A History of Philippine Botanical Exploration
by J.F. Barcelona
Early History of Philippine
Botany (1688-1900)
Early European Philippine
Botany
The written history of Philippine Botany may very well have
started with the Jesuit missionary and pre-Linnean botanist,
Georg Joseph Kamel (also known as Camellus). Born in
Brünn, Moravia (now Brno, the Czech Republic) on 21 April
1661. Kamel arrived in Manila in 1688 where he established the
first pharmacy in the Philippines. Here, he formulated
remedies from local plants and dispensed these freely to the
poor (Vallejo, 2007). Kamel’s botanical sojourns were
concentrated in and around the already established Chinese
gardens in Manila and he sent many of those plants to
London. The results of his work were presented in his
Herbarium aliarumque stirpium in
insula Luzone Philippinarum (“Herbs and Medicinal
Plants in the island of Luzon, Philippines”), published in
1697-1698. Copies of this pioneering ethnobotanical work
were sent to the eminent English botanist John Ray and
apothecary-botanist James Petiver; however, those manuscripts,
accompanying botanical drawings and specimens fell into the
hands of pirates and were subsequently lost. The following
year, Kamel sent another volume which was subsequently
appended in John Ray's
Historia
plantarum;
species
hactenus editas insuper multas noviter inventas &
descriptas complectens (1703) and later published in
the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.
Kamel was not only interested in plants but also in
birds. In fact, he wrote
Observationes de Avibus Philippensibus, the
first account of the birds of the Philippines published in
1702 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Kamel died in Manila on 2 May 1706. In his honor,
Linnaeus named the popular ornamental flowering plant genus
Camellia. The 300th
anniversary of Kamel’s death in 2006 was listed by UNESCO as
one of the most important anniversaries of the world.
The Malaspina Expedition
About a century after Kamel’s contributions to Philippine
botany, the country was explored as part of Spain’s Malaspina
Expedition. This mission was carried out by two corvettes,
Atrevida (commanded by
José de Bustamante y Guerra) and
Descubierta (commanded by Alessandro
Malaspina), that left Cadiz, Spain on July 30, 1789 on a
five-year journey in which much of America’s west coast was
explored and mapped. When this was completed, the expedition
crossed to Guam and the Philippines, and then proceeded
southward to New Zealand, Australia, and Tonga. Naturalists
aboard the ships included Antonio Pineda, the head of the
team, and botanists Luis Née and Thaddäus Haenke who missed
the boat in Cadiz but joined the expedition in Santiago de
Chile in 1790 (Wikipedia). The corvettes visited Luzon
from March to December 1792. During this period, Malaspina
sent Bustamante, who was aboard the
Atrevida, to Macau, China (Wikipedia) while
he and his team aboard the
Descubierta
visited Manila and nearby provinces including Bulacan,
Illocos, Panquasing, Pampanga, W. Luzon, Sorsogon, Albay,
Camarines, Tayabas, Laguna, Cavite, Cagayan, and Pangasinan.
From mid-September, they spent some time at Taal Volcano and
Laguna de Bay to study cinnamon. While in the Philippines
Pineda died of a tropical disease whereas the remaining crew
proceeded on Nov. 22 to New Zealand and Australia via
Mindanao.
Specimens of the Malaspina expedition are now at MA, with
duplicates in B, BM, BR, C, DS, F, FI, G, GH, K, KIEL, L, M,
MO, MPU, NY, PNH, PR, and W. Most of Haenke's material
were from South America. Of the 10,000 collection
numbers that Née, gathered, four thousand were considered new
(Merrill, 1915; van Steenis, 1958). His Philippine collections
totalled 2,400 but only ca. 1,000 specimens were left in
Madrid (MA) (Ashton in van Steenis, 1958) because some were
lost in transit from Manila to Spain (Madulid, 1989). No
duplicates were distributed of Née's Philippine collections
and much of these still remain unidentified. Née’s drawings
and manuscripts are nowadays in Madrid (MA), as well as his
fern collections which are part of the Cavanilles herbarium.
From his collections, a few species were described by
Cavanilles in his
Description
de las Plantas (1802-1803) as well as come by Lagasca
and by Née himself. Née’s most significant contributions to
botany were his numerous botanical collections that at that
time formed the core collection of MA. Erroneously labelled
specimens, however, resulted in some Philippine species being
attributed to South America. For instance,
Ophioglossum pendulum, a
species collected in either Guam or the Philippines, was
credited to South America “in Regno Quitensi,” by Cavanilles
whereas
Chloris
dolichostachya, which may have originated from
Australia, was reported to have come from the Philippines
(Merrill, 1915).
