Costus zechii K.Schum. (1904)

Maas-van de Kamer, H., Maas, P. J. M., Wieringa, J. J. & Specht, C. D., 2016, Monograph of African Costaceae, Blumea 61 (3), pp. 280-318 : 313

Costus zechii K.Schum. (1904) 409. — Type: Zech auf Neuhofen 273c (holo B destroyed), Ghana, Kete Krachi (‘bei Kete Kratschi’).

Acknowledgements We are grateful to the curators of the herbaria mentioned under Material & Methods, from which we borrowed and studied plant specimens. We thank the people working in the former WAG herbarium and the L herbarium for all their help and nice company.

We also thank Hendrik Rypkema (artist of the former Utrecht Herbarium), who prepared the beautiful accurate botanical drawings of the new species. We are much indebted to Lubbert Westra who provided us with many photographs of Costaceae (as he has been doing since 1969), thus enabling us to create the beautiful colour-plates in this publication. John Mood, Eberhard Fischer and Pete Philipson also contributed photographs.

Many thanks go to the people who cultivated Costaceae in their greenhouses in the Botanic Garden, Meise, Belgium and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, Great Britain. Special thanks to Ernst Kamphuis who care- fully cultivated the very rich and unique Costus collection in Burgers’ Bush, greenhouse of Burgers’ Zoo,Arnhem, The Netherlands.

When travelling in Cameroon in 2001 with Tinde van Andel and Marion Jansen-Jacobs to collect Costaceae we much appreciated support of the field assistants from the KRIBI herbarium. Our second field trip to Africa in 2011 to Gabon was in the company of Frans Breteler. In this country we grate- fully appreciate assistance from Art Louis, R. Swamborn (Director of Africa’s Eden), Jean-Paul Vande Weghe and particularly Raoul Niangadouma from the LBV Herbarium in Libreville.

CDS additionally thanks S. Salzman and J. Chery for assisting with DNA extraction, data collection and phylogenetic analyses.

HM-vdK and PJMM are much indebted to the Hugo de Vries Fonds and the Treub-Maatschappij who financed their field trip to Cameroon (2001) and Gabon (2011). Funding for travel to and fieldwork in Gabon was provided by National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration Grant #8994-11 to CDS.Additional funding for herbarium and phylogenetic work was provided by NSF DEB 0816661, 1257701 and 1208666 to CDS.