Saponins are secondary metabolites that are found in many plants and some animals. These compounds are high molecular weight glycosides, consisting of a sugar moiety linked to a triterpene or steroid aglycone. Many saponins have detergency properties and give stable foam in water. The genus Silene L. with more than 700 species is one of the largest genera of the family Caryophyllaceae mainly distributed in northern hemisphere. Saponins are one of the important secondary metabolites in the members of the genus. Quantitative and qualitative study of the saponins in the aerial parts and roots of three Silene species, namely S. ginodioica Ghaz. subsp. Penducularis (Fenzl ex Boiss.) Melzh., S. spergulifolia (Willd.) M. Bieb. and S. swertiifolia Boiss. were carried out by spectrophotometry and TLC methods. In this study, 5 fractions were obtained from each plant part and in both parts of the three species, fraction 1 contains the highest amounts of saponins. On the other hands, root extracts have high amounts of saponins. In addition, thin layer chromatography (TLC) of the extracts revealed some saponins spots with different R_f.

Silene ghahremaninejadii (Caryophyllaceae) is described as a new species to science in this article based on critical differences in certain characters of both vegetative and reproductive organs, compared with its closely related taxa, i.e. S. marschallii and S. ruprechtii. The new species has compact caudex, glabrous leaves and pedicles, cylindrical calyx without indumentums on its inner surface, deeply bifid petals without coronal scales and glabrousfilaments. In addition, a hypothesis about the speciation process of the species is proposed.

In a revision of annual Silene species some interesting specimens were observed, which belonged to the sp-ecies that had not been previously reported in detail from Iran. In this paper S. nocturna from the section Scorpioideae was added to the checklist of the third important genus of the flora of Iran, i.e. Silene, and new localities for S. gallica from the section Lasiocalycinae were reported. The description, geographical distribution in Iran and photos of each sp-ecies were also presented