Contributions to our knowledge of the flora of Borneo
E.D. Merrill published this taxonomic contribution in 1917, drawing on recent herbarium collections from British North Borneo, Sarawak, and Dutch Borneo to document the island’s poorly known flora. The article describes thirty-seven new species, a new genus, a new section, and numerous new records, with Mount Kinabalu serving as the principal source of novelties.
Summary
Merrill’s paper is a systematic treatment of plant material collected primarily between 1913 and 1916 by field collectors working in British North Borneo and Sarawak. The dominant source of new taxa is Mount Kinabalu, where the collector Clemens gathered specimens across a wide altitudinal range from sea level to above 3,600 metres, supplemented by material from Villamil (Sandakan, Kalabakan, Silimpon), Topping (various localities), Foxworthy (Sarawak and Borneo), and Hose (Baram, Sarawak). The article spans roughly twenty families, from Poaceae through Rubiaceae, and is organized taxonomically rather than thematically.
The historical problem Merrill addresses is the severe underdocumentation of Borneo’s flora relative to neighbouring islands such as Java, Sumatra, and the Philippines. Many of the species he describes are new to Borneo specifically—extending the known range of taxa previously recorded only from the Malay Peninsula, Java, or the Philippines—while others represent genuinely new species unknown from anywhere. Merrill also undertakes nomenclatural corrections, including the reduction of Beccari’s Artocarpus tarap to a synonym of A. odoratissima Blanco, the proposal of the new generic name Hoseanthus to replace the invalid Hosea Ridley, and the establishment of the new section Disparistemones within Dissochaeta for an anomalous Philippine-Bornean form.
The primary sources are herbarium specimens, and Merrill’s diagnostic descriptions rely on morphological characters—indumentum, leaf venation, floral merosity, fruit morphology, and stipule structure—to differentiate new species from their nearest allies. Several taxa are named after collectors (Clemens, Topping, Villamil, Hose), reflecting the collaborative nature of colonial-era botanical surveying.
Key Findings
- Thirty-seven new species are described, including Isachne clementis, Mucuna toppingii, Aglaia tripeta, Ostodes villamilii, Columbia borneensis, Faradaya matthewsii, and five species of Vaccinium (V. clementis, V. caudatifolium, V. elliptifolium, V. sarawakense, V. hosei).
- A new genus, Hoseanthus (Verbenaceae), is proposed as a replacement for the invalid Hosea Ridley, with H. lobbii as its type species, a Bornean endemic previously mislocalised to Penang.
- Mount Kinabalu is the single most productive locality, yielding new species across at least twelve families; specimens were collected between approximately 900 and 3,600 metres altitude (e.g., Agrostis infirma at Low’s Peak, ~3,600 m; Symplocos clementis at Paka Cave, ~3,000 m).
- Faradaya matthewsii represents the first record of the genus in the Sunda Islands, the genus previously being known only from New Guinea, north-eastern Australia, and Polynesia; it is distinguished from the type genus by its 1-celled ovary and subequal (not didynamous) stamens.
- Columbia borneensis is the first representative of the genus Columbia reported from Borneo, a tree about 10 m high with stellate-puberulent indumentum, collected on the trail from Khota Balud to Kibayo.
- Aglaia tripeta is a tree reported at approximately 30 m in height, characterised by 3-merous flowers and strongly inequilateral leaflets, collected at Sandakan behind the Wireless Station swamp.
Conclusion
Merrill’s definitive takeaway is that Borneo’s flora, particularly that of the montane forests of British North Borneo, remained vastly underexplored even by 1917, and that a single intensive collecting campaign on Mount Kinabalu could yield dozens of new species and numerous range extensions. The paper underscores both the richness of Bornean biodiversity and the degree to which it had been obscured by the island’s inaccessibility and the concentration of earlier botanical effort on Java and the Malay Peninsula.
Context
- The primary source material consists of herbarium specimens from the collections of Clemens, Villamil, Topping, Foxworthy, and Hose, held at the Philippine Bureau of Science (Manila) and the Sarawak Museum; Merrill worked from these sheets in his capacity as a botanist with the Philippine government.
- The article contributes to the colonial-era programme of botanical surveying in the Straits Settlements and Borneo, and its taxonomic decisions (particularly the nomenclatural corrections and new generic combinations) remained influential in subsequent floras of the region.