The Malaspina Expedition resulted in several botanical
publications. In his “De la abaca que es la
Musa textilis” (1801),
the Philippine endemic source of fiber more popularly known as
“Manila hemp”, Née described in detail this plant including
its economic uses, local names, geographical distribution and
propagation techniques. “Del buyo” was Née's account of
the betel nut (
Areca catechu
L.), describing its economic and masticatory importance in
some areas in the Philippines (Madulid, 1989).
Blanco and his Flora de
Filipinas
Father Francisco Manuel Blanco was a Spanish Augustinian friar
who arrived in the Philippines in 1805. His position as
Curate and later as delegate of the Augustinian order brought
him to Luzon and the Visayas. Here, he not only accomplished
his religious duties but also satisfied his botanical
curiosity, the latter resulting in the publication of the
three editions of his
Flora
de Filipinas.
The first edition (1837), written in Spanish, consisted of 887
pages in which the genera were arranged in classes following
the Linnaean classification system. It provided
treatments for 903 species and varieties under Latin names and
an additional 31 were presented with only their common names.
Included in this edition were economically important species,
especially cultivated ones. Most of the large families (e.g.
grasses, orchids, and sedges) were, however, almost
ignored. Shortly after Blanco’s death in 1845, the
second edition of the
Flora
was published. This was a 619 page volume, in which 1131
species and varieties were described using scientific names
and 27 using their vernacular names. As Merrill (1905)
stated, the second edition of Blanco’s
Flora was full of
typographical errors, perhaps because Blanco died months
before it was printed and therefore had not seen the proofs
himself. In other respects this edition was, unfortunately,
not an improvement on the first edition. Blanco arbitrarily
changed the generic and specific names for some species,
whereas for others, that had been correctly identified in the
first edition, incorrect names were used. The third
edition (Gran Edicion or the Augustinian Edition) of Blanco’s
Flora was published
between 1877 and 1883. Two priests, Andreas Naves and
Celestino Fernandez-Villar, were solely responsible for its
publication. It consists of four volumes of which the first
three were mere reprints of the second edition with slight and
negligible modifications. The fourth volume contains the
Novissima Appendix which consisted of an index of the species
pages from Blanco’s three editions of the
Flora de Filipinas. This
volume also provides a Latin translation of Blanco’s Spanish
plant descriptions, thus making his works more widely
accessible. Interestingly, of the total of 4479 included
species (classified in 1223 genera and 155 families), 116
genera, 1 family and about 1948 species (44%) do not occur in
the Philippines. These mistakes likely stemmed from many
sources including 1) the authors’ lack of knowledge of the
Philippine and its neighboring Indo-Malayan flora, 2) the
failure to communicate with and send materials to European
botanists to verify identifications by comparing these with
types deposited in public and private herbaria, 3)the absence
of Philippine and extra-Philippine herbarium specimens with
which to compare their specimens, 4) the lack of a good
botanical library and 5) their inadequate knowledge of
phytogeography. The botanical legacy of the Gran Edicion
was summarized in the following statement by Merrill (1918):
"The errors of Blanco, working
between 1805-1845 and of Llanos, working between the years
1850-1873, sink into insignificance when compared to the
authors of the third edition of Blanco's Flora".
While the work of Blanco was considered a great accomplishment
in the Philippines, most of his European contemporary
botanists, especially DeCandolle, considered his work of
little importance and even claimed that it has retarded rather
than advanced the knowledge of the Philippine flora (Merrill,
1905). Hooker f., likewise, considered it undesirable to
devote much time on identifying Blanco’s plant species on the
grounds that his account of the Philippine flora was
unsatisfactory (Merrill, 1918). Most of Blanco's generic
and specific descriptions were based on materials collected
near heavily settled areas in the provinces around Manila, few
from other provinces in northern Luzon and still fewer were
from the islands of Mindoro, Cebu, and Marinduque.
