Mostuea

Danish botanist and physicist Didrik Ferdinand Didrichsen, publisher of the genus Mostuea.

The genus was described by Didrik Ferdinand Didrichsen and published in Denmark in Videnskabelige Meddelelser fra Dansk Naturhistorisk Forening i Kjøbenhavn (translation: Scientific Announcements from the Danish Society for Natural History in Copenhagen) 1853: 86. 1853.2. It is named in honour of the Danish botanist Jens Laurentius (Lorenz) Moestue Vahl (1796-1854), son of the botanist Martin Vahl. The type species is Mostuea brunonis Didr.[5]

Small shrubs, undershrubs or, less commonly, lianas, between 20 cm and 2m in height/length, having much-branched stems and slender twigs, these being either glabrous or clothed in simple trichomes. Leaves opposite with short petioles and blades ovate to very narrowly elliptic, variable in shape and size (often smaller in size on lateral branches) entire or with margins somewhat sinuate–dentate, veins pinnate and conspicuous. Inflorescence axillary or terminal, many-flowered, usually on short lateral branches. Flower: five-merous, dimorphic, corolla funnel-shaped, white, sometimes pale yellow, orange, or red, yellow at the base or not, 2·5 to 9 times as long as the calyx; tube approx 3 to 5 times as long as the lobes; corolla aestivation imbricate, corolla lobes spreading, orbicular or nearly so, rounded, entire or sometimes slightly sinuate–dentate. Fruit a capsule, obcordate (heart-shaped,the point attached to the pedicel), bilobed or occasionally ellipsoid, flattened, with an impressed line in the middle, loculicidal (septa remain intact at maturity), 4–valved; valves hinging on the septum; cells with 1–2 seeds.[6]

Kew's Plants of the World Online website recognises the following ten species.[1]

• Mostuea adamii Sillans – Africa: Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone
• Mostuea batesii Baker (syn. M. stimulans) – Africa: Cameroon, Gabon, Zaïre
• Mostuea brunonis Didr. (including M. walleri) – Africa (widespread), Madagascar
• Mostuea hirsuta (T. Anderson ex Benth. & Hook. f.) Baill. – Africa (widespread)
• Mostuea hymenocardioides Hutch. & Dalziel – Africa: Guinea, Sierra Leone
• Mostuea microphylla Gilg – Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, S. Somalia, Tanzania and Zaire
• Mostuea muricata Sobral & Lc. Rossi – Southeast and west-central Brazil
• Mostuea neurocarpa Gilg – Africa: Cameroon, Congo, Gabon
• Mostuea rubrinervis Engl. – Africa: SE. Kenya to E. Tanzania
• Mostuea surinamensis Benth. – Northern Brazil and Suriname

As might readily be expected of a close relative of the notoriously toxic genus Gelsemium,[7][8][9] the genus Mostuea encompasses toxic, alkaloidal species with a variety of ethnobotanical applications as poisons and folk medicines.[5]

• Mostuea brunonis: the young leaves are eaten to treat stomach ailments. Preparations of the twigs and leaves are said to have analgesic effects upon body (muscular ?) pains and intestinal pain and to be beneficial in cases of colitis and dysentery. The root decoction or infusion is considered to be effective as an aphrodisiac, an anthelmintic, an analgesic and a treatment for colds, yellow fever and kidney disease. The roots are chewed to treat stomach pain, the crushed roots are applied topically to treat wounds and snake bites and the root bark is used as an ingredient in arrow poisons.[5]
• Mostuea batesii (syn. M. stimulans): the root bark is considered a powerful stimulant and aphrodisiac, antimalarial and antileishmanial, while a decoction of the root bark is administered to children as an anthelmintic. Both the roots and stem bark are considered psychoactive (stimulant and hallucinogenic), aphrodisiac and antipyretic. Also used in magic and ritual, including initiation rites.[5]

Father André Raponda-Walker,the scholar who first drew the attention of the scientific community to the use of Mostuea spp. as entheogens.

