Plants of the Genus Heracleum as a Source of Coumarin and Furanocoumarin

Abstract

Heracleum is one of the greatest genera of the Umbelliferae family that has more than 120 species. This genus is represented by 109 species in Asia. Common names for the genus or its species include hogweed and cow parsnip. This paper discusses the phytochemistry, ethnopharmacological use and pharmaceutics of Heracleum species. Many kinds of metabolites have been isolated and identified, that furanocoumarins are among the significant ones. Modern pharmacological studies demonstrated that Heracleum and its active compounds have extensive biological activity, particularly in anticonvulsant, antiinflammatory, antifungal, anticancer, anti-psoriatric, anti-vitiligo and antioxidant activities. In clinical test, Heracleum has successfully been utilized to treat psoriasis, vitiligo, carminative, stomachs, pain killer and anticonvulsant.

Effect of Heracleum sosnowskyi extract aqueous solution on the Allium cepa root meristem

“…Knowledge has been accumulated about the composition of the plant's ether oils, coumarin compounds, leaf organs (trichomes), etc. (O'Neill et al, 2013;Hosseinzadeh et al, 2019;Laman & Usik, 2020). The furocoumarins (angelicin, methoxalen and imperatorin) extracted from H. sosnowskyi exert broad-spectrum biological effects (Trott et al, 2008).…”