Contents of constituents in mature and immature fruits of Evodia species

A total of 33 commercial samples of Evodiae fructus originated from the rut aceous plants Evodia rutaecarpo (Juss.) Benth. and E. rutaecarpa (Juss.) Be nth. var. officinalis (Dode) Huang (= E. officinalis Dode), respectively, w ere collected from Taiwan's herbal market. The contents of eighteen constit uents (including 15 alkaloids, 2 flavonoids and 1 diterpenoid) in these sam ples were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography within 60 mi nutes. Analysis results showed that the constituent contents were almost un related to the species, but rather closely related to the degrees of maturi ty of the fruit. Those fruits with open mouths and unsplit ovaries had the highest total contents, fruits with open mouths and split ovaries had lower contents, and fruits with closed mouths had the lowest contents. In terms of the individual constituents, the open-mouth fruits contained higher cont ents of dehydroevodiamine, evodiamine, evocarpine and rutaecarpine, whereas the closed-mouth fruits had higher contents of dehydroevodiamine, epimedos ide C, evocarpine and evodiamine.