Abstract
IN the early literature dealing with the isolation and characterization of triterpene alcohols it is not uncommon to encounter the use of different names for the description of a single substance, and one of the functions which contemporary papers in this field can usefully perform is the straightening out of this confusion and the establishment of an agreed nomenclature. From this aspect, the recent observations of Zimmermann1 would appear to be somewhat unfortunate. This author, in extension of his valuable generalization which seeks to correlate, for a given plant source, triterpene structure with type of pigment present, describes the isolation from the marguerite of a monohydric triterpene alcohol which, he claims, is identical with a sample of taraxasterol prepared from the chamomile2. This claim of identity is made on the basis of melting-points and mixed melting-points of the alcohols and their acetates, and may be regarded provisionally as valid (no analytical or optical rotatory data are given).
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References
Zimmermann, Helv. Chim. Acta, 28, 127 (1945).
Power and Browning, J. Chem. Soc., 105, 1829 (1914).
Burrows and Simpson, J. Chem. Soc., 2042 (1938).
Simpson, J. Chem. Soc., 283 (1944).
Power and Browning, J. Chem. Soc., 101, 2411 (1912).
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SIMPSON, J. Nomenclature of Triterpene Alcohols. Nature 157, 372 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/157372b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/157372b0
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