Terminalia Linn, a genus of mostly medium or large trees in the family Combretaceae with about 250 species in the world, is distributed mainly in southern Asia, Himalayas, Madagascar, Australia, and the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa. Many species are used widely in many traditional medicinal systems, e.g., traditional Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine, and Indian Ayurvedic medicine practices. So far, about 39 species have been phytochemically studied, which led to the identification of 368 compounds, including terpenoids, tannins, flavonoids, phenylpropanoids, simple phenolics and so on. Some of the isolates showed various bioactivities, in vitro or in vivo, such as antitumor, anti HIV-1, antifungal, antimicrobial, antimalarial, antioxidant, diarrhea and analgesic. This review covers research articles from 1934 to 2018, retrieved from SciFinder, Wikipedia, Google Scholar, Chinese Knowledge Network and Baidu Scholar by using "Terminalia" as the search term ("all fields") with no specific time frame setting for the search. Thirty-nine important medicinal and edible Terminalia species were selected and summarized on their geographical distribution, traditional uses, phytochemistry and related pharmacological activities.
Keywords: Combretaceae; Ethnomedicine; Hydrolyzable tannins; Pharmacology; Phytochemistry; Terminalia; Traditional uses.