Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica |Plan of the Manual| 255 
altitudinal qualifiers. Five major descriptors have been utilized; from driest to wettest, 
these are: dry forest (bosque seco), moist forest (bosque himedo), wet forest (bosque 
muy humedo), rain forest (bosque pluvial), and paramo (paramo). Bosque seco occurs 
only in the Guanacaste lowlands of the north Pacific coast, particularly in the Rio Tem- 
pisque basin. Bosque himedo and bosque muy himedo are scattered throughout the 
country, mostly in the lowlands; the former is best represented on the Nicoya Peninsula 
and in the Llanura de Los Guatusos (vicinity of Cafio Negro and Los Chiles) and the 
lower portions of the Central and General Valleys, while bosque muy himedo 1s char- 
acteristic of the Llanuras de Sarapiqui and Tortuguero, the area about Carara National 
Park, and the Golfo Dulce region. Bosque pluvial occupies all the main cordilleras, in- 
cluding Cerro Turrubares and the Pacific Fila Costefia, generally above 1000 m eleva- 
tion on the Pacific slope, but descending to at least 800 m on the Caribbean slope. 
Pdramo occurs only on the highest summits of the Cordilleras Central and de Tala- 
manca, mostly above 3000 m. For more information on the Holdridge life zones, see 
the Vegetation chapter. 
Manual habitat summaries occasionally employ several more vaguely defined sec- 
ondary descriptors, which are actually just different aspects of (usually) bosque pluvial. 
These include (in roughly ascending elevational sequence) cloud forest (bosque nu- 
boso), oak forest (bosque de roble), and elfin or dwarf forest (bosque enano). Various 
narrower habitat qualifiers may also be added, e.g., pastures (potreros), scrublands 
(matorrales), or ponds (lagunas). 
Upward and downward elevational limits, always in meters (m), are generally 
rounded up or down (respectively) to the nearest 50 m. 
Geographic range within Costa Rica is expressed mainly in terms of topographic 
features rather than major political units (provinces), each one of the latter being nearly 
as heterogeneous, for features important to plant distribution, as the entire country. A 
typical description might read: “N vert. Carib., Llanuras de Los Guatusos y de Tortuguero, 
vert. Pac. Cord. de Guanacaste, desde P.N. La Cangreja al S.” The general rule is to di- 
vide between the two slopes, indicate the distribution along the principal cordilleras, 
then among other prominent topographic features, all more or less from north to south. 
For a clearer understanding of Costa Rican geography, the reader is referred to the maps 
on the inside covers and the sections on Political geography and Physical geography, in 
the chapter on The physical environment. For standard abbreviations used in the descrip- 
tions of geographic distribution, see Abreviaturas y simbolos comunmente usados, in 
each treatment volume. A note on national parks and reserves: the status of these enti- 
ties is constantly being changed. For example, Tapanti National Park [P.N.] used to be 
Tapanti Biological Reserve [R.B.], and both Carara R.B. and the La Cangreja Protection 
Zone [Z.P.] were recently elevated to P.N. status (the latter after the publication of Man- 
ual Vol. If). While the Manual has made every effort to keep abreast of these changes, 
some errors and inconsistencies are inevitable. As for the names themselves, our source 
for all geographic features has been the maps of the Instituto Geografico Nacional; we 
