Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume XVI, Number 1, January 2009 News and Notes | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick | Annotate your copy CONVOLVULACEAE. Ipomoea suaveolens (M. Martens & Galeotti) Hemsl. (Hammel & Pérez 24994) was one of several interesting Ipomoea spp. collected by Barry Hammel and wife, INB herbarium assistant Isabel Pérez, on a recent trip to Parque Nacional Diriá in the center of the Península de Nicoya. The excitement over this rather uninspiring, white-flowered sp.—similar enough to I. squamosa Choisy to have been pressed and momentarily forgotten—was delayed by the simultaneous (re)discovery of two other rather more spectacularly flowered Ipomoea spp. (see “Season's Pick”), which Hammel had never before seen (live). Nevertheless, only the comparatively boring-looking one turned out to be a country record:  I. suaveolens had been reported previously only from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. A second new Ipomoea for Costa Rica was discovered even more belatedly, among not-so-recent collections from Baja Talamanca identified as I. indica (Burm.) Merr. (J. González 3002, INB; Wilkin 474, CR). This intriguing material has flowers and sepals somewhat like those of I. indica, but calyx trichomes more like those of I. nil (L.) Roth or I. purpurea (L.) Roth; however, unlike the two last-mentioned spp., it has only bilobed stigmas (vs. trilobed), as well as biloculate ovaries. Hammel had decided to relegate these anomalous specimens to discussion notes but, thanks to correspondence with Ipomoea specialist J. Andrew McDonald (PAUH), we now have a solid sp. identification:  Ipomoea variabilis (Schltdl. & Cham.) Choisy, otherwise known for certain only from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. ULMACEAE. Ampelocera hottlei (Standl.) Standl. is a sp. that had been collected in every country from Mexico to Colombia except Costa Rica, so it is no great surprise that it should turn up there. And now it apparently has, in the extreme northwestern corner of the country, not far from the Peñas Blancas border crossing into Nicaragua, where it is “abundante en bosque primario” (according to the collector). The initial identification by INB hotshots Daniel Santamaría (who provided this report) and Alexánder Rodríguez has been confirmed by Manual co-PI Nelson Zamora, who knows the sp. well from his work in Honduras; this is reassuring, since the name A. hottlei was misapplied for many years, at the Estación Biológica La Selva, to the superficially similar Celtis schippii Standl. (Cannabaceae).   TOP