[4] The genus was described by Didrik Ferdinand Didrichsen and published in Denmark in Videnskabelige Meddelelser fra Dansk Naturhistorisk Forening i Kjøbenhavn (translation: Scientific Announcements from the Danish Society for Natural History in Copenhagen) 1853: 86.

Fruit a capsule, obcordate (heart-shaped, the point attached to the pedicel), bilobed or occasionally ellipsoid, flattened, with an impressed line in the middle, loculicidal (septa remain intact at maturity), 4–valved; valves hinging on the septum; cells with 1–2 seeds.

[5] De Smet (1996) [4] provides a short, but nonetheless informative overview of the (almost exclusively French) accounts of the use of Mostuea as a ceremonial entheogen with iboga-like aphrodisiac effects.

He notes that the first accounts of the psychoactive properties of Mostuea in the scientific literature are to be found in two papers by French botanist, taxonomist and explorer Auguste Chevalier (1873–1956) published in 1946 and 1947.

[12] Chevalier reported that the inhabitants of the Gabonese region in the vicinity of the Fernan Vaz Lagoon (Ogooué-Maritime Province) made ceremonial use of a certain root known as Sata mbwanda in Nkomi (one of the Myene languages) and Sété mbwundè in Bakole.

[11] They are straight or zigzag in form, sometimes even corkscrew-shaped, of a brown colour, 15 to 25cm long, more or less branched and ending in slender rootlets; the biggest have about the thickness of a pencil (5mm in diameter) in the upper part, but very thin at the tip.

One such example ( - that invites comparison with Raponda-Walker's comments on Gabonese use of the related Mostuea - ) is to be found in Louis Lewin's early 20th century classic Phantastica: during a severe attack of rheumatism a man took a large quantity of an alcoholic tincture of Gelsemium sempervirens a plant which is liable to act on the brain and the medulla oblongata.

[13] Lewin's "disorders of the intelligence" manifested in the later stages of the victim's Gelsemium addiction recall immediately Raponda-Walker's "Excessive use of this drug [Mostuea] can lead to cerebral troubles".

The full-blown addiction, ["became a slave to the drug"] suggests not merely the victim's relief from his rheumatic pain, but some pleasurable effect [compare Raponda-Walker's "euphoria" induced by a moderate dose of Mostuea root].

[17] Quattrocchi noted in 2012 that the terpenoid indole alkaloid camptothecin (better known as an active constituent of Camptotheca acuminata, Nyssaceae) had been isolated from the widespread species Mostuea brunonis, which shares at least the aphrodisiac properties attributed in folk medicine to M.

The stems and leaves yielded gelsemicine, mostueine and some related compounds and the roots sempervirine and (as noted above by Quattrocchi) the quinoline-based alkaloid camptothecin.