PREFACE 7 
apparently undescribed forms encountered during the preparation of the 
manuscript, as well as the few new combinations made necessary by a 
strict interpretation of the accepted code of nomenclature, will be found 
in a paper entitled “Nomenclatural and Systematic Notes on the Flora of 
Manila,”’* published previous to this work. A general consideration of 
the more striking characters of the flora, the introduced species and their 
origin, etc., will be found in the same publication.’ 
In the descriptions of families, genera, and species, the general sequence 
of characters as that adopted by Hooker in his “Flora of British India” 
has been followed. Many of the family and generic descriptions have 
been complied from that work, more or less modified to suit the character 
of the present publication; the descriptions of the species have been 
rewritten, partly from fresh material and partly from dried specimens, with 
reference to previously published descriptions in various standard works. 
This publication contains the descriptions of 1007 species, 591 genera, 
and 136 families, nearly one-sixth of the species definitely known from 
the Archipelago at the present time. Most of these are the very com- 
monest and most widely distributed ones in the Philippines, and form the 
characteristic vegetation of the settled areas at low altitudes in all parts 
of the Archipelago. 
An examination of a number of recent elementary textbooks of botany 
has convinced me that it is impossible for the student to gain from them 
a sufficient knowledge of the technical names used in descriptive botany, 
properly to use a volume like the present one. For this reason it has 
been considered essential to include a short consideration of the terms more 
generally used in describing plants, in order to make the present work more 
complete in itself. The terms defined in the following pages will also be 
found in the Glossary of Technical Terms on page 25, together with many 
of the more unusual terms that are used to a greater or less extent in the 
following descriptions. 
E. D. MERRILL. 


* Philip. Journ. Sci. 7 (1912) Bot. 227-251. 
?“Notes on the Flora of Manila, with Special Reference to the Introduced 
Element.” Philip. Journ. Sci. 7 (1912) Bot. 145-208. 
