STUDIES ON THE CHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS OF CHINESE HERB HONG-ZE-LAN, STROBILANTHES JAPONICUS (THUNB.) MIQ

Hong-Ze-Lan is the Chinese name of the whole herb of Strobilanthes japonicus (Thunb.) Miq. (Acanthaceae). It has been used commonly in China as a folk medicine.From "Hong-Ze-Lan", four class of compounds (flavones, sterols, alkanes and inorganic salts) were isolated and identified by spectroscopic and chemical methods. In this paper we report the identification of four constituents including two flavones and two sterols. A new flavone glycoside (Ⅱ), named strobilanthin, was comfirmed to be 5,7-dimethoxy-4'-hydroxyflavone-4'-O-apioside. Another flavone (Ⅰ) was identified as 5,7-dimethoxy-4'-hydroxyflavone. The two sterols were identified as stigmasterol (Ⅲ) and stigmast-8(14)-en-3-ol (Ⅳ).