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FBS 121 Morphology, Taxonomy and Dendrology

PREFACE

The subject Taxonomy, Morphology and Dendrology in second year forestry student is a
very important subject. It is in these subjects they can learn to identify forest trees which is very
essential when they work in the field of forestry related job. With almost nine years experienced
of the author as Instructor holding this subject, he observed that students have difficulties
identifying vascular plants due to very limited manual regarding field identification suitable to
local species.Most of the available books related to this subjects are non-native or non-endemic.
This prompted him to develop this simple field guide manual, all of the species shown are actual
image found in the vicinity of Potia, Alfonso Lista, Ifugao.
All images are exclusively owned and taken by the author. This field guide manual is
intended to make easier for forestry student to identify local vascular plant species found around
in the locality of Alfonso Lista, Ifugao. This manual is user’s friendly, which is very ideal during
non-face-to-face class, wherein students can grab this book and do their own field laboratory plant
identification activities even with limited supervision.
As experienced in the past where students need to go in the nearest forest to maximize the
time, where the species inside forest is dense and diverse compare to the marginal land around the
university campus. This resulted to a traumatic experienced when one student from Nueva Vizcaya
State University conducting research in the forest of Manaot, Monggayang, Aginaldo, Ifugao met
an accident resulting to the amputation of one of his leg.
The traditional wildlife hunting practices wherein booby traps such as improvised gun and
explosive of the upland community residing inside the pristine forest of Ifugao made difficult for
forestry students to go on field laboratory. Although the creation of booby traps which were very
dangerous to unsuspecting student are abandoned long ago as information from barangay officials
revealed, still the remnant of this booby traps is risky to life and limb.
The author’s experienced from the traumatic event made possible the writing of this field
guide manual in addition to the preceding paragraph mentioned. He hope that this field manual is
a great learning tools for future forester. He further believes that the future Forester should possess
good skill in leaf identification which part of the subject dendrology in order to become a good
forest technician, ranger and environmental law enforcer.

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