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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 231

The super popular impatiens has its roots in Costa Rica

By Dennis Rogers
Special to A.M. Costa Rica

Visitors often note how impatiens (“busy lizzie”) grows like a weed along the roadsides of the wetter parts of Costa Rica. That is because china, as it’s known locally, is a weed, an exotic invader. But the Costa Rican plant population was used to breed several of the commercial varieties of impatiens, now one of the most important bedding plants in the world.

Impatiens walleriana is part of the small botanical family Balsaminaceae. The genus Impatiens includes about 850 species, widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere and Old World tropics. There is a single native Costa Rican species of the genus, I. turrialbana, found only at middle elevations on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica and western Panama.

I. walleriana is native to East Africa, and was originally described to science by the English botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker as part of a study he made of the genus about 1905. Hooker was best known as a member of the original Ross Antarctic Expedition and later as director of the Royal Botanic Gardens and friend of Charles Darwin.

Impatiens for most means that species, which is cultivated in the tropics and subtropics worldwide. In its original state it is a succulent herb reaching a height of 80-100 cms. (from 31 to 39 inches) in its preferred wet, shady habitats. The abundant flowers are various shades of pink,
with a small amount of nectar that attracts butterflies. It is also known as “touch-me-not” since the tiny seeds are spread explosively from the seed pods at the slightest touch.

A.M. Costa Rica/Dennis Rogers

The multicolored impatiens

It was from the Costa Rican Impatiens population that Claude Hope developed the domesticated strains now cultivated in so many gardens, including where the plant cannot survive the winter and is treated as an annual. Hope came to Costa Rica during World War II to work on the production of quinine for malaria treatment needed by troops in the South Pacific.

After the war, he set up a breeding operation in Dulce Nombre de Cartago and developed numerous commercial varieties of petunias and other plants, and the Ripples, Grande, and Super Elfin varieties of impatiens.

Hope died in 2000 after more than 50 years in Cartago. The Linda Vista operation is now owned by Ball Horticultural Co. and continues to produce hybrid flower seeds.

Suspects in murder of magazine editor acquitted in court

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

A three-judge panel acquitted a former boss of five other persons in the drive-by murder of editor Ivannia Mora Rodríguez.

The judges found that key evidence in the case had been obtained improperly. Chief Judge Rocío Pérez Montenegro read the sentence in the high-profile trial on live television. She was critical of the way the Ministerio Público and the Judicial Investigating Organization handled the case.

The six defendants showed signs of relief. One buried his head in his hands. Defense lawyers made the rounds of shaking hands and embracing.

Ms. Mora, then 33, died when she stopped her sport utility vehicle at a traffic light in Curridabat the evening of Dec. 23, 2003. Two men on a motorcycle pulled up and one fired multiple bullets into the woman.

She was well known in the journalistic community, and many of the reporters covering the story since then were her friends.

Ms. Mora had worked with Eugenio Millot at the financial magazine Estrategia y Negocios. Shortly before her murder she left that firm to produce a similar magazine for Credomatic.

Investigators detained Millot a few days later. They claimed he hired hit men to kill his former associate.

Ms. Mora was married with one child.

Eventually agents implicated five men as either intermediaries or killers. They were on trial with Millot. The trial began in May.

Francisco Dall'Anesse, the chief prosecutor said the case would be appealed to the Sala III criminal supreme court. He appeared surprised that the judges threw out the evidence.

The disputed evidence were two interviews, one in San José and the other in Bogotá, Colombia. The decision said that investigators did not follow the rules in obtaining the evidence and that the rights of the defendants were jeopardized. Unlike in some countries, the acquittal is not absolute. The Sala III could decide that the accused stand trial again.

But the verdict was enough to allow Millot and four co-defendants to leave the San Sebastian prison shortly after 7 p.m. Monday, about two hours after the verdict in the Tribunal de Juicio del Segundo Circuito Judicial de San José in Goicoechea.

Millot, who was jailed most of the time since his arrest, was greeted outside the prison by his wife, a lawyer who served as part of his defense. The charges had been murder and conspiracy. One defendant stayed in prison because of an unrelated conviction. The five other defendants have been identified by the last names of Serna, Cortés, López, Nieves and Martínez

Dall'Anesse said he was surprised that the judges did not throw out the disputed evidence at the time it was entered into the case. Instead, they waited until the final verdict.

Costa Rican Spanish-language newspapers generally do not follow the principle that someone is innocent until proved guilty. A number of news stories and public statements by newspeople began with the assumption that Millot engineered the murder. There is a possibility of civil action by the magazine publisher against those who went on record calling him guilty.

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