Athyrium distentifolium
A neutral collectible fern with no arena nativity role — unpalatable to attackers and, late, a bench-chipping spore drift.
Alpine lady fern is a Fern that fights as a plain, neutral card. It is neither native nor invasive anywhere on the arena wheel, so it never takes the native buffer role or the invasive attacker role — it fields only as a neutral card with no nativity bonus or penalty. It is a modest collectible with a couple of defensive traits and little punch.
Its starter attack, Frond Whip, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun for about 34 damage as a plain hit. The free once-per-battle ability, Frond Chemistry, arrives at level 25: Bitter frond chemistry — the foe is poisoned and weakened. The advanced attack, Carboniferous Comeback, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (29) and mends the plant as it strikes. Most of your ferns sit below level 40, where only the starter is available. None of its moves carry an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn.
Alpine lady fern keeps two always-on traits. Unpalatable, a defensive trait that makes it a poor target, arrives at level 10 at full strength. Spore-drift arrives on the level 68 riser and chips the enemy bench each turn. Both are always on once earned, not chance effects. See Abilities.
It carries no offensive trait keywords and is non-toxic, so nothing recoils an attacker: no contact recoil and no poison rider. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a neutral card it takes no nativity bonus, so general defensive field gear such as a Cloche is the natural fit to shore up its thin body.
At level 40 Alpine lady fern reads 103 HP and 22 ATK. Because it has neither role, it gains none of the native HP cushion and bench overshield and none of the invasive attack bonus or Faustian bench self-damage — it plays as a plain neutral card. DEF is only 2, at the fern floor, so it takes hits with almost no armor. Its tempo is a slow start into a faster cruise: turn 1 on its initiative (32), every turn after on its SPD (34), so it is out-paced early but relentless as a fight drags on. Retreat costs 16 Sun. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, it reaches 190 HP and 40 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 3 — as a soft fern it gains bulk in health, never armor, so it stays vulnerable to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 33 Sun and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature fern acts last against most young cards. Maturing buys health, unpalatability, and bench chip, but no wall.
As a fern, Alpine lady fern is in the Specialist succession group. It strikes Competitor plants (perennial herbs, shrubs, trees, vines) for x1.5 and takes only x0.667 from them, but it is weak to Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, bulbs), which hit it for x1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Specialists and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
With no native or invasive role, Alpine lady fern is a neutral, collectible-tier card. It can hold a bench slot and lean on unpalatability, self-heal, and its late bench-chipping spores, but with no nativity bonus and little armor it does not carry games. Its value is also economic — it is inedible, so any nutrient you feed it banks x1.25 XP toward leveling. It fights as a slow skirmisher early and leans on its health as it matures, crossing over around level 27; leveling it still helps, so there is no reason to hold it back.
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.