''Manilkara spectabilis'' is an uncommon species of

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

in the sapodilla family. In 1997, the IUCN were mistakenly under the impression that a specimen in the US, collected in 1899 from a site near

Limón Limón (), commonly known as Puerto Limón, is a district, the capital city and main hub of Limón province, as well as of the Limón canton in Costa Rica. It is the seventh largest city in Costa Rica, with a population of over 55,000, and is ...

in the Atlantic coastal forests of Costa Rica was the only specimen that had ever been collected for of the species, and therefore assumed it might be an

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found els ...

to this location. Based on this supposition, the species was provisionally declared ' critically endangered'. It had in fact been collected in Nicaragua in 1951 already, and after being declared 'critically endangered' it was soon found elsewhere in eastern coastal Costa Rica by local researchers.

References

spectabilis Plants described in 1912 Critically endangered plants Trees of Costa Rica Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Sapotaceae-stub