Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume XXIII, Number 2, April 2016 News and Notes | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick | Annotate your copy BALANOPHORACEAE. No sooner do we complete the "final" editing of this family for the upcoming Manual Vol. 4 than we receive word from our esteemed collaborator Reinaldo Aguilar of another exciting new discovery on the Península de Osa: photos of a mystery plant found there by Reinaldo confirm his opinion that it does not answer to the description of Helosis cayanensis (Sw.) Spreng. (the only sp. in the family recorded from lowland regions in Costa Rica), nor to the genera Corynaea or Langsdorffia, thus eliminating all the Balanophoraceae accounted for in our Manual draft treatment. Manual contributor Daniel Santamaría (also Reinaldo's cousin!) suggested the mainly South American genus Ombrophytum as a strong candidate, and after a close perusal of Reinaldo's excellent photos, we are convinced that Daniel is correct. We have provisionally identified Reinaldo's find as Ombrophytum violaceum B. Hansen, the only member of its genus recorded from Mesoamerica (by a single collection from Prov. Darién, Panama); however, a final determination must await a more careful study of the actual material (particularly with regard to the male portion of the inflorescence, not clearly shown in the photos). CACTACEAE. We might have reported this new realization (rather than new country record) last year when Reinaldo Aguilar and Miguel Cruz Espindola (see under "News and Notes") brought in a small snippet, but we needed to see flowering material to confirm it as Epiphyllum columbiense (F. A. C. Weber) Dodson & A.H. Gentry. The plant from cuttings that Manual co-PI Barry Hammel has at home flowered toward the end of March, is in the press (Hammel 27096, CR), and all is confirmed. Although this entity has most often been recognized at an infraspecific level [either as a var. of E. phyllanthus (L.) Haw. or a subsp. of E. hookeri Haw.], it is Hammel's studied opinion that it deserves recognition at the sp. level, for much the same reasons espoused by Dodson and Gentry. Hammel can now confirm one other, earlier collection of this sp. (also in fruit) from Costa Rica: Bello 2363 (CR), from Parque Nacional Carara. See more of Hammel's photos of this sp. here. FABACEAE. Three specimens from the Guanacaste region recently arrived at MO determined by one "S. Gama" (IZTA) as Stylosanthes subsericea S. F. Blake, a sp. otherwise known from southern Mexico, Belize, and Honduras, and not mentioned in the Manual Fabaceae treatment (2010) by co-PI Nelson Zamora (to whom these particular specimens would have been unavailable). We are ignorant as to whether this represents a bona fide new country record, or merely reflects a notion (on the part of "S. Gama") that Nelson misapplied, say, Stylosanthes hamata (L.) Taub. or S. humilis Kunth (names previously used on these specimens) to Costa Rican material. POACEAE. We have just become aware of 2007 determinations in TROPICOS by bamboo specialist Ximena Londoño for two Costa Rican collections as Guadua refracta Munro. This is a sp. that has historically been considered South American, but three Nicaraguan collections were also identified as G. refracta in 2007 by Londoño. All the Central American material had previously been determined as Guadua paniculata Munro. The two Costa Rican specimens of G. refracta were collected at different times by the late Richard W. Pohl, both from a large colony in savanna country in the basin of the Río Sapoá, about 3 km east of the Carretera Interamericana, in Prov. Guanacaste (but on the Atlantic slope, technically speaking). One collection was flowering in June, 1978, so that date must certainly be deleted from the flowering phenology of G. paniculata, as given in Manual Vol. 3 (2003). Whether the phrase "NO vert. Carib., cuenca del Río Sapoá" should be stricken from the geographic range of G. paniculata is debatable, as three other Pohl collections from essentially the same site as the G. refracta colony remain determined in TROPICOS as G. paniculata. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that both spp. occur in close proximity at the Sapoá site, since the label of Pohl & Pinette 13239 (currently as G. paniculata) alludes to an "adjacent colony [that] is slightly different" (and which was in a different phenological phase at the time of the collection). As to the morphological differences between these two spp., we remain in the dark. SCHLEGELIACEAE. Noteworthy as an in-country range extension: Gibsoniothamnus epiphyticus (Standl.) L. O. Williams (Hammel et al. 27083), found for the first time in the Golfo Dulce region, and at ca. 200 m elevation, well below the lower limit of the altitudinal range (600 m) in Costa Rica as indicated in Manual Vol. 8 (2015). The specimen was collected from a fallen branch, along the road between Rancho Quemado and Drake, just below the ridgetop towards Drake. See more of Hammel's photos of this sp. here. TOP