Hence, most species discussed are cosmopolitan in
distribution. The mountain flora was nearly absent in his
Flora. Likewise, the large families/classes, e.g.,
orchids, grasses, sedges, and the pteridophytes, were
underrepresented, if not ignored. However, considering the
unfavorable conditions under which Blanco’s Flora was
accomplished and that most of the data presented were the
result of one man’s field observations, Blanco's Flora de
Filipinas is a monumental work that must be acknowledged for
its initiative, industry, and perseverance (Merrill,
1918). In his Species Blancoanae, Merrill provided
interpretations of Blanco’s species and initiated a collection
of plants that would represent these species in the absence of
preserved types.
Hugh Cuming (1791-1865)
Cuming was a 19th century English collector who was interested
in gathering natural history specimens, especially in
conchology and botany. He arrived in Manila on 24 July 1836
and spent the next three years exploring mostly forested and
otherwise inaccessible areas (ignoring settled areas and
shorelines) in the Philippines. He collected plants,
terrestrial snails, and other animals with the exception of
fishes and aquatic invertebrates. Cuming visited all the major
Philippine islands and islets except Palawan. His itinerary
included Calauan, Laguna in the centre of Luzon and areas
around Laguna Lake. Most of 1837 was spent exploring Panay,
Guimaras, Negros, Siquijor, Cebu, Bohol, Camiguin de Misamis
and Mindanao, Samar, Leyte, Masbate, Ticao, Burias, Mindoro
and the SE provinces of Luzon, namely, Albay, Camarines,
Tayabas and Batangas. In Nov. 1838, he was at Manila
preparing for a trip to the northern part of Luzon.
Cuming left Manila on Nov. 1839 for Malacca, Sumatra, and
Singapore and visited St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean
before arriving back in England on 5 June 1840.
His collections of dried plants during his travels between
1836 and 1840 totaled 130,000, some 10% of which were
ferns. His snail collection was vast, about 30,000
specimens, and he also collected a substantial number of
specimens of other animals. Cuming was the first to
successfully ship live orchids from Manila to England, of
which 33 species were unknown to science. He was responsible
for the introduction of the orchids
Aerides quinquevulenerum, Dendrobium anosmum,
Dendrobium superbum, Grammatophyllum scriptum, Phalaenopsis
ambilis var.
aphrodite,
and
Vanda lamellata,
amongst others. Unfortunately, Cuming did not maintain field
numbers, and the distribution numbers for his collections were
not added until after the ferns and other cryptogams, orchids,
figs, and specimens of some other groups had been separated.
These numbers were given as the bundles were successively
distributed, and only partially indicate the sequence in which
the collecting localities were visited (Rolfe, 1908). Hence,
some of his Malaccan collections were erroneously labeled as
from the Philippines (e.g.
Henslovia
philippinensis,
Eriocaulon
truncatum, and
Mangifera
lagenifera). About 140 species of plants have been
described from Cumming’s Philippine collections with their
scientific names chosen to honor this remarkable collector
(Merrill, 1926, p. 162) (e.g.
Coelogyne cumingii, Podochilus cumingii, the
tree fern
Dicksonia
cumingii,
Selaginella
cumingiana and
Pleocnemia
cumingiana).
Cuming's vast collection formed the basis of much of the
knowledge on Philippine plants at the turn of the 20th
century. Tagged as the “Prince of Collectors,” no collections
of a single person have surpassed the value of Cuming’s plant
(and conchological) collections because a high percentage of
them were types of new species (Orchids.co.in).
Fedor Jagor (1816-1900)
Jagor, a German ethnologist of Russian descent, travelled to
Singapore, Malacca, Java and the Philippines in
1857-1860. He was in the Philippines in 1859-1860 and
visited Manila, Bulacan, Bataan, Laguna, most of the Bicol
region, Samar, and Leyte. Jagor’s contribution to the study of
the Philippine flora is his collection of 345 specimens (Van
Steenis, 1958) now deposited in Berlin (B) with duplicates at
Leiden (L). Jagor returned to some parts of the
Malaysian region between 1873-1876 and 1890-1893, although no
botanical collections have been reported from these later
trips. Some of the plants named after Jagor by Warburga
(a German botanist) are
Begonia
jagori,
Sterculia
jagori,
Vaccinium
jagori, and
Freycinetia
jagori (Perkins, 1904). Hieronymous named
Selaginella jagori after
him. Jagor’s contributions to the study of the natural
history of the Malesian region also included significant
zoological collections, including
Microphis jagorii (a fish),
Enhydris jagorii (Jagor's
water snake),
Phoniscus
jagorii (Peter's Trumpet-Eared Bat).
