Cornus racemosa
The Gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa) is a Shrub that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Gray dogwood is a thicket-forming wetland dogwood of eastern North America. In battle it plays as a Shrub. It is native to Eastern North America and listed as invasive nowhere, so it fills the defensive buffer role only.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Drupe Drop, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 27 as a native and 27 as an invasive. Its effect: Drops fruit — also nicks the bench.
The free ability, Nurse Shrub (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Shelters the whole bench — evens their health, and calls the fallen back.
The advanced attack, Blackthorn Barrage (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 43 native and 43 invasive: Every thorn it has, all at once. 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 Extrafloral Nectaries, ant bodyguards that chip the attacker whenever the plant is struck. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Lignotuber, which turns fire to its advantage — a Burn applied to it heals a slice of health instead of only hurting. 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. 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 12 — a firm mid band — shrubs harden well past a weed, short of a tree. It retreats for 14 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (35) and every turn after by its SPD (35). 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 (121 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 that firmness has grown into real armor at 24 DEF, with HP toward 233; retreat rises to 29 Sun and its tempo has fallen to about 1% of cap. It ends as a tough, slow body that trades blows rather than racing.
It is a Competitor on the succession wheel: it crowds out Ruderals (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is outlasted by Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), which turn its 1.5× disadvantage against it. 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 firm-DEF shrub, native-only, with ant-bodyguard recoil and a fire-fed Lignotuber. A durable buffer that punishes attackers and even benefits from Burn; unremarkable on offence. It has no resolved edible part, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — a growth boost, not an income stream. On the total-power curve its native crossover falls around Level 18: 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.