Michel Finds Moringa Among the Wild Uvito

That Sunday in March, Michel Salas was making his way through the sanctuary's scrubland when the uvitos stopped him in his tracks: several trees heavy with clusters of fruit shifting from green to yellow beneath a sky without a single cloud. He photographed them from below, the canopy closing in around the blue, then pressed on. Deeper in, tangled among the branches and creeping vines of the understory, he came upon two more plants. One, known to locals as pica pica — stinging, its dry pods and fruit still clinging on, its precise taxonomic identity yet to be confirmed. The other, cradled in his hands and checked against page 69 of the field guide, turned out to be moringa — Moringa oleifera — growing completely wild, its pinnate leaves and open white flowers rising from the parched floor of a tropical dry forest. No one had planted it there. It stood alone, blooming without an invitation from anyone.