Lamiaceae

The studies have been conducted in Sicily (Fig. 1), an island with a surface of 25,707 square km, situated in the middle of the Mediterranean sea and is divided from Italy (the country to which it belongs) by a narrow section of water (Messina strait). Due to its unique position, vast variety of mountains and substrates and its mild climate, the island is rich in species.
According to Di Martino and Raimondo [2 ] its vascular flora consists of 2361 taxa. This number has grown because many more taxa have been added, today in fact almost 3000 taxa can be counted, including those in the surrounding islands [3 ]. Due to its richness in species, Sicily is considered as one of the territories with the higthest vegetal biodiversity in the whole of the Mediterranean area. As for food plants of traditional use which are the subject of this research, the information has been collected by working on researches carried out in the island's rural communities and in particularly in the provinces of Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Enna, Messina, Palermo, Ragusa, Siracusa, Trapani, and in the Eolic islands (Messina), Egadi Islands and Pantelleria (Trapani), Pelagie islands (Agrigento) and Ustica (Palermo) which, in the past, have contributed to a lot of useful information concerning other researches [4 -18 ]. Nevertheless, where the popular flora of Catania is concerned, the authors have referred exclusively to bibliographical researches instead [19 -23 ]. This study has been carried out in two stages: during the first stage the cooperation of the local people, above all shepherds, farmers and old housewives has been indispensable and has provided valuable information about the plants of popular use, such as the vernacular name, parts used, period of collection and the receipts used in order to prepare traditional dishes; furthermore they also contributed in the collection of the plants. The second stage has been carried out in the Department of Botanical Sciences of the University of Palermo, where the collected species have been dehydrated and taxonomically determined using the analytical keys. The obtained exiccata have been kept in the Ethnobotanical Herbarium in the same Department. The study has been completed through an accurate bibliographical research which has allowed comparing the information collected in Sicily with the one known from literature [24 (link)-61 ].
The data reported has been shortened and summarised and placed in a scheme (Additional file 1) in which for every species the scientific, names, family, Italian vernacular names, used parts, traditional receipts and also the food uses recorded outside Sicily with the corresponding bibliographical references have been provided. In the scheme the species marked with the symbol @ are quoted as edible in the database PFAF [24 (link)]. The nomenclature used is the same adopted by Pignatti in Flora d'Italia [60 ] apart from the following families Apiaceae, Asteraceae, Brassicaceae, Fabaceae, Lamiaceae and Smilacaceae for which the authors referred to Jude et al., 1999 [61 ].
Furthermore, in Additional file 2, the scientific names and the corresponding Sicilian vernacular names are reported and, in Table 1, some traditional Sicilian vernacular culinary terms have been cited in the Additional file 1.
This work has been expanded with data taken from Battiato [62 ] concerning edible seaweeds of traditional use and data concerning edible mushrooms in Sicily taken from [63 ][64 ][65 ]: this data is reported in a table (Table 2).

