Pelargonium sidoides, the South African root sold as umckaloabo, its tannins and coumarins, the EPs 7630 extract, and what an independent trial found when it was tested against usual care.

The episode reads the Institute's 2026 Journal article. P. sidoides is a low, silver-leaved geranium of the summer-rainfall grasslands of the Eastern Cape and Lesotho, with a tuberous rootstock that carries it through frost, drought and fire; digging it kills the plant. Charles Henry Stevens brought a root decoction to Britain in 1897 and sold it without naming the plant. Adrien Sechehaye's Geneva case series of about 800 tuberculosis patients followed in the 1920s, and the source species, with P. reniforme alongside it, was identified in Munich in 1977. In 2010 the European Patent Office revoked Willmar Schwabe's extraction patent after oppositions that included the Masakhane community of the Tyhume Valley and the African Centre for Biosafety. It fell on lack of inventive step, so the benefit-sharing question went undecided.

The Cochrane review (2008, updated 2013) graded the evidence for EPs 7630, an 11% ethanol liquid, as low quality in acute bronchitis and very low in sinusitis and the common cold, citing likely publication bias and manufacturer-sponsored trials; tablets did less well than the liquid. A 2026 open-label trial of 332 adults in Swiss primary care found no significant difference against usual care in time to halve symptom severity, with a trend to less antibiotic use, 17.4% against 25.2%. The last third covers red-flag symptoms and the one-week rule, the German liver warnings and the CIOMS reassessments in which none of 28 cases reached probable causality, its AUST R registration, the 2011 advisory committee minutes on a non-specific polyphenol assay, and what to check on the box.

In this episode: (00:00) A brown bottle in the winter pharmacy aisle; (01:43) The article and its contradictions; (04:04) A geranium in witness protection; (05:40) Grasslands, frost and a 2,300 m range; (07:00) The tuber that survives fire; (07:42) Traditional use and the name umckaloabo; (08:40) Charles Henry Stevens and tuberculosis, 1897; (10:57) Sechehaye's 800 Geneva cases; (12:41) The plant is named in 1977; (13:51) Harvest kills the plant; (14:33) The Schwabe extraction patent; (15:39) The Masakhane community goes to Munich; (17:09) Revoked on inventive step; (18:42) Nagoya and provenance; (19:46) Wild harvest and cultivation; (21:07) Tannins and the pharmacopoeia standard; (22:44) Coumarins as the fingerprint; (23:26) Why these coumarins do not thin the blood; (25:40) In vitro against in vivo; (28:36) The Cochrane review and EPs 7630; (30:20) Low-quality evidence and sponsored trials; (31:11) Liquid against tablet; (32:27) The HATRIC feasibility study; (33:07) The 2026 Swiss primary care trial; (34:34) Fewer antibiotics?; (36:43) Red flags and the one-week rule; (38:35) Masking tuberculosis; (39:03) Side effects and allergy; (39:27) The German liver warnings; (39:54) Reassessing causality; (41:30) Why the warning stays; (42:16) Nose and gum bleeding; (43:41) How it reached Australian shelves: AUST R; (44:46) Export-only listings; (45:20) The 2011 committee minutes; (47:52) Has the evidence changed?; (49:15) What to check on the box; (51:13) Closing thought.

Read more in the Institute's Journal: https://www.australian-pharmacognosy.org/blog/umckaloabo-pelargonium-sidoides-evidence-review/

Nothing in this episode is a prescription or a dose. If you want to use a herb, consult a degree-qualified herbalist with competencies and adequate training in pharmacognosy.

Dr Luke Iggulden, Chief Scientific Officer, made the episode from the Institute's Journal and monograph material. Jesse Kirby, Head of Community Outreach, wrote the show notes and chapters from the episode transcript.

The Herbarium Hour, from the Australian Institute of Pharmacognosy, Cardwell, Queensland.

Kava, Piper methysticum, its six kavalactones, the flavokavains and pipermethystine, and how a move from cold water to ethanol and acetone extraction changed what reached the liver.

The episode reads the Institute's 2026 kava monograph. Kava is a sterile cultigen: it sets no viable seed, so every plant across Oceania for about 3,000 years has come from a stem cutting. The accepted name is Piper methysticum G.Forst.; material traded as Macropiper latifolium belongs to another species and is not kava. Vanuatu's Kava Act 2002 sorts the roughly 200 cultivars into noble, tudei and wichmannii groups and allows only noble kava for export and drinking. A common garden trial at the Waimanalo Research Farm in Hawaii grew two cultivars side by side for 3.4 years, and one carried about twice the kavalactones of the other. Strength follows the cultivar and the plant part; a Vanuatu origin speaks to legal standing and traceability.

On the clinical side, a Cochrane review of 11 trials and 645 people found a 5-point drop on the Hamilton anxiety scale, graded tier B, almost all of it from acetone or ethanol extracts such as WS 1490. Aqueous extracts gave mixed results in generalised anxiety disorder, including a 16-week Australian trial of 171 people that did not beat placebo, and Australian listed medicines may only use an aqueous extract of peeled root or rhizome, capped at 250 mg of kavalactones a day. The second half covers the 2000 to 2001 liver injury reports, a published Australian death, kava dermopathy in heavy traditional drinkers, four explanations for the liver cases (peelings, solvents, mould and tudei substitution), the three-month limit, pregnancy, alcohol, paracetamol and levodopa, six questions to put to a supplier, and a clonal crop in a changing climate.

