Biochemical Systematics and Ecology 28 (2000) 291}293 Exudate #avonoids from Ficus altissima Mohamed Sharaf*, Nagat S. Abu-Gabal, Mohamed A. El-Ansari Phytochemistry and Plant Systematics Department, National Research Centre, El-Dokki, Cairo, Egypt Chemistry Department, Education Collage, Ghada, Saudi Arabia Received 9 February 1999; accepted 6 June 1999 Keywords: Ficus; Moraceae; Methylated #avonoids 1. Subject and source Aerial parts of four Ficus species (Moraceae) were investigated for surface #avonoids. They were collected at the following localities: Ficus altissima Blume and F. nitida Thunb, El-Begdadia, Saudi Arabia, in August 1997; F. carica L., 70 km to the west of Alxeandria, in November 1997, Egypt.; F. pseudosycamonus Decne, near the Suez Canal University Gust House, Saint Catherine, in November 1997, Egypt. Voucher specimens are deposited at the Herbarium of the NRC (CAIRC). Only one of these species was found to exhibit surface #avonoids. 2. Previous work Little has been reported on the #avonoids of Ficus species. The available reports are those dealing with the isolation of rutin and quercetin 3-galactoside from F. be- nghalensis, also rutin was reported to be present in F. carica (Subramanian and Nair, 1970; Nakaoki et al., 1957), and 3-hydroxy-3-methoxy#avone glycoside from F. rumphii (Baslas, 1979). Two #avonoid alkaloids were separated from F. pentoniana (Johns et al., 1965). * Corresponding author. Fax: #202-337-0931. 0305-1978/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 3 0 5 - 1 9 7 8 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 6 5 - 4