Abstract
Multipurpose herbal teas with numerous ingredients, in which flowers are the main component, are common in the traditional medicine and pharmacy of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean countries. In this study, we combine ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology field work techniques and botany and pharmacognosy laboratory methods for the study of traditional herbal mixtures with flowers, we identify their botanical ingredients and record the local medicinal uses of these mixtures, in Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Turkey. These, and their industrial versions, are analyzed, using morphological and multivariate analysis techniques in order to determine marker species, relevant patterns of combination and local styles. The medicinal properties attributed to the different flowers are discussed in relation with their role in the mixtures. These blends are consumed for their relaxing, digestive, and anti-infective properties. These mixtures are not consumed as a treatment when one is sick but rather to avoid getting sick, as a preventive measure. The formulations can reach forty ingredients (sarantha in Greek, arbain in Arabic language of Palestine), usually entire or coarsely chopped in the more traditional formulations, leading to extreme variability of individual doses. We ask what biological signification this randomness can have. To give an answer requires new and more comprehensive pharmacological approaches. The flowers of Rosaceae, Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, Malvaceae and Fabaceae species characterize these mixtures in which other materials (roots, leaves, and fruits) and other species are present as well. Flowers of some species, particularly of Fabaceae, are exclusively used in mixtures, and their use in monospecific herbal teas is not yet recorded. We draw attention on the urgent need in exhaustively recording in Greece and the Near East, the formulation and use of traditional herbal mixtures and their numerous local variants. To consider these mixtures and the contribution of flowers (most mixtures receive the general name of tea of flowers) merits further extensive study.
Highlights
Typical angiosperm flowers appeared more than 150 million years ago in the evolutionary history of plants, early in a pre-Cretaceous period, associated with pollinating insects that played a decisive role in the origin and early evolution of the angiosperms (Ren, 1998)
The study has shown a total of 227 floral and non-floral ingredients belonging to 201 species that were used to prepare the analyzed herbal teas in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean (Table 1)
This difference is due to the fact that several species contribute more than one ingredient used together or separately: Origanum dictamnus flowers and leaves; Citrus and Rosa spp., flowers and fruits, for example
Summary
Typical angiosperm flowers appeared more than 150 million years ago in the evolutionary history of plants, early in a pre-Cretaceous period, associated with pollinating insects that played a decisive role in the origin and early evolution of the angiosperms (Ren, 1998). The chemicals that are involved in this ensemble of relationships stand available in the flowers in a wide repertory including: volatile compounds responsible of their scents (fatty acid derivatives, benzenoids, phenylpropanoids, isoprenoids, nitrogen containing compounds, etc.) (Jürgens et al, 2003; Raguso 2004; Dötterl & Vereecken, 2010); pigments coloring the flowers such as anthocyanins (Saito and Harborne 1992), flavonoids and betalains (Miller et al, 2011); nectars with amino acids, carbohydrates, vitamins, mineral ions and others (Morris et al, 2020); and toxic substances such as alkaloids, non-protein aminoacids, lectins, ammonia, and heavy metals (Adler, 2000) Such a wide repertoire of biologically active compounds attracted the attention of bees and other pollinators, and of hominids, who used the flowers of numerous species for food and medicine. Some of them are included in the materia medica on account of their contents in bioactive compounds (Inocencio et al, 2000; Rivera and Obón, 2004; Fernandes et al, 2017)
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