The One That Closes Its Leaves at a Touch

There are plants that prefer silence and the brush of a hand. This Sunday, Jorge Alcalá and Michel Salas were walking through the reserve's dense vegetation when they came upon one of them: the dormidera, that Mimosa pudica whose most famous habit is written into its very name. There it was, woven among other wild plants, its bipinnate leaves spread open like small green feathers, its stems armed with tiny thorns. Light filtered down through the canopy as Jorge and Michel documented the specimens before them: the symmetrical leaflets, the deep green that seemed almost to glow, the perfect order of that botanical architecture which, at first glance, looks so delicate. The dormidera is a plant of disturbed soils and roadsides, and its presence in this corner of the reserve speaks to how wild life claims every available space — with or without anyone there to witness it.