The pharmaceutical botanical investigations on the genus Agrimonia L. (rosaceae) growing in Turkey

The genus Agrimonia L. is represented by two species in Flora of Turkey. These speices are A. eupatoria L. and A. repens L. In the present study, these two Agrimonia species included in the Rosaceae family are investigated in aspects of pharmaceutical botany, morphological, anatomical, palynological and chemical (essential oil and enzyme inhibition) characteristics of these species presented in detail. Detailed descriptions of the species have been given in morphological studies and supported by drawings. Both species showed differences in the way of the inflorescence, the length, the distance between flowers, pedicles, sepal, petal and hypantium lengths and in point of positions of hairs located on the fruit. In anatomical studies, it has been turned into permanent preparations by sectioning from stems and leaves of the species and illuminated anatomical structures but no significant difference was determined. In the palynological studies, samples were photographed on desktop scanning electron microscope and their palynological properties were determined. The pollens of A. eupatoria were longer and wider than A. repens, and there was no difference in other specialities. In the chemical studies, the essential oils of Agrimonia species were analyzed by GC/MS technique and main components of oils were determined as methylmyrtenate (49,1%) and α-pinene (24,7%) for A. eupatoria and α-pinene (43,3%), hexadecanoic acid (31,3%), selina-4,11-diene (= 4,11-eudesmadiene) (6,9%) and 7-epi-α-selinene (6,6%) for A. repens. Cyclooxygenase (COX) and lipoxygenase (LOX) enzyme activity inhibition experiments of the species were also investigated and it has been defined that A. eupatoria and A. repens did not affect on COX-2 enzyme activity. A. eupatoria is more effective than A. repens on COX-1 and A. repens was found to be ineffective on LOX.