Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica es) 
established as an organ of UCR under the name Jardin Botanico Lankester, largely 
through the efforts of Rafael Lucas Rodriguez (Morales, 2002a, 2003; Warner, 2003). 
That same year, Mary Jane Bumby conducted perhaps the first systematic survey of 
aquatic vascular plants in Costa Rica (Bumby, 1982). From 1976 to 1978, Valerie J. 
Dryer dedicated herself to documenting the florula of the Monteverde reserve in the 
Cordillera de Tilaran, and in 1979 produced an unpublished checklist. Smithsonian 
pteridologist David B. Lellinger (b. 1937), an early OTS student, collected ferns 
throughout the country in 1977, and later published the first volume of a regional pteri- 
dophyte flora (Lellinger, 1989). Luis Poveda continued his work at UNA, and Jorge 
Goémez-Laurito, at the herbarium of the Universidad de Costa Rica, was quietly begin- 
ning to amass one of the largest and most significant collections of Costa Rican plants 
in history, with a special focus on Cyperaceae. 
The installation of North American OTS headquarters at Duke University in 1976 
(Burlingame, 2002) ushered in another new wave of progress in Costa Rican floristics. 
Donald E. Stone (b. 1930) and Robert L. Wilbur (b. 1925), professors of Botany at 
Duke, began to exert their distinct influences on Costa Rican botany. Both had collected 
extensively in the country, Stone (who had been a student in OTS 65-4) specializing on 
Juglandaceae, Wilbur on Ericaceae, Campanulaceae, and Gentianaceae. During his 20- 
year tenure as Executive Director of OTS, Stone tirelessly promoted botanical and other 
research at La Selva and all of OTS’s properties, and trained numerous students who have 
become contemporary specialists, including John MacDougal (b. 1954; Passiflora- 
ceae), Lucinda McDade (b. 1953; Acanthaceae), W. John Kress (b. 1951; Heliconia- 
ceae), and John Utley (Bromeliaceae, Marcgraviaceae). Wilbur has left a similarly im- 
pressive legacy, including Frank Almeda (b. 1946; Melastomataceae, Symplocaceae), 
Peter Fritsch (b. 1961; Styracaceae), Barry E. Hammel (b. 1946; Clusiaceae, Cy- 
clanthaceae), Adrian Juncosa (Rhizophoraceae), James L. Luteyn (b. 1948; Erica- 
ceae), and Charlotte M. Taylor (b. 1955; Polygalaceae, Rubiaceae). In 1979, Wilbur 
initiated work on an NSF-funded project to produce a florula of the La Selva Field Sta- 
tion (see Wilbur, 1986, 1994). That year, University of Massachusetts graduate student 
Michael H. Grayum (b. 1949) was hired as the first on-site collector, a role that was 
filled during the ensuing two years by Wilbur’s own student, Barry Hammel. Grayum 
later published treatments of the pteridophytes for the La Selva flora (Grayum & 
Churchill, 1989a, 1989b), and Hammel produced treatments for six angiosperm fami- 
lies (Hammel, 1986b, 1986c, 1986d, 1986e, 1986f, 1986g). 
The current involvement of the Missouri Botanical Garden (MO) in Costa Rica can 
be traced back to the participation of then Stanford University professor Peter H. 
Raven (b. 1936) as a resource person in an OTS course during the summer of 1967. 
Students in this course included both Gary Hartshorn (this was his introduction to the 
tropics) and Alwyn H. Gentry (1945-1993). During his six weeks with the course, 
Raven found time to make important collections, chiefly from the Osa Peninsula (then 
very poorly known); as so many others before and since, he became enchanted with the 
