Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica 29 
OTS 66-4, Biology of Tropical Grasses, led by Cleofé E. Calder6én and Richard W. 
Pohl (1916-1993); and OTS 67-4, Advanced Botany (Pteridophytes), led by John T. 
Mickel (b. 1934; see Mickel, 1967). These seminal offerings fostered a surge of re- 
search activity, the effects of which are still being felt. 
La Selva was purchased by OTS in 1967 (Stone, 1988), and has since become one 
of the world’s foremost tropical field-stations, and the training ground for a generation 
of tropical biologists, too numerous to mention here. Holdridge and his protégé, then 
University of Washington graduate student Gary S. Hartshorn (b. 1943; until recently, 
president of OTS), conducted a thorough inventory of the woody vegetation at La 
Selva, and produced the first (unpublished) checklist of vascular plants for the site. 
During 1964-1966, Holdridge supervised the so-called WNRE project, designed to 
test the predictive value of the Holdridge Life Zone System under a regime of multi- 
disciplinary field research at 46 stations scattered throughout Costa Rica. The botani- 
cal efforts of this study, coordinated by W. H. Hatheway, yielded a list of 860 identi- 
fied tree species (Holdridge et al., 1971: 621-639). The WNRE project also produced 
a detailed analysis of vegetation at 19 selected stations (Sawyer & Lindsey, 1971), as 
well as the definitive life-zone map of Costa Rica, by Joseph A. Tosi Jr. (Tosi, 1969; 
Holdridge et al., 1971: map suppl. No. 1). Holdridge went on to publish the first vol- 
ume of a photographic guide to Costa Rican trees (Holdridge & Poveda A., 1975), now 
in its second edition (Holdridge et al., 1997). Under Holdridge and later Hartshorn, 
TSC undertook the management of the popular and ecologically critical Monteverde 
Reserve. 
The legacy of Leslie Holdridge also includes the many students and fellow bot- 
anists he influenced while at the Instituto Tecnol6gico de Costa Rica (ITCR) in Car- 
tago, including Luis J. Poveda (coauthor of the tree guide) and Rodolfo Peralta. Po- 
veda, from his base at UNA, became the mentor of the present generation of leading 
Costa Rican dendrologists, including Quirico Jiménez (b. 1961), José Gonzalez 
(b. 1969), and Nelson Zamora (b. 1959); with Hartshorn, he published a checklist of 
trees at seven important research sites in Costa Rica (Hartshorn & Poveda A., 1983). 
Jiménez, in turn, filled Holdridge’s shoes at ITCR, where he produced many distin- 
guished students, such as Armando Estrada (b. 1972) and Alexander Rodriguez 
(b. 1972). Zamora is coeditor of the present volume and the author of numerous criti- 
cal works on the Costa Rican flora, including comprehensive treatments of Fabaceae 
subfam. Mimosoideae (Zamora V., 1993) and the genus /nga (Zamora V. & Penning- 
ton, 2001) and sequels to Holdridge and Poveda’s classic tree guide (Zamora V., 1989; 
Zamora V. et al., 2000, 2004). 
The second enterprise of lasting significance to Costa Rican botany launched dur- 
ing the stagnant middle quarter of the 20th century took root in the United States. Work 
toward a new and improved Costa Rican country flora was initiated at Chicago’s Field 
Museum, where Paul Standley’s flora had been completed. In 1960, Louis O. Williams 
(1908-1991) joined the Field Museum as chairman of the Botany Department, and 
