Cardenolides content in wild Sardinian<b><i>Digitalis purpurea</i></b>L. populations

Abstract

In order to quantify the amounts of digitoxigenin and gitoxigenin in wild Sardinian Digitalis purpurea L. an easy extraction method and an high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analytical technique have been set up. The analyzed samples, stemming from six different locations, showed a great variability in glycoside content. The HPLC analyses carried out on 2-year-old plants of D. purpurea showed that the amounts of digitoxigenin and gitoxigenin ranged between 11.34 and 240.59 mg kg(-1) and 4.05 and 178.07 mg kg(-1), respectively, calculated on fresh material. Chemometric analyses, carried out considering different morphological characters, showed that correlations between morphological variations and glycoside content are poor.