The Pink Climber No One Can Name

José Marín found it without looking, the way the most beautiful things in the field tend to appear. A climbing vine tangled through the low vegetation, with rose-purple flowers and white centers opening beside still-closed green buds, as though the plant were showing its entire story in a single glance. Its large, glossy leaves caught the afternoon light with an intensity that made it hard to simply walk past. It sits at coordinates 10.4459413, -75.2642093, within the reserve, and its tubular flowers suggest it may belong to the family Bignoniaceae — though that has yet to be confirmed. Out in the field, giving it a name proved impossible, and perhaps that is the most honest thing an observer can do: record what is seen without manufacturing certainties. The photograph remains. The location remains. Now it falls to those who know their botany. Meanwhile, that climbing vine goes on flowering, indifferent to whether it has a name or not.