Anthocercis

Abstract: The major alkaloids of Anthocercis tasmanica are shown to be hyoscine and nicotine. Anthocercis tasmanica is endemic in Tasmania and is one of some twenty species of Anthocercis, all indigenous to Austra1ia.l Three Western Australian species have been found2s3 to contain a variety of tropane alkaloids, most of which also occur in other solanaceous plants. A. tasmanica is now quite rare, and only a few bushes near the east coast of Tasmania are known to exist. Extraction of a sample of air-dried leaves and stems gave 0.064% of crude base, which from t.1.c. contained two main alkaloids and several minor ones. The major alkaloid, separated by preparative t.l.c., gave an n.m.r. spectrum corresponding closely to that of hyoscine; a second oily base was considerably more volatile, and had a pronounced pyridine-like smell. On t.1.c. it had an R, corresponding to that of nicotine, and the spot gave the same characteristic colour as nicotine when sprayed with iodoplatinate reagent.4 A sample isolated by preparative t.1.c. gave an n.m.r. spectrum which agreed with that of nicotine. The crude alkaloids extracted from a further quantity of plant material were separated into steam-volatile and involatile fractions. The first fraction formed a picrate identical with (-)-nicotine picrate, and the second a hydrobromide identical with that of (-)-hyoscine. T.1.c. showed the presence of other alkaloids, but in quantities insufficient for further examination; some of them are evidently steam-volatile from g.1.c.-m.s. of the crude nicotine fraction, but no indication of the presence of nornicotine could be observed. Hyoscine has been found amongst the alkaloids of A. lit tore^,^ and has been identified by t.1.c. as occurring in A. v i~cosa .~ These species contain other tropane alkaloids, but no nicotine-type bases have been recorded in them; A. tasmanica is one Curtis, W. M., 'The Student's Flora of Tasmania' Part 3, p. 509 (Government Printer, Tasmania: Hobart 1967). Cannon, J. R., Joshi, K. R., Meehan, G . V., and Williams, J. R., Aust. J. Chem., 1969, 22, 221. Evans, W. C., and Treagust, P. G., Phytochemistry, 1973,12,2505. Smith, I., 'Chromatographic and Electrophoretic Techniques' 2nd Edn, Vol. I, p. 98 (Heinemann Medical Books: London 1960). Short Communications of the few solanaceous plants in which both these alkaloid types have been found to occur t~ge the r .~