Keys for identifying Malaysian plants

The Flora Malesiana is not preceded by a general key enabling one to identify any unknown native or wild plant to the family or genus to which it belongs. This is certainly a serious lack and presents a formidable handicap to inexperienced taxonomists in rapid naming current collections. However, there are several forcing arguments for omitting—at present—such an attempt which in itself would present no facile task, and could be accomplished only by a taxonomist thoroughly acquainted with the Malaysian flora. One could of course use some world key as a basis and cut out the entries leading to genera or families not represented in the Malaysian flora, but this procedure would be unsatisfactory, specially as these world keys make little use of vegetative characters; the latter appear to me very important specially in the earlier forks of the keys.