about plants the way other people speak about movie stars. One tree he
described to me as “charismatic.” Others were “hilarious,” “crazy,”
“neat,” “clever,” and “amazing.”
Sometime in the mid-afternoon, we emerged onto a rise with a view
across a valley to the next ridge. On the ridge, the trees were shaking. This
was a sign of woolly monkeys making their way through the forest.
Everyone stopped to try to get a glimpse of them. As they sailed from
branch to branch, the monkeys made a chirruping noise, a bit like the
whine of crickets. Silman pulled out the shopping bag and passed it
around.
A little while later, we reached Plot 6, elevation 7,308 feet, where the
tree from the new genus had been found. Silman waved his machete at it.
The tree looked pretty ordinary, but I tried to see it through his eyes. It
was taller than most of its neighbors—perhaps it could be described as
“stately” or “statuesque”—with smooth, ruddy bark and simple, alternate
leaves. It belonged to the Euphorbiaceae, or spurge, family, whose
members include poinsettia. Silman was eager to learn as much as
possible about the tree, so that when a new taxonomist could be found to
replace the one who had died, he’d be able to send him all the necessary
material. He and Farfan went to see what they could come up with. They
returned with some seed capsules, which were as thick and tough as
hazelnut shells, but delicately shaped, like flowering lilies. The capsules
were dark brown on the outside and inside the color of sand.
That evening, the sun set before we reached Plot 8, where we were
going to camp. We hiked on through the dark, then set up our tents and
made dinner, also in the dark. I crawled into my sleeping bag around 9 PM,
but a few hours later, I was woken by a light. I assumed someone had
gotten up to pee, and rolled over. In the morning, Silman told me that he
was surprised I’d been able to sleep through all the commotion. Six
groups of cocaleros had tromped through the campsite overnight. (In
Peru, though the sale of coca is legal, all purchases are supposed to go
through a government agency known as ENACO, a restriction growers do
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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