Angelonia biflora
A soft Perennial herb card that punishes attackers and slowly builds armour over a long fight.
Tortoise Flower is a Perennial herb card with both roles: native to South America and invasive in Africa, Oceania and South Asia. Native it is a cushioned bench piece; invasive it is a sharper attacker. See nativity and categories.
The starter attack, Volatile Oils, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun, reading 23 native and 27 invasive. Releases volatile oils — Poison the foe.
The free once-per-battle ability, Perennating Bud, unlocks at level 25 and costs no Sun. Breaks a stored bud: heal 40%.
The advanced attack, Herbaceous Assault, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun, reading 29 native and 32 invasive. A season's growth thrown at once — the foe wilts. A real step up from a soft starter. See moves.
Bitter Principle arrives on the first riser at level 10 at full strength. When this card is struck, the attacker takes Wither and loses attack power for the rest of the fight — no turn or Sun spent.
Contractile Roots stacks on at level 68 and works by accumulation: it adds a little armour every checkup, building to a ceiling as the fight goes on. Roots pulling the crown deeper. Both traits therefore reward the same thing — staying on the field — which gives this card a coherent plan despite its thin stat line.
The species record lists no toxicity and no trait keywords, so no poison rider applies. For field gear, anything that gets it through the early turns pays off, since its defence improves the longer it survives. Its growth habit is not vine, epiphyte or hemiepiphyte, so a Moss Pole does not apply.
At level 40 native reads 103 HP and 15 ATK; invasive reads 89 HP and 25 ATK. The native attack figure is very low; the invasive step is a real improvement. Armour is 1, the lowest reading available, before Contractile Roots accumulates. Retreat is a cheap 11 Sun. Opening tempo is 35 and sustained tempo is 34, both middling. Invasive it pays Faustian bench damage per damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes on knockout. See stats.
By level 100 native reaches 190 HP and 25 ATK, invasive 165 HP and 49 ATK, with printed armour only at 1. The soft-herb divergence. Retreat rises to 21 Sun and the inverted tempo has fallen to its floor. Longer fights at the cap suit both of its traits.
Perennial herb is Competitor: strong into Ruderal — annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs — and weak to Specialist, meaning succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes. See weaknesses and resistances.
A card that wants to stay in. Both traits build value across turns, so pulling it out early throws away what makes it distinctive — and its cheap retreat is therefore more of an escape hatch than a plan.
Native it hits very softly and should be treated as a pure blocker. Invasive it has enough attack to be worth attacking with. Either way it is a slow-burn card that loses to burst damage before its defence accumulates.
It is not eaten, so a soil amendment earns no matching fertiliser coins and instead banks the ×1.25 XP an inedible plant pays. See the battle lab.
Leveling trades speed for power. A plant’s tempo (SPD + INI, the turn-order edge) fades as it grows, while its power (HP + ATK + DEF, net of the rising Sun cost to retreat) climbs. The crossover is the level where power overtakes tempo: below it the plant is a fast skirmisher, above it a heavyweight. Shown for each stance this plant can actually hold — native adds a HP cushion, invasive an attack edge, neutral neither — with the card at its crossover and fully grown at Lv 100.