The complete architecture of plant chemistry — every family a plant can build, what each one is for, and what decides whether it ever reaches your bloodstream. This is the map the formulation is drawn from.
How to read this map
What follows is the whole of plant chemistry, family by family. Each family is a distinct piece of biochemical machinery — a different skeleton, a different reason the plant built it, and a different fate once you swallow it. Knowing which family a compound belongs to tells you more than knowing which plant it came from.
Absorption is engineered, not inherited. ‘Poorly absorbed’ describes a bare powder in water, never a compound in a vehicle. In healthy volunteers a formulated curcumin delivered 39 times the curcuminoid exposure of the unformulated standard (PMC5861163); a lipidic formulation put it in plasma within twelve minutes (PMC3834932); piperine raises it up to 20-fold (PMC12501955); and against a control an oat-milk matrix improved absorption 76%, because dairy polar lipids drive the bile-acid release that carries these molecules across the gut wall (PMC9369953). Take them with fat.
Every family of plant chemistry, and what sits in each
Plants build these beyond the business of growing — for defense, signaling, color and scent. They are called specialized metabolites, and they fall into families. The family is the unit that matters: it predicts the biology, and it predicts whether the compound reaches your bloodstream at all.
IPhenolicsone benzene ring, and everything built on it
Phenolics are built from three skeletons
One aromatic ring, and what the plant hangs off it. Every phenolic family you have heard of is one of these three shapes.
Change the bridge between the rings and you change the family: two carbons gives a stilbenoid, seven gives a curcuminoid.
Why one plant behaves nothing like another
Every compound on this page belongs to a chemical class, and the class — not the plant it came from — decides how it is absorbed, how far it travels and whether a laboratory reading survives contact with a human being.
Curcuminoids, stilbenes and carotenoids are lipophilic. They will not cross the gut wall from water. They must be carried into mixed micelles, which requires bile, which requires fat in the same meal. That is chemistry, and it is why the vehicle is part of the formulation.
Catechins and flavonols sit in between. Water-soluble enough to appear in plasma, conjugated fast enough that the plasma window is short — which is why dose and timing carry the trial results.
Sesquiterpene lactones, alkaloids and steroidal lactones are the potent ones, and that potency is exactly why this family is dosed by chemistry rather than by habit.
Polysaccharides and glycosides do not need fat at all. Many never enter the bloodstream intact and act at the gut wall or through the microbiome — which is why a low plasma number means something completely different for them than it does for curcumin.
Why this map exists
Every family above is a real branch of plant chemistry, and every one of them is represented in this catalog. The chemistry is what determines the biology, and it is what determines whether a compound ever reaches you.
The catalog it belongs to is built to the same rule. Every ingredient in every formula carries its own grade, and the blends act on a map of 567 pathways and 3,343 connections: every arrow names the study behind it, or carries a mark showing where its evidence stands.
Nothing here asks you to believe a superfood claim. It asks you to check one. Open the atlas, choose any pathway, and follow the arrow back to the paper it came from. A connection still waiting on its receipt is drawn fainter, and says so.
Sources
1. Nelson et al., ‘The Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Curcumin’, J Med Chem 2017 (PMID 28074653) — curcumin as PAINS + IMP. Its survey closed in 2017; the double-blind placebo-controlled BDNF result (PMC7463477, 155 adults) came after, and is listed beside it here. 2. ACS Med Chem Lett 2017 + PAINS analyses (J Med Chem 2017) — PAINS/IMP list incl. genistein, quercetin, apigenin, resveratrol, kaempferol, fisetin. 3. Sulforaphane–NRF2: Fahey/Talalay (PMC4789124); Frontiers Nutrition 2021; PMC4736808 — superior bioavailability & NRF2 induction; clinical biomarker data. 4. Negative sulforaphane trials: PLOS One 2016 (COPD RCT); PMC4957339 (airway) — honest counter-evidence. 5. Berberine meta-analyses & RCTs: Front Pharmacol 2025; PMC8107691; Atherosclerosis 2015 — AMPK; ↓HbA1c/FPG, and ↓triglycerides/LDL-C/total cholesterol — but NOT HDL-C, which meta-analysis finds unchanged (PMID 40740996); low bioavailability. 6. Berberine AMPK-independence: PLOS One 2014 (PMC4114874) — works even when AMPK is blocked. 7. Isoflavone phytoestrogen pharmacology (canonical) — genistein/daidzein as ERβ-preferential partial agonists.
Not medical advice. This is mechanistic pharmacognosy describing reported pathway modulation and its evidence quality. It is not a treatment protocol and makes no claim that any supplement treats, prevents, cures or ‘corrects’ any disease. Several listed compounds are toxic or unsuitable for supplementation. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA.
Phenolic acids Small aromatic acids — chlorogenic, caffeic, ferulic, rosmarinic, gallic. Cell-wall chemistry and the browning of a cut apple.
Phenylpropenes C6–C3 scent and spice — eugenol in clove, anethole in fennel, cinnamaldehyde in cassia.
Coumarins Benzopyrones — coumarin, umbelliferone, and the light-activated furanocoumarins of bergamot and celery.
Lignans and lignin Coupled phenylpropanoids — secoisolariciresinol in flax, schisandrin in schisandra, honokiol in magnolia. Lignin is the polymer that makes wood wood.
