Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume XI, Number 2, April 2004 News and Notes | Recent Treatments | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick | Annotate your copy SEASON'S PICK: Souroubea vallicola Woodson ex de Roon (Marcgraviaceae) photos © B. E. Hammel, vouchered by Hammel et al. 22516 The Marcgraviaceae deserve to be featured here more often. This small family (125+ spp., among 7 genera; 27 and 6, respectively in Costa Rica) is restricted to the New World tropics, and has flowers that are not only quite showy in many cases, but also display fragrances with remarkable sweetness and intensity and of somewhat unexpected mixtures (especially in the genus Souroubea). The family is easily recognized by its usually epiphytic, often scandent habit; alternate, coriaceous leaves that are rolled in bud (as in Theaceae) with poriform glands on the lower surface; and especially for its nectar-producing, large and often oddly-shaped inflorescence bracts. Souroubea vallicola, our featured species for this season, flowers mostly during Costa Rica's dry season, from December through April, but sporadic flowering collections are known also through July, and from October. It is known from Pacific coastal mountains and lowlands to the south from San José, and from there on to Ecuador. The fragrance of this species has been described as "sweetly aromatic," and most recently as "sweetly aromatic of cinnamon and vanilla" (Hammel, pers. obs.). TOP