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E.S. Fernando: Vegetation of the Philippine Islands 12
Conclusions
The vegetation of the Philippines is diverse in its habitats and flora. Destruction has been
reducing its scope even more rapidly than we have been able to catalogue it.
Although plant collecting activity in the Philippines has been shown to have increased since
1974 compared to other countries in Malesia (Prance 1988; Tan & Rojo 1988), the area or
island concentration of the collections is not clear. In fact, the collecting density index for each
island or province is still not known. It is almost certain that collecting has been carried out
unevenly with greater focus on some, mostly readily accessible, areas or islands. Many of the
forest formations in the various islands are still poorly collected, notably those in the Sierra
Madre Mountains along the eastern coasts of Luzon, the islands of Samar and Leyte, southern
Palawan and certain areas on Mindanao. Some have not even been documented floristically.
The majority of the plant groups remain insufficiently known and meagerly represented in
herbaria, particularly the difficult-tocollect emergent trees, epiphytes, lianas, palms (including
rattans), pandans and aroids.
The inventory of the flowering plants of the Philippines is thus, far from complete. There as yet
many inadequacies in our floristic knowledge of many parts of the archipelago, particularly of
the different formations and habitats. The current "Flora of the Philippines Project", being
undertaken under the auspices of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas and the National
Museum in Manila (Madulid 1989; Sohmer 1989) is, undoubtedly, a step in the right direction
and should proceed with greater urgency. There is also need to immediately set aside and
protect adequate representative areas of the various vegetation types in the archipelago to
safeguard biological diversity. Botanic gardens. likewise, can help insure the prevention of total
loss of floristic diversity by bringing rare and endangered plants into effective cultivation. Time
is of the essence in all these undedakings because the decimation of the flora and their
habitats is proceeding unrelentingly.