Chem. Pharm. Bull. 54(5) 722—724 (2006)

cludes about 130 species worldwide which have been found to be rich sources of new and bioactive steroidal alkaloids. Many species of Fritillaria have traditionally been used as herbal remedies in Japanese, Turkish, Pakistani and Southeast Asian folk medicines. In China, the bulbs of many Fritillaria species (“Beimu” in Chinese) have been used as antitussive and expectorant herbs in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 2000 years, and nine species, including Fritillaria thunbergii, F. cirrhosa, F. unibracteata, F. przewalskii, F. delavayi, F. ussuriensis, F. walujewii, F. pallidiflora and F. hupehensis, were recorded in the Year 2005 edition of China Pharmacopoeia as the plant sources for herbal Beimu. At the same time, the bulbs of F. puqiensis G. D. YU et G. Y. CHEN, native to Hubei Province of China, are expected to be an important substitute for Beimu due to their antitussive activity. In our search for biologically interesting alkaloids from this plant, we previously isolated two veratramine alkaloids (puqienine A and B) and three secosolanidine alkaloids (N-demethylpuqietinone, puqietinonoside, and puqietinone) from its dried bulbs. Our recent investigation resulted in the isolation of a new veratramine alkaloid designated puqienine F (1). This paper describes the isolation and structure elucidation of 1.