Sebastian Vidal y Soler (1842-1889)
In 1871, Vidal came to the Philippines as Inspector General of
the Forestry Bureau. From 1873 to 1875 he was back in
Spain but returned to Manila in 1876 where he was appointed
Chief for the Commission of the Forest Flora of the
Philippines (van Steenis, 1958). Vidal was the first botanist
based in the Philippines to recognize the significance of
having a good library, a herbarium, in comparing new
collections with existing ones in herbaria abroad, and in
collaborating with known botanists during his time. He
collected in Luzon, Panay, Guimaras, Marinduque, Palawan,
Samar, and Cebu. His herbarium, which included
collections by R. Garcia, Maximo Ramos, and Maeso, was housed
at the then Forestry Bureau Building in Manila. Unfortunately,
this collection and his botanical library were destroyed by
fire in 1897. His botanical collections were estimated to be
14,000 numbers with duplicates at K, MA, Fl, L, G, A, and
P. Of the 4000 or so numbers promised (by MA?) to
Manila, only 319 were brought back by E. Quisumbing from
Madrid in 1954 (van Steenis, 1958).
August Loher (1874-1930)
August Loher was a German botanical pharmacist who was a
resident of the Philippines since 1889. His Philippine
plant collections made from 1889 to 1896 numbered over 5200
and were mostly from Luzon, especially from Rizal and adjacent
Umirey (Umiray) region of Tayabas (Quezon) and Provinces,
Caraballo Mountains in Nueva Viscaya, Polillo Island and the
vicinity of Lake Mainit in Surigao, Mindanao. Most of
his specimens are now deposited at Kew (K) with duplicates
widely distributed among different herbaria, including M, B,
P, L, CAL, US, GH, NY, UC, PNH (van Steenis, 1958). Most
of his botanical collections after 1908-1915 (over 3000
numbers) were deposited in the Herbarium of the Bureau of
Science in Manila in 1923 and became the basis of Merrill’s
New species of Philippine plants collected by Loher
(1925). In this publication, Merrill described 41 new
species of plants based solely on Loher’s collections.
Genera with the specific epithet '
loheri' in this paper include
Pilea, Cinnamomum, Cryptocarya,
Clausena, Dysoxylum, Xanthophyllum, Dimorphocalyx, Ilex,
Saurauia, Garcinia, Diplocasia, Embelia, Palaquium,
Fragraia, Rauwolfia, Paveta, Randia, and
Williamsia.
References
Hay I. 1998. E. D. Merrill, from Maine to Manila. Arnoldia
Spring: 11-19.
Hugh Cuming (1791-1865).
Website
by Sinu
(http://www.orchids.co.in/orchidologists/hugh-cuming.shtm)
Madulid, D.A. 1989. The life and work of Luis Née, botanist of
the Malaspina Expedition. Archives of Natural History 16(1):
33-48.
Merrill, ED. 1905. A review of the identifications of
the species described in Blanco's Flora de Filipinas.
Publication No. 27 of the Bureau of Government Laboratories.
Bureau of Printing, Manila. 132 pp.
Merrill, E.D. 1902-1906. Notes on Cuming's plants in the
herbarium of the Bureau of Government Laboratories, No. 28-36:
69-77.
Merrill, E.D. 1915. Genera and species erroneously
credited to the Philippine flora. Philipp. J. Sci. 10(3):
171-194.
Merrill, E.D. 1918. Species Blancoanae: A critical revision of
the Philippines species of plants described by Blanco and
Llanos. Bureau of Science Publications No. 12. 425 pp.
Merrill, E.D. 1925. New species of Philippine plants
collected by A. Loher. Philip. Journ. Sci. 27: 21-59.
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portrait.
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Robbins, W. J. 1958. Elmer Drew Merrill 1876—1956: A
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Sciences, Washington, DC. 333pp.
Rolfe, RA. 1908. The localities of Cuming's Philippine plants.
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Vallejo, B.M. Jr. 2007. Georg Joseph Kamel, SJ (1661-1706):
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(http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/fmcollectors/Home.htm)
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plantas fanerogamas colleccionadas en Filipinas por Hugh
Cuming, con caracteristicas de algunas especies no descritas y
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