Flora
The Sweetstone Orchard-Apple is the Valari plains-orchard standby, a ten-meter tree of warm grey-brown bark and jade-green oval leaves whose autumn rust paints whole valleys. Five-petal blossoms cluster four to a stem in pale pink and ivory each spring, scenting orchards with crushed pear and rose for the entire flowering month. By late summer the fruit hangs in fist-sized cream apples rose-blushed on the sun-side, each apple seeded with a small chord-resonant stone that hums faintly when the fruit is ripe and falls silent when it rots. The bark is lightly furrowed and pleasant to lean against; pruning it cleanly produces a sap that smells of honey. The canopy spreads eight meters at full size and shelters herd children at midday. Long-cultivated strains exist for cider, eating, and sweetstone harvest, the last grown specifically for its larger humming pits. A single tree will produce reliably for sixty years before the chord goes thin.
Valari plains-orchards organize their year around Sweetstone. Children compete to find the loudest-humming fruit at harvest; the loudest pit is set into the eaves of the family hearth and is said to keep the household chord even. A failing tree is mourned as a relative; a thriving orchard is dowry-grade wealth. Cider made from Sweetstone is the formal drink at every Valari council and chord-feast.
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