Chemical constituents of the roots of and evaluation of their antimicrobial activity.

is one of the endemic plants of Ethiopia and is widely used for the treatment of microbial infections. However, the biological and phytochemical information pertaining to this plant has not been reported so far. Anticipated by these claims, the chromatographic isolation of the CHCl/CHOH (1:1 v/v) extract of the roots of . afforded five compounds, knipholone (), asphodeline (), -sitosterol ), 9-pentacosenoic acid (), and nonacosanoic acid (). The structures of the isolated compounds were identified based on their NMR (1D and 2D) spectral data analysis and comparison with reported literature data. The crude extract and isolated compounds were evaluated for their antimicrobial activity against four bacterial strains (, , and ) and a fungal strain () using the agar disk diffusion method. The test samples showed moderate antimicrobial activity, with the highest activity observed for compound (with a zone of growth inhibition of 15.5 ± 0.71 mm) against .