Vaccinium costaricense Wilbur & Luteyn, Brittonia 29(3): 270, fig. 5.  1977.  Type.   Costa Rica.  Heredia:  Vicinity of Cerro Chompipe, between Río Las Vueltas and Río Nuevo, ca.12 km NNE of San Rafael, 1800-2000 m, Wilbur & Luteyn 18579 (holotype, DUKE;  isotypes, CR, F, MO, NY1, NY2).  Image: Line-drawing.

        Terrestrial or more typically epiphytic shrubs 1-3 m tall with grayish to reddish-brown, glabrous branchlets.  Leaves coriaceous, ovate or lanceolate to elliptic, (2.5-)4-8(-11) x (1.5-)2.5-4.5(-6.2) cm, basally acutely tapering to rounded, apically acute to acuminate, entire marginally slightly thickened and perhaps appearing slightly revolute, glabrous to moderately but inconspicuously appressed glandular-strigillose both above and more especially beneath;  indistinctly 3-5-plinerved and also somewhat weakly arcuately veined;  petioles 1-2 mm long, glabrous.  Inflorescences axillary (but often superficially appearing terminal), umbelliform racemes;  rachis 1-2.5 cm long, glabrous to very sparingly and minutely puberulent;  floral bracts persistent, scale-like, ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate or triangular, 1-3 mm long, glabrous to minutely ciliate;  pedicels mostly 1-3 cm long, glabrous to inconspicuously puberulous;  bracteoles subopposite, appressed, persistent, lance-ovate to lanceolate, 0.8-1.5(-2) mm long, glabrous to indistinctly ciliate, located in the lower third of pedicel.  Flowers with calyx clearly disarticulating from the pedicel by means of a sharply delineated groove often indistinctly fimbriate with glandular trichomes ± 0.1 mm long;  hypanthium campanulate, ± 2-2.5 x 2.5-3 mm, glabrous to inconspicuously although often densely , minutely puberulent;  limb ± 0.5-0.8 mm long;  lobes 5, triangular, acute, 0.5-0.8 mm long, glabrous to inconspicuously puberulent;  corolla broadly cylindric to somewhat urceolate, 6-8 x 4-7 mm, pale greenish-yellow, externally glabrous and internally moderately to densely pilose especially in the throat and on the lobes with sordid, white trichomes, the lobes 5, erect to spreading or somewhat reflexed, triangular, acute, 1-2 mm long;  stamens 10;  filaments flattened, 3 mm long, slightly adherent to the very base of the corolla tube and attached to the thecae in their lower quarter, slightly ciliate;  thecae granular, ± 1.8 mm long, golden, basally markedly inwardly curved with an apiculate tip;  tubules stout, ± 2 mm long each with slightly flaring terminal pore.

        Distribution:  Endemic to Costa Rica, to the cordillera between the northeastern slopes of Volcán Barba (Prov. Heredia) and the western slopes of Volcán Irazú (Prov. Cartago).  Rare.