Astragalus mongholicus (MG) and Astragalus membranaceus (MJ), both generally known as Huangqi in China, are two perennial herbals widely used in variety diseases. However, there were still some differences in the chemical ingredients between MG and MJ. In this paper, metabolomics combined with the ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ESI-Q-TOF-MS/MS) was employed to contrastively analyze the chemical constituents between MG and MJ. As a result, principal component analysis showed that MG and MJ were separated clearly. A total of 53 chemical markers were successfully identified for the discrimination of MG and MJ. Of them, the contents of 36 components including Astragaloside I~III, Astragaloside IV, Agroastragaloside I, etc. in MJ were significantly higher than those in MG. On the contrary, the contents of 17 other components including coumaric acid, formononetin, sophoricoside, etc. in MG were obviously higher than those in MJ. The results showed that the distinctive constituents in MG and MJ were remarkable, and MJ may own stronger pharmacological activities than MG. In a word, MG and MJ may be treated as two different herbs. This paper demonstrated that metabolomics was a vitally credible technology to rapidly screen the characteristic chemical composition of traditional Chinese medicine.

Corn silk (Zea mays L.) is the stigma of an annual gramineous plant named corn, which is distributed in many regions worldwide and has a long history of medicinal use. In recent years, with the sustainable development of traditional Chinese medicine, studies of corn silk based on modern technologies, such as GC–MS, LC–MS, and other analytical means, have offered more comprehensive analyses. Phytochemistry studies have shown that the main bioactive components in corn silk include flavonoids, polyphenols, phenolic acids, fatty acids, and terpenoids. Pharmacological studies have shown that corn silk extract has various pharmacological effects, such as reducing blood lipids, lowering blood pressure, regulating blood sugar levels, anti-inflammatory effects, and anti-oxidation effects. In this paper, the related research on corn silk from the past few years is summarized to provide a theoretical reference for the further development and utilization of corn silk.