A REVISION OF PHILIPPINE LORANTHACE/E. 



Bj' E. D. Merrill. 



{From the Botanical Section of the Biological Lahoratonj, Bureau of Science, 



Manila, P. I.) 



The greatest difficulty in dealing with this famih' is in connection 

 with the generic limits of Loranthus, to determine whether or not to 

 follow Bentham and refer all the forms to one great genus with numerous 

 sections, or to follow Van Tieghem, recognizing a great number of small, 

 more or less closely allied genera, or to follow Engler, who chooses a 

 middle course, recognizing a few genera, several of them large and with 

 numerous subgenera. After considerable preliminary work on the group, 

 I decided to follow Bentham, excluding, however, the species with versa- 

 tile anthers, of whicb we have a single representative in the Philippines, 

 as his arrangement on tlie whole seemed to me to be the most logical and 

 simple one. The difficult}' with Van Tieghem's system is that his work 

 is not sufficiently amplified, his generic and specific descriptions being too 

 short, and frequently almost wanting, so that it is quite difficult, if not 

 impossible, to follow him closely, unless one has access to the specimens 

 cited by him. After a careful study of the material available here, I am 

 now rather firmly convinced that there is no middle ground to be taken 

 in the matter, and that one must refer most of the species to a single, 

 or at most' two or three large and small genera, or one must follow Van 

 Tieghem, and recognize numerous small and more or less closely allied 

 genera, only in the latter case it will be necessary to establish a consider- 

 able number of new genera to accommodate numerous Philippine and 

 Malayan species that can not be fitted into any of tbose proposed by him. 



It is fortunate that there is in the herbarium of this Bureau a nearly 

 complete set of Cuming's Philippine Loranthacece, so that it has been 

 possible for me accurately to identify most of the species established by 

 Van Tieghem based on this collection; without these specimens it is 

 quite impossible to identify the species on account of the short descrip- 

 tions. The other material cited is entirely of recent collection. 



Six genera have been recognized, of which the largest is Loranthus, 

 with forty-three species, although specimens not in proper condition for 

 complete descriptions, at present in our herbarium, would bring this list 

 up to about fifty. Wlien material available has not allowed me to place 

 the species in its proper section, I have refrained from describing such 

 plants, and a number of these, at present represented by incomplete 



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