A Matarratón Beneath the Savanna Sky

On Sunday, March 29th, Michel Salas ventured into one of the sanctuary's sandy-soiled zones with a clear purpose: to document the flora that grows in quiet communion between dry earth and the blue sky of the region. During that characterization survey, he stopped in his tracks before a well-formed matarratón — Gliricidia sepium — its bright green foliage kindled by the mid-afternoon sun, a single dry seedpod hanging from a slender branch like the last memory of a flowering long past. With five photographs, Michel captured the tree from different angles: the pinnately compound leaves cut against an open blue sky, the savanna landscape that surrounds it, the branches spreading upward with that quiet generosity so characteristic of this species. The individual recorded was in good vegetative health, rooted firmly in its usual place, indifferent to the heat. The matarratón is one of those trees the farmers of the coast know well: it serves as living fencing, as shade, as a means of restoring the soil. Finding it established within the area of influence of the Fundación Loros, at coordinates 10.4399, -75.2572, is a piece of knowledge now inscribed in the living map of the sanctuary.