Objective To study the polyphenols in the flowers of yellow Camellia and their relationship with plant classification, and provide reference for the application of polyphenols in the classification of yellow Camellia.

Method The author used HPLC to determine 9 polyphenolic components in the petals, stamens and sepals of the full flowering flowers of 22 species of yellow Camellia, and the cluster analysis were used to study the relationship between them and the taxonomy of yellow Camellia.

Result Among the 9 polyphenols tested, GCG, ECG, and CG were detected in all samples, while GA, GC, EGC, C, EC, and EGCG were not detected in some samples. EC was the most abundant, followed by EGC, GCG and ECG. The total polyphenols were significantly positively correlated with these 4 components. The contents of EGC, C, EC, EGCG, GCG, ECG as well as total polyphenols were the highest in sepals, followed by stamens and petals. The content of CG was the highest in petals, followed by stamens and sepals. The contents of GA and GC were the highest in stamens, followed by sepals and petals. The results of cluster analysis showed that the similarity rate of stamen polyphenols with classification systems was the highest, which was 80.00%−90.00%. The similarity rates of sepal polyphenols content and petals polyphenols content were 75.00%−88.89% and 58.33%−81.82%, respectively.

Conclusion The highest polyphenolic content in the flowers of yellow Camellia is EC, and the main polyphenolic constituents are EC, EGC, GCG and ECG. The polyphenolic content is the highest in sepal followed by stamen and lowest in petal. The clustering results of stamen polyphenols can be used as an important supplement to the phylogenetic classification of yellow Camellia.