Abstract: Prinsepia utilis Royle, also known as Prinsepia utilis,is a woody oil plants which belongs to prinsepia of Rosaceae and it is mainly distributed throughout the mountains,slopes arid valley,wasteland and jungle with altitude from 1800-3200m in Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet and Guizhou,etc. People in Northwest Yunnan minority area have thousands of years for the edible and medicinal history of Prinsepia utilis Royle. In order to study the the functional significance of Prinsepia utilis Royle edible in medicine ,eating ,skin care, health care and other aspects, the study reviewed nearly thirty years about Prinsepia utilis Royle and its products as well as it's chemical composition and found that the roots, stems and nuts of Prinsepia utilis Royle contain a variety of the necessary constants and trace elements for the body, vitamins, amino acids, crude fat, polysaccharides, flavonoids, terpene etc.,which can lower blood lipid,improve hypoxia tolerance, maintain biological membrane fluidity and which also have anti-oxidative and antibacterial effects and so on. At the same time, the study has also made great progress in the cultivation, extraction and chemical composition analysis of Prinsepia utilis. However, the study of chemical constituents and pharmacological analysis is inadequate and that the further study of isolation and identification of chemical constituents of Prinsepia utilis and its the application in pharmacology need to be enriched.