ON THE IDENTITY OF BLANCO'S SPECIES OF BAMBUSA 
E. D. Merrill 
In the year 1837 Blanco^ described eight species of bamboo under 
the generic name Bambus, which, for the most part, have not been at 
all understood by later authors. It should be borne in mind that 
Blanco preserved no herbarium material, and that his descriptions, 
judged by modern standards, are very imperfect. Later authors 
having little or no botanical material from the Philippines, and having 
no special knowledge of field conditions in the Archipelago have usually 
merely enumerated Blanco's species with abbreviated descriptions 
compiled from the data given by Blanco. The single attempt pre- 
viously made to reduce Blanco's species is notably inaccurate. 
SteudeP includes all of Blanco's species with abbreviated descrip- 
tions under Blanco's names, except for Bamhusa mitis Blanco which 
he changed to Bamhusa hlancoi Steud. Miquel^ merely follows 
Steudel in his treatment of Blanco's species. Munro, in his mono- 
graph of the Bambuseae,^ includes all of Blanco's species under 
"Bambusae minus notae" with abbreviated descriptions, accepting 
Steudel's Bamhusa hlancoi in place of Bamhusa mitis Blanco. The 
next consideration of the Philippine species was by Fernandez-Villar,^ 
who arbitrarily reduced all of Blanco's species to those of other authors, 
species that, with one exception, do not occur in the Philippines. 
With one exception all of F.-Villar's reductions are erroneous. In 
1905 I was obliged to enumerate six of Blanco's species as unknown,^ 
but am confident that the remaining two were correctly reduced. At 
this time very few specimens of Philippine bamboos had been collected 
in flower. As botanical exploration progressed, however, there was 
a rapid increase in fertile bamboo material, and in 1910 the accumu- 
ipl. Filip. 268-272. 1837; ed. 2. 187-189. 1845; ed. 3, 3: 333-338. 1879. 
- Syn. Plant. Glum, i: 331. 1854. 
^ Fl. Ind. Batav. 3: 420-21. 1855. 
^ Trans. Linn. Soc. 26: 1-157. 1868. 
^ Novis. App. Fl. Filip. 323, 324. 1880. 
^ A Review of the Identifications of the Species descHbed in Blanco's Flora de 
Filipinas. Govt. Lab. Publ. (Philip.) 27: 1-132. 1905. 
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