Inaturalist lists Vaccinium talamancense as a member of Vaccinium sect. Pyxothamnus. I don’t think that it is, but before I say anything I want to find a source that I can point to that lists most of the species in the section.
Flora of North America lists the subsections but obviously leaves out the species in Central, South America, and the Caribbean. Pyxothamnus Batodendron
Inaturalist also lists only Vaccinium arboreum in Batodendron while I think Vaccinium leucanthum is also a member.
There’s a recent study of Vaccinieae that built a tree of a lot of species including Vaccinium talamancense https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790324001945
It seems like V. talamancense came out within Cavendishia on their tree, and that Pyxothamnus was not a monophyletic group in their tree. From their tree it seems like there is a lot of rearranging needed within Vaccinium but it’s probably quite complicated from hybridizing. That doesn’t really answer your question but maybe you’ll find that source useful.
Wilbur & Luteyn 2008 cover Central American Vaccinium but don’t cover infrageneric taxonomy due to phylogenetic uncertainty. The same authors described talamancense in 2001 (I can’t find that paper at the moment), in the 2008 paper they say “Its interspecific relationships are uncertain at this time.”
Sleumer 1936 has Batodendron (as a subgenus) including V. leucanthum, stenophyllum, and cubense. It looks like Sleumer 1941 (Vaccinioideen-Studien. Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 71:375-510) would have a slightly more recent and comprehensive infrageneric taxonomy, if you can find the text of it.
Also in case you haven’t seen it, there is an open flag discussing where each species goes in the infrageneric taxonomy here: Flag for Taxon: blueberries, cranberries, and allies (Genus Vaccinium)
I enjoy that paper, it has been the most convenient source for getting an idea of what is in each vaccinium subsection because it includes a lot of species and labels the subsection. Their explanation for why batodendron and pyxothamnus are grouped together in both locations that they show up in the tree is that the central american species are hybridized, which seems reasonable since Lutyn said so on morphological grounds. However if hybrization can change the structure of the tree to that extent then they probably should have built a graph instead.
Agree, would be nice to see a phylogenetic network of the system.
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