Michel's White Flowers on the Trail

Through the dense vegetation of the sanctuary, Michel Salas moved slowly along one of the interior trails, with the watchful gaze of someone who knows the forest always has something in store. It was March 22nd when, pack slung over one shoulder, he stopped dead in his tracks before a tree that stopped him cold: a Pseudobombax ellipticum in full bloom, its white flowers bursting in clusters of stamens as fine as threads of silk. The species, commonly known as algodón de seda, belongs to the family Malvaceae and bears a flowering that does not go unnoticed: those flowers without visible petals — pure stamen — look like pompoms suspended among the branches. Michel photographed it and recorded it in the botanical inventory he had been working on that afternoon, at the coordinates along the northern edge of the reserve. The discovery was duly noted: a single blooming individual, documented, tucked into a corner of the forest where the trails pass through, but where attention does not always follow.