Guatteria darienensis (Annonaceae), a new species from Panama and Colombia

Guatteria Ruiz & Pavón (1794: 85) is the largest genus of Annonaceae with about 210 recognized species (Chatrou et al . 2012, Maas et al. 2011). It comprises small- to medium- sized trees, rarely canopy trees or shrubs, and only two species are lianas, Guatteria scandens Ducke (1925:10) and G. fractiflexa Maas & Westra (2008: 491; Erkens et al . 2008). It is widely distributed throughout Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, and tropical South America (Erkens & Maas 2008). Species of Guatteria are common members of Neotropical forests where they occupy a wide variety of habitats, such as lowland rain forests, gallery forests, semideciduous forests, coastal forests, inundated forests, savannas and montane forests (Erkens et al. 2007b). However, the highest species diversity is found in the Amazon Basin with approximately half of the species occurring there. Central America harbours ca. 30 species, mostly endemics (Erkens et al. 2008) of which ca. 20 species occur in Panama, a highly under-collected country with respect to Guatteria (Erkens et al. 2006). In the adjacent Colombian Chocó region, we found ca. ten endemic species, and to date, only two species, Guatteria aberrans Erkens & Maas (2006: 201) and the new species described in this paper, are restricted to Panama and northwestern Colombia