Abstract
From the medicinal plants Gelsemium, various skeletal type of indole alkaloids were isolated. Along the biogenetic speculation of these alkaloids, some of the structurally complex compounds, involving sarpagine-, humantenine-, koumine-, and gelsedine-type, were prepared from ajmaline and the Gardneria alkaloids. In the second half of this article, recent synthetic studies on the sarpagine type alkaloids and on a principal Gelsemium alkaloid, gelsemine, are reviewed.
