Prior to this expedition, the known flora of Palawan was represented by 1519 species in 649 genera and 138 families of higher plants. The known flora has now been expanded by 153 species, an increase of 10% (table 32). These new additions are distributed as follows:
- 8 possible new species to science
- 1 new genus to the Philippines
- 6 new species to the Philippines
- 1 new family to Palawan
- 38 new genera to Palawan
- 97 new species of known genera on Palawan
The above are minimum figures only as a number of collections still remain unidentified. Another type of situation is exemplified by the species-complex of Syzygium-Eugenia. Forty-four distinct species are represented in the collections. These were compared with specimens of all the species previously known from Palawan. It was found that only six of the collected species had been formerly recorded from Palawan and eight from the rest of the Philippines. Further study of the remaining thirty 'species' is not practical as the confused taxonomy of this group and the large numbers of unidentified specimens in all herbaria point to the need for a major revision. similar situation exists for Actinodaphne, Dehaasia and Tristania. The position for Bulbophyllum is similar also, though here revisionary work is already taking place. The expedition collections trebled the number of known Bulbophyllum species on Palawan. Such figures have not been included in the figures for the new collection records.
The fact that these results represent a 10% minimum expansion of the known flora reflect the original premise that Palawan is much under explored. What is also clear is that exploration of the vegetation of south Palawan and the Babuyan River valley is now needed together with a thorough floristic inventory of St. Pauls' Bay Underground River National Park.
The report on "Gene Conservation Areas on Palawan" can be found here gene-conservation-areas-palawan.pdf
