The mamón de mico at the Y

At the coordinates Alberto shared from the reserve, the reddish earth and small stones kept a secret among the branches: a yellow-green fruit, barely open, its white flesh peeking shyly toward the light. It was a cotoperi —known also as cotoprix or mamón de mico—, a Talisia sp. that few would have noticed had it not been for the trained eye of whoever was walking through that stretch on a Wednesday. This was no isolated find. Omar had already reported several individuals of this same species in the area before, which makes this record a confirmation: the cotoperi has an established presence in that corner of the reserve. Alberto held it in his hand —branch, elongated leaves and fruit— and left a photographic trace of that almost ordinary moment which, added to the earlier reports, begins to draw the map of a plant that already feels at home among the 520 hectares of Loros.