Abstract: An HPLC method was developed and validated for simultaneous determination of isoorientin, orientin, vitexin, and isovitexin, and the four common flavone C-glycosides in bamboo leaves of 24 species of Phyllostachys and their contents in P. propinqua in the four seasons. The HPLC separation was performed on an Inertsil ODS-3 (250 mm×4.6 mm, 5 μm) column with the mobile phase of acetonitrile (B) and 0.5% phosphoric acid in water (C) with equal elution at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. The column temperature was 30℃, and the detected wavelength was 340 nm. The results showed that the linear ranges of the concentration of isoorientin, orientin, vitexin and isovitexin were 1-300 mg/L, respectively, and the concentrations of the four compounds showed a good linear relationship with their peak areas, and the correlation coefficients all > 99%; the average recoveries for the samples were 97.14%, 100.53%, 93.60% and 95.66%, respectively, and the relative standard deviations were 1.11%, 1.45%, 1.96% and 1.43%, respectively. The results showed that the content of flavone C-glycosides had big differences among bamboo leaves of 24 species of Phyllostachys. The total content of the four flavone C-glycosides were in the range of 286.14-3 838.79 mg/kg. The maximum content was found in P. nigra, and its content was 3 838.79 mg/kg. The total concentrations of four flavone C-glycosides in P. propinqua were in the range of 1 371.15-4 367.01 mg/kg in the 4 months, and the maximum content was found in January, and its content was 4 367.01 mg/kg. HPLC method had good reproducibility and high accuracy. This provides a basis for quality control of flavone C-glycosides of bamboo leaves.

Key words: HPLC, bamboo leaves of Phyllostachys, flavone C-glycosides, quantitative analysis