Pathway 01 — ethnobotany
Pathway 02 — Psychedelics & Science
Pathway 03 — Plant Medicine Traditions
Plant Chemistry
Plants are far more ingenious chemists than we are. Dennis McKenna decodes the molecular logic behind traditional medicine — from the first photon captured by chlorophyll to the alkaloids, terpenoids, and phenolics that have shaped human healing for millennia.
● 7 modules
● 48 lessons
● 1 hour 40 minutes
● All levels
Dennis McKenna, PhD
Ethnopharmacologist · President & Founder
course overview
“Plants substitute biosynthesis for behavior. They can’t run, they can’t fight — so they use chemistry to mediate every relationship they have with the world. Once you understand that, traditional medicine stops being a catalogue of folk remedies and becomes something much more rational: a record of what plants have been communicating all along”
what you will learn
Trace the complete biosynthetic map — from photosynthesis through primary metabolites to the major classes of secondary compounds
Understand why plants produce secondary metabolites and what ecological roles they play: defense, semiosis, and symbiosis
Identify the structural features of phenolics, terpenoids, alkaloids, glycosides, and other compound classes that determine their biological activity
Apply pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic frameworks to interpret how plant compounds interact with animal physiology
Evaluate traditional medicinal plant use against the chemistry of the plant — understanding why a plant is used the way it is
Appreciate the molecular diversity of the plant kingdom and why biodiversity loss represents an irreversible loss of chemical knowledge
course sYllabus
free preview — Module 1 · Lesson 1
watch free
Introduction to Plant Chemistry
Dennis McKenna opens by establishing the core argument of the entire course: that we value plants for their chemical ingenuity — and that plants are far more accomplished chemists than any human. He explains why understanding plant chemistry provides a rational basis for evaluating traditional medicine, connecting the biological activity of a plant’s constituents to the reasons it has been used the way it has.
aprox: 2 minutes
about the instructor
Dennis McKenna, PhD
Ethnopharmacologist · University of British Columbia · Heffter Research Institute
Dennis McKenna has spent fifty years in the field — the Peruvian Amazon, the Colombian rainforest, the laboratories of UBC — studying the chemical relationships between plants and the organisms that depend on them. His doctoral research on ayahuasca pharmacology was among the first rigorous biomedical investigations of an Amazonian hallucinogen. As a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute and key organizer of the Hoasca Project, he helped build the scientific foundation that modern psychedelic research now stands on. Plant Chemistry is the course that sits beneath all of his other work — the molecular bedrock that makes ethnopharmacology legible.
Amazonian ethnopharmacology
Plant secondary metabolites
Pharmacodynamics
this course in context
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“The entire biospheric community of species is conscious, and seeks to advance the evolution of consciousness through collaboration and symbiosis.”
— Dennis McKenna, Ph.D. · President and Principal Founder
