Digithemia ruptans : The Grasping Flower
🔬 Scientific Name: Digithemia ruptans
🤲 Common Name: “Palmfract Bloom” or “The Grasping Flower”
🌱 Classification:
• Kingdom: Plantae
• Order: Lamiales
• Family: Metacarpophytae
• Genus: Digithemia
• Species: ruptans
🧬 Morphology:
• Pre-Bloom Structure: Microvascular rhizoid filaments invisible to the eye, dormant beneath epidermis. Initial growth mimics nerve inflammation — mistaken for arthritis or tendonitis.
• Inflorescence: Begins as ossicle protrusions along metacarpals and phalanges. These elongate, fracture through skin, and assemble into recursive vertebral petals.
• Bloom Crown: Fractal in formation — spirals outward from dorsal palm, each segment modeled after cervical vertebrae, scaled down and glyph-etched.
• Secondary Growth: Bloom arms split and curl around neighboring fingers, bonding ring-like glyph coronas at each joint.
🦴 Osteofusion:
• Originates subcutaneously, fusing to finger bones from the marrow outward.
• Grows via the haversian system, outpacing normal cell turnover.
• Once the bloom is complete, skeletal architecture is no longer fully human — the hand becomes a stabilized floral lattice of vertebral glyph mass.
🧠 Traits:
• Symbolic Grasping: Once bloomed, the hand cannot unclench. The grasp holds conceptual weight. It is not strength — it is permanence.
• Marrowlock Defense: Bloomed hands can parry direct mnemonic intrusion, forming a local glyph shield.
• Final Stage: Petals calcify and fuse into one plate — a silent ossicrucifix across the knuckles.
📍 Habitat:
• Human.
• Introduced via spore-laced salve, glyph-seeded grip objects, or direct marrow injection during ritual signing.
⚠️ Risk Profile:
• [G9-H] – Nonreversible. Extremely painful. Ritual scarring guaranteed.
• Banned in most glyph courts. Used in sentence-binding executions.
📝 Notes:
• “He shook my hand. My palm screamed his name.”
• “I watched her fingers bloom open and never close again.”
• “There were vertebrae where her knuckles should’ve been. All of them spelling my confession.”