In this episode: (00:00) Three thousand years of kava, then liver failure; (01:15) The Institute behind the monograph; (03:25) Piper methysticum, the intoxicating pepper; (04:21) A sterile clone kept alive by cuttings; (05:47) Peeled rootstock only; (06:30) G.Forst. or L.f.: a naming error in the trade; (08:55) Root scars, a fibrous fracture and a numb tongue; (10:30) Two hundred cultivars; (11:18) Vanuatu's Kava Act 2002: noble, tudei and wichmannii; (13:12) Rain, shade and three to five years in the ground; (14:53) The country-of-origin myth; (15:38) The Waimanalo common garden trial; (18:00) What a Vanuatu origin guarantees; (19:35) Six kavalactones; (20:28) Flavokavains and pipermethystine; (21:45) UHPLC and the chemotype code; (23:18) The kavain to flavokavain B ratio; (24:52) Cold water against ethanol and acetone; (26:20) Fifty times the flavokavains; (28:13) Liver cells in the dish; (29:42) The Cochrane review: 11 trials, 645 people; (31:46) Water extracts in generalised anxiety disorder; (33:16) The Australian irony: aqueous extracts only; (34:30) Trials that never named the chemotype; (35:55) The 2000 to 2001 liver reports; (37:07) An Australian death; (39:15) Pacific drinkers and kava dermopathy; (40:13) Four suspects: peelings, solvents, mould, tudei; (43:12) A perfect storm; (44:14) Australian limits: 250 mg, aqueous, peeled root; (45:41) Three months, pregnancy and alcohol; (46:30) Paracetamol and levodopa; (47:58) Six questions for a supplier; (51:23) A clone in a changing climate; (55:01) Closing.

Read more in the Institute's Journal: https://www.australian-pharmacognosy.org/pharmacopoeia/piper-methysticum/

Nothing in this episode is a prescription or a dose. If you want to use a herb, consult a degree-qualified herbalist with competencies and adequate training in pharmacognosy.

Dr Luke Iggulden, Chief Scientific Officer, made the episode from the Institute's Journal and monograph material. Jesse Kirby, Head of Community Outreach, wrote the show notes and chapters from the episode transcript.

The Herbarium Hour, from the Australian Institute of Pharmacognosy, Cardwell, Queensland.

Black cohosh (Actaea racemosa, long filed as Cimicifuga racemosa), its triterpene glycosides actein and 23-epi-26-deoxyactein, and the liver injury warning Australian labels have to carry.

The episode works through the Institute's pre-publication monograph AIP-HP003. It starts with the plant in shaded eastern North American woodland and the knotted dark rhizome and roots that make up the drug. Then comes the naming problem: the 1998 move of Cimicifuga into Actaea left the European Medicines Agency, the World Health Organization and most older trials on one name while the TGA and manufacturers moved to the other, so a toxicology search on one spelling misses decades of case data. Asian pharmacopoeias use Rhizoma cimicifugae for different species altogether, which is how a shipment of sheng ma can clear paperwork as black cohosh.

A laboratory section explains how the powder is authenticated: lignified vessels with bordered pits, suberised cork fragments, starch granules of 3 to 15 micrometres with a slit-shaped hilum, and the negative markers the European Pharmacopoeia insists on, no stomata, no trichomes, no calcium oxalate. Potency runs on HPLC with light-scattering detection, twelve summed peaks against a minimum of 1.0% triterpene glycosides, calibrated against monoammonium glycyrrhizate from liquorice. The supply chain follows: about 500,000 pounds of root a year, roughly 97% wild collected, lookalikes such as Actaea podocarpa in the same ravines, cheaper Asian species substituted on purpose, and a 2001 TGA survey that found 35% of Australian retail products held other species. Cimifugin, absent from authentic North American material, is what a thin-layer chromatography screen hunts, down to about 5% adulteration.

Chapters00:00 A supplement, then a transplant list01:39 Why the Institute put this monograph together03:16 The plant in Appalachian woodland04:55 The rhizome, the drug and its old names06:32 Cimicifuga or Actaea: the 1998 revision09:44 Sheng ma and the shipping manifest11:21 Microscopy: clearing agents and lignified vessels12:59 Starch granules with a slit hilum14:37 Negative markers that condemn a batch16:12 Triterpene glycosides and the 1.0% limit17:48 Why the calibrant comes from liquorice19:25 HPLC, light scattering and twelve peaks21:00 Half a million pounds a year, almost all wild collected22:42 Yellow cohosh, and deliberate substitution24:20 The 2001 TGA survey: 35% were other species25:57 Cimifugin, the chemical dye pack27:37 How the TLC screen is run29:17 Twenty-five years on, and a new market survey30:57 The phytoestrogen theory32:35 Formononetin was never there34:13 Serotonin, opioid and dopamine pathways35:49 What the 40 mg extract trials show39:08 Liquid extracts at 20 to 35 times the trial dose42:24 Idiosyncratic liver injury and the Australian label45:37 Liver disease, pregnancy and lactation47:16 The blue cohosh combination case48:51 Hormone-dependent tumours and the observational data52:10 A DNA barcoding proposal for the Australian market53:46 Closing thought

More from the Institute's Journal: https://www.australian-pharmacognosy.org/pharmacopoeia/actaea-racemosa/

Nothing in this episode is a prescription or a dose. If you want to use a herb, consult a degree-qualified herbalist with competencies and adequate training in pharmacognosy.

Dr Luke Iggulden, Chief Scientific Officer, made the episode from the Institute's Journal and monograph material. Jesse Kirby, Head of Community Outreach, wrote the show notes and chapters from the episode transcript. Jesse Kirby scheduled the release.

Australian Institute of Pharmacognosy, Cardwell, Queensland.