Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume XXVII, Number 2, April 2020 News and Notes | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick | Annotate your copy This season’s prize goes to an entire wetland reserve, the Reserva Nacional de Vida Silvestre Caño Negro, on the Llanuras de Los Guatusos, right up against the border with Nicaragua in Prov. Alajuela. Almost exactly twenty years since his last visit there (in the month of April, with former INBio parataxonomist Priscilla Hurtado, to collect on the mudflats of the drying lagoons), Manual co-PI Barry Hammel (MO) went again, this time in January, but on a short fishing and sight-seeing excursion with family. Of course, he couldn’t resist collecting and photographing plants, some of the rarer and more photogenic of which are featured here. By the way, although this area is isolated, the shortest route from San José is nicely paved all the way until the last ca. 20 km. It’s an easy and smooth-going four-hour drive, at most. The area is well worth a long weekend of birding, botanizing, and nature loving, far from the madding crowd. You can take the botanical tour of this area at Hammel’s Flickr site. Be sure to watch for the abundant and elegant Acoelorraphe wrightii (Griseb. & H. Wendl.) H. Wendl. ex Becc. (Arecaceae)—in Costa Rica known only from here—as well as the seldom-seen Calyptrion arboreum (L.) Paula-Souza (Violaceae) and Dioclea rosea (Benth.) N. Zamora (Fabaceae) and the fearfully symmetrical Ludwigia sedoides (Bonpl.) H. Hara (Onagraceae). TOP