Fragaria virginiana
A soft perennial herb that leads turn one, opens with poison, guards itself with thorns and a last-ditch resprout, and plays as a neutral base card belonging to neither role.
Wild strawberry is a soft, low Perennial herb that fights as a light attacker with a poison opener and a couple of defensive tricks. It is neither native nor invasive to any region the game tracks, so the arena always casts it as a neutral base card — it gets neither the native buffer role nor the invasive attacker role. It is a modest but characterful card: fragile, but able to punish attackers and cling to life.
Its starter attack, Volatile Oils, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 26 damage and leaving poison on the target. The free once-per-battle ability, Autogenic Reaction, comes in at level 25: Remakes its own ground: +6 ATK and heal 25%. The advanced attack, Herbaceous Assault, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (31 damage) and strikes plainly. Most of your strawberries sit below level 40, where only the starter is available, and none of its moves carry an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn.
Wild strawberry keeps two always-