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Tribe Lilieae, encompassing Lilium, Notholirion, Cardiocrinum, and Fritillaria, includes economically important crops with a horticultural and medicinal value. It is considered to be a core lineage of Liliaceae, but phylogenetic relationships within it, and the timing of the origin of individual clades, remain incompletely resolved. To address these issues, we reconstructed the evolutionary history of the tribe. We sequenced 45 Liliaceae plastomes and combined them with publicly available data (for a total of 139 plastomes) to explore the systematics, origin, divergence, and evolution of Lilieae. Our taxon sampling covers all ten sections of Lilium, all Cardiocrinum species, three Notholirion species, and major phylogenetic clades of Fritillaria. Our phylogenetic analysis confirms the monophyly of major sections/subgenera of Lilium and Fritillaria with strong support. We dated the origin of Lilieae to the Eocene, with genera and species radiations inferred to have occurred in the Miocene. The reconstruction of the ancestral area implies that Lilieae may have originated from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP): the Himalayas and Hengduan Mountains and uplifting of the QTP likely promoted divergence within the tribe. Ancestral-state reconstructions of the bulb component number (including bulblets and scales) show a strong correlation with the genus-level phylogenetic diversity in Lilieae. They also predict that the most recent common ancestor of Lilieae had bulbs with numerous bulblets. Based on these observations, we predicted that climatic oscillations associated with the QTP uplift played an important role in the evolution of the Lilieae bulb. Our findings provide a well-supported picture of evolutionary relationships and a useful framework for understanding the pathway of bulb evolution within Lilieae, contributing to a better understanding of the evolutionary history of lilies.

Garlic is used as a medicinal seasoning worldwide. The aim of this work was to compare four varieties of garlic: ‘Taicangbaipi’, ‘Ershuizao’, ‘Hongqixing’, and ‘Single-clove’; among them, ‘Ershuizao’ and ‘Hongqixing’ are unique to the Sichuan Province of China. Firstly, soluble sugar, starch, and the protein content of the garlic were analysed. There was more soluble sugar in ‘Single-clove’, total starch in ‘Hongqixing’, and protein content in ‘Ershuizao’ relative to the other three varieties, respectively. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis showed that ‘Ershuizao’ and ‘Hongqixing’ contained high levels of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, which has antitumor, antioxidant, and cytoprotective effects. Indeed, the extracts from these two types of garlic were more effective at inhibiting tumour growth than that from the others. Moreover, the sulphide content and antimicrobial effects of ‘Ershuizao’ and ‘Hongqixing’ garlic were also higher than those of the other two types of garlic. In addition, changes observed in the membrane permeability and protein leakage suggest that the antimicrobial activity of the ‘Ershuizao’ and ‘Hongqixing’ extracts may be due to the destruction of the structural integrity of the cell membranes, leading to cell death.

Background The genus Seseli L., which consists of 125–140 species distributed in the Old World from western Europe and northwestern Africa to China and Japan, is one of the largest and most taxonomically difficult genera of Apiaceae Lindl. Although several previous studies have been conducted on Seseli based on limited morphological characteristics and molecular fragments, a robust and comprehensive phylogeny of Seseli remains elusive. Plastomes provide abundant genetic information and have been widely used in studying plant phylogeny and evolution. Consequently, we newly generated the complete plastomes of eleven Seseli taxa. We combined plastome data and morphological characteristics to investigate the phylogeny of Seseli. Results In our study, we observed that the genome length, gene numbers, IR/SC borders, and repeat composition of the eleven Seseli plastomes were variable. Several appropriate mutation hotspot regions may be developed as candidate DNA barcodes for evolution, phylogeny, and species identification of Seseli. The phylogenetic results identified that Seseli was not a monophyletic group. Moreover, the eleven newly sequenced Seseli taxa did not cluster with S. tortuosum (the type species of Seseli, belonging to the tribe Selineae), where S. delavayi clustered with Eriocycla belonging to the tribe Echinophoreae and the other ten belonged to Selineae. The comparative plastome and morphological characteristics analyses confirmed the reliability of the phylogenetic analyses and implied the complex evolution of Seseli. Conclusion Combining molecular and morphological data is efficient and useful for studying the phylogeny of Seseli. We suggest that “a narrow sense” of Seseli will be meaningful for further study and the current taxonomic system of Seseli needs to be revised. In summary, our study can provide new insights into the phylogenetic relationships and taxonomic framework of Seseli.