If you've been reading about shikimic acid, you probably came across the same thing everyone does: it's a compound the pharmaceutical industry buys by the ton as a starting material. That's true. It's also only part of the story.

Here's what we know from harvesting and extracting it ourselves.

What shikimic acid is

Shikimic acid is a naturally occurring compound found in certain plants. In the plant, it sits in the biosynthesis pathway that builds aromatic amino acids. In the lab, it is the raw material manufacturers start from when they synthesize certain finished medicines. It is the starting point, not the finished thing, and that distinction is the whole reason this page exists.

For decades, the drug industry sourced shikimic acid almost entirely from Chinese star anise. When global demand spiked in 2005, that supply chain buckled fast. Researchers went looking for alternative sources and found one growing wild across the American Southeast: the sweet gum tree.

Where it comes from

The sweet gum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua) is native to North America and grows abundantly across the Southeast, including Alabama, where it's better known for the spiky brown balls that litter every yard in fall. Those balls, specifically the infertile seeds inside the green, immature pods, contain shikimic acid concentrations of up to 6.5% by dry weight, according to a 2008 study in Tetrahedron Letters (Enrich et al., DOI: 10.1016/j.tetlet.2008.02.140). That's comparable to star anise, the traditional commercial source.

Star anise (Illicium verum) is the other significant plant source. Star anise doesn't grow in Alabama, so we don't grow it. We do extract it here on the farm from sourced whole star anise pods. Sweet gum we wildcraft and extract ourselves.

For a broader look at every plant that contains this compound and how much, see our overview of natural sources of shikimic acid.

What we're clear about

Shikimic acid is a precursor compound used in pharmaceutical synthesis. It is not a drug. A precursor is a raw material, and it does not work in the body the way a finished medicine does. Anyone who tells you otherwise is overselling it, and you should be skeptical of them.

Sweet gum has been looked at in the laboratory for more than shikimic acid alone, because the whole pod carries terpenes, flavonoids, gallic acid, and other compounds together rather than one isolated molecule. That is the difference between a whole-plant extract and a purified compound. What we will not do is tell you what any of that does for you. Laboratory work is not the same as work in people, and it is not a claim we get to make.

We make no drug claims about our extracts. We trust you to read the research and decide what makes sense for you.

How we harvest

Timing is everything with sweet gum. The green, immature pods pulled in late summer and early fall carry the highest concentration of shikimic acid. Once they dry out, brown, and fall, that window closes. We pull them green, by hand, from wild trees on our land in Crenshaw County, Alabama. Trees that have never been sprayed, treated, or fertilized.

After harvest we do a slow alcohol extraction to pull out the shikimic acid and the full spectrum of other compounds in the pod. Small batches. No additives. Every bottle goes through our hands.

Our shikimic acid products

We make two shikimic acid extracts, each from a different plant source:

• Sweet Gum Ball Extract, wild harvested from green sweet gum balls on our Alabama land. One of the few farm-direct sources of this extract in the country.
• Star Anise Extract, slow-extracted here on the farm from sourced whole star anise pods. This is the plant the pharmaceutical industry relied on before the shortage. A concentrated natural source in its own right.

Both are small-batch tinctures, packaged here on the farm, and they are not made in the same alcohol. The sweet gum balls come off the tree green and hold a lot of their own water, so those go into a high proof alcohol. Anything less would end up watered down by the pods themselves. Star anise pods come to us dry, so vodka does the job there. We add no water to either one.

Browse all shikimic acid products

Read the full sweet gum tree story, history, botany, how we harvest, and what the research actually says.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Talk to your doctor before using any herbal supplement, especially if you're pregnant, nursing, managing a health condition, or taking medication.