The Milk-Bleeding Liana of the Dry Scrubland

The ground was so cracked it looked like a map torn into a thousand pieces. That is what Michel Salas found when he set out on his flora inventory walk through that corner of the sanctuary where the dry scrubland presses in and the vegetation scatters as if searching for shade. Moving through the shrubs and hanging pods, Michel went on noting, photographing, touching leaves and fruits with the unhurried calm of someone who knows how to read the land. The day's discovery was a liana. When he cut it, it released a generous exudate — that white "milk" that is the unmistakable signature of the family Apocynaceae, subfamily Asclepiadoideae. Further along came another gift: a fruit already split open, its white silky fibers spilling outward as if making an offering. Gathered in the palm of his hand, three black seeds with their radicles already showing — germinating right there in the open air, ready for the wind to carry them to some other corner of the sanctuary. Six photographic records in all, from a short but richly layered day. The dry scrubland holds far more than it first lets on.