Identification of the pyrrolizidine alkaloid 1-hydroxymethylpyrrolizidine from Thesium humile Vahl

This work describes the first chemical results obtained from thesium humile,one of the moroccan poisonous plants to livestock. dosing mice with different extracts of the plant showed that the aqueous extract was highly toxic while ethyl acetate or methanol extract did not cause any toxicosis,suggesting that the toxic principle is a water soluble compound. after successive separations of the aqueous extract by column chromatography,the relatively clean and more toxic sub-fraction was analyzed by capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and revealed the presence of a major compound identified as 1-hydroxymethylpyrrolizidine,a saturated pyrrolizidine alkaloid (pa).