This post series on botanical ingredient adulteration is inspired by the excellent work coming out of the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP) by the American Botanical Council (ABC), continuing today with:
➡️ Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) is traditionally used to help relieve nervousness and anxiety, support sleep, particularly when sleeplessness is associated with stress and ease spasms. The medicinal material consists of the flowering aerial parts. American skullcap should not be confused with Chinese skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis), a separate species widely used in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
On the market, American skullcap is available as fresh or dried herb, cut-and-sifted material, teabag-cut herb for infusions, and powdered aerial parts. It is also sold as tinctures, fluid extracts, and extract-based dietary supplements, either alone or in multi-herb formulations.
For companies, confirming identity is not optional; it’s a legal and ethical duty under cGMPs to verify that each incoming botanical is the right species, the right plant part, and meets agreed quality specs. Brands and manufacturers should be leaning on resources like the BAPP adulteration bulletins and implementing fit-for-purpose analytical methods, rather than relying on nonspecific tests that can miss plant-part adulteration.
Adulteration, in the regulatory sense, means a product is unsafe or of inferior quality because it fails to meet legal standards for purity, strength, or composition (including contamination).
Economic adulteration is emphasized in these posts: intentional substitution, dilution, or undeclared additions that misrepresent a botanical’s true identity or quality compared to what the label and consumer would reasonably expect. Accidental adulteration is also present in some species.
For more detailed information on adulterants in botanicals, see the BAPP publications, which are freely available on their website. To see the full downloadable PDF post, go to it on LinkedIn here:
Skullcap Common Adulterants-
