Angelica polymorpha

The dominant coumarin of the rhizome and, at over half a percent, a substantial furanocoumarin load for a crude drug. Linear furanocoumarins of this type are the class responsible for phytophotodermatitis in the carrot family and for the cytochrome P450 inhibition seen with grapefruit and related plants, so its abundance here is the single most practically important fact about this herb's chemistry.

A well-known furanocoumarin of the Apiaceae. Compounds of the imperatorin family are mechanism-based inhibitors of CYP3A4 and inhibit CYP2C9, and they are photosensitising on ultraviolet A exposure.

A third furanocoumarin of the root, reinforcing that this is a furanocoumarin-bearing drug rather than a chromone-only one. Its individual pharmacology in this plant has not been studied.

One of the five compounds used together as a quality-control panel for this rhizome. It is present at a tenth the level of aviprin and has no separately characterised activity here.

Notable less for its own pharmacology than for where else it occurs: hamaudol is one of the characteristic chromones of Fang Feng, Saposhnikovia divaricata. Its presence here means a chromone-based chemical fingerprint is not on its own sufficient to distinguish this rhizome from Fang Feng.

The acetylated congener of hamaudol, again shared with Saposhnikovia divaricata. Quantified alongside hamaudol in the rhizome assay.

The third of the Fang Feng chromones found in this plant. Cimifugin and its glucoside are the compounds on which the identity of Saposhnikovia divaricata is conventionally assayed, so finding free cimifugin in an unrelated Angelica root is a real quality-control complication rather than a curiosity.

A chromone described from this species and named for it. It showed marked cytotoxicity against the A-549 lung carcinoma cell line, which is a laboratory observation and not a basis for any clinical claim.

A simple 5,7-dihydroxy-2-methylchromone found widely in plants. Present in the root fraction and of chemotaxonomic rather than therapeutic interest.

Described as a new sesquiterpene from this species, with its absolute configuration settled by NOESY and circular dichroism. No pharmacology has been reported for it.

A common phenolic acid, reported from this plant for the first time in 2013. It is worth naming because ferulic acid is also a marker constituent of Dang Gui, and its presence here is one more reason not to lean on a single-compound test when telling the two apart.

Listed with an explicit caveat. A single report around 2000 described an eserine-type alkaloid from this species, and the only readily traceable record of it is an abstracting-service entry rather than an accessible primary paper. Eserine is physostigmine, a potent carbamate cholinesterase inhibitor, so if this finding is real it would matter clinically. It has not been replicated, no content figure exists, and it should be treated as an unconfirmed report that deserves checking rather than as an established constituent.

No entry for this species has been located in the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, the Ming Yi Bie Lu, the Ben Cao Tu Jing or the Ben Cao Gang Mu. It has no pinyin drug name in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia and no monograph in it. What exists is regional folk practice recorded in the modern pharmacognostic literature, and the record here should be read on that footing rather than as a classical drug.

The root and stem are described as a folk medicine that dispels wind-damp and cold and reduces swelling and pain, and the root extract is recorded as a popular remedy for stomachache, abdominal pain, stomach ulcer and rheumatism. One phytochemical paper describes the plant as a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine, but no Pharmacopoeia standard, dose range or contraindication list backs that description.

Dang Gui was first published as Angelica polymorpha var. sinensis Oliv. and only later raised to species rank as Angelica sinensis (Oliv.) Diels. Angelica polymorpha Maxim. remains an accepted species distinct from it, native from northern and eastern China to central and southern Japan. Everything that makes the bare name Angelica polymorpha ambiguous descends from this nineteenth-century varietal treatment.

The earliest modern chemical study of the roots was published in Japan in 1967, and much of the recent work on the stem and flower has been done in Korea. The species grows across Japan and Korea as well as China, and this is one of the few East Asian medicinal Angelica species with no Chinese Pharmacopoeia standing anywhere in its range.