Phenol-Carbohydrate Derivatives in Higher Plants

Abstract

This chapter presents phenol-carbohydrate derivatives in higher plants. The known chemical and biochemical facts regarding these compounds are brought together and treated as carbohydrate derivatives. Such an approach is unusual, but the carbohydrate moieties of these molecules have, in the past, been largely ignored by chemists more intent on investigating the exciting, new aromatic and heterocyclic structures being discovered in the plant kingdom. It was difficult to separate and identify the mixtures of monosaccharides before the advent of partition chromatography. In higher plants, the mono- and oligosaccharide residues found in combination with phenolic compounds may be divided into two main groups: (1) the glycosides and (2) the phenolic carboxylic esters of sugars, esterification normally involving the hydroxyl group on the anomeric carbon atom. Ester and glycosidic linkages can both occur in the same compound.