Cornus chinensis
A native-only broadleaf tree that plays as a slow, armored bench buffer rather than an attacker.
Cornus chinensis is a broadleaf tree (Broadleaf tree) that plays as a durable support piece. It is native to East Asia and is invasive nowhere in the current arena regions, so it fills the native-only role: a benched cushion and a slow, hard-to-shift wall, never an attacker.
It opens with Limb Lash, its starter attack, unlocked at Lv 1 for 2 Sun: Two lashes from a heavy limb. As a native it deals about 36 damage. Its free once-per-battle ability, Canopy Recruitment, unlocks at Lv 25 and costs no Sun: Pushes a sapling into the canopy: heal 35% and +3 ATK. Its advanced attack, Canopy Closure, arrives at Lv 40 for 6 Sun and deals about 25: Closes the canopy β nothing below it recovers. Neither attack carries an initiative rider, so it never jumps the turn order.
This card keeps two always-on traits. Buttress Roots arrives first, at Lv 10: it makes the trunk immune to Bind, so nothing can pin it in place. Network stacks on much later, at Lv 68: while this tree sits on your bench it projects a gold Sun overshield bar onto your active plant β a backup Sun reserve that any active can use, native or not. Below Lv 68 it has only the Bind immunity, so for most of a card's climb the trunk is unpinnable but lends no Sun.
It carries no special trait keywords. As a broadleaf tree it is not a climber, so it takes no Moss Pole; ordinary field gear suits it, and a Ca/Mg soil amendment stacks flat DEF onto an already-hard trunk. Its natural place is the bench, where its native buffer projects onto your active.
Read at Lv 40, where every move is unlocked, it has 121 HP as a native (the +15% native cushion is already baked in) and 26 DEF, firm for a mid-level tree and still climbing. Its ATK is a modest 18. On tempo it is a quick starter and a slow cruiser: its opening initiative (39) outruns its sustained SPD (33), so it tends to move first on turn 1 but is out-paced from turn 2 onward. Retreat costs 14 Sun. Benched, it projects a green HP overshield bar onto your active β thin, because it is a Least-Concern species β and, from Lv 68, the gold Sun bar as well. See stats.
Matured, this tree hardens into a wall. Its DEF climbs from 26 at Lv 40 to 59 at Lv 100 β broadleaf-tree armor scaled by wood density β while HP rises to 233 and ATK to 31. Retreat rises to 29 Sun: an old tree is deeply rooted and slow to pull back. Its tempo, already fading at Lv 40, sinks toward its floor, so a grown tree acts late almost every turn. What maturing buys is durability; what it costs is speed.
As a broadleaf tree it sits in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for Γ1.5, and is on the losing side against Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), whose hits land at full weight while its own are resisted.
Play it on the bench as a native buffer: it feeds your active a green HP overshield and, once it reaches Lv 68, a gold Sun bar as well. As an active it is a slow, tanky wall that trades on DEF and staying power, not damage β its ATK is low and it has no attacker role, so it wins by outlasting rather than out-hitting and wants harder-hitting teammates to close games. It is not edible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks Γ1.25 XP for growth rather than coins. Honestly it is a support and family-tree collection piece more than a carry. Its bulk makes it power-favored from a very low level β it leans on raw HP and DEF over turn order almost its whole life, with the crossover around Lv 19.
Leveling trades speed for power. A plantβs 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 β native adds a HP cushion, invasive an attack edge, neutral neither β with the card at its crossover and fully grown at LvΒ 100.