| Summary: | Wild chervil (<i>Anthriscus sylvestris</i>) is a wild-growing plant from the Apiaceae family, used as a food in Europe and eastern Asia. Due to its high content of lignans known to possess anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative, antiviral and other activities, it represents a potential functional food. However, quantitative data on lignans are still scarce and limited to deoxypodophyllotoxin, nemerosin and yatein. In this paper, a newly developed and validated reverse-phase HPLC–UV method was used to evaluate the content of 14 lignans in both aerial parts and roots of <i>A. sylvestris</i>. The most abundant root components were found to be deoxypodophyllotoxin (2.0–42.8 mg/g), nemerosin (2.0–23.4 mg/g), yatein (1.1–18.5 mg/g), podophyllotoxone (0.7–20.5 mg/g), guaiadequiol (0.8–8.3 mg/g) and dimethylmatairesinol (0.1–5.2 mg/g). Despite the high intra-population variability, a general trend of an increased lignan content during plant development could be observed in the root samples, whereas an opposite trend was observed in the herb samples. A validation study indicated that some of the investigated compounds—7-oxoaryltetralins and dibenzylbutyrolactones—have low stability and require cold storage in the dark. Furthermore, dibenzylbutyrolactones were confirmed to undergo a fast <i>cis</i>–<i>trans</i> isomerization; therefore, only the total content of these isomers should be reported.
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