Bocconia genus

The genus Bocconia consists of about ten species. These are woody plants, shrubs or small trees indigenous to Central and South America. Some of them are significantly rich m chelerythrine, as for example B. ar-... 

The species of the genus Macleaya, namely M. cordata and M. micro-carpa, perennial herbs from the Far East, are used in Russia as a source of the natural mixture of sanguinarine and chelerythrine (called sanguiritrine), that has been introduced into medicine for the treatment of various diseases. The content of QBA in the leaves ofM microcarpa has been found to be unusually high, up to 1.97% [66], The QBA contents in M. microcarpa and M. cordata cultivated in central Europe [37,38] are considerably lower. Similar low yields have been found by Bulgarian, Japanese, and Russian authors [5,6], Chelirubine, chelilutine, and macarpine have also been isolated from Macleaya species [37,38], The alkaloid bocconine [35], isolated from M. cordata (invalid synonym Bocconia cordata Willd.) in 1965, is identical to chelirubine [34], described for the first time in 1954 [30],... 

Formerly, rhoeadine and papaverrubine alkaloids were known to occur only in the plants of the genus Papaver. Recently, Slavik et al. have shown that rhoeadine and papaverrubine E are present in Bocconia frutescens and papaverrubine D in Meconopsis betonicifolia, M. horridula, M. napaulensis, M. paniculata, M. robusta, M. rudis, and M. sinuata (33, 50). The genus Meconopsis is botanically closely related to the genus Papaver, a relation thus confirmed chemotaxonomically (see structures 152-154 in Table V). 

Slavik showed that the presence of the rhoeadane alkaloids is not restricted to the plants of the genus Papaver but also to those of Bocconia and Meconopsis (33, 50,221). Dimeric alkaloids were found in the plants of the genus Bocconia, Dicentra, Papaver, and Sanguinaria (see Table I). 

The genus Bocconia Plum, of the tribe Chelidonieae comprises some 10 species that are native to tropical and subtropical areas of Central and South America. Bocconia, which is closely related to the east Asian genus Macleaya, does not appear to contain alkaloids that are taxonomically significant (Tables XXXII and XXXIII). In these two genera the major alkaloids are allocryptopine... 

Rhoeadine and papaverrubine (norrhoeadine) alkaloids which were previously believed to occur only within the genus Papaver have now been found to be present in two other Papaveraceae genera, namely Bocconia and Meconopsis. In Bocconia frutescens L. rhoeadine alkaloids accompany a variety of protopine, protoberberine, and benzophenanthridine bases. ... 

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