Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume VIII, Number 4, October 2001 News and Notes | Recent Treatments | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick BALANOPHORACEAE. J. Fco. Morales (INB). This curious family of fungoid parasites is represented in Costa Rica by a single sp. in each of three genera, Corynaea, Helosis, and Langsdorffia. There are no Costa Rican endemics. Chico's treatment recognizes one less sp. than the Flora costaricensis account of Luis D. Gómez (Fieldiana, Bot. n. s., 13: 93–99. 1983), in which two spp. of Corynaea were distinguished. CANNABACEAE. J. Fco. Morales (INB). Here the family is construed traditionally, not in the recently expanded sense (see Song et al., under Germane Literature). Only the narcotic Cannabis sativa L. is recorded from Costa Rica, where it is widely cultivated “en forma clandestina,“ and sporadically naturalized. This family was treated informally, as “expected,“ by William Burger in Flora costaricensis (Fieldiana, Bot. 40: 216–217. 1977), but actual specimens are now available. HYDNORACEAE. J. Fco. Morales (INB). Prosopanche costaricensis L. D. Gómez & Gómez-Laur. was one of the most startling botanical discoveries of the 20th century in Costa Rica, widely disjunct both geographically and ecologically from the previously known New World range of Hydnoraceae (in the drier portions of southern South America). Described in 1981, it remains the only North American member of this small family of root-parasites. Chico's treatment thus follows that of Luis D. Gómez in Flora costaricensis (Fieldiana, Bot. n. s., 13: 87–89. 1983), except for the citation of additional localities, expanding the Caribbean lowland distribution of this endemic sp. both geographically and altitudinally.