Carex hamata
A native-only sedge with a heavy twin-cut opener and bench-wide reach, but the paper armor of a grass.
Birdcatching sedge is classed as a grass — a soft, damage-capped category built for speed and area pressure. It is native across eastern and western North America and South America and invasive nowhere, so it plays a native-only buffer role. It hits surprisingly hard for a grass and reaches the whole enemy bench, but has almost no armor.
Its opening attack, Razors (level 1, 2 Sun), lands two razor passes for 46: "Two passes of razor-edged blades." The ability Fire Climax (level 25) does "A grassland that burns to stay a grassland — fire on the foe, and fire through its own ranks." — fire that burns both sides. Its advanced attack, Creeping Runner (level 40), costs 6 Sun for 34 across the enemy bench: "Rhizomes run beneath the field, striking the foe's whole bench."
From level 10 it carries Silica Phytoliths — a contact chip: an attacker that strikes it wears itself down on the abrasive blades and takes a small hit back. At level 68 it adds Spore-drift: each checkup it chips one random benched enemy, a standing background threat to the foe's back row. Below level 68 it has only the contact chip.
No thorns, no toxin. Not a climber, so no Moss Pole. Its bench-reaching attacks and Spore-drift make it an area-pressure card; its weakness is durability, so keep it out of straight trades.
At level 40 it reads HP 103, ATK 23, DEF 2 (floor), retreat 16 Sun. Opening tempo 32 and sustained tempo 34 are both moderate, so it moves around par with an average foe. As a native it lends a +15% HP cushion and a bench overshield. Note its attacks are damage-capped as a grass, so raw power tokens sit a hair below what an uncapped card would show.
By the cap, HP swells to 190 and ATK to 43, but DEF reaches only 3 — a grass gains biomass, not armor. Retreat rises to 33 Sun and its tempo sinks near floor. Maturing buys HP and reach, never durability.
Birdcatching sedge is a Ruderal: ×1.5 into Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), ×1.5 taken from Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs, broadleaf trees), even with fellow Ruderals.
Play it as a native area-pressure buffer: chip the whole enemy bench with its wide attacks and Spore-drift while lending a cushion from your own bench. Its thin armor means it is a fragile solo card that wants backup benched. It is not edible, so any fertilizer banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — feed it to level. It skirmishes on tempo early and leans on bulk after about level 23; level it up.
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.