Snowdrop chemical identified

Reporting in the journal Plant medica,¹ Jaume Bastida and colleagues, of the University of Barcelona's department of natural products, plant biology and edaphology,have extracted 17 alkaloids, nitrogen-containing natural products, three of which were previously unknown to chemists. They found 10 alkaloids in G. nivalis, a bulbous plant that flowers in the snows of midwinter, and seven from the related G. elwesii  species, which originates in the Caucasus.