Contents of constituents in mature and immature fruits of evodia species.

A total of 33 commercial samples of Evodiae fructus originated from the rutaceous plants Evodia rutaecarpa (Juss.) Benth. and E. rutaecarpa (Juss.) Benth. var. officinalis (Dode) Huang (= E. officinalis Dode), respectively, were collected from Taiwan's herbal market. The contents of eighteen constituents (including 15 alkaloids, 2 flavonoids and 1 diterpenoid) in these samples were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography within 60 minutes. Analysis results showed that the constituent contents were almost unrelated to the species, but rather closely related to the degrees of maturity 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 contents of dehydroevodiamine, evodiamine, evocarpine and rutaecarpine, whereas the closed-mouth fruits had higher contents of dehydroevodiamine, epimedoside C, evocarpine and evodiamine.