PHYTOCHEMICAL STUDY OF HYDRANGEA SP. USING CLASSIC METHODS OF ANALYSIS BY VISIBLE ULTRAVIOLET SPECTROSCOPY (UV-VIS) AND COLUMN AND PAPER CHROMATOGRAPHY

Abstract

The phytochemical research is an issue that can be approach by several areas of science. The Hydrangea sp., also known in Brazil, as “hortênsia” is an ornamental plant widely known because the presence of flavonoids, a class of
antioxidant compounds, which can interact with aluminum ions in the soil, changing the color of the sepals of the Hydrangea flowers. In this work, the objective was to extract chlorophyll from leaves of Hydrangea sp. using three
different solvents (dichloromethane, acetone and aqueous solution of acetone, 80 %). The obtained results indicated that in addition to chlorophyll, there were strong spectroscopic evidence of the presence of the carotenoids β-carotene
and/or lutein, and lycopene. The used method can be applied to explain that: i) the leaves are green by the presence of the pigment chlorophyll; however, ii) they not only contain chlorophyll in their constitution, also have yellow and
reddish pigments and; iii) the aging leaves lose their green color, by the breakage of the resonance of the porphyrin ring from chlorophyll and hence the other colors in the plant predominates.