Two populations of Mazuslanceifolius were rediscovered in June 2020 in Sichuan Province, China. One is located in the Qingchengshan Mountain near Dujiangyan City, and another was found in Qianfoshan Mountain near Mianyang City. Morphological observations were conducted based on wild individuals as well as the type specimens. Fresh leaves were collected in the field and dried with silica-gel for DNA extraction (Chase and Hills 1991 (link)). Voucher specimens are deposited in the herbarium of Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden (CSH).
In the present study, most DNA sequences are based on previous phylogenetic analyses (Deng et al. 2019 (link)), but some problematic sequences were excluded for analyses. For example, the trnL-trnF sequences of Mazusjaponicus (Thunb.) Kuntze 3 (KX807207) in the study of (Deng et al. 2019 (link)) were actually under the name of M.pumilus (Burm. f.) Steenis in GenBank. Similarly, trnL-trnF sequences of two different species (i.e. Mazus sp., MK266435 and Mazusjaponicusvar.delavayi (Bonati) P.C. Tsoong, KX783521) are completely identical. Such kinds of sequences were excluded for analyses. In addition, two individuals of Dodartiaorientalis and three individuals of Lanceatibetica were included for analyses. Thus, all genera (Mazus, Lancea and Dodartia) of the newly established family Mazaceae (Reveal 2011 (link)) were represented. Voucher information and GenBank accession numbers for taxa used in this study are provided in Appendix 1.
Based on previous studies (Schäferhoff et al. 2010 (link); Refulio-Rodriguez and Olmstead 2014 (link); Luna et al. 2019 (link); Xia et al. 2019 (link); Liu et al. 2020 (link)), 14 taxa representing 12 genera in five families (Pedicularis L., Rehmannia Libosch. ex Fisch. & C.A. Mey. and Striga Lour. [Orobanchaceae], Paulownia Siebold & Zucc. [Paulowniaceae], Erythranthe Spach, Mimulus L. and Phryma L. [Phrymaceae], Wightia Wall. [Wightiaceae], Callicarpa L., Lamium L., Premna L. and Vitex L. [Lamiaceae]) were selected as outgroups for the cpDNA dataset. While, because of the high divergence of nrITS sequences, only eight species from the above-mentioned families were selected as outgroups.

The dried and ground spices were kindly provided by AllinAll Ingredients Ltd., Dublin, Ireland. All Lamiaceae and Apiaceae samples, which were the main constituents of different combinations of herbs and spices used in this study, were cultivated in the northern Negev Desert, Israel (Latitude 30 30′ ON, Longitude 34 55′ OE, annual rainfall 12 inches). The herbs were transported to Ireland in premium condition, at 1–3 °C, within 3 days after harvesting. These samples were immediately steamed (120 °C) and air-dried, prior to grinding to <500 µm. Folin–Ciocalteu reagent, sodium acetate anhydrous, ferric chloride hexahydrate, 2,4,6-Tri(2-pyridyl)-s-triazine, 6-Hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethylchroman-2-carboxylic acid, sodium carbonate, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), octyl gallate (OG), propyl gallate (PG), tert-butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ), and the pure phenolics, namely eugenol, acetyl-eugenol, caffeic acid, protocatechuic acid, rosmarinic acid, carnosol, carnosic acid, thymol, curcumin, capsaicin, p-coumaric acid, kaempferol, catechin, gallic acid, ferulic acid, and quercetin were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich, Wicklow, Ireland.

The compound data set used for this work comprised 100 active TCM individual metabolites as published in previous work (Lv et al., 2017 (link)), which were commonly found in TCM botanical drugs, such as Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge [Lamiaceae; Salviae miltiorrhizae radix et rhizoma], Coptis chinensis Franch. [Ranunculaceae, Coptidis Rhizoma], and Panax ginseng C.A.Mey [Araliaceae, Ginseng Radix et Rhizama]. These were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) using the accession number GSE85871 (the full list of individual metabolites with annotations is given in Supplementary Table S1). Most of these 100 individual metabolites are reported to be quality-controlled components in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia and have been selected to represent a wide range of activities and diverse structures (Lv et al., 2017 (link)). According to our literature review, 51 of the 100 active TCM individual metabolites studied were known to modulate angiogenesis (Known Angiogenesis Modulators), while the ability of the remaining 49 individual metabolitesto modulate angiogenesis was unknown to date. Of the 51 Known Angiogenesis Modulators 19 were known promoters and 32 were known inhibitors. The gene expression data obtained from GEO used all individual metabolites at either 1 or 10 μM, and DMSO used as control, tested on MCF7 breast cancer cell lines in duplicate. Total RNA was extracted and profiled by Affymetrix HG U133 A 2.0 microarray chips. Compound structures, represented by Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System (SMILES), were pre-processed using the open access eTOX standardiser (https://github.com/flatkinson/standardiser), with the options set to “aromatize,” and “keep largest fragment.”