwise.

Constituents

All Other Alkaloids

123 total Filter other alkaloids

14-Deacetylnudicauline 1 herb 17-Oxosparteine 1 herb 3-Angeloylzygadenine 1 herb 3-Veratroylzygadenine 1 herb 4-Hydroxygalegine 1 herb

Achillein 1 herb Aconitine 1 herb alpha-Isolupanine 1 herb Anabasine 2 herbs Anaferine 1 herb Anagyrine 1 herb Anatabine 2 herbs Arecaidine Arecoline Asparagamine A

Baptifoline 1 herb Benzoylaconine 1 herb Brahmine 1 herb

Cadabicine 1 herb Cananodine 1 herb Caulophyllumine A 1 herb Caulophyllumine B 1 herb Chavicine 1 herb Codonopyrrolidum A 1 herb

Open in filterable index

Source Plants

Herbs Containing Other Alkaloids

44 herbs

Plants in the materia medica documented to carry other alkaloids, with the compounds each one is listed for. The bar counts how many DISTINCT other alkaloids are on record for a plant, relative to the best-documented — it measures breadth of record, not potency, so a plant with one well-studied compound can outrank a richer source that has simply been analysed less. Where a measured concentration is on record it is quoted inline; most entries have none yet.