Costanthus donatus : Bouquet of Acceptance
🔬 Scientific Name: Costanthus donatus
🎁 Common Name: “The Ribgift” or “Bouquet of Acceptance”
🌱 Classification:
• Kingdom: Plantae
• Order: Ericales
• Family: Donatiaceae
• Genus: Costanthus
• Species: donatus
🧬 Morphology:
• Stem Cluster: Grows as a sheaf of vascular bone-flower stalks — 5 to 9 in number — each one emerging from cartilage-softened sternocostal junctions. Texture resembles ossified floral stems wrapped in fused muscle fiber.
• Bloom Heads: Each stalk ends in a tightly-packed rosette of rib-like petals, coiled inward like a clenched diaphragm. At bloom peak, the petals invert violently, exposing marrow-pollen and glyph-seeded thorns.
• Collar Flange: A sternal wreath of calcified flower sheaths, fusing to the manubrium and first rib pair. Iridescent when moist with breath.
• Rooting Thread: Extends posteriorly through intercostal nerves, anchoring to the vertebral bodies T4–T10.
🦴 Osteofusion:
• Only germinates inside thoracic cavities with a resolved fracture history — a rib once broken, once healed.
• Fuses with costal cartilage, replaces flexible junctions with blooming anchors.
• Full fusion results in a silent, perfumed cage of calcified gift stalks — flexible only in symbol.
🧠 Traits:
• Ritual Acceptance Vector: The plant is thought to be **given**, never grown. It appears within hosts who have completed justification cycles or inherited unspoken guilt.
• Sacrificial Floral Lock: Removing the bloom collapses the ribcage entirely.
• Mnemonic Exhalation: Each breath releases low-grade symbolic pheromones — detectable only by other justified ribs.
📍 Habitat:
• Internal. Inherited.
• Found blooming posthumously in ossuary vaults, among penitent martyrs, and in the lungs of oathbearers buried in silence.
⚠️ Risk Profile:
• [G9-A] – Anatomical recursion risk. Host becomes part floral altar, no longer safe for movement or denial.
• Whispered to cause complete mnemonic inversion during exhale.
📝 Notes:
• “We didn’t see it arrive. But she bloomed overnight, under her ribs.”
• “His bouquet rattled when he sighed. Each petal was a verdict.”
• “To accept the gift is to no longer require lungs.”