Abstract: Tea flower [Camellia sinensis (L.) O.kuntze] is trimmed by growers in order to increase the production and improve the quality of the tea leaves. However the flower is rarely utilized for further applications. Tea flower samples from five species of five locations were selected and analyzed for the identification and utilization of the bioactive components. The contents of polypheols, total sugars, and polysaccharides were respectively determined by spectrophotometric methods. The polysaccharide components were isolated with gas chromatography(GC-14B, SHIMADZU, Japan), and the polyphenol components were identified with high pertormance liquid chromatography (HPLC-Spectra System, THERMO, America) with C18 column (0.46 mm×150 mm). The results showed that camellia samples contain high levels of total saccharides, polyphenols and soluble sugars, at 20.97%～33.60%, 6.35%～ 8.19%, and 1.04%～1.84%, respectively. The polyphenols are comprised of epigallocatechin, epigallocatechin gallate, epicatechin, gallocatechin gallate and epicatechin gallate. The polysaccharides are composed of glucose, arabinose, galactose, galacturonic acid, mannose, xylose, fucose and rhamnose. These samples have a similarity in major bioactive compounds to the tea leaves, even though their average content of polysaccharides is significantly higher than that of the tealeaves. The distribution of these components in camellia was also examined. The bioactive materials are higher in pistil than in petal. Overall, the tea flower samples have higher levels of bioactive components than tea leaves and are worthy further exploitation for nutraceuticals.

Key words: tea flower, polyphenols, polysaccharidies, GC, HPLC