Phenetics in Tree Peony Species from China by Flower Pigment Cluster Analysis

Abstract

Petal pigment compositions were used as markers to study the phenetic relationships among seven wild tree peony species of Paeonia section Moutan DC. (fifteen accessions) from China. As the pigment markers, five anthocyanins together with three flavone and three flavonol aglycones were used. Principal component analysis (PCA) provided five eigenvectors from nineteen pigment patterns, in which peonidin and cyanidin as well as the types of glycosides greatly influenced the first factor, Z1. The Euclidean distances of standardized values obtained by eigenvector matrices with five factors (Zl to Z5) produced a dendrogram in Ward's minimum variance cluster analysis, which showed good agreement with a classification based on the morphological characteristics of two subsections Vaginatae F.C. Stern and Delavayanae F.C. Stern. The results obtained by PCA and clustering qualify a chemical classification of section Moutan using secondary metabolites, specifically flower pigments, as taxonomic markers.

Some Physiological Changes at Early Germination Phases ofMirabilis JalapaL.

“…1, 2. According to the litera- ture, it is known that if the productivity of anthocyanin increases and the chlorophyll is lost, this indicates a significant change in the metabolism (10,35,14). The results of this study support this fact.…”

“…The content of its toxic compounds still remains unclear in spite of the conducted researches (2). It has been determined that particularly the tuberous roots harbor antiviral activity against viruses (10,11,12), that its peptides, which are rich in cysteine, exhibit antifungal activity when isolated from its roots (13,14), that when root extracts are sprayed over potatoes they inhibit viral infection (15), showing thus it features a anticarcinogen chemotherapeutic potential. Moreover, in recent years, researches aiming at revealing the anthocyanin content, relation with chlorophyll and regulation of pigments with genes have been conducted (2,16,17,18,19).…”

Chemical taxonomy of the Xibei tree peony from China by floral pigmentation

“…Pre-treatment of the fresh petals was as described in a recent paper (Wang et al 2001b). Fresh petals were treated with boiling water for 2 s to prevent enzymatic degradation of pigments.…”

“…Our laboratory has first identified the presence of six flavone and flavonol aglycones (Wang et al 2001b). Apigenin, luteolin, kaempferol, and quercetin were identified by comparison with the data obtained from authentic samples.…”

“…Furthermore, methylated flavonoids, chrysoeriol and isorhamnetin, were identified for the first time by nuclear magnetic resonance spectra. Recently, we have represented the phenetics in tree peony species from China by flower pigment cluster analysis (Wang et al 2001b). The objective of the present study was to focus on the chemotaxonomic relationship with the original tree peony species by using floral pigment clustering in order to provide data for phylogenic positioning of tree peony cultivars.…”