A Survey for Alkaloids in Hawaiian Plants. I 
Carl E. Swanholm/ Harold St. John,^ 
and Paul J. Scheuer^ 
Although plant alkaloids have been iso- 
lated and studied for over 150 years, only a 
small percentage of the recorded plant species 
have been investigated and even fewer of the 
isolated compounds have been carried to full 
elucidation of their structures. Willaman and 
Schubert (1955) in their valuable survey of 
alkaloid-containing plants state that by the 
end of 1952 about 950 alkaloids were isolated 
and named and that 1,202 plant species were 
known to contain alkaloids. Up to that time 
only about 2 per cent of all recorded plant 
species had been as much as tested for 
alkaloids. 
The widely varying pharmacological prop- 
erties of alkaloids always have been a major 
point of interest and have helped to attract 
organic chemists to this field of research. 
This viewpoint, however, was losing ground 
steadily in the face of mounting successes 
scored by synthetic drugs. The demonstration 
by Muller, Schlittler, and Bein (1952) that 
the alkaloid reserpine was responsible for the 
hypotensive action of the Indian snakeroot, 
Kauvolfia serpentina B^nX-h., instilled new vigor 
into natural products research. As a conse- 
quence of this work many members of the 
genus Kauvolfia and related genera in the plant 
family Apocynaceae from all parts of the 
tropics have been investigated. This recent 
research has also prompted the chemical study 
of three of the reported seven Hawaiian 
Kauvolfia species (Gorman et al.^ 1957). 
In order to utilize plant sources for the iso- 
lation of alkaloids effectively it is necessary 
to survey a given flora, and base subsequent 
^ Department of Chemistry, University of Hawaii, 
Honolulu. 
2 Department of Botany, University of Hawaii, 
Honolulu. 
Manuscript received March 12, 1958. 
detailed work on the results of such a survey. 
A number of native floras have been investi- 
gated in recent years from this point of view. 
The most notable of these have been carried 
out in Australia (Webb, 1949, 1952), and 
more recently in Papua-New Guinea (Webb, 
1955). 
Hawaii’s flora is unique in two respects: It 
offers widely diverse vegetational types lo- 
cated within small geographical areas, and its 
native flora is over 90 per cent endemic, one 
of the highest endemisms in the world. Yet, 
except for the recent Kauvolfia research (Gor- 
man et aL, 1957 ) and a few isolated instances 
in the past (e.g,, Folkers and Koniuszy, 1939), 
Hawaii’s flora has not been the subject of 
chemical study, nor has it even been surveyed 
for alkaloids. The pioneering research of 
Bushnell and co-workers (1950) drew atten- 
tion to the antibacterial properties of some 
plants found in Hawaii and to the important 
link between Hawaiian flora and native Ha- 
waiian materia medica. 
The present work is concerned with a sur- 
vey of some Hawaiian plants for their alkaloid 
content. While the 96 species tested represent 
only a small fraction of the recorded species, 
it is hoped that this work will constitute only 
the beginning of more extensive surveys in 
the future. 
METHODS 
This study was patterned after the survey 
carried out by Webb (1949, 1952) in Aus- 
tralia. The floristic books by Hillebrand 
(1888) and by Rock (1913) were used in the 
study of the indigenous plants of Hawaii. An 
attempt was made to test indigenous plants 
predominantly, although some introduced 
species have been included. A majority of the 
tests were carried out on freshly collected 
specimens. To ascertain that herbarium speci- 
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