Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica 45 
As in the past, all of this plant exploration continues to fuel and in turn be stimulated 
by floristic compilation, as exemplified by the recent publication of Robert L. Dressler’s 
authoritative and lavishly illustrated orchid field guide (Dressler, 1993); an equally op- 
ulent guide to the flowering plants of the Golfo Dulce region (Weber et al., 2001), based 
on the field work of Werner Huber and Anton Weissenhofer; and the first two volumes 
of Flora mesoamericana (Davidse et al., 1994; Moran & Riba, 1995), a massive regional 
effort coordinated jointly by the Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de México, the Mis- 
souri Botanical Garden, and the Natural History Museum (London). The Flora de Ni- 
caragua, a MO project in the works for 23 years, was recently published in its entirety 
(Stevens et al., 2001). Concomitant with the preparation of these works, many hundreds 
of new taxa have been validated by specialists. For example, since 1993 at least 209 
new species of Orchidaceae have been described from Costa Rica alone. During the pe- 
riod 1989—2000, our records indicate that a total of over 500 species of vascular plants 
were added to the Costa Rican flora (476 of these in the “golden years,” 1994-1997), 
including roughly 200 new country records of previously described species. 
The Manual de plantas de Costa Rica project 
In his almost autobiographical and relatively informal introductory chapters to the 
Flora of Costa Rica, Standley stated that “The fame of Costa Rica’s flora for bewil- 
dering variety and exquisite beauty is based primarily upon the vegetation of the tierra 
fria ... If a botanist has only a short time to spend in Costa Rica, he should hasten to 
the upper slopes” (Standley, 1937b: 29). From the beginning of our work in Costa Rica, 
we felt that too many botanists— perhaps with a north-temperate penchant for seeking 
out the most comfortable places to work and the plants easiest to reach—had taken 
Standley’s words too seriously, no matter the length of stay. The collecting plan de- 
signed for the Manual project reflected our intention to concentrate on the far more di- 
verse and little-explored low to middle elevations, especially wet forest formations. But 
Standley did sense that here was the real heart of the matter: “It has seemed to me that 
in a land of so many interesting regions, this was one of the most profitable for explo- 
ration. Nowhere is it possible to find a greater number of plants that are likely to prove 
new” (Standley, 1937b: 16). 
By far the vast majority of new collections accumulated during the course of the 
Manual project have come from lowland to mid-elevation forests (see Fig. 4, in the 
Vegetation chapter). The original strategy of the Manual project was to station resident 
collectors at Braulio Carrillo, Corcovado, Rincén de La Vieja, and Tortuguero National 
Parks. Several expeditionary incursions, mostly into the middle-elevation slopes of the 
Cordillera de Talamanca (funded by the National Geographic Society), also generated 
important collections for the project, as did similarly funded work in the Monteverde 
area (see preceding section). Parataxonomist Reinaldo Aguilar later adopted the Osa 
