Antioxidants from Gerbera piloselloides: an ethnomedicinal plant from southwestern China.

Gerbera piloselloides is a very important ethnobotanical and ethnomedicinal plant used by indigenous peoples in southwestern China. Ten compounds were obtained using activity-guided isolation, including a parasorbosid derivative, two caffeic acid derivatives, two coumarins and five flavonoids, and identified from the whole plant of G. piloselloides. This is the first report of compound 5 as natural product. Six compounds were reported in the Gerbera genus for the first time. The antioxidant activity of all the compounds was evaluated by using ABTS assay, and the chemotaxonomic implication of this study was also discussed.