Flowers: precious food and medicine resources

Abstract

Flower plants are popular all over the world and important sources of ornamental plants, bioactive molecules and nutrients. Flowers have a wide range of biological activities and beneficial pharmacological effects. Flowers and their active ingredients are becoming more and more popular in the preparation of food, drugs and industrial products. This paper summarizes the active ingredients, pharmacological activities and applications in the pharmaceutical and food industries of flower plants in recent years. In addition, the possible molecular mechanism of pharmacological effects of flower plants were also discussed. 302 active constituents from 55 species of flower plants were summarized, including flavonoids (115), terpenoids (90), phenylpropanoids (20), alkaloids (13), organic acids (27) and others (37). The pharmacological effects of flower plants are very extensive, mainly including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, anti-virus, and hypoglycemic. The mechanisms of anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor and hypoglycemic activities present the characteristics of multi-way and multi-target. Because of its rich nutrients, bioactive ingredients and plant essential oils, and its wide sources, flower plants are widely used in food, beverage, cosmetics and drug research. Flower plants also play an important role in pharmaceutical industry, food industry and other fields.

Keywords

• Flowers
• Active ingredients
• Biological activity
• Mechanism