Verbena

[Roger]

Verbena
P/2030(34Tauri(2020)D)14

Orbital Distance: 1.36 AU
Rotational Period: 1.225 Years
Surface Area: 418,225,917 km2 (82.0% that of Earth-That-Was)
Population: 250,000,000
Terraformed: 2415
Affiliation: Commonwealth of Nations

Verbena is the second planet of the Kalidasa system and the founder (and unofficial leader) of the Commonwealth of Nations.  Verbena itself is a federation of several sovereign entities across the planet, each tracing its lineage back to one of the original colonies on the planet in the early 25th Century.

Verbena is known for the vast forests the planet was seeded with, massive orderly rows of trees as well as many more wild and nature sections springing up since then.  Many areas of the planet, however, are cleared either through original planning or having cut away the forests as the population grew and expanded.  The people of Verbena thus are primarily farmers of these clearings or woodsman out beyond them.

Following Unification, the Alliance began to industrialize Verbena, an effort which has been successful in the last century.  However, at the time the arrival of Core interests changing their way of life prompted resistance and even small scale rebellion from the recently conquered people.  When the wave of independence began, Verbena had difficulty but eventually overthrew the significant Alliance garrison that had been stationed there in response to the earlier unrest.

Since then Verbena was instrumental in forming the Commonwealth of Nations based off of their own planetary form of loos government and military alliance.  Verbena is a leading world in the Kalidasa system but other than its political and military role in the Commonwealth, it has very little influence across the rest of the 'Verse either economically or culturally.