Sky-Canopy Cloudthistle

On Originis' floating sky-reefs the Cloudthistle stands as a twenty-five meter half-tree half-thistle whose thirty-meter canopy fans in pearl-pompom clusters above silver-white papery bark that peels in long ribbons in the high wind. Compound feather-leaves are pale teal above and silver beneath, downed so densely that each leaf catches updrafts like a sail. Aerial roots cling to floating limestone with crystalline grip, and the trunk leans permanently into the prevailing sky-current. Inch-long ivory thorns ring the upper branches as a defense against grazing Caelfins. By late summer the pompom flowers fade and the seed-puffs ride out on the planet's high winds for kilometers, often crossing whole sky-reef chains before settling. The cold-sweet scent lingers on a Cael flier's wing-cloak after a brush with the canopy. From below the trees look like silver-pearl clouds tethered to drifting island-stones, and a sky-reef without a few Cloudthistles is considered too young to support a Cael colony.

Seed-puffs retain a fragment of the parent's chord and can be released to call distant Cael fliers home

Cael flier-clans plant a Cloudthistle the day a child is born; if the tree takes hold on the colony's reef, the child is reckoned to have a true place there. A failed sapling is taken as a sign the child belongs on a different reef, and adoption follows. Cael old-songs claim the first sky-reefs themselves were anchored by Cloudthistle roots before any Cael set foot on them.