Belonging to the vast Astereaceae family, thewoolly umbrella it is a flowering plant from South Africa, which, as recently discovered, produces dozens of cannabinoids: the chemical compounds responsible for the effects of cannabis.
Although for decades it was suspected that this helichrysum with yellow and velvety petals could boast of it, since it was burned in some rituals by the indigenous African populations, the study published in the scientific journal Nature Plants confirms that the woolly umbrella produces approximately 40 cannabinoids, of which the majority unknown and possible new therapeutic properties.
Woolly umbrella cannabinoids
The team of international researchers led by Dr. Paola Bermann and Professor Asaf Aharoni of the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences of the Weizmann Institute of Science has the genome sequenced of the plant discovering that, unlike cannabis, whose cannabinoids are produced by trichomes which mainly cover its inflorescences, the cannabinoids of the woolly umbrella are collected in the trichomes abundantly present on the leaves.
A talent that brought the authors of the study, given the ease of extraction compared to the cannabis that it instead requires more expensive and less sustainable treatments, to describe it as “a perennial, fast-growing, commercially viable plant source valid for bioactive cannabinoids”.
Finally, although they are missing among the cannabinoids produced by helichrysum CBD and THC, relatively high concentrations of CBG or cannabigerol. Chemical compound with important therapeutic qualities and precursor of all other cannabinoids.
“The next exciting step would be to determine the properties of beyonds 30 new cannabinoids that we discovered, and then see what therapeutic uses they might have,” he concluded Dr. Bermann.
