Guide to Tendrillate Climbers of Costa Rican Mountains (PDF)

Climbers, such as lianas and vines, are important constituents of
tropical forests and perhaps the single most important physiognomic
characteristic differentiating tropical from temperate forests,
occurring on nearly 50% of forest trees in Central and South
America. Despite their widespread nutritional and medicinal use,
lianas remain poorly understood ecologically.

Tendrillate Climbers offers comprehensive coverage of all
of the tendrillate lianas of Costa Rica and most of the tendrillate
lianas of Central America. This unique reference provides

* Excellent keys to families and separate keys to genera and
species

* State-of-the-art nomenclature and lists of synonymy when other
scientific names have been published or used informally

* Each species illustrated by the author's hand-drawn line
art

An invaluable addition to our understanding of tropical forests,
the book offers new information as well as information brought
together from dispersed publications and unpublished lists and
reports. In these times of habitat fragmentation and species loss,
this data is a significant contribution to the biological research
that is thriving in Central America, especially Costa Rica.

Tendrillate Climbers fills a major gap in the botanical
literature. Its high level of scholarship and comprehensive
coverage will astonish the tropical botanists, forestry scientists,
ecologists, biologists, and horticulturalists who will want it as a
reference for their continued work on this neglected group of
plants.