Sceletium Phytochemistry

TL;DR: Kanna (Sceletium tortuosum) is a low creeping succulent in the Aizoaceae family from South Africa's Cape, easy to recognize by its skeleton-veined dry leaves. Researchers have identified twenty-five alkaloids in it across four structural classes, and the mesembrine class is the dominant one and the main reason for kanna's traditional uses.

People usually meet kanna as a powder in a bag, so it's easy to forget it's a living plant with a pretty interesting botany. We grow and handle a lot of it, and knowing what the plant actually is helps make sense of why extracts are labeled the way they are.

Where kanna sits in the plant family tree

Here's the quick classification:

• Order: Caryophyllales
• Family: Aizoaceae
• Subfamily: Mesembryanthemoideae
• Genus: Sceletium
• Species: Sceletium tortuosum

Sceletium tortuosum, also called kanna, channa or kougoed, belongs to the Aizoaceae family, the same broad group as ice plants and other fleshy South African succulents. Some botanists place it in the genus Mesembryanthemum instead of Sceletium, and it has picked up a bunch of synonyms over the years, including Mesembryanthemum aridum, Phyllobolus tortuosum and several variations under the Sceletium name. That's normal for a plant botanists have argued over for a century. It's native to the Cape Provinces of South Africa.

What the plant looks like

Kanna has thick, fleshy leaves covered in visible bladder cells, also called idioblasts. They look like tiny glassy bubbles on the leaf surface, and they catch the light when you hold a fresh leaf up.

The real giveaway is what happens when the leaves dry. The soft tissue shrinks away and leaves a skeleton-like pattern of veins behind. That skeletonized venation is the defining feature of the genus, identified by N.E. Brown in 1925, and it's where the name Sceletium comes from, from the Latin for skeleton.

The flowers have thin, threadlike petals, usually white to yellow, and now and then pale orange or pink. The fruits are capsules holding small kidney-shaped seeds that range from brown to black.

How it grows

Kanna is a creeper. It usually tops out around 15 to 20 cm tall and spreads along the ground, often in the shade of bigger shrubs. Its leaves grow in pairs during the winter growing season, then die back in summer to protect the plant from heat and drought. If you've ever grown it at home and panicked when it looked half dead in July, that's why. It's resting, not dying. Hold off on the extra water too. Overwatering a dormant kanna plant is the fastest way we know to lose one.

That cycle also matters for harvesting. Leaf picked at the right point in the season tends to carry more alkaloid, which is one reason loose leaf can vary so much from batch to batch.

The alkaloids inside

This is the part most people care about. Current research has identified twenty-five alkaloids in Sceletium tortuosum. They fall into four structural classes:

• Mesembrine class
• Sceletium A4 class
• Joubertiamine class
• Tortuosamine class

The mesembrine class is the predominant one, and it includes the names you see on extract labels like mesembrine and mesembrenone. These alkaloids are considered the plant's main active constituents and are behind its traditional uses, like easing thirst, possibly taking the edge off minor aches, and possibly shifting mood. We say possibly on purpose. The traditional use is well documented, but the research on how each alkaloid works in people is still pretty early.

In practice, the balance between mesembrine and mesembrenone is a big part of why one extract feels more upbeat and another feels more relaxed. That's why we list alkaloid profiles on our extracts instead of just a big "X times stronger" number.

Common questions

Why is it called Sceletium?
The dried leaves show a skeleton-like vein pattern, and the name comes from the Latin word for skeleton.

How many alkaloids does kanna have?
Research has identified twenty-five, grouped into four structural classes, with the mesembrine class being the main one.

Is kanna a cactus?
No. It's a succulent in the Aizoaceae family, related to ice plants, not cacti.

Knowing the plant makes you a smarter buyer. When you see an alkaloid breakdown on a label, you'll know exactly where those numbers come from.