Cornus controversa
A durable, tiered-canopy broadleaf tree that plays as a native wall and, once mature, shrugs off Bound, Spread and Splash entirely.
Giant dogwood is a broadleaf tree β a durable, tiered-canopy Broadleaf tree that plays as a defensive bench card. It is native to East Asia and South Asia and is recorded as invasive nowhere in the current regions, so it holds only the native buffer role: an HP wall that props up your team.
Limb Lash unlocks at Lv 1 and costs 2 Sun for 38 across two lashes from a heavy limb. The free once-per-battle ability Old-Growth Reaction (Lv 25) deals no damage: Centuries of shade β the foe stalls and withers.. The advanced attack Canopy Closure (Lv 40, 6 Sun) lands 26 and shuts down the foe's recovery. No move carries the initiative rider.
Two always-on traits, arriving far apart. Buttress Roots comes in at Lv 10: the trunk cannot be Bound, so a pin that would skip its turn fails against it. Canopy Gap stacks on at Lv 68 β a mature crown that leaves gaps makes it immune to bench-reaching Spread and Splash effects, so multi-target attacks that would clip it from the side simply miss. Both are defensive, in keeping with its wall role.
No trait keywords, and a broadleaf tree is not a climber, so no Moss Pole. Gear it as a native wall β DEF or overshield support. See field gear.
At Lv 40 it carries 121 HP behind 26 DEF β a firm tree-tier wall β with the +15% native cushion and a projected HP overshield while benched. Its attack is middling at 22 ATK. Its opening tempo 36 edges its sustained tempo 32, so it is a slightly quicker starter than cruiser, though a fairly slow mover either way. Retreat costs 14 Sun. See stats.
It matures into a wall: HP to 233, DEF to 59 on wood density, with ATK only reaching 40. Retreat rises to 29 Sun and its tempo pips sink to about a percent of cap. Leveling buys durability and near-total status protection from its two traits, at the cost of its early speed.
A broadleaf tree is a Competitor. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for x1.5 and resists them to x0.667, but loses to Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes) at x1.5.
Play it as a native bench anchor: it soaks hits behind a real DEF wall, projects an overshield, and β once both traits are online β shrugs off Bound, Spread and Splash entirely, which makes it a clean answer to control and multi-target teams. Its own damage is modest, so pair it with a finisher. It is not edible, so fertilizer banks x1.25 XP toward leveling rather than coins. Its bulk keeps it power-favored from a low level β it plays as a heavyweight for almost its whole life, crossing over around Lv 16.
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.