THE SC1TAMINH>£ OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 



By H. N. Ridley. 



(Director, Botanic Garden, Singapore, Straits Settlements.) 



This account of the Scitaminece of the Philippine Islands is based on 

 the whole series of specimens in the herbarium of the Bureau of Science, 

 Manila, kindly placed in my hands by Mr. Elmer D. Merrill, which 

 contains a very fine series of specimens of this group collected by many 

 botanists in different islands of the Archipelago, and also collections 

 made by Mr. A. D. E. Elmer. 



Among the earlier collectors in the Philippines were Haenke, Cuming, 

 and Blanco. The first of these collected a good number of species which 

 were described and figured by Presl in "Reliquiae Haenkeanae." The 

 types of Presl's species I have not seen; nearly all have been re-collected, 

 but one or two do not seem to have been met with again. Cuming seems 

 to have obtained comparatively few species of the order. Blanco described 

 a small number, chiefly cultivated species, in the first and second edition 

 of his "Flora de Filipinas," some of which are figured by Naves in the 

 third edition. Warburg also made extensive collections in the Archi- 

 pelago, and several of the species described by K. Schumann in the 

 "Pflanzenreich," based on material collected by the former, I have not 

 been able to identify with any of the plants collected by the American 

 botanists, and to complete this account I have had to copy Schumann's 

 descriptions. 



The area does not seem to be so rich in this group of plants as are the 

 Malay Islands farther west, or the Malay Peninsula. The number of 

 genera, twenty-one, is not quite so large and the number of species is 

 much smaller than in the Malay Peninsula. Of the indigenous genera 

 we have Globba, Iledycliium, G astro chilus, Zingiber, JTornstedtin, A mo- 

 mum, Plagiostachys, Alpinia, and Costus in Zingibcracea', and Phrynium, 

 Phacclophrynium, and Donax in Marantacect', with the endemic genera 

 Kolowratia, Leptosolena and Adelmeria (Zingibcracece) , and Mono- 

 phrynium (Marantacece) . Of the genera found in the Malay Peninsula 

 and Archipelago, not yet met with in the Philippines, are Odontycliium, 

 Camptandra, Haplochorema, Conamomum, EJettariopsh, Geostachys, 



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