Skimmia foremanii, H. Knight, H. Knight

Epifano, Francesco, Fiorito, Serena, Genovese, Salvatore, Granica, Sebastian, Vitalini, Sara & Zidorn, Christian, 2015, Phytochemistry of the genus Skimmia (Rutaceae), Phytochemistry 115 (1), pp. 27-43 : 30-31

3.3. S. x foremanii

S x foremanii , commonly known as ‘‘Japanese skimmia’’ is an up to 1.5 m high evergreen shrub, featuring stellate shaped white flowers arranged in a cyme, ovate leaves, and red fruits. S. x foremanii is a hybrid between S. japonica and S. reevesiana ( Weinstein and Craig, 1971) .

Weinstein and Craig (1971) investigated the apolar extract obtained from leaves of S. x foremanii and isolated one alkaloid, dictamnine 12, two coumarins, isoimperatorin 47 and (+)- oxypeucedanin 48, and two triterpenes, skimmiol (syn. taraxerol) 80 and skimmione (syn. taraxerone) 81. Compared to other Skimmia taxa the number of secondary metabolites reported from S. x foremanii is very limited and the taxon warrants more attention in the next future both from a phytochemical and pharmacological point of view. Future studies should be focused on both the hybrid HO O O

64, columbianectin, MW 246 65, seselin, MW 220 and both its parental species. It will be of particular interest to elucidate whether the secondary metabolite profile of the hybrid taxon contains additive sets of compounds from its parents (i.e. the metabolites found in S. japonica plus the ones found in S. reevesiana ) or only the intersecting set (i.e. only compounds found in both species) and whether this pattern is uniform or diverging for different compound classes (phenolic, coumarins, alkaloids, etc.). Another aspect to be studied in future investigations is whether crosses of male S. japonica and female S. reveesiana plants result in phytochemically identical plants as compared to crosses of female S. japonica and male S. reveesiana plants. Skimmia being a dioecious genus, a comparison of male and female descendants of such crossing experiments is obviously of interest, too.