De Smet (1996) [4] provides a short, but nonetheless informative overview of the (almost exclusively French) accounts of the use of Mostuea as a ceremonial entheogen with iboga-like aphrodisiac effects. He notes that the first accounts of the psychoactive properties of Mostuea in the scientific literature are to be found in two papers by French botanist, taxonomist and explorer Auguste Chevalier (1873–1956) published in 1946 and 1947.[10][11] Chevalier's informant was the Catholic priest and renowned authority on Gabonese language and culture, Father André Raponda-Walker (1871–1968), who later included information on Mostuea in his own collaborative work of 1961 (with Roger Sillans) on the ethnobotany of Gabon.[12] Chevalier reported that the inhabitants of the Gabonese region in the vicinity of the Fernan Vaz Lagoon (Ogooué-Maritime Province) made ceremonial use of a certain root known as Sata mbwanda in Nkomi (one of the Myene languages) and Sété mbwundè in Bakole.

"This root" (writes Father Walker) "is considered to possess an action comparable to those of Tabernanthe iboga and Schumanniophyton. It is a potent aphrodisiac and also a stimulant. During nights set aside for dancing,the Blacks chew the roots, whole or grated, to drive away sleep. But the majority consume them during their dances - either on their own or mixed with Iboga - for the sexual excitement which they cause. Excessive use of this drug can lead to cerebral troubles". [translated from the French of Auguste Chevalier][11]

Chevalier notes that two species of Mostuea were used in the practices described above: M. stimulans ( - Latin stimulans = "stimulating" - now known correctly as M. batesii) and M. gabonica (now M. hirsuta), but that the former was used more frequently. He then proceeds to describe in detail roots of M. batesii which he had received and which, it is apparent from his description, were dried, unlike the fresh ones referenced by Raponda-Walker.[11]

They are straight or zigzag in form, sometimes even corkscrew-shaped, of a brown colour, 15 to 25cm long, more or less branched and ending in slender rootlets; the biggest have about the thickness of a pencil (5mm in diameter) in the upper part, but very thin at the tip. The root bark is thin (1 to 1.5 mm thick) and difficult to peel off. The outer root bark is greyish-brown and wrinkled longitudinally while the inner bark...is of a whiteish grey. When wetted, it takes on a shade of white tinged with ochre or pink. Chewed whole, or reduced to powder before being placed in the mouth, the flavour of the root is very bitter at first but, after causing some salivation, becomes reminiscent of chewed kola nut. Thereafter, it causes a certain euphoria and, if the dose taken be rather strong, a sort of inebriation.[11]

As of 1996 [11] the only chemical and pharmacological evaluation of the genus Mostuea which had been undertaken was that of Paris and Moyse-Mignan, carried out upon M. batesii (as M. stimulans) in 1949.[17] These researchers found the alkaloid content of the leafy twigs to be a meagre 0.06% - compared with 0.15% in the entire roots and a more substantial 0.33% in the root bark (in keeping with reports that it was the roots and not the aerial parts of the plant that featured in Gabonese ritual use). Two of the alkaloids present in the root bark bore some resemblance to Gelsemium alkaloids: one showed similarities to sempervirine, while the other exhibited certain properties similar to those of gelsemine. In neither case, however, was a definitive identification made.[17] Quattrocchi noted in 2012 that the terpenoid indole alkaloid camptothecin (better known as an active constituent of Camptotheca acuminata, Nyssaceae) had been isolated from the widespread species Mostuea brunonis, which shares at least the aphrodisiac properties attributed in folk medicine to M. batesii.[5] A recent study found Mostuea brunonis to contain several indole alkaloids. The stems and leaves yielded gelsemicine, mostueine and some related compounds and the roots sempervirine and (as noted above by Quattrocchi) the quinoline-based alkaloid camptothecin.[18]