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Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica

Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge
Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors

The Cutting Edge

Volume XXI, Number 3, July 2014

News and Notes | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick

APOCYNACEAE. The liana Condylocarpon intermedium Müll. Arg. has been known as a sp. that "skips" Costa Rica, having been recorded from coastal Nicaragua and, quite disjunctly, Venezuela, Trinidad, the Guayanas, and Brazil. On that basis, it would have merited honorable mention in the Manual, as a sp. to be sought in Costa Rica. But seek ye no more! Our friends Mario García and Marco Otárola at the Universidad Nacional in Heredia (JVR) report their recent discovery of this sp. growing along canals (Caño Palma, specifically) near sea level in Parque Nacional Tortuguero, where it has been observed flowering from May through July. Their voucher collection with photos (M. García & Otárola s.n., 19 jun. 2006, JVR-10691) was identified in collaboration with JVR curator Pablo Sánchez-Vindas. Manual Apocynaceae contributor Francisco Morales (UBT) has seen photos of C. intermedium taken by a tour guide at Tortuguero, but never an actual specimen. Consequently, the genus Condylocarpon (not otherwise represented in Costa Rica) was omitted from Chico's Manual draft [see The Cutting Edge 1(4): 3, Oct. 1994], as well as a published elaboration of same [see The Cutting Edge 13(1): 9–10, Jan. 2006].

BROMELIACEAE. In a characteristically terse communication, Reinaldo Aguilar has reported to us his discovery in Costa Rica of Billbergia pallidiflora Liebm., a sp. previously known to range from Mexico to northern Nicaragua. He did not provide either the collection number or locality, but we presume he found it in his usual haunts, on the Península de Osa or thereabouts (although the implicit disjunction would be an unusual one).

PTERIDACEAE. A specimen (Grayum & Peña 10790) from the Atlantic slope of Costa Rica previously determined as Adiantum trapeziforme L. has been newly identified by one M. R. McCarthy (MU) as A. mathewsianum Hook., a sp. heretofore not reported (as far as we can tell) from outside South America. The collector had originally thought the plants looked somewhat different from A. trapeziforme (as he knew it) in the field, and consequently did not determine the collection beyond genus rank in his field book. It seems that the entity we had accepted as A. trapeziforme (apparently restricted to the Pacific slope in Costa Rica) is also not that, most Costa Rican material at MO having been annotated by the afore-mentioned individual as a new (and as yet undescribed) sp.

URTICACEAE. Our colleague Reinaldo Aguilar finally summoned the energy to make a proper collection of a Cecropia that has been nagging him for some time and then, in conjunction with Manual co-PI Barry Hammel, quickly nailed the determination: Cecropia heterochroma C. C. Berg & P. Franco, otherwise known only from Panama and western (Pacific) Colombia. This addition to the Costa Rican flora squeaked in just under the wire for Manual Vol. 8 (see under "News and Notes"). Reinaldo's collection comes from the Golfo Dulce region, as usual, rather than the Baja Talamanca region on the Atlantic slope, where we might have looked for this sp., known from just across the border in Prov. Bocas del Toro, Panama. But Baja Talamanca/Osa disjunctions are fairly commonplace, and C. heterochroma could still very well turn up in the former region. In Panama, this sp. exists in two color morphs (as suggested by its epithet): in one morph, the leaf-blades are purplish below, whereas in the other they are light green. Reinaldo reports that he has seen only green-leaved plants at his site. See Reinaldo's photos of this species on his Flickr site.

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