Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume XVIII, Number 1, January 2011 News and Notes | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick | Annotate your copy OPERACIÓN RELÁMPAGO.  Manual co-PI Barry Hammel (MO) and better half Isabel Pérez (INB) were in St. Louis from 18–30 November for a meeting, and also found time for critical work on Verbenaceae and other families in the MO herbarium. PLOTTING IN COSTA RICA.  Former MO associate and long-time OTS educator Brad Boyle (ARIZ) arrived in Costa Rica in mid-December to do a bit of vacationing and obtain permits, then was off to the field with four or five University of Arizona students to do his transect thing.  Presently the team is engaged in a three-week {5–25 January) bout of field work in the (mostly) lower Río Savegre basin, with a view to complete the elevational gradient of forest plots and accompanying trait measurementes they began several years ago.  Sampling will occur at the following sites:  Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio (near sea level), Zona Protectora Cerro Nara (500 m), Reserva Forestal Los Santos (1000 m), Fila Seca (1500 m), and Cerro de La Muerte (3000 m).  Plots have already been installed at 2000 and 2500 m in the San Gerardo Valley.  The Río Savegre basin, one of the most poorly explored areas of Costa Rica only a few decades ago, has lately become reasonably well known botanically [see, e.g., The Cutting Edge 8(1): 1, Jan. 2001]. LIANAMANIA.  Paleobotanist and neotropical liana specialist Robyn Burnham (MICH) showed up in Costa Rica on 10 January for a one-week eco-tour with a group of University of Michigan alumni/donors.  She was at INB on 11 and 12 January, identifying liana specimens collected at Paul Foster’s Bijagual Research Station, at ca. 300 m elevation near Tirimbina (on the Atlantic slope, in the Sarapiquí region).  During her brief visit, Robyn convinced Manual co-PI Barry Hammel that he has two different species (read, genera!) lumped under the name Leretia cordata Vell. in his Manual Icacinaceae treatment (see Icacinaceae, under “Leaps and Bounds”).  Robyn has looked at a lot of South American material, and has a very quick eye for lianas.  She also easily determined a sterile specimen from the Bijagual site as Thinouia myriantha Triana & Planch. (Sapindaceae), a sp. that has heretofore been known only from the Pacific slope in Costa Rica. TOP