Echinacoside is a natural phenol. It is a caffeic acid

Caffeic acid

Caffeic acid is a hydroxycinnamic acid, a naturally occurring organic compound. This yellow solid consists of both phenolic and acrylic functional groups...

 glycoside

Glycoside

In chemistry, a glycoside is a molecule in which a sugar is bound to a non-carbohydrate moiety, usually a small organic molecule. Glycosides play numerous important roles in living organisms. Many plants store chemicals in the form of inactive glycosides. These can be activated by enzyme...

 from the phenylpropanoid

Phenylpropanoid

The phenylpropanoids are a diverse family of organic compounds that are synthesized by plants from the amino acid phenylalanine. Their name is derived from the six-carbon, aromatic phenyl group and the three-carbon propene tail of cinnamic acid, which is synthesized from phenylalanine in the first...

 class. It is constituted from a trisaccharide consisting of one glucose

Glucose

Glucose is a simple sugar and an important carbohydrate in biology. Cells use it as the primary source of energy and a metabolic intermediate...

 and two rhamnose

Rhamnose

Rhamnose is a naturally occurring deoxy sugar. It can be classified as either a methyl-pentose or a 6-deoxy-hexose. Rhamnose occurs in nature in its L-form as L-rhamnose . This is unusual, since most of the naturally occurring sugars are in D-form...

 moieties glycosidically linked to one caffeic acid and one dihydroxyphenylethanol residue at the centrally situated rhamnose. This water-soluble glycoside is a distinctive secondary metabolite

Secondary metabolite

Secondary metabolites are organic compounds that are not directly involved in the normal growth, development, or reproduction of an organism. Unlike primary metabolites, absence of secondary metabolities does not result in immediate death, but rather in long-term impairment of the organism's...

 of Echinacea angustifolia

Echinacea angustifolia

Echinacea angustifolia is a herbaceous plant species in Asteraceae. The plants grow tall with spindle-shaped taproots that are often branched. The stems and leaves are moderately to densely hairy.E. angustifolia blooms late spring to mid summer...

and Echinacea pallida

Echinacea pallida

Echinacea pallida , commonly called Pale Purple Cone-flower, is a species of herbaceous perennial plant in the family Asteraceae. It is sometimes grown in gardens and used for medicinal purposes. Its native range is the south central region of the United States.-Description:E. pallida is similar to E...

(to about 1%) but only occurs in trace amounts in Echinacea purpurea

Echinacea purpurea

Echinacea purpurea is a species of flowering plant in the genus Echinacea. Its cone-shaped flowering heads are usually, but not always purple. It is native to eastern North America and present to some extent in the wild in much of the eastern, southeastern and midwest United States...

. It is also isolated from Cistanche

Cistanche

Cistanche is a worldwide genus of holoparasitic desert plants in the family Orobanchaceae. They lack chlorophyll and obtain nutrients and water from the host plants whose roots they parasitize.-Uses:...

 spp.

It was first isolated by Stoll et al. in 1950 from the root

Root

In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial or aerating . Furthermore, a stem normally occurring below ground is not exceptional either...

s of Echinacea angustifolia. It shows weak antibiotic

Antibiotic

An antibacterial is a compound or substance that kills or slows down the growth of bacteria.The term is often used synonymously with the term antibiotic; today, however, with increased knowledge of the causative agents of various infectious diseases, antibiotic has come to denote a broader range of...

 activity in vitro against Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus is a facultative anaerobic Gram-positive coccal bacterium. It is frequently found as part of the normal skin flora on the skin and nasal passages. It is estimated that 20% of the human population are long-term carriers of S. aureus. S. aureus is the most common species of...

and Streptococci.