Flavonoids — the largest family by far Flavones (apigenin, luteolin, baicalein) · flavonols (quercetin, kaempferol, myricetin, fisetin, rutin) · flavanones (hesperidin, naringenin) · flavanols and catechins (EGCG, epicatechin, proanthocyanidins) · anthocyanins (cyanidin, delphinidin) · isoflavones (genistein, daidzein, puerarin) · chalcones (xanthohumol, cardamonin).
Curcuminoids and diarylheptanoids Seven-carbon-bridged phenolics — curcumin, demethoxycurcumin, bisdemethoxycurcumin.
Xanthones Tricyclic pigments — mangostin from mangosteen, mangiferin from mango leaf.
Tannins Protein-binding polymers — punicalagin and ellagitannins in pomegranate, condensed tannins in grape seed. Astringency you can feel.
Quinones Oxidized cyclic diones — emodin, rhein and aloe-emodin (anthraquinones), shikonin, thymoquinone in black seed.
Other phenolics Capsaicinoids in chili, gingerols and shogaols in ginger, alkylresorcinols in rye, anacardic acids in cashew.
IITerpenoidsisoprene units, counted in fives
Terpenoids are built in fives
One isoprene unit is five carbons. Every terpenoid family is a multiple of it — and the size decides the job.
Saponins sit at C30. The pigments that color a carrot sit at C40. The same brick, eight times over.
Hemiterpenoids (C5) Single isoprene units and their simple oxygenated relatives — isoprene, prenol.
Monoterpenoids (C10) The essential-oil aromas — limonene, menthol, pinene, linalool, thymol, carvacrol, and the iridoids such as oleuropein and valerenic acid.
Diterpenoids (C20) Resins, hormones and drugs — carnosic acid in rosemary, andrographolide, tanshinone, forskolin, ginkgolides, steviol, paclitaxel.
Sesterterpenoids (C25) The rare ones — ophiobolins, and a small set of marine and fungal metabolites.
Triterpenoids (C30) Saponins and membrane-active defenses — ginsenosides, astragalosides, glycyrrhizin, ursolic and oleanolic acid, boswellic acids, centellosides, cucurbitacins, ganoderic acids.
Carotenoids (C40 tetraterpenoids) The pigments — beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, astaxanthin, fucoxanthin, crocin in saffron.
Polyterpenoids Long isoprene polymers — natural rubber, polyprenols, and the latex hydrocarbons.
Meroterpenoids Terpene fused to another pathway — cannabinoids (CBD, THC), hyperforin in St John’s wort, humulones in hops, tocopherols.
Steroids and phytosterols Tetracyclic isoprenoids — beta-sitosterol, campesterol, stigmasterol, diosgenin, the withanolides of ashwagandha, ecdysteroids, and the cardiac glycosides digoxin and ouabain.
IIINitrogen & sulfurthe most physiologically active chemistry a plant makes
Alkaloids The most physiologically potent family — caffeine, berberine, piperine, capsaicin’s relatives, morphine, quinine, nicotine, vinblastine, galantamine, huperzine A, sanguinarine, tetrandrine.
Non-protein amino acids Nitrogen store and antifeedant — L-theanine in tea, L-DOPA in mucuna, canavanine, mimosine, 5-HTP in griffonia.
Cyanogenic glycosides The same two-part architecture as the glucosinolates, and the best-studied example of it: an inert sugar-bound compound held in one compartment, its activating enzyme in another, the two meeting only when the tissue is broken. Separated, neither half does anything at all — which is why preparation decides what a plant delivers. Amygdalin, dhurrin, linamarin.
Glucosinolates The two-part system again, and the one you eat on purpose: glucoraphanin and its enzyme sit apart until the leaf is cut or chewed, and only then does sulforaphane exist. Sinigrin becomes allyl isothiocyanate the same way, glucobrassicin becomes indole-3-carbinol. It is why how you prepare a brassica changes what it gives you.
Betalains Nitrogenous pigments that replace anthocyanins in beet and amaranth — betanin, vulgaxanthin.
Alkamides Tingling fatty-acid amides — the echinacea alkylamides, sanshools in Szechuan pepper, spilanthol.
IVThe remainderfamilies that fit no larger house, and matter anyway
And this is the line that decides what reaches you
Where a family sits on this axis decides whether it needs fat to reach you. It is the single most useful thing on this page.
Polyketides Acetate–malonate chains — plant anthraquinones, the annonaceous acetogenins, phloroglucinols such as hyperforin, and the resorcylic acids.
Polyacetylenes and specialized lipids Highly unsaturated fatty-acid derivatives — falcarinol and falcarindiol in carrot and ginseng, plus the oxylipins, phytoprostanes and unusual waxes.
Glycosides — not a family but a condition Any of the above with sugar attached: cardiac glycosides, saponins, iridoid glycosides, flavonoid glycosides. The sugar changes solubility, absorption and where the molecule is released.
Specialized carbohydrates and organic acids Inulin and fructo-oligosaccharides, the beta-glucans of oat and mushroom, pectins including modified citrus pectin, fucoidan, phytic acid, and organic acids such as citrate and malate.
Mixtures treated as classes in practice Essential oils, resins and oleoresins — not single families but traditional categories, mostly terpenes plus phenylpropenes.