Quinolizidine alkaloids constitute about 2% of the alkaloids that are known from plants. In this report, data on chromatography (TLC, cGLC), spectroscopy (MS, NMR), occurrence, biosynthesis (tracer studies, enzymatic experiments), accumulation, transport, degradation, biological activities (pharmacology, chemical ecology), and alkaloid formation in cell cultures are reviewed.Quinolizidine alkaloids (QA) have been studied in a number of laboratories during the last 100 years. Although of minor pharmaceutical importance (sparteine is used as an antiarrhythmic compound), interest in this group of alkaloids has increased within the last 15 years, which can be seen in the growing number of articles and reviews in this field (7,8,24,58,(91)(92)(93).It is not my intention in this review to cover the literature exhaustively, but rather to present an overview of the most significant and interesting aspects of QA biosynthesis and QA metabolism in plants and cell suspension cultures.