Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica 49 
and another that is a powerful search engine that can provide information not only about 
plants, but also about all the other taxa inventoried at INBio: 
http://atta.inbio.ac.cr/ 
Between the ATTA database at INBio and the TROPICOS database at MO, accessible 
through WWW at: 
http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html 
nearly half of the estimated total number of specimens on which the Manual is based 
are computerized. 
The Manual project was designed from the beginning to be based in Costa Rica, to 
build a computerized specimen database in the country, to stimulate and involve maxi- 
mally local botanists and parataxonomists, and to produce an illustrated hard-copy man- 
ual written in Spanish. Although conceived as a single-volume “manual,” that goal 
proved impossible (and short-lived) for such a large and complex flora, given the inclu- 
sion of diagnostic descriptions, as well as many illustrations. Only the name remains. 
Beginning with the gymnosperms and monocots, the Manual de plantas de Costa Rica 
seeks to update and augment the work of Standley (1937b—1938b) and Burger (1971- 
2000) in a relatively succinct format, copiously illustrated and in Spanish. 
