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The Cutting Edge
Volume VI, Number 2, April, 1999
LEAPS AND BOUNDS
ANNONACEAE. Collections from the Cordilleras de Guanacaste and Tilarán
made by parataxonomist Petrona Ríos and Monteverde guru Bill
Haber (respectively) are the first Mesoamerican records for the largely
Amazonian Xylopia sericea A. St.-Hil. This material had been confused
with the locally better known X. sericophylla Standl. & L. O.
Williams, but differs in pubescence color and apocarp form.
ARECACEAE. The fan-palm saga continues. The latest development is considerably
more exciting than the recent discovery of Sabal on the Pacific slope
[see The Cutting Edge 5(4):
3--4, Oct. 1998]. During their two-week residence in the Refugio Nacional
de Vida Silvestre Gandoca-Manzanillo (see under "News and Notes"),
co-PI Barry Hammel and colleagues happened upon a sizeable population
of the rare and endemic Cryosophila cookii Bartlett. This sp., the
largest and one of the most distinctive in the genus (infructescence,
cross section of same), has also been regarded
as one of the most endangered neotropical palms. Previously, it was known
only from a small and largely deforested area between Siquirres and Parque
Nacional Tortuguero. Monographer Ramblin' Joe Evans (MO) estimated
the total population size at about 100 adult individuals, just one of which
was protected within the boundaries of the national park (see Principes
40: 129--147, 1996). At Gandoca-Manzanillo, C. cookii is "supper
common" in drier microhabitats throughout a substantial tract of primary
swamp forest; Barry estimates that this population comprises perhaps 10
times as many individuals as the more northern one. Here, as to the north,
C. cookii grows intermixed with the more familiar and widespread
C. warscewiczii (H. Wendl.) Bartlett; according to Barry, the two
spp. are virtually indistinguishable in sterile condition. Because the Gandoca
refuge is so close to the Panamanian border, the status of C. cookii
as a Costa Rican endemic is challenged. Overshadowed by all of this is the
simultaneous discovery, at Gandoca, of the first known Costa Rican Atlantic
slope population of the pinnate-leaved Astrocaryum
standleyanum L. H. Bailey. Though best known in Costa Rica from
the Golfo Dulce region, this sp. has been found on the Atlantic slope of
Panama.
And, as long as we are reporting distribution records within the country,
Colpothrinax is now known from three sites in Costa Rica [see The
Cutting Edge 4(2):
2, Apr. 1997]. The most recent collection comes to us from Fila Chonta
(see below), not far from the now famous collecting hot-spot by the Tarrazú
dump [e.g., The Cutting Edge 3(4):
Oct. 1996]. The population was discovered over a year ago by King of
the region Francisco Morales and his ocasional serb,
co-PI Barry Hammel.
GESNERIACEAE. Sometimes rediscoveries can be more exciting than discoveries.
During a recent collecting trip to Fila Chonta, in the Pacific Fila Costeña
above Quepos, co-PI Barry Hammel happened upon a sterile, peltate-leaved
subshrub that he at first mistook for a Piper sp. Closer examination
revealed that its leaves were actually opposite, with one leaf at each node
greatly reduced. This and other clues led to Gesneriaceae and, eventually,
to Drymonia peltata (Oliv.) H. E. Moore,
a long-lost and near-mythical sp. that has intrigued us for many years.
Described in 1877 from live plants grown in England and originally collected
in Costa Rica by the mysterious A. R. Endres, D. peltata was
soon lost to horticulture and has never, as far as we know, been refound
in the wild. Barry's rediscovery of this horticulturally promising sp. may
shed some light on Endres's collecting localities. Although he certainly
never visited Fila Chonta, even now difficult of access, Endres may well
have encountered D. peltata somewhere in the nearby Candelaria region--deforested
by the turn of the century, but a popular botanizing destination in Endres's
day. Drymonia peltata is now in cultivation, under the sure custodianship
of Manual artist Silvia Troyo, who hopes to coax it into flower.
POACEAE. A collection made by specialist Lynn Clark (ISC) at 1760
m on Cerro de la Muerte is apparently the first Costa Rican record of Paspalum
urvillei Steud., a South American sp. introduced in Mesoamerica (Belize,
Guatemala, Honduras). Our thanks to Francisco Morales (INB) for this
report.
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