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Publisher Summary This chapter presents a study on colchicine. Colchicine occurs in the corm, seeds, flowers, and other tissues of the meadow saffron, Colchicum autumnale L. (family Liliaceae), crude extracts of which have long been used in medicine for the treatment of gout. The toxic principle of colchicum was first isolated in a relatively pure state in 1820. Colchicine is present mainly in cells in full activity, and plays an essential part in the nutrition and growth of the plant. A remarkable physical attribute of colchicine is its high solubility in water, in spite of the absence of any of the groups usually associated with a high degree of water solubility. Colchicine, C 22 H 25 O 6 N is susceptible to acid hydrolysis and contains no less than five molecular groupings that can undergo hydrolysis under the conditions of varying stringency. In colchicine and its simple derivatives one ring is aromatic and resistant to oxidation. The clearest picture of the molecular structure of colchicine, as a whole, is given by the complete elucidation of the structure of its transformation product, deaminocolchinol methyl ether. Colchicine is an intensely poisonous substance and its toxic symptoms have been described in the chapter. The typical action of colchicine on cell division is to arrest the process at the stage of early metaphase. When the effect of colchicine on mitosis became known, the possibility of such an application was rapidly appreciated, and in 1937 several workers reported the use of colchicine for the biological assay of hormones, by means of this apparent accentuation of the influence of the hormone on the susceptible tissues.

Publisher Summary This chapter presents information on the alkaloids of the Amaryllidaceae . The chapter presents a table that summarizes the present state of knowledge, regarding the distribution of alkaloids, in Amaryllidaceae. From the demonstrated fungicidal action of lycorine, considered together with the quantity and localization of the alkaloids in the plants, they concluded that the alkaloid content contributes to the immunity displayed by this plant family towards Phymatotrichum root rot. The chapter discusses the chemistry of individual alkaloids. The chapter discusses pseudolycorine, sekisanine, crinamine, lycorenine, alkaloids from Buphane Disticha, etc. Most of the experimental work, bearing on the chemical structure of the alkaloids, suggested the presence of an isoquinoline residue in lycorine. Lycorine is a tertiary base that contains one ethylenic bond, two nonphenolic hydroxyl groups, and a methylenedioxy group but no methoxyl group. Tazettine, C 18 H 21 O 5 N, was isolated from the bulbs of Narcissus tazeita and was subsequently identified with “Base VIII,” from Lycoris radiata , arid also with “ungernine,” from the bulbs of Ungernia sewerzowii.