Abstract: The folk medicines, big aconites and vine aconites, are used as substitutes of aconite in the mountain region of north-west China.From phylogeny point of view, the plants of big aconites belong to Ser. Stylosa and those of vine aconites belong to Ser. Volubulia. The dry root of these plants is used as medicine.An HPLC method was developed to evaluate the alkaloidal contents in these drugs. The ethereal extract was chromatographed on an ODS column, using methanolwater-triethylamine (75:25:0.2) as mobile phase. Each alkaloid could be well separated.Twelve aconites from different species were analyzed by this method. The alkaloids were identified and quantified. The results reveal that all of them contain yunaconitin type alkaloids. Ten samples contain yunaconitine, eight samples contain crassicauline A and two samples contain. vilmorrianine A. This means that these plants are phylogeny-phytochemically very closely related.