Isolation of ursolic acid from the leaves of Ocimum lamiifolium collected from Addis Ababa Area, Ethiopia

Ocimum lamiifolium is a well known medicinal plant in Ethiopia. Fresh leaves of the plant are squeezed and sniffed to treat colds and coughs and as an eye rinse for eye infections, while crushed leaves are used to arrest nose bleeding. In this study phytochemical investigation on the methanol extracts of this plant collected from Addis Ketema subcity, Addis Ababa. A triterpene, namely ursolic acid, was isolated using column chromatography over silica gel. The structure of this compound was identified using one dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopic techniques such as proton NMR (1H NMR), carbon-13 NMR (13C NMR) and distortionless enhancement by polarization transfer (DEPT), two dimensional NMR spectroscopic method such as HMBC, HMQC and COSY and literature survaye.   Key words: Ocimum lamiifolium, Ethiopia, phytochemical investigation, ursolic acid, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.