Morpho-Taxonomy of Philippine Cinnamomum Schaeffer (Lauraceae)

Philippine Cinnamomum are trees with aromatic leaves and bark. It has several economic and medicinal uses, but concerns on its morphology and taxonomy are limited. The study sought to describe the diagnostic morphological characters and determined the character traits of each of the different species of Philippine Cinnamomum. Cinnamomum leaf samples were collected in different places and mountains in the Philippines. . Only 27 species were actually collected and 7 species are unknown and considered potential new species. Phenetic analyses resulted to 4 clusters as result of thirty morphological characters and 110 character states. The Principal Component Analyses (PCA) of the first ten components has 71.31% total morphometric variation. The first axis explained 12.86%, the second axis 21.78%, and the third axis 30.15% of the total variation. Further study was recommended especially on morpho-taxonomy of cinamommum species collected in areas of the Philippines not covered in this study.