Flavonoids of the Genus of Acer: A Mini Review

Abstract

The genus of Acer, usually known as maple, is an important genus of the family Aceraceae. Some Acer plants (i.e., red maple, sugar maple and black maple) are used to tapping sap, which were thermally evaporated to produce maple syrup in North America. There are ca. 200 Acer species widely distributed in Asia, North America and Europe regions. More than 200 chemical constituents have been isolated and identified from nearly 30 Acer species, including flavonoids, tannins, diarylheptanoids, phenyl propanoids, phenylethanoid glycosides, terpenoids, phytosterols, benzoic acid derivatives and other compounds. Among those constituents, flavonoids and tannins were two major and characteristic constituents existing in Acer species. Herein we made a mini-review about the flavonoids constituents from the Acer plants. A checklist of 60 flavonoids from the genus is given and 42 references are cited.