Iraqi land is rich with medicinal plants and Iraqi people trust using herbals as treatments since ancient times, one of these important wild medicinal plants is Silybum marianum, which is known as Milk thistle. It has a long history in Greek and Arabian medicine as a liver tonic which has been confirmed by scientific in vivo/ in vitro study and made the plant in the top of medicine that can regenerate liver tissues and cure various liver diseases. The aim of this study is to investigate the active constituents in the seeds, leaves and the flowers of Iraqi Silybum marianum, identification  have been done by GC-MS instrument after the extraction process by hexane then ethanol as a solvent in the Soxhlet apparatus, An important compounds has been detected such as phytosterol, catechin, terpenes, fatty acids, fatty alcohol, and  monosaccharide,  in different concentration in the parts of the plants.

Milk thistle's extract by an organic solvent is known as silymarin, which is a mixture of about 75% flavolignan and trace content of flavonoid (mainly taxifolin), other ingredients involve fatty acids and polyphenolic compounds. The major flavolignans are silybin, isosilybin, silydianin, and silychristin, quantitatively silybin is considered as the major compound followed by isosilybin, and both are represent approximately 60% of silymarin. This study was designed to determine the concentration of silybin in different parts of the plant and to study the effect of extraction methods, solvents and the time of collection on silybin concentration, which have been done by HPLC instrument. The results show that the higher yield of silybin is obtained from the seed using ethanol in the soxhlet apparatus and that all other parts of the plant which are produced in huge amount by the plant also contain a good concentration of silybin when compared with seeds, So they can be used as an alternative source for silybin production.

Asteraceae (Compositae) famous as the aster, daisy or sunflower family is the biggest flowering family divided into thirteen subfamily that involve approximately two thousand genus, an important member of this family is Silybum marianum (Milk thistle). Management of hepatic diseases is the main use of milk thistle in traditional medicine also it has anticancer activity against different type of cancer in addition to antiviral, antioxidant, antiinflammatory and anti-diabetic activity. This study was designed to investigate the pharmacognostical feature and the phytochemical ingredient of Iraqi Silybum marianum. The plant were examined macroscopically to investigate the morphological characters of plant and microscopically to determine the type of stomata and trachoma then flowers, leaves, stems and seeds of the plant were extracted by ethanol in a soxhlet apparatus individually and subjected to standard methods for active constituents identification and that total flaononid, total phenolic and total tannins content were determined using aluminum chloride colorimetric, folin-ciocaltue and acidified vanillin methods respectively. The results shows that Silybum marianum leave have a thick cell wall, anomocytic stomata, annual vessel, and unicellular unbranched trichomas. Also an important active constituents have been detected that terpenes, steroid and flavonoids were present in all plant parts, saponin appear only in the leaves and stems while alkaloids and coumarins are not detected in any part. Also the study referred to the seeds as the richest part of the plant with flavonoid and phenolic compounds followed by the flowers, leaves and stems which contain the less amount, while the higher content of tannin were observed in the leaves and stems..