30 SPECIES BLANCOANAE 
were handicapped by a lack of knowledge of the Philippine flora, 
due to insufficient exploration; by the consequent lack of her- 
baria; and by the lack of literature. Above all they were limited . 
by their lack of knowledge of the Indo-Malayan flora. The 4 
work of Llanos, Fernandez-Villar, and Naves in interpreting . 
Blancoan species is noteworthily faulty, inexact, and not to 
be trusted. Their knowledge of the Indo-Malayan flora was 
gained entirely from a study of the scanty literature that was q 
available to them; they had no true conception of the principles ’ 
of geographic distribution of plants; and they failed to realize 
the very high percentage of endemism that characterizes the 
Philippine flora. While they may have had a fairly good knowl- 
edge of Blanco’s species as such, their reductions of them to a 
Indo-Malayan species that do not extend to the Philippines are 2 
notoriously erroneous in a high percentage of cases. 4 
While Blanco called his work a Flora of the Philippines, it 
is manifest that he did not intend it as a complete flora. It 
contains descriptions of not more than one-tenth of the species 
that actually occur in the Archipelago. He definitely states 
that he included what he considered to be of value or interest, and 
not infrequently discusses this or that species as being worthy 
of a place in his work. As noted elsewhere no exhaustive field 
work was undertaken, the vast areas of virgin forests were 
scarcely explored, and no attention was given to the rich and 
characteristic vegetation of the higher mountains. Large and 
critical families such as the Orchidaceae, Gramineae, and Cyper- 
aceae, and the Pteridophyta were largely ignored, only a few 
of the more conspicuous or common species of each group or 
those of economic importance being described. Thus among the 
few grasses described we find rice, Italian millet, maize, sugar 
cane, sorghum, a few bamboos, and a few of the more common 
and conspicuous or curious non-cultivated grasses. The same 
is generally true of all the larger families of plants. Cultivated — 
plants, ornamentals, and native species of economic importance © 
were given prominence. i 
Blanco, having no conception of the principles of geographic © 
distribution of plants, was influenced in his selection of generic 
and specific names by the limited literature at his command. He > 
made no attempt in the first edition of his flora to account for. 
species actually described from Philippine material by other — 
authors, but did attempt to interpret a few such species in the 
second edition. Many indigenous and endemic species he iden- 
tified with species of other authors, based on American material, 
yet on the other hand described as new various species of Amer- 
