Biflavonoids, a special class of
flavonoids, are widely distributed in gymnosperm plants and have various
biological activities. They are also major bioactive ingredients in Selaginella tamariscina. In this work, we report the use of high-performance liquid chromatography with a diode-array detector (HPLC-DAD) and electrospray ionization multi-stage tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS(n)) to study the fragmentation behavior of three main types of
biflavonoids using seven
biflavonoid reference compounds and analyze the
biflavonoids in Selaginella tamariscina. The most useful fragmentations in terms of structural identification are those involving the C-ring cleavage of
biflavonoids. For
amentoflavone-type
biflavonoids (containing
flavonoid parts I and II), fragmentation on the
flavonoid part II at positions 1/3 and 0/4 are the primary pathways, whereas the chances are greater for C-ring cleavage fragmentation occurring on
flavonoid part I at positions 1/3 and 1/4 for
robustaflavone-type
biflavonoids. However, the predominant diagnostic
ions of the specific C-O-C-connected
hinokiflavone-type
biflavonoids are a series of
ions resulting from the
rupture of the connective C-O bond. Based on the fragmentation patterns of these reference compounds, 17
biflavonoids were identified in an extract of Selaginella tamariscina, three of which have not been previously reported as constituents of this plant. This study provides a powerful approach for the online structural elucidation and identification of different types of
biflavonoids and positional isomers from Selaginella tamariscina and other
biflavonoids distributed in related plants and prescriptions.