The rapid decline of Philippines’ native ecosystems calls for urgent conservation actions and these require solid baseline information about plant diversity. Ideally, these data would follow from comprehensive specimen-based taxonomic research and would consist of species descriptions, literature references, identification keys and distribution information.

However, considering the enormous plant diversity in the Philippines (c. 1935 genera and over 9000 species of vascular plants), such a ‘traditional’ approach would be extremely time consuming and would depend on substantial contributions of many taxonomic specialists. Considering the urgent need for baseline data, waiting for such efforts to be initiated and completed is not an option. Dan Nickrent (Southern Illinois University), Julie Barcelona (University of Canterbury; Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society, Inc.) and Pieter Pelser (University of Canterbury) therefore recently launched Co’s Digital Flora of the Philippines (www.philippineplants.org), a website that provides an illustrated checklist for all known species of vascular plants in the Philippines. This website builds on the late Mr. Leonardo L. Co’s unpublished checklist of Philippine plants and his large collection of plant photographs (>10,000). The aim of the Flora is to be a widely and freely accessible source of taxonomic information that can be easily updated and expanded as new traditional taxonomic treatments are published and additional plant photographs become available.

With support from the Rufford Small Grants Foundation, plant photography fieldwork will be conducted in several locations in Mindanao to increase the number of plant species for which high-quality scientific pictures are available.