Does Wild Quinine contain Quinine?
Here in the Mohawk Valley, we grow an interesting perennial called Wild Quinine (Parthenium integrifolium). In the late summer to early fall, beautiful small white inflorescenes form, and we harvest these to create an extremely bitter tincture. It is as bitter as quinine from Cinchona bark, but the taste is somewhat different.
We had read that during World War I, this plant was used as a substitute for real quinine. One website reports that “During World War I the supply of cinchona was disrupted. Since Parthenium integrifolium also contained quinine, it was used as a substitute.” This was very interesting to us, as it would mean we could produce quinines here on our farm.
We took a look at our extraction using some analytical chemistry. In our GC-MS method, we could see many compounds from the wild quinine, but our quinine reference did not elute on our column. An LC method calls for a fluorescence detector, exciting at 250-300nm and detecting at an emission at 450nm. Our LC fluorescence detector is not a scanning type and our optical filters were not set up for this. So, we did two very simple tests.
TEST 1: The blacklight. Tonic water fluorescences strongly in the presence of a blacklight, producing the characteristic blue emission. The wild quinine did not.
TEST 2: Thin Layer Chromatography. Using a reverse-phase C18 plate, we used acetonitrile with 0.1%w/w acetic acid as the mobile phase. We compared tonic water to the wild quinine extract. After elution and drying, we observed the plate under UV. Tonic water produced the characteristic fluorescent dot. None were observed for the wild quinine.
CONCLUSION
Old conclusion is that wild quinine DOES NOT actually contain quinine. Wild quinine extracts are very bitter, and quinine-like. It would be a great substitute for Cinchona products, especially because it grows so well here in New York.
We shall try it in our next gin and tonic!
-Big E and Dean Stark