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Keywords - Lacistemataceae, species, common names, herbarium

Abstract: My monographic work on Lacistemataceae ( www.lacistemataceae.org ) was initially written for my Masters dissertation submitted in 2009. I chose this family because the previous monographer, Dr Herman Otto Sleumer, died in 1993. I am thereby continuing his research into the 21st Century. Lacistemataceae is a small Neotropical family consisting of two genera Lacistema (11 species) and Lozania (five species) distributed from the Mexican Gulf & Southwest regions across the Isthmus of Panama, as far south as Misiones Province, Argentina. Taxa are also located on the islands of Jamaica and Trinidad. Back in 2007, when version 1 of my electronic monograph was released, there were few virtual libraries or herbaria, so my website was just a list of type specimens, protologues, books and journal articles. But today what were just references are now hyperlinks to display type specimens directly on my website and external links to protologues and articles.

I have downloaded more than 5,000 specimen images from 88 virtual herbaria and perusing these images I have located 111 species names, 69 common names, and 9 family/tribe names. By comparison, for Sleumer's 1980 Monograph of Tribe Lacistemeae, 51 herbaria were visited to access 3,133 specimens, and 65 species names, 0 common names, and 9 family/tribe names were published. I am sure that there are far more names (and maybe type specimens) out there to discover and I cannot wait for the time when more virtual herbaria and articles become available, especially those held by herbaria and libraries based in the Americas.