1. Introduction
Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics-mainly between latitudes 25° N and 25° S [1]. Mangrove plants were comprised of true-mangrove plants and semi-mangrove plants. The true-mangrove plants were woody plants, which only grew in the intertidal zone and couldn’t survive in the land. Semi-mangroves were woody plants that could both grow in the intertidal zone and in the land. The differences between the two kinds of mangroves were the specificity of living habitats of the true-mangrove and the amphibiotic living habitats of the semi-mangrove as shown in Figure 1. Meanwhile, all of them were woody plants and could grow in the specific environment of intertidal zone, and the latter was the basis of the diversified chemical constituents and biological activities of the mangroves [2].
The word’s mangrove plants have 84 species (including 12 varieties) in 24 genera and 16 families. Of which, true mangrove plants have 70 species (including 12 varieties) in 16 genera and 11 families, and semi-mangrove plants 14 species in eight genera and five families [3]. 12 species of semi-mangroves were grown in China including
Most semi-mangroves possessed medicinal usages were utilized as folk medicine in many provinces of China. For example, the seeds of
Chemical constituents isolated form semi-mangrove plants with various and unique structures including flavanoids, lignans, sesquiterpenoids, diterpenoids, triterpenoids, steroids, and alkaloids et al. For example, Abe and coworkers obtained cardiac glycosides from the seeds of
Meanwhile, the biological activities of the isolated compounds were studied extensively. Some were found to have obvious biological activities. For example, cardiac glycosides showed obvious anti-cancer activity [11] and bartogenic acid can inhibit the activity of α-glycosidase and amylase [13].
In short, semi-mangrove plants played an important role in curing disease and finding new chemical entities. We highlight that it will become more and more significant to the research and development of new drugs. In this review, chemical constituents and biological activities of semi-mangrove plants were mainly regarded and they are as follows.
2. Chemical constituents
2.1. Flavanoids
2.2. Sesquiterpenoids
Sesquiterpenoids isolated form
Sesquiterpenoids isolated form
2.3. Triterpenoids
Some oleanane type triterpenoids with highly oxygenated were isolated form
2.4. Cardiac glycosides
More than 30 cardiac glycosides were isolated from the seeds of
2.5. Lignans
Many lignans were isolated from the semi-mangroves, and lignans obtained from
2.6. Others
Apart from these above mentioned compounds, courmains, iridoids, and alkaloids have also been obtained from semi-mangroves distributed in China. For example, cerbinal, p-hydroxybenzaldehyde, benzamide, n-hexadecane acid monoglyceride, loliolide,
3. Biological activities
3.1. Antitumor activities
The seeds extract of
3.2. Antibacterial activity
Khan and coworkers [24] used disc diffusion methods to test antibacterial activity of the ethanol extract of
3.3. Anti–inflammatory analgesic activity
Srinivasan and coworkers studied the anti-inflammatory activity of 70% ethanolic extract of
3.4. Others
Chakraborty reported the bark, seeds of
4. Conclusions
Among the 12 mangroves,
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to the financial support of initial funding by Hainan Medical University (Project No. HY2010-012). We also thank Dr. Yinfeng Tan for helpful discussions regarding the pharmacological analysis.
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