THE HONDURAN FLORA
Cusuco NP 2016
The overall aims of this March-April 2016 expeditions are:
- To complete a survey of the canopy forest community composition To fill in gaps in the inventory of higher plant species.
- To help inform conservation efforts by providing data and reports to Honduran authorities and international audiences.
The present project will result in the most complete botanical and ecological survey of any Honduran National Park, and one of the most complete in Central America. It builds on prior fieldwork in CNP by D.L. Kelly and S.P. Batke in the period 2004-13, under the aegis of the educational charity Operation Wallacea. A network of permanent plots has been built up which provides a quantified, georeferenced baseline record of CNP forest, and is vital for monitoring future change; it has already contributed to a pantropical tree inventory database. We have already added at least 32 vascular plant species to the Honduran flora, including at least three new to science. However, all fieldwork has hitherto been done in the period June - August; many plants have not yet been found in flower, and hence identification to species level has been difficult or impossible. Currently 73.6% of taxa collected have been identified to species level, 18.4% to genus only, 4.8% to family only, and 3.2% are ’morphospecies’ (‘form species’) only.
The peak flowering season in CNP is thought to be in February-April. This spring expedition would have as its primary tasks:
1. To record and collect botanical specimens of any hitherto unidentified tree species that are in flower and/or fruit
2. To record and collect specimens of hitherto unidentified herb species in the field layer (a group that has been neglected in previous survey work).
3. To record a small number of additional forest plots, in order to complete our survey of forest vegetation types.
4. To record and collect botanical specimens of hitherto unidentified mechanically dependent plants (epiphytes, climbers, etc.) that are in flower and/or fruit.
