White Flowers on the Forgotten Log

José Marín was walking through the humid forest of Fundación Loros when something white amid the leaf litter caught his eye. On an old log, surrendered to decay and draped in moss and creeping vines, a family of mushrooms had taken hold — broad, rippling caps, almost translucent in the filtered light of the canopy. He photographed them before the afternoon closed in entirely. The images revealed features consistent with the genus Pleurotus, known commonly as oyster mushrooms or hongos ostra. These are organisms that have made a specialty of dead wood: they break it down slowly, returning its nutrients to the forest floor. In that forgotten log there was no defeat — only quiet work. The find, georeferenced at coordinates 10.4471772, -75.2614572, adds one more piece to the living inventory of the reserve. The biodiversity of Loros does not only fly or climb: it also grows slowly, white and hushed, in the corners we so rarely think to look.