This proposal requests funds to permit Dr. Seymour H. Sohmer, Chairman, Department of Botany, Bernice P. Bishop Museum, to conduct with Dr. Domingo A. Madulid, Assistant Chief, Botany Division, National Museum, Republic of the Philippines, a workshop for planning the "Flora of the Philippines" project. Four U.S. experts who have an interest in tropical floristic botany, three key Philippine botanists, and a member of the Flora Malesiana project staff, Rijksherbarium, Leiden, the Netherlands, will be participants in the three-day workshop. The Philippine archipelago is a region of great plant diversity with some 8,000 to 10,000 species believed to exist at present, some 1,000 of which may be unique to the archipelago. In the Philippines today there is little knowledge of the number of flowering plants that exist there, no unified floristic account of them is available, and, therefore, no cataloging of endangered species has been made. The workshop will be held for the purpose of planning the research necessary to produce a comprehensive survey of the Philippine flora.
