WATCHDOG

**pete2000**

Saw a Mac Haddow post on Reddit saying he was speaking at Florida’s state senate this week. Looks like his AKA KCPA is heading towards passage.

If the bill does pass I’m very concerned that my favorite vendors who are not AKA sanctioned will no longer be able to ship to Florida. Many small vendors don’t have the resources to become cGMP or do lab testing, and will ultimately end up out of business as the KCPA becomes adopted by more states.

@will @guywithtrees be sure to keep an eye on this, it may affect your business as well.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2022/01/18/kratom-would-be-unavailable-to-floridians-under-21-if-this-bill-passes/

**pete2000**

@paulinruskin I know plenty of people who make tea by boiling dried crushed leaf for 30 minutes or more. In Indonesia and Thailand they put fresh leaves in pots of simmering water and leave them for hours before drinking. Assuming the leaves have alkaloids I think your tea will be fine.

**pete2000**

@guywithtrees its the digital database (plants of the world online) of the Kew botanical gardens in London. Looks like they host the largest collection of plants in the world. It’s now on my list of things to do if I ever go to London lol.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens

But I agree there isn’t much info there. This is the big problem when it comes to trying to understand really all aspects of Kratom - too little actual science and way too much “bro” science.

I’m curious, how old were your trees when you starting feeling effects and did those effects get stronger as the trees got older?

**pete2000**

@guywithtrees that’s good to know. Unless I can find some more info I’ll assume mine is a true Mitragyna speciosa that came from a clone Claude Rifat brought from Thailand.

I would like to know why it looks so different from the Borneo ones, and if there is some inherent difference in mitragynine levels between the two. Maybe I’ll get lab tests done when my Kali plants get a bit older. Have you guys ever had any testing done?

Here’s a link from a Royal Botanical Gardens site that identifies about 20 different species of Mitragyna.

https://powo.science.kew.org/results?q=Mitragyna

Unfortunately, there aren’t many pics. Some only have an image of an old leaf or sketch made by a botanist 150 years ago. Hard to believe how little good info there is. Maybe it’s time to start work on an Encyclopedia Speciosa lol.

**pete2000**

@peteypyro it looks like some species do have (slightly) different flowers. The link below has images of reddish Mitragyna flowers that are identified as Mitragyna parvifolia and more whitish ones from Mitragyna inermis.

https://inaturalist.nz/taxa/431341-Mitragyna/browse_photos

I’d kinda like to grow all of them lol.

**pete2000**

I’ve recently seen a few posts on some of the Kratom related Reddit forums discussing whether or not most of the Kratom plants grown in the US are actually Mitragyna speciosa, as opposed to other species of the Mitragyna genus.

For years I’ve assumed that my Rifat tree was a true Kratom plant. Most Kratom pics I saw looked similar to mine and were identified as Rifat or (less commonly) Bumblebee. Some of the larger Kratom tree sellers claim that they offer other types (Malay, Green Thai, Vietnam, etc.) but even those all look suspiciously like my Rifat. And all claimed to be Kratom.

I started looking for pics of other Mitragyna species and the one that most closely matches my “Rifat” is not Mitragyna speciosa, but Mitragyna tubulosa.

When I looked at the gallery in the Wikipedia link every image looked like it could have been taken from my tree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitragyna_tubulosa

And this tree isn’t even from Indonesia, but from India.

To add to the confusion, the picture shown in the Wikipedia entry for Mitragyna speciosa also looks like this one. But, they have a different image further down that looks very different. The leaves from that image look exactly the same as the leaves on my West Kali plant. I’m 99.9% sure that the West Kali is a true Kratom plant.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitragyna_speciosa

One redditor posted the results of a chromatography experiment that he claims shows Rifat plants contain no mitragynine. This would also indicate the Rifat’s are not true Kratom plants since Mitragyna speciosa is the only species that contains it.

On the bright side, all Mitragyna species contain a number of alkaloids including analgesic ones so they are useful. But are the ones commonly grown here true Kratom? A couple of years ago I would have considered that a silly question, but now I’m honestly not sure.

Here are a few links describing so if the other species in the Mitragyna genus.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitragyna

http://www.theplantlist.org/browse/A/Rubiaceae/Mitragyna/

https://kratomherald.com/mitragyna-speciosa-is-not-alone-there-are-actually-7-other-species-in-the-mitragyna-genus/