Plant Profile, Phytochemistry and Pharmacology of Spathodea Campanulata P. Beauvais (African Tulip Tree): A Review

Abstract

Plants have been used as one of the important source for treating various diseases of human beings since ancient times. Numbers of plants are mentioned in different traditional system of medicine, among them Spathodea campanulata P. Beauvais is one of the important medicinal plant. Different parts of Spathodea campanulata such as flowers, leaves, stem, bark and roots have been reported for possessing anti-inflammatory, analgesic, cytotoxic, anti-diabetic and anticonvulsant activity. Phytochemical screening shows the presence of various secondary metabolites like alkaloids, tannins, flavonoids, glycosides and sterols. Relevant information and literature on Spathodea campanulata from electronic databases such as Academic Journals, Google, Google Scholar, Science Direct, PubMed and Web of Science were collected and analyzed. Available literatures evidently show that Spathodea campanulata possess a wide range of pharmacological activities that could be explained by the presence of variety of phytochemicals. The aim of the present review to provide detailed information regarding geographical distribution, phytochemicals and pharmacological properties of this plant.

Comparative Phytochemical and Anti-microbial Studies of Leaf, Stem, Root of Spathodea companulata

“…The aqueous stem showed activities against only P. aeruginosa, and n-hexane extract showed activity only against E. coli. These activities could be linked to the higher flavonoids and glycosides quantity found in stem of the plant and the use of stem in treatment of diarrhea, and the antioxidant property exhibited by the stem as reported by Heim et al [47,10,48]. The methanol extract of the plant showed activities against E. coli, S. aureus, V. cholera, and P. aeruginosa, the ethyl acetate root extract only showed activity against C. albican.…”

“…The presence of tannins in the methanol leaf, stem and root extracts is in line with the report of Ghasemzadeh et al [35], that methanol(polar) was most effective in the extraction of phenolic compounds and still confirmed the use of most parts of the plant as antioxidants. Also the use of stem as anti diarrheal agent could be as a result of the presence of tannins in the methanol stem extract [10,6,33]. The absence of tannins in the n-hexane leaf, stem and root extracts and its presence in the methanol extracts is in line with the previous work done by Thavamoney et al [36] that the solubility of phenolic compounds increased with increasing solvent polarity, though water extract being the most polar solvent did not contain any phenolic compound.…”

“…The presence of saponins in all the aqueous extracts is understandable since water has been reported to be one of the most common extraction solvents for saponins [38]. The cytotoxic, hepatoprotective and hypoglycemic activities of the plant could also be associated with the presence of saponin [10,38,39]. The ethylacetate leaf extract contained flavonoids, tannins and glycosides.…”

“…Different parts of Spathodea campanulata such as flowers, leaves, stem, bark and roots have been reported for possessing anti-inflammatory, analgesic, cytotoxic, antidiabetic and anticonvulsant activity. Phytochemical screening showed the presence of various secondary metabolites like alkaloids, tannins, flavonoids, glycosides and sterols [9,10]. The leaves possess analgesic and antiinflammatory activities.…”

Apoptosis Inducing Activity of Bark Extract of Spathodea campanulata on Human Leukemia Cell Lines U937, K562 & HL60 Cell Lines via Caspase Cascade

“…However, Different parts of S. campanulata (leaf, bark, root, etc.) have been used against various types of disease 7 . Therefore, we evaluated the anti-leukemic activity of bark extract of Spathodea campanulata (BESC) against U937 (human leukemic monocytes lymphoma cell line), K562 (human myelogenous leukemia cell line) and HL60 (acute promyelocytic leukemia) cell line.…”