Citharexylum spinosum
A broadleaf tree that plays as an armored wall and bench medic native, and a slow but sturdy attacker where it has naturalized.
Spiny fiddlewood is a Broadleaf tree that plays as a wall: high armor, slow, and hard to shift. It is native to South America, where it plays as a native buffer, and invasive across Africa, Oceania, and South Asia, where it becomes an attacker. Like most trees it is bulky and defensive from early on, trading speed for staying power.
Its moves unlock across three levels. The starter Branch Slam unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun: A heavy branch slams down. It hits for 34 native and 35 invasive. The free once-per-battle ability Nurse Log unlocks at level 25 and costs no Sun: The fallen feed the next: heal 25%, even the bench, and call back the lost. That heal, bench-evening, and revive make it a bench medic. The advanced attack Barking Mad unlocks at level 40 and costs 6 Sun: Sheds bark like shrapnel — the foe wilts. It deals 37 native and 38 invasive. None of its moves carry the initiative rider.
It keeps two always-on traits, arriving at different levels. Buttress roots come in at level 10: the flared trunk cannot be pinned, so the card is immune to Bound and can always retreat or reposition. Canopy gap stacks on at level 68: keeping a gap from its neighbors, it is immune to splash and spread damage, so blows aimed at the card next to it never reach it. Both are defensive immunities rather than heals, in keeping with a wall-type card; for most of its life it has only the Bound immunity, with the splash and spread immunity arriving late.
It carries no special trait keywords. For field gear, a native wall wants defensive amendments to push its already-high armor further — a Calcium/Magnesium amendment adds flat DEF — while an invasive copy wants offense to make its slow, heavy hits count; a Cloche wards Poison, which is the counter to a high-DEF card since Poison ignores armor. It is a tree, not a climber, so it takes no Moss Pole.
At level 40, HP is 103 as a native (with the +15% cushion) against 89 invasive, and ATK rises from 23 native to 27 invasive. Its defining stat is DEF: at 29 it is by far the hardest card in this batch, a real wall, and because damage scales by ATK divided by (ATK plus DEF), a small attacker struggles to punch through it while Poison bypasses it entirely. On tempo, initiative 34 orders the first turn and SPD 13 orders the turns after; its initiative is respectable but its SPD is very low, so it can land an early blow and is then heavily out-paced — a classic quick-first, slow-after tree. Retreat costs 16 Sun. As a native it projects a green HP overshield bar from the bench; as an invasive it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on each damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes on a knockout.
It hardens into a true wall. HP climbs to 190 native and 165 invasive, ATK to 41 native and 51 invasive, and DEF to 67 — a genuine tree-tier armor value drawn from its wood density, far beyond anything a shrub or herb reaches. Retreat rises to 33 Sun as the tree roots in, and its already-low tempo has bottomed out, so a grown copy almost never moves first past turn one. It buys enormous durability at the cost of any speed at all.
As a broadleaf tree it is a Competitor succession group card. It deals x1.5 to Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) and resists them down to x0.667, but it loses to Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), who hit it for x1.5. Against other Competitors and the Weird categories the matchup is neutral.
Play it as an anchor. Native, it is a wall and a bench medic: park it in front, soak hits its high DEF blunts, and use its ability to heal, even out, and revive the bench. Its two immunities — Bound, then splash and spread — make it awkward to lock down or chip indirectly. Invasive, it is a slow but sturdy attacker; the ATK jump is modest and its low SPD means it rarely moves first, so it works best behind a faster teammate that sets up while it soaks. Its main counter is Poison, which ignores its armor, so a Cloche is worth carrying. It is not edible, so any fertilizer banks x1.25 XP toward leveling rather than coins; treat it as a defensive core and a family-tree entry. As a bulk-heavy tree it is power-favored from a low level — its crossover is early, around level 9 native and level 11 invasive — so it leans on raw power over tempo for almost all of its life.
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.