Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume XXV, Number 1, January, 2018 News and Notes | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick | Annotate your copy ARACEAE. Monstera membranacea Madison is a highly distinctive sp. that has been reported (as in Manual Vol. 2) only from the Pacific lowlands of Costa Rica and adjacent Panama. Thus we were somewhat surprised to learn that Monstera specialist Marco Vinicio Cedeño (USJ) had recently encountered a sizeable population in the vicinity of Manzanillo de Talamanca, on the Caribbean slope. A cursory check of TROPICOS yielded an additional surprise: the same sp. had been collected in that same general area (between Bribrí and Sixaola), by Manual contributor (Scrophulariaceae) Kerry Barringer, in 1983 (Barringer et al. 3500, F)! The Barringer specimen, determined by family specialist Tom Croat (MO) in 2011, was not readily accessible to us when the Manual Araceae treatment (2003) was in the works. While all of this may be news to us, other disjunctions of this sort are well known, Osa pulchra (D. R. Simpson) Aiello (Rubiaceae) and Thoracocarpus bissectus (Vell.) Harling (Cyclanthaceae) being prime exemplars. More sobering is the fact that your editors (especially MHG, also an Araceae nut) have botanized extensively in the Baja Talamanca region (and particularly in the vicinity of Manzanillo) without ever encountering M. membranacea! ASTERACEAE. Renowned for his uncanny ability to ferret out intriguing plant material even in the unlikeliest of places, Manual co-PI Barry Hammel strikes yet again! Gridlocked in traffic on a busy highway in a northern suburb of San José, he jumped out of his vehicle and dashed to the median strip (all the while braving admonishments from his wife, Isabel Pérez) to snatch what turned out to be the first Costa Rican record of Calyptocarpus vialis Less. (the epithet of which, he maintains could not be more appropriate). Otherwise known only from Mexico and (adventively?) the southeastern United States and Greater Antilles, C. vialis must be carefully distinguished from its better known (in Costa Rica) congener, C. wendlandii Sch. Bip., as well as from the even more common weed Synedrella nodiflora (L.) Gaertn. Those distinctions were first made by Manual Asteraceae contributor Alexánder Rodríguez (CR), and subsequently confirmed by Hammel himself. For further insights, see the excellent, old-school analysis of McVaugh & Smith (1967; Brittonia 19: 268–272), which facilitated our final determination. Given the wide disjunction and ruderal habitat, we would assume Calyptocarpus vialis to be adventive (and recently so) in Costa Rica. See images (one comparing the two CR congeners) here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68114448@N06/sets/72157690939811855/ COMMELINACEAE. As per the Manual treatment, Callisia repens (Jacq.) L. was known only from "Bosque húmedo, cult. y escapada, terreno perturbado, 1150–1200 m; centro vert. Pac., Valle Central (San José)..." and not known from "poblaciones silvestres en CR." We can now confirm a much wider distribution for the sp., in Manualese; "Bosque húmedo y muy húmedo, cult. y escapada, terreno perturbado, (0–)1150–1200) m; vert. Carib., Baja Talamanca (R.N.V.S Gandoca-Mnzanillo), vert. Pac., S Pen. de Nicoya (vecindad de Cabuya), Valle Central...." The Gandoca population, while not likely "silvestre," was far from any house, along a small road in the middle of banana plantations. Oddly, plants in that population didn't look anthing like what is normal for this sp. (at least in cultivation), that being with the leaves quite succulent and many of the distal ones closely imbricate (as in the other new locality at Cabuya). We had no idea what genus it was until it flowered in captivity at Manual co-PI Barry Hammel's house in Santo Domingo de Heredia, just at the end of December of last year. See photos of plants from both localities here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68114448@N06/sets/72157662026403357/with/24570832777/ PRIMULACEAE. Anagallis minima (L.) E. H. L. Krause was characterized in the Manual Primulaceae treatment (2014) as "muy rara en CR" and reported only from ca. 2200 m elevation on the Pacific slope of the northern Cordillera de Talamanca. Perhaps its diminutive stature has caused it to be overlooked—at least, that is the suggestion of Manual collaborator Mario Blanco (USJ), who recently collected it (Blanco 5033, USJ) in (of all places) a lawn on the campus of the Universidad de Costa Rica! Curiously, Mario's plants were growing together with the more common Anagallis pumila Sw. (Blanco 5034, USJ). TILIACEAE (i.e., MALVACEAE). Manual co-PI Nelson Zamora would like to call attention to his relatively recent (2016) discovery of the largest and finest population of Christiana africana DC. yet found in Costa Rica (Zamora et al. 8922, CR). This tree sp. was heretofore known from the country only by a few collections from degraded habitats in the Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Caño Negro, on the Llanura de Los Guatusos. While Nelson's population is on the same llanura, it extends the range of the sp. considerably westward, to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste's Estación Biológica Botarrama, near the village of Birmania, in the basin of the Río Pizote. There the plants attain impressive sizes, to 20 m in height (vs. "ca. 7–9 m," according to the Manual) and 45–50 cm DBH. As far as we can determine, the above-cited voucher represents the first and only flowering record for this sp. in Costa Rica. Factoring in the data from Nelson's recent collections, the Manual distribution statement for C. africana should be modified as follows: "Bosque húmedo y muy húmedo, bosques primarios y secundarios, claros de bosque y cercas vivas, 0–350 m; NO vert. Carib., Llanura de Los Guatusos. Fl. ago." Nelson cautions that C. africana is easily confused in sterile condition with genera such as Matisia and Ochroma (Bombacaceae, or Malvaceae), as well as Conceveiba and Croton (Euphorbiaceae). TOP