Euphrosyne xanthiifolia
Marsh elder (*Euphrosyne xanthiifolia*) is a annual forb that holds neither a native nor an invasive role, so it fields a plain neutral card.
Marsh elder (Euphrosyne xanthiifolia) is an annual forb, a fast, fragile pioneer in battle terms. It is registered as neither native nor invasive in any battle region, so it always fields its plain neutral card — no native health cushion, no invasive attacking edge. Read across the fight it is middling off the mark but noticeably faster once the fight settles.
The kit fills in as the card levels — most of your copies will be well below the snapshot level of 40 used for the numbers here.
This card keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category's pool and locked in once and for all — everything else the pool offered was dropped.
It carries no special keyword traits — no innate toxin, thorns, carnivory or succulence — so it plays as a straight annual forb. Its growth habit is not recorded as a climbing one, so it does not take a Moss Pole. For field gear, a native copy leaning into the defender role wants a Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment to firm up its otherwise thin DEF; an attacker copy would rather spend the slot on the fertilizer that suits its role, and a Cloche is worth holding if you expect a poison-heavy opponent. See nativity for how region sets its role and abilities for the trait model.
Read at the snapshot level of 40, where every move is unlocked: 89 HP, 1 DEF, tempo of 31 opening / 43 sustained, and a 12 Sun retreat cost. Its Sun bar caps at 120 and refills in real time; from Level 52 it also regenerates Sun mid-battle, and a Level 85 capstone makes the starter free. Its DEF is soft (1 at the snapshot level), the low annual forb band, so it leans on health and recovery rather than armor. See stats for the full model.
Grown to the cap, its HP swells to 165 but its DEF barely leaves the soft band it started in (1) — biomass without armor, the signature of a soft-bodied annual forb. The retreat cost rises to 23 Sun, and the inverted tempo that made it quick when young has fallen to roughly 1% of cap. It ends the climb as a big health pool that still takes hits on the chin, so it wants recovery and positioning rather than a trading war.
By category it belongs to the Ruderal succession group. On the type wheel, Ruderal deals extra damage to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes) and takes extra from Competitor plants (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees); a strong matchup lands at ×1.5 and a resisted one at ×0.667. Everything off those two edges — including the Weird categories — is neutral. See weaknesses and resistances.
Holding neither role, it is a neutral utility card — no cushion and no attacking bonus — so it earns its slot on its moves and traits rather than on a nativity edge. In absolute terms this is a fragile card: a fine coin-earner and collection piece in single-player, but it wants backup on the bench rather than carrying a fight alone. It is inedible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP — a steady way to level a collection piece. Leveling steadily trades falling turn-order speed for rising bulk and attack: it fights as a fast skirmisher up to about Level 30, after which its power takes over — it is monotonically stronger the higher you level it, so there is never a reason to hold it back. The Total power panel below charts this trade-off for each stance it can hold.
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.