ISOLATION, CHARACTERIZATION AND STRUCTURAL ELUCIDATION OF TWO COUMARIN COMPOUNDS FROM THE CHLOROFORM FRACTION OF SCADOXUS MULTIFLORUS (MARTYN) RAF. (AMARYLLIDACEAE)

Scadoxus multiflorus belonging to the family Amaryllidaceae, is a flowering plant, first introduced by Thomas Martyn in 1795 as Haemanthus multiflorus. In 1838, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque changed the genus of H. multiflorus by a new genus Scadoxus. The flower is also known as fire-ball lily, African blood lily, powderpuff lily, pincushion flower, and so on. Scadoxus multiflorus, is a fleshy herbaceous plant with a large bulb bearing leaves of 25 cm long and 8 cm wide which appear during the rainy season. It is used in ethno-medicine in the management of malarial, the ointment is use for treating ulcers, as stimulant in debility and cardio tonic activity. In the present work, the aerial parts of Scadoxus multiflorus was extracted with methanol using maceration process, the crude methanol extract was partitioned with hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and butanol. Extensive phytochemical separation of chloroform fraction of MAE followed by isocratic elusion lead the isolation of two coumarin compounds identified as 2-methyl-2H-chromen-7-ol and 7-methoxy-2H-chromen-2-one. The two isolated compounds were subjected to physicochemical analysis (chemical test, melting point determination and solubility test). And the structure of the compounds were elucidated using UV, FT- IR, and 1D, 2D NMR spectroscopy and the structure was name using ChemDraw.