Elder (Sambucus nigra L.) is a widespread aromatic plant in Europe and one of the most frequently used herbal drugs in the folk medicine. Flavonoids and triterpenes are the most important bioactive compounds in elder flowers. There are no clinical trials studying elder flowers available. Data on the composition and variability of elder essential oil, hydrolate and extract are very poor, therefore this is the purpose of our study. Samples of elder flowers were acquired on four different locations in Slovenia during a full flowering period. Fresh flowers and flowers dried in various ways were distilled and extracted. Samples of essential oil, hydrolate and extracts were then analysed with gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. The results show that qualitative and quantitative variability among essential oil and extract samples is high, whereas it is much lower among hydrolate samples. The amount of essential oil and the number of detected compounds are higher in essential oil and extract samples of dry flowers compared to the fresh ones. The dry flowers sample from Čermoţiše (0,23 mL/kg fresh herbal drug) contains the largest amount of essential oil, while the largest compound number was found in the dry flowers sample from Anovec (196). The extract sample of flowers dried in a desiccator in the argon atmosphere has the largest number of compound – 424. The compound number and the volatile substances concentration are higher in fresh flowers hydrolate samples compared to the dry ones and fall with each subsequent fraction. The highest are in the first fraction of the dry flowers hydrolate sample from Anovec (compound number: 16; volatile substances
concentration: 0,359 mL/L). In all essential oil and extract samples there is a higher proportion of other organic compounds (on average 83,4 % and 29,6 %, respectively) compared to terpenes (on average 4,46 % and 8,70 %, respectively), whereas in the hydrolate samples the major
compound is monocyclic monoterpenoid (Z)-linalool oxide pyranoid (on average 88,4 % in all hydrolate samples fractions). In essential oil samples, the content of the main compounds decreases in the following order: n-heptacosane, n-tricosane, n-nonadecane, n-pentacosane and squalene, and in the extract samples: squalene n-pentacosane, n-tricosane, n-heptacosane and n-nonacosane.
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