Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica oo 
doubtable Gerardo Herrera was engaged as a project collector and stationed (initially) 
at Rincén de La Vieja National Park; he was joined by Costa Rican botanist Rafael 
Robles, stationed at Tortuguero National Park and University of Texas graduate student 
Christopher Kernan, stationed at Corcovado National Park. Assisted by Gerardo 
Herrera and Felipe Chavarria, Grayum conducted an informal inventory of the previ- 
ously unexplored Gandoca-Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge (see McLarney, 
1988), and later led a systematic, NGS-funded exploration of the middle elevation (ca. 
400-2000 m) Caribbean slope of the Cordillera de Talamanca (Grayum, 1991), the 
least known part of the country, in collaboration with Gerardo Herrera, Barry Hammel, 
Reinaldo Aguilar (b. 1961), Abelardo Chacon, Rafael Robles, Marlon Valerio, and 
German ecologist Jens Bittner. Hammel moved to Costa Rica in 1989, concentrating 
his collecting efforts principally on the Osa Peninsula. 
During the 1980s, botanical exploration in Costa Rica exploded, with numerous 
more or less independent projects contributing to our knowledge of the flora. Costa 
Rican botanist Pablo Sanchez-Vindas published an illustrated guide to the plants of Ca- 
huita National Park (Sanchez-Vindas, 1983), now in its second edition (Sanchez-Vindas, 
2001). Entomologist William A. Haber (b. 1946), a part-time MO employee and long- 
time Costa Rican resident, pursued his richly rewarding and still ongoing inventory of 
the flora of the Monteverde region, together with companion Willow Zuchowski 
(b. 1955), local collectors Erick Bello and Eladio Cruz, and numerous volunteers and 
associates including Seth Bigelow, Christopher T. Ivey, and (later) Darin S. Penneys. 
These studies, also funded by NGS, have already resulted in a comprehensive, 
vouchered checklist of vascular plants (Haber, 1991, 2000b) and an illustrated guide to 
common trees (Haber et al., 1996, 2000) for the site. Two expeditions sponsored by 
OTS and NGS explored the Caribbean slope of Volcan Barva in 1983 (Pringle et al., 
1984) and 1986, with plant-collecting responsibilities shouldered by Grayum, Isidro 
Chacén, Gary Hartshorn, American Robin L. Chazdon (see Chazdon, 1989), British 
botanists A. Clive Jermy (b. 1932) and Trevor Walker, and MO curator George E. 
Schatz (b. 1953), another OTS product and (at that time) a graduate student of Hugh 
H. Iltis at the University of Wisconsin. Universidad de Costa Rica algologist Ricardo 
Soto coordinated extensive botanical inventories of the Zona Norte (Chaves Q., 1988) 
and the Osa Peninsula, both relying extensively on expert collector Gerardo Herrera. 
From 1988 to 1991, Smithsonian botanist Vicki A. Funk (b. 1947) led a botanical sur- 
vey of Volcan Arenal, with the assistance of the ubiquitous Herrera and Museo Na- 
cional botanist Gina Umafia. Dutch phytosociologist Maarten Kappelle (b. 1962) 
completed a painstaking study of Talamancan oak forests, and published a checklist to 
the woody flora of the higher (> 2000 m) Talamancas (Kappelle et al., 1991), as well 
as numerous other related works (e.g., Kappelle, 1996; Kappelle & Gémez P., 1992; 
Kappelle & van Omme, 1998; Kappelle et al., 1989, 1992, 2000). Lately, he has turned 
his attention to other regions of the country (see, e.g., Kappelle et al., 2003). The dis- 
criminating field work of American orchidologist John T. Atwood (b. 1946) con- 
