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The Cutting Edge
Volume XXVI, Number 4, October 2019
News and Notes |
Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature |
Season's Pick | Annotate your copy
CALLITRICHACEAE (or PLANTAGINACEAE, for those who insist). Not to be totally skunked, co-PI Barry Hammel (MO) meekly claims a new, in-country distribution
record for Callitriche terrestris Raf.: from the front yard of a house in the Tarrazú region (see the next entry). This sp. was previously recorded in Costa
Rica only from the Valle Central. See photos at Hammel’s
Flickr site.
STERCULIACEAE (i.e., MALVACEAE). The thrill of field botany at its best came to us this time thanks to the keen eye of Daniel Santamaría, and in the form of an at-the-moment unidentified, ca. 25 m tall, fruiting tree belonging to Malvaceae (in the broad sense of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group). None of us (including, besides Daniel, Barry Hammel, Jairo Hidalgo, Esteban Jiménez, and Isabel Pérez) in attendance during this excursion to the Tarrazú region, on the road to Quepos, was able then to decide on a genus, but among us Daniel was the most certain that it was a new one for the country. Indeed, as both he and Esteban discovered more or less simultaneously back at their respective home bases, this new genus for the country, Reevesia, is disjunct between Indomalesia (whence most of its ca. 25 spp.) and Central America, with the isolated New World populations themselves disjunct between Mexico, Nicaragua, and now Costa Rica. The material is tentatively identified as the only New World sp., Reevesia clarkii (Monach. & Moldenke) S. L. Solheim ex Machuca-Machuca, pending comparison with Mexican and Nicaraguan material, the latter of which was suggested to represent a distinct sp. by the late Stephen L. Solheim (in his unpublished Ph.D. thesis). We look forward to another trip to the site early next year, with the goal of collecting the plant in flower. So far, only one individual is known, growing on the lower part of a steep, forested slope, right beside a house. Photos can be seen at Hammel’s Flickr site.
FABACEAE. Once again admitting the relatively minor significance of the record (compared to Reevesia, above), Manual co-PI Barry Hammel (MO) reports having noticed on recent excursions that Acrocarpus fraxinifolius Arn. (see this column in our April 2019 issue) is commonly cultivated in fence rows and along roads in the Tarrazú region (yet to be vouchered).
SCROPHULARIACEAE (or, for the youngsters, LINDERNIACEAE). Here is another new, in-country distribution record: Micranthemum umbrosum (J. F. Gmel.) S. F. Blake, reported in the Manual only from northern Costa Rica at 0–350 m elevation, has now been collected from the Valle Central at ca. 800 m, along road paths within a palm plantation. See Hammel’s Flickr site for photos.
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