An updated inventory of the Bromeliaceae for Costa Rica is presented including citations of representative specimens for each species. The family comprises 18 genera and 198 species in Costa Rica, 32 species being endemic to the country. Additional 36 species are endemic to Costa Rica and Panama. Only 4 of the 8 bromeliad subfamilies occur in Costa Rica, with a strong predominance of Tillandsioideae (7 genera/150 spp.; 75.7% of all bromeliad species in Costa Rica). 124 species (62.6%) grow exclusively epiphytic, additional 59 spp. (29.8%) are facultative epiphytes. The most diverse genus is Werauhia, with 59 species (29.8% of the Costa Rican bromeliad flora), followed by Tillandsia with 40 species (20.2%) and Guzmania with 28 spp. (8.6%).
Guzmania panamensis (Bromeliaceae), a new species so far endemic to Veraguas province, Western Panama, is described and illustrated. The new species is recognized due to its peduncle much longer than the leaves and its red floral bracts, shorter than the yellow flowers. The new species is compared to morphologically similar species, namely Guzmania monostachia, Guzmania berteroniana, Guzmania elvallensis, and Guzmania skotakii.
Bomarea Mirbel (1804: 71; Alstroemeriaceae) includes 122 species (Govaerts 2013) and is divided into four subgenera (Hofreiter & Tillich 2002): Baccata (five species), Bomarea (ca. seventy species), Sphaerine(twelve species) and Wichuraea (eighteen species). Bomarea is distributed from Mexico and the Greater Antilles to southern South America (Gereau 1994). The centre of distribution of the genus is along the Andes from Colombia to Bolivia (Hofreiter 2008).
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