Bidens tripartita
The Trifid bur marigold (Bidens tripartita) is a Annual forb that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Trifid bur marigold is a wetland annual with clinging barbed seeds and edible young leaves. In battle it plays as a Annual forb. It is native to Africa, East Asia, Europe, Eastern North America, Western North America, Oceania, and South Asia and listed as invasive nowhere, so it fills the defensive buffer role only.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Seed Scatter, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 30 as a native and 30 as an invasive. Its effect: Scatters seed across the foe's whole back row.
The free ability, Germination Flush (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: The seed bank breaks at once: +4 ATK, kept for the match.
The advanced attack, Scatterseed (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 27 native and 27 invasive: Scatters wide — the foe's bench sickens and wilts. Most cards you meet are well below the Level 40 snapshot these numbers are read at, and unlock their kit slot by slot as they level.
This card actually keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool with the rest discarded. From Level 10 it carries Ephemeral Bolt, extra ATK while it stays above half health that fades once it drops low. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Reseed, which leaves a fresh Seedling token on your bench on a knockout, once per match. Both are working traits — there are no inert abilities in the game — and each arrives at full strength on the riser shown, so for much of the card's life it plays with only the earlier of the two.
It carries no Toxin or Thorns trait, so it inflicts no contact recoil on an attacker. Because its body is soft, a Cloche is a valuable ward against the damage-over-time Poison that bypasses its overshield, and a Cal-Mag amendment shores up its thin armor. Its edible leaf means the matching Nitrogen (N) fertilizer pays bonus coins (see Gameplay uses). See field gear for the full item list and nativity for how region sets its role.
Read at the Level 40 snapshot, its DEF is 1 — a soft floor — annual forbs sit in the lowest DEF band, so it relies on speed and pressure, not armor. It retreats for 12 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (52) and every turn after by its SPD (52). Its opening and sustained tempo sit close together, so its turn order holds roughly steady through a fight. No region lists it as invasive, so it plays purely as a buffer: a +15% HP cushion (103 HP) and, from the bench, an HP overshield onto your active. It has no attacker stance. The overshield is a bench-built extra ring: up to four green HP bars from benched natives (drained by direct damage first, but bypassed by poison, recoil and splash) and up to two gold Sun bars from benched Network trees.
By Level 100 its DEF has barely left the floor even as biomass HP swells toward 190 — a bigger, softer body, not a tougher one. Its retreat creeps up to 23 Sun and its once-brisk tempo has collapsed to about 1% of cap, so the fast opener it was as a seedling is gone; late, it is a soft mass that must win before it is worn down.
It is a Ruderal on the succession wheel: it reclaims ground from Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is crowded out by Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees), which hit it 1.5× and shrug off its own attacks. The Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and vascular parasites) sit off the wheel and trade neutrally with it. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
A soft ruderal with even, fast tempo and edible leaves — its value is mostly economic, and its Reseed keeps a seedling on your bench after a knockout. Native-only and frail; harass and bench it, and feed it for coins. Because its edible part is a resolved leaf, feeding it Nitrogen pays ×1.25 coins; any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead. On the total-power curve its native crossover falls around Level 36: below it the card leans on its turn-order edge, above it on raw bulk and attack — it is monotonically stronger as it levels, so keep growing it.
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.