The Bloodweed That Deceives and Enchants

Michel Salas was making his way through the scrubland when he found it: a slender-stemmed little plant with oval leaves and, peeking out from the dry foliage, a row of red berries so vivid they looked freshly painted. It was Rivina humilis, known in these parts as sangresuela, and it didn't take long for him to remember what the local children use it for — they crush those tiny berries against their skin and walk around with their arms stained crimson, faking wounds that alarm their mothers and send their friends into fits of laughter. The plant was in full bloom, its buds clustered in upward-reaching sprays while the ripe fruits hung below like tiny beads on a string. Michel photographed it at the sanctuary's coordinates, in that corner of low vegetation and tawny grass where Rivina humilis — of the family Petiveriaceae — grows in near silence, drawing no attention from anyone who doesn't know how to look. But once you've seen it, that fierce red burning against so much green and dry earth, you can never quite unsee it.