Wogonin (5,7-dihydroxy-8-methoxyflavone, 5), a flavonoid natural product first isolated from Scutellaria Radix, is well-known for its anti-inflammation, 1 anti-allergy, 2 anti-tumor 3 and anti-hepatitis B virus 4 properties. Owing to its extensive applications in medical treatment, researchers have developed several synthetic pathways to obtain this important natural product since the early part of the last century. 5, 6 The initial total syntheses of wogonin were based on the common synthetic approaches to flavonoids through Baker-Venkataraman rearrangement 6, 7 or intramolecular Wittig reaction. 8 However, neither of these two strategies was efficient for large scale production of the compound. Recently Huang et al. 9 reported a simplified synthesis of wogonin (5) and oroxylin A (6) from 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenol (1) and cinnamoyl chloride (2). As shown in Figure 1, the flavone nucleus was obtained from intermediate 4 wherein the two hydroxyl groups compete for the addition to the α,β-unsaturated ketone moiety. Evidently, the C 6 -OH is more active than C 2 -OH since the yield of oroxylin A was nearly double that of wogonin. Moreover, this synthetic route is not an ideal process for industrial production because the two products are difficult to separate.Prompted by this earlier report on the construction of the flavone nucleus, we launched our own studies, focusing on avoiding the undesired flavone derivative 6 in the total synthesis of pure wogonin (Figure 2). To avoid the competitive addition process while forming the flavone nucleus, we utilized intermediate 8 which has only one reactive position. Intermediate 8 was synthesized in >90% yield from 2,5-dimethoxybenzene-1,3-diol (7)