Characteristics of Selected Silphium Species as Alternative Plants for Cultivation and Industry with Particular Emphasis on Research Conducted in Poland: A Review

Abstract

This article reviews the available research results of selected species of the genus Silphium L. (Asteraceae) as alternative plants for crops and industry. Silphium species have valuable qualities across a wide range of uses, which is very important in considering plant resources as a green alternative to a sustainable future. Species of the genus Silphium are tall perennials found in fields, prairies, open forests, and groves in the central and eastern parts of the United States and Canada. Various tribes of Native North American used Silphium for medicinal purposes. The cup plant Silphium perfoliatum L. is the most popular species of the genus Silphium due to its attractive ornamental, honey−giving, healing, and forage qualities. As the literature review shows, species of the genus Silphium are characterized by a high production potential in terms of yields and contain significant amounts of nutrients, i.e., carbohydrates, proteins, and L-ascorbic acid, as well as minerals and biologically active substances, e.g., terpenoids and essential oils, flavonoids, phenolic acids, and oleanosides. In addition, the research confirmed the possibility of using Silphium for fodder, as honeybee forage, phytoremediation plants, for reclamation of degraded land, as plants for energy purposes (biomass, biogas), and as plants that provide components with antimicrobial activity. This review largely takes into account many years of research experience conducted in Poland.

Evaluation of the Intra- and Interspecific Development of Different Accessions of Silphium perfoliatum L. and Silphium integrifolium Michx.

“…In the second year of the field experiment, all plants showed full generative growth. The same was reported in other studies [50,60,61]. The first buds were visible in all accessions 426 DAS and, in the course of generative growth, an intraspecific variation of the respective accessions developed.…”

A Comparative Study of Silphium spp. Antioxidant Activity

“…leaves identified complexes of benzoic and cinnamic acids (Williams et al, 2009). Among benzoic acids identified p-hydroxybenzoic, protocatechuic, isovanilic, gallic, ellagic, vanillic, syringic, and salicylic; among cinnamic acids found chlorogenic, rosmarinic, p-coumaric, caffeic, hydrocaffeic, ferulic, isoferulic, m-coumaric (Kowalska et al, 2022).…”

“…S. perfoliatum L. is a high-productive crop (Šiaudinis et al, 2012;Ţîţei et al, 2013;Peni et al, 2020) that can grow for over 15 years (Bury et al, 2020) and be harvested for different purposes such as fodder (Pichard, 2012;Shalyuta and Kostitskaya, 2018), honey, ornamental (Jucsor and Sumalan, 2018), medicinal (Kowalska et al, 2022), energetic (Mueller et al, 2019;Šiaudinis et al, 2019;Cossel et al, 2020;Cumpido-Marin et al, 2020;Rakhmetov et al, 2020) plants. The high productivity and calorific value of S. perfoliatum allow using plant raw on biogas (Gansberger et al, 2015) and solid (Jasinskas et al, 2014) production.…”

“…The extracts of these plants and their components such as polysaccharides (Shang et al, 2017) exhibited antioxidant activity (Borchardt et al, 2009;Kowalska et al, 2022). Wolski (2003a, 2003b) identified in phenolic acid fractions caffeic, p-coumaric, p-hydroxybenzoic, ferulic, and vanillic acids and the most predominant was caffeic acid.…”