Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume XXIV, Number 3, July 2017 News and Notes | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick One serendipitous step for a man, a giant leap for the sp.! July's Pick, Lathrophytum peckoltii Eichler (Balanophoraceae), is a no-brainer. This, the latest in a series of exciting discoveries from the Península de Osa by Reinaldo Aguilar, was reported last year in these pages [see under "Leaps and Bounds" in The Cutting Edge 23(2), Apr. 2016], where it was identified provisionally (from photographic images) as Ombrophytum violaceum B. Hansen—a sp. otherwise recorded from Mesoamerica by a single collection from eastern Panama (the only Mesoamerican occurrence of its genus). That would have been interesting enough, but a different story unfolded this year when Reinaldo led the lucky of us (Manual co-PI Barry Hammel & crew--see News and Notes, Billia Reconsidered, this issue) right to the site of his discovery, with it again in full flower. That same evening, with literature, "lupas" and macro-lenses in hand said field crew concluded that Reinaldo had found something even more astounding: the first record of the monospecific genus Lathrophytum from outside southeastern Brazil! Subsequently, with dried material in hand at MO, Manual co-PI Michael Grayum confirmed the field det. Wonders really never do cease. See plenty of pictures of this wonderfully strange creature at Hammel's Flickr pages.   TOP