Fern Collecting in Southern Costa Rica

Abstract

That large section of Costa Rica which lies to the south of San Jose, its capital city, is nearly all wild, mountainous, sparsely inhabited, forested country. The backbone of the region is the non-volcanic Cordillera de Talamanca, which rises in the craggy summits of Chirripo (12,580 feet) to the most elevated point between Guatemala and Colombia. On the highest treeless summits of this range are found the northernmost outposts of the pdramo formation of the Andes; corresponding elevations in Guatemala support a vegetation far more Arctic-alpine than Andean in composition and appearance. The broken foothills of the Cordillera push down nearly or quite to the coasts, leaving at best a narrow coastal plain. Lofty, humid forests sweep up almost unbroken from the seashore nearly to the tops of the highest mountains. Although to the north of the Gulf of Nicoya the Pacific coast of Central America is nearly everywhere arid or semi-arid, in southern Costa Rica this side is almost as wet as the opposite Caribbean slope. Seven years' records from Pedregoso in the basin of El General show an annual rainfall ranging from 88 to 167 inches.1 The Pacific slopes of the Cordillera de Talamanca drain into the Rio Grande de Terraba, which flows for a long way parallel to the Cordillera. The upper portion of the Terraba Valley is the valley, or more properly basin, of El General. Aside from the pioneer explora-