Co’s Digital Flora of the Philippines is actually a checklist of vascular plants native to the Philippine archipelago. Leonard Co worked his entire life updating the checklist produced by Merrill in the 1920s. As such, it is not an actual flora where one typically finds keys and descriptions of each species. Many species entries are also accompanied by other information such as distributions within and outside of the Philippines, flowering and fruiting times, and economic uses. We have called this a Digital Flora because the checklist is supplemented with thousands of photographs of the plants. These photos often contain sufficient information for the user to make a positive identification of the plant. Thus, in lieu of actual keys and descriptions (which could be added later), we feel this is an expeditious approach to making information on the Flora available to many users. ... [Information of the supplier]
Some people say that the flora of this tiny city-state is among the most well-documented in the world. In terms of species lists, and for the tropics at least, we seem to have a pretty comprehensive record of what WAS here, what IS here, and given our small size, it would be easier for us than for others to carry on recording what WILL BE found here, as well as what will be going extinct. But given the dearth of plant autecological studies, not just in Singapore but throughout the tropics, we hardly know anything about many of our plant species aside from their names. Although we are armed with our species lists, we are scarcely able to make full use of it to understand or make predictions on the impacts of urban development on ecosystems. To catch up on this backlog of unresearched knowledge, it would probably take us another decade or two, by the time which ecological sophistication would have moved even further. Also, who would want to fund and support such research, which has been though of as so 19th century? There is a way, however. We can attempt to make use of technology and information tools to share our combined knowledge. Through incremental efforts, disparate bits and pieces of information from book floras, annotated checklists and online databases, as well as anecdoctal observations and published studies, can be put together in one place for easy cross-reference. Several plant-based biodiversity projects are always going on, and if the outputs can be summarised back to the same information source that they drew from, we can streamline the way our knowledge will grow. This blog is an attempt to bring together community and academic knowledge of plant biodiversity and ecology in Singapore. We will attempt to list all vascular plant species, of all habitats ranging from dipterocarps to seagrasses, whether exotic like the iconic raintree or Koster’s curse, or native like the sole surviving endemic Spatholobus ridleyi. With multiple pairs of eyes but one mouthpiece, this blog will be our combined notepad and textbook for information on the vascular plant flora of Singapore. ... [Information of the supplier]
The Interactive Key to Malesian Seed Plants is an identification system for all native and naturalised (i.e. introduced species with self-maintaining 'wild' populations) families of the Flora Malesiana region (including Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, East Timor and Papua New Guinea). The key is based on a small set of features of the vegetative, floral and fruit morphology and ecology. These features were chosen because they are relatively easy to assess from any reasonably intact flowering and/or fruiting specimen, and are readily interpreted in conjunction with the help of the notes and illustrations contained in the key. The key is mainly based on the books by Max van Balgooy (MALESIAN SEED PLANTS - Spot Characters (1997) and Plant Portraits (1998, 2001)) and incorporates additional information from L. Watson and M. J. Dallwitz "The Families of Flowering Plants: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval. Version: 14th December 2000. ... [Information of the supplier]