Abstract
DIHYDROCHALCONES, which may be regarded as open-chain members of the extensive class of flavonoid compounds with a 15-carbon skeleton, are of limited occurrence in plants. Until recently, the glucosides phloridzin and asebotin were the only well-authenticated examples. Phloridzin was one of the earliest phenolic glucosides to be isolated in a pure state; de Koninck1 reported its presence in apple, pear, plum and cherry trees in 1835, and described its isolation from apple root bark. Its presence in the other fruit trees does not seem to have been confirmed by any other workers; its absence from the pear tree was observed by Rivière and Bailhache in 19042, Bourquelot and Fichtenholz in 19113 and Lincoln in 19264. A survey of a large number of pear species and varieties in the course of the present work has failed to show the presence of even traces of phloridzin in any part of the tree. In fact the work has shown that phloridzin is absent from the leaf of all genera of the sub-family Pomoideae of the Rosaceae other than Malus; and its supposed occurrence in plum5 and cherry has not been confirmed by the examination of many species and varieties of Prunus. It is unfortunate that these erroneous reports of the presence of phloridzin, apparently deriving from de Koninck's original paper of 1835, still persist in many books including some published within the past year.
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References
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WILLIAMS, A. Dihydrochalcones; their Occurrence and Use as Indicators in Chemical Plant Taxonomy. Nature 202, 824–825 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1038/202824b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/202824b0
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