Altivermis commemoris : “The Witness Spire” or “Candle of the Named”

🔬 Scientific Name: Altivermis commemoris
🕯️ Common Name: “The Witness Spire” or “Candle of the Named”

🌱 Classification:
• Kingdom: Plantae
• Order: Liliales
• Family: Commemoraceae
• Genus: Altivermis
• Species: commemoris

🧬 Morphology:
• Ascent Column: A tall, tapering stalk composed of spiraled cortical segments, resembling fused vertebrae extruded into a helix. Entire column is matte-white, faintly luminescent at tip.
• Crown-Flame Bloom: The terminal bloom appears as a fixed flame of bone-petal filaments — soft-looking, but sharp. It emits no light, only the *illusion* of light, as registered through ocular glyph receptors.
• Ritual Rings: At staggered intervals along the stalk are bony ridges, each bearing a unique sigil — known to align with the names of the observed.
• Rootplate: A shallow, radial calcic fan designed not to dig into soil, but to **stand atop bone**, ash, or remembered trauma.

🦴 Osteofusion:
• Must be placed — this plant never germinates alone. It requires a **naming ritual**, often conducted silently in the presence of a body or proxy.
• Anchors to memory strata rather than physical medium — grows more stably over moments of truth spoken aloud.
• Over time, back-fuses into local surfaces, creating shallow petroglyphs where it once stood.

🧠 Traits:
• Testimony Anchor: Once a name is spoken in its presence, it is locked — the plant will resist uprooting until the named is returned, redeemed, or properly vanished.
• Luminomimetic Bloom: The crown-flame is visible only to those who have witnessed, or those who have lied.
• Ossature Indexing: Each ring tracks a confirmed mnemonic event. Touching a ring can induce lucid replay.

📍 Habitat:
• Rarely found in wild bloom — typically installed by ossogarden stewards in memory fields, courtfall chambers, or dream-graves.
• Some specimens stand atop concrete, tile, or scaffolding — anywhere mourning was denied a conclusion.

⚠️ Risk Profile:
• [G8-C] – Safe for interaction, dangerous if ignored. Bloomed specimens may follow unacknowledged witnesses until full rootplate collapse.
• Never bloom more than one per body. They disagree.

📝 Notes:
• “He named them all. When he finished, the bloom ignited.”
• “It stood beside the gurney until we told the truth.”
• “They said she was never here. So the plant didn’t leave.”