Willow Power

It s decision time. I ve been putting it off. But when you start receiving brochures addressed to you from the Golden Age Association — info on programs for the over-fifty set — you know the moment has come to get off the fence. While you re still nimble enough to do so, you ve got to decide whether to start taking a small dose of aspirin on a regular basis in order to ward off some cardiovascular disaster. 

That s quite a claim for the little pill that was concocted in 1897 by Felix Hoffmann, a chemist working for the Bayer company in Germany. While Hoffmann did synthesize the first commercial sample of acetylsalicylic acid, as aspirin is known generically, he wasn t the first to produce the substance in the laboratory. That honor goes to Karl Friedrich Gerhardt, who, in 1853 at Montpellier University in France, concocted an impure version with an eye towards improving on the effects of salicylic acid, a commonly used painkiller. At the time salicylic acid was extracted from the leaves of the meadowsweet plant and used for the treatment of fevers and pain, particularly of the arthritic variety. But it had to be taken in 

The true scientific era of the salicylates began in England in 1763, when the Reverend Edward Stone presented a report to the Royal Society on the use of willow bark as a fever treatment. Stone was a believer in the rather curious Doctrine of Signatures, which maintained that one could find cures where the diseases themselves were spawned. Since fevers were often associated with swamps, probably because of mosquito-borne infectious agents, Stone searched swamplands for cures. He tasted a sprig of willow and was stunned by its bitterness. Aware that quinine, an equally bitter substance, was useful in the treatment of malarial fever. Stone decided to give willow 

While aspirin itself does not occur in nature, similar, less effective substances do. Willow extracts, sold in health food stores, cannot match aspirin s demonstrated effectiveness in fact, aspirin came about as an improvement on the natural salicylates. Furthermore, we may attribute aspirin s anticoagulant effect to the acetyl part of the molecule responsible for deactivating an enzyme that leads to blood-clot formation. So there is really no point in chewing on willow bark to prevent a heart attack. 

Recent evidence indicates that a dose of forty to eighty milligrams of aspirin a day is probably sufficient to bring about the cardioprotective effects. And at this dose the risk of gastric complications is veiy small. So is the risk of other complications, like the one experienced by a woman who took twelve tablets daily for her arthritis. She began to hear music, even when she 

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Combretastatins are a class of compounds originally derived from the African Willow tree (Combretum caffrum) and are powerful reversible inhibitors of tubulin polymerization. This class of molecules has been shown to bind to the colchicine binding site of tubulin, by the same mode of action as mentioned above (Sect. 1.2). Combretastatins consist of a ris-slilbcnc core structure. To date, there have been several compounds that have shown promise as potential anticancer drugs. However, development of these compounds as anticancer agents is limited by issues of chemical stability, bioavailibilty, toxicity, and solubility. 

Wood is another biomass fuel which, when growing, takes out as much carbon dioxide as it puts oxygen back by photosynthesis. In Britain the first fairly large wood-fuelled power station, using rapid-growing willow, began supplying electricity in late 1998. 

Combustion Power Company, Inc., 1346 Willow Road, Menlo Park CA 94025... 

April 27, 1978. Willow Island, West Virginia. Construction of a concrete cooling tower for a power station had reached 166 feet. Concrete from the previous day s pour started to collapse and took wooden forms and metal scaffolding with it. Fifty one constmction workers on the scaffold fell to their death. 

Plants produce some of the most important natural products used in medicine (Fig. 1). Plant-derived compounds have been used as powerful pharmaceuticals throughout the course of human history. For example, opium poppy has been used since neolithic times [1] aspirin, synthesized by acetylation of salicyclic acid from willow bark, was discovered in the late nineteenth century [2] and the powerful chemotherapy agent taxol, used in the treatment of advanced breast cancer, was discovered from the yew tree in the mid-twentieth century [3]. 

Peacock L, Herrick S, Brain P (1999) Spatio-temporal dynamics of willow beetle (Phratora vulgatissimd) in short-rotation coppice willows grown as monocultures or a genetically diverse mixture. Agric Forest Entomol 1 287-296 Peacock L, Lewis M, Powers S (2001) Volatile compounds from Salix spp. Varieties differing in susceptibility to three willow beetle species J Chem Ecol 27 1943-1951 Pena-Cortes H, Sanchez-Serrrano JJ, Mertens R, WiUmitzer L (1989) Abscisic acid is involved in... 

The main biomass crops are Short Rotation Coppice (mainly willow) and Miscanthus grown for pellets, billets or chips for use mainly in co-fired power stations where they are burnt with coal, or in domestic or community heating systems. Crop wastes such as straw can be burnt in on-farm boilers to provide heating for grain drying. 

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