How Medicinal is Dried Angelica archangelica Relative to the Fresh Plant?

The chemical composition of natural products is responsible for their medicinal properties. Angelica archangelica is known for its antimicrobial properties, which stem from terpenes that make up the bulk of the extract of the fresh plant. The dried root can be purchased from commercial sources and is sold for the above-mentioned medicinal characteristics. Though thorough identifications of the fresh plant’s composition have been made, there has been little in the way of characterization of the chemical components of the dried root. In this study, we use both organic solvents and supercritical CO2 to extract the dried root and compare the results to the essential oil (made from the fresh plant). The results show that the dried roots used in this study were devoid of the terpenes linked to the plant’s medicinal properties, and rather contain osthole, a coumarin derivative found in relatively small abundance with respect to the plant’s terpenes.