PREFACE 
Blanco’s Flora de Filipinas was first issued in 1837; followed . 
by a second edition in 1845, printed a few months after the 
author’s death; and a third edition published in 1877-83 under 
the auspices of the Augustinian Order of which Blanco was a 
member. The publication is merely a conventional one, in- 
complete, imperfect, and presenting no innovations in taxonomy. 
Naturally the work is chiefly of local interest, as a high per- 
centage of the species described are confined to the Philippines. 
To the student of the Philippine flora, as such, and to authors 
of monographs and revisions of families and genera extending 
to the Philippines, it is important that the status of Blanco’s 
species be determined. However, as no botanical material rep- 
resenting Blanco’s species was preserved by him, or if pre- 
served, is no longer extant, the matter of determining the 
identity of very many of his species presents by no means a 
simple problem. The object of the present work is to record 
what I have been able to determine regarding the status of 
Blanco’s species and their relationships with those described 
by other authors, based on sixteen years experience in prosecut- 
ing botanical work in the Philippines. 
Hooker f. considered that, on account of the unsatisfactory 
nature of Blanco’s work, it was undesirable to devote time to 
the identification of his species; which, perhaps, well reflects 
the attitude of the botanists of the middle of the last century. 
No botanist, not primarily interested in the Philippine flora, 
was in a position to do much actual work on the status of 
Blanco’s species, and up to the immediate present data and 
material by which Blanco’s species could satisfactorily be deter- 
mined have not been available. Thus, in general, Blanco’s species 
were considered to be of little importance and, being difficult 
of interpretation to the average botanist working only with 
dried material, were frequently ignored or briefly discussed as 
unknown or imperfectly known ones by authors of various 
monographs. 
The necessity for a critical determination of the status of 
Blanco’s species and of their relationships with those described 
‘Hooker, J. D., and Thomson, T. Flora Indica 1 (1855) Introductory 
Essay 56. 
| 5 
