Selaginella Grass Pharmacognosy Study

Selaginella uncinata (Desv.) Spring. is a medicinal plant from Selaginella genus, Selaginnellaceae. There are 700 species in Selaginella genus all over the world, and 60-70 species in our country. Among of them, more than 22 species can be used to treat diseases. Chinese Pharmacopoeia has gather S. tamariscina (Beauv.) Spring. and S. pulvinata (Hook. et Grev.) Maxim. as chinese medicinal "Juanbo". Other 20 species also be used as preparation rawmaterial or commonly used as Chinese medicine. Modern pharmacologic researches found that the medicinal species from Selaginella not only have traditional function of pure heat and counteract poison, but also have obvious effection on anti-cancer, antivirus, decline the blood sugar, hemtstasiset, immunoregulation and analgesia. The phytochemistry research indicated Selaginella plants contain massive biflavonoids, These kind of contains show extensive pharmacology activities such as anti-cancer, anti-inflammation, anti-virus, anti-oxidation, anti- thrombus and expansion blood vessel. Therefore keeping study on Selaginella plants deeply, screening valuable medicinal species, developing the new medicine of treating cardiovascular disease and tumor, has broad prospect.Selaginella uncinata (Desv.) Spring. is one kind of Chinese medicine widely applies in folk, which has relieving cough, stopping bleeding, antibacterial sterilization as well as anti- tumor function. The folk applies it for treat jaundice, enteritis, dysentery, thenephritisdropsy, pulmonary tuberculosis which coughs up blood, therheumatism arthritis, burn, hemorrhage and so on. It has great medicine valuable. Guangxi has gather it in the Guangxi Chinese Medicine Standard (in 1990 version).This paper carry on the pharmacognostic research of S. uncinata from characteristic, anatomy, TLC, chemical compounds, HPLC fingerprint character research and determination of content.There are many plants of Selaginella genus (for example S. tarnariscina, S. pulvinata, S. stauntoniana, etc.), which appearance identification and compounds have been reported, but there are still not enough related reports about S. uncinata up to now. In the investigation of S. uncinata in Hubei province we found in the different recovery time, different environment, the characteristic of S. uncinata, has obvious variation. This paper carry on the comparative anatomy research of S. uncinata on different recovery time, different environment, study and summary the basic character of appearance and anatomic structures of this species. It has special anatomic structures, such as the outside of the transverse section has ridged heaves, the outer cortex consists mostly of several layers of thick-walled cells, one air chamber can be observed in the center. The stele is hanged in the central part of the air chamber by some cross-bridges, the xylem is divided into 2 parts abreast, one is larger; another is smaller.In the TLC study, we apply amentoflavone as standard to determine 3 samples of S. uncinata. 5 same biflavonoids spans can be seen on the TLC charomatograms. This method can be used to identify S. uncinata, and has important signification.Because of the similarity in some species appearances, the great variation of some species and mix growing in living location, it is always difficult to identify them by taxonomic method. We establish and compare the HPLC fingerprint character charomatograms of 13 samples from Selaginella plants, and find 5 main peaks in their HPLC chromatograms, the existence and rate of these peaks have valuable signification for their identification and quality study, which also supply fmgerprint information for S. uncinata.On the basic of HPLC fingerprint character research, we establish HPLC to determine the amentoflavone content of Selaginella plants, which provid basis for the quality control of Selaginella plants. Simultaneously it also has provided the valuable reference and attempt for the research Selaginella plants' intrinsic quality.With solvent and chromatographic methods to extract and isolatethe effective composition, we get ethyl acetate, petroleum ether andn-BuoH ether, then according chromatogram isolution, we get and identificate four compounds from it : Amentoflavone,Robustaflavone,Robustaflavone-4 -dimethyl,2 ,3 -dihydro-4 -O-meth yl amentoflavone.In summary, the study of appearances, microstructure, chemical compounds, TLC, fingerprint characteristics and determination on the S. uncinata, further enrich this species research content, laid a foundation for further development of this species. Simultaneously italso provides scientic referance for developing Selaginella plants.