Crataegi folium have been used as medicinal and food materials worldwide due to its pharmacological activities. Although the leaves of Crataegus songorica (CS), Crataegus altaica (CA) and Crataegus kansuensis (CK) have rich resources in Xinjiang, China, they can not provide insights into edible and medicinal aspects. Few reports are available on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of flavonoids compounds of their leaves. Therefore, it is necessary to develop efficient methods to determine qualitative and quantitative flavonoids compounds in leaves of CS, CA and CK. In the study, 28 unique compounds were identified in CS versus CK by qualitative analysis. The validated quantitative method was employed to determine the content of eight flavonoids of the leaves of CS, CA and CK within 6 min. The total content of eight flavonoids was 7.8–15.1 mg/g, 0.1–9.1 mg/g and 4.8–10.7 mg/g in the leaves of CS, CA and CK respectively. Besides, the best harvesting periods of the three species were from 17th to 26th September for CS, from 30th September to 15th October for CA and CK. The validated and time-saving method was successfully implemented for the analysis of the content of eight flavonoids compounds in CS, CA and CK for the first time.

The immature epicarps of Juglans mandshurica and Juglans regia have been used as folk medicine for the treatment of cancer in China. Other parts of the J.mandshurica plant, including leaves, branches, barks, and stems, have reported antitumor activities. We previously found that various diarylheptanoids and phenolic compounds isolated from J. mandshurica epicarps show significant antitumor activities. However, there are no reports of quantitative analysis of diarylheptanoids and phenolic compounds of J. mandshurica. In this study, a validated quantitative method, based on ultraperformance liquid chromatography coupled with triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry, was employed to determine the contents of eight diarylheptanoids and seven phenolic compounds in the epicarps of J. mandshurica during different growth periods, in different parts of the plant, and in the epicarps of two Juglans species. The most successful J. mandshurica epicarp harvesting time fell between Day 12 and Day 27. The leaves of J. mandshurica showed potential for medical use as they had the highest content of the 15 compounds (3.399 ± 0.013 mg/g). We showed for the first time that the total content of diarylheptanoids in J. mandshurica is higher than that in J. regia, though, conversely, J. regia has higher contents of phenolic compounds. The method developed in this study is practical and simple and can be applied for quantitative analysis for evaluating the intrinsic quality of J. mandshurica.