Musharaf Khan¹ , Shahana Musharaf²

1. Department of Botany, Federal Government College Mardan, Pakistan
2. Government Girls Degree College Sheikh Maltoon, Mardan Pakistan
Author    Correspondence author
Medicinal Plant Research, 2014, Vol. 4, No. 6   doi: 10.5376/mpr.2014.04.0006
Received: 24 Mar., 2014    Accepted: 11 Apr., 2014    Published: 24 Apr., 2014

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Khan and Musharaf, 2014, Foeniculum vulgare Mill. A Medicinal Herb (A Review), Pakistan, Vol.4, No.6 46-54 (doi: 10.5376/mpr.2014.04. 0006)

Foeniculum vulgare .Mill. commonly known as Fennel belonging to the family Apiaceae, is a small, erect and aromatic herb. A number of chemical constituents and various therapeutic effects of this herb have been reported by different workers. Extensive investigations have been carried out on different parts of herb and as a consequence, varied classes of compoundsfatty acids, hydrocarbons and sterols, Fu­rocoumarins; (imperatorin, psoralen, ber­gapten, xanthotoxin and isopimpinellin), Flavonoids; (isorhamnetin 3-O-α-rhamnoside, quercetin and kaempferol) and quercetin; (3-O-rutinoside, kaempferol 3-O-rutinoside and quercetin 3-O- β-glucoside) have been isolated. So, it has been used in ethnomedicine to exploit its medicinal properties including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antifungal, antibacterial, antinociceptive, anti-inflammatory and antiviral activities. The presented review summarizes the information about the ethnopharmacology, toxicity, phytochemistry and biological activity of F. vulgare.

Foeniculum vulgare; Phytochemistry; Biological and ethnomedicine evaluations