Main | Family List (MO) | Family List (INBio) | Cutting Edge Draft Treatments | Guidelines | Checklist | Citing | Editors The Cutting Edge Volume XXV, Number 4, October 2018 News and Notes | Leaps and Bounds | Germane Literature | Season's Pick | Annotate your copy Photos of the humble Picrasma excelsa (Sw.) Planch. (Simaroubaceae), submitted some time ago by Manual co-PI Nelson Zamora, have made it to the end, beating out all competitors for this season's prime spot. The images, taken at Parque Nacional Rincón de La Vieja, Estación Cacao are vouchered by Zamora 10345 (CR). In the big picture, this sp. has a somewhat far-flung distribution (El Salv.–Ecua., Bol., Ven., Antillas, in Manualese), while within Costa Rica it can be locally abundant, but is restricted to just the two most northern cordilleras. Perhaps for that reason it seems not to have gotten into the local pharmacopoeia, and does not have any Costa Rican common names, as far as we know. This, in spite of the fact that it has elsewhere a rather long history of use as a medicinal plant. The family itself is known for its bitter wood, and probably most famously so for Quassia amara L. (AKA CUASIA, GUABO, HOMBRE AMARGO, HOMBRE GRANDE, or HOMBRÓN). TOP