Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume X, Number 2, April 2003 News and Notes | Recent Treatments | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick ARALIACEAE. Francisco Morales's recent work on this difficult family has already produced results, with the addition of two spp. to the Costa Rican flora. The name Dendropanax stenodontus (Standl.) A. C. Sm. has sometimes been applied to Costa Rica plants (e.g., at the Estación Biológica La Selva) but, says Chico, always incorrectly [mostly to D. arboreus (L.) Decne. & Planch.]. Up until now, that is: the real D. stenodontus pleases to stand up in the form of a collection from Parque Nacional Barbilla, at 300-400 m elevation on the Atlantic slope of the northern Cordillera de Talamanca. Meanwhile, Schefflera albocapitata M. J. Cannon & Cannon narrowly evades Panamanian endemism with its recent discovery, by MO grad student Allison Miller, at 1200-1300 m elevation near San Vito. BRASSICACEAE. With only a scanned image to work from, Manual Brassicaceae contributor Ihsan Al-Shehbaz (MO) has identified a recent collection by Manual co-PI Barry Hammel as “most likely the perennial, weedy, European“ Diplotaxis tenuifolia (L.) DC. “If so“ (he went on), “then it is a new addition to the [Costa Rican] flora“; as far as we can tell, it may be new to all of Mesoamerica. Hammel confirmed the id. via Ihasan's “mature fruits should show that there is a short gynophore and that the seeds are in two rows“ In Costa Rica, one needn't mount an expedition to chalk up country records: Barry found this one at the edge of a sidewalk in downtown San José! Ihsan also reports that, while working at F and US on his Flora mesoamericana treatment, he was able to verify two additional new mustards for his already-submitted Manual account [see The Cutting Edge 8(1): 1-2, Jan. 2001]: Capsella bursa-pastoris (L.) Medik. (which had been included, but without a voucher) and Cardamine africana L. TOP