Butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea L.) is a medicinal legume widely used in traditional systems of medicine and increasingly explored as a source of nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and pharmacologically active natural products. Although the blue petals have received the greatest scientific attention, the leaves also represent a promising reservoir of bioactive metabolites. Reported leaf constituents include phenolics, flavonoids, tannins, saponins, alkaloids, terpenoids, glycosides, steroids, and triterpenoid biomarkers such as taraxerol, which together contribute to antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, hepatoprotective, antinociceptive, and wound-healing activities. Standardization and analytical profiling have relied on qualitative screening, spectrophotometric quantification, RP-HPLC, GC-MS, and more advanced hyphenated methods such as LC–MS and UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS in related Clitoria ternatea studies. However, leaf-specific evidence remains fragmented, with many studies still limited to in vitro assays and small animal experiments. Future work should emphasize compound isolation, metabolomic fingerprinting, toxicity evaluation, and clinical validation to support evidence-based application of butterfly pea leaves in medicinal and functional products.

Keywords: Clitoria ternatea, butterfly pea leaves, phytochemical profiling, pharmacological activity, antioxidant, flavonoids, phenolics, wound healing, hepatoprotection