Abstract: AIM: To determine the contents of three alkaloids in some plants of Mahonia and to provide an effective tool for the quality evaluation of Mahonia family. METHODS: The contents of three alkaloids, berberine, palmatine and jatrorrhizine, in different plants were determined by using high performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE), with brucine as internal standard. The conditions were as follows: diode array detector set at 265 nm; run time, 8.0 min; applied voltage, 30 kV; temperature, 20℃. The background electrolyte system selected was 0.1 mol.L^-1 phosphate with pH 7.0-methanol (2∶1). RESULTS: The linear ranges of berberine, palmatine, and jatrorrhizine were 4.9～498.6 μg.mL^-1 (γ=0.9990), 5.0～ 504.9 μg.mL^-1 (γ=0.9996) and 5.1～505.8 μg.mL^-1 (γ=0.9984), respectively. The relative standard deviations of peak area of the alkaloids ranged from 1.03% to 1.61%. The average recoveries of the alkaloids were 96.00%～101.66%, 100.15%～102.97% and 96.68%～102.44%, respectively. Quantitative determination of the alkaloids in the dried stem of different plants of Mahonia was performed by this method. The results showed that the contents of the three alkaloids varied greatly with species, place of origin and collecting time. CONCLUSION: The contents of the alkaloids in all the plants of Mahonia analyzed in this paper were very high, so they have the potential of being new pharmaceutical resources. HPCE technique provides a simple, rapid, and effective tool for the quality control of herbal medicine.