[Two new Dammaran sapogenins from leaves of Panax notoginseng.]

Hydrolysis of the crude saponin extracted from the leaves of Panax notoginseng (Burk.) F. H. Chen yields five sapogenins which are separated by column chromatography. Two of these are identified to be panaxadiol and panaxatriol whose structures were elucidated earlier. The third sapogenin ist found to be Dammar-20(22)en-3beta, 12beta,-26-triol by carbon-13 NMR. The structure of the fourth sapogenin is established by X-ray diffractometry and carbon-13 NMR to be 20 ( R)-Dammaran-3beta, 12beta, 20, 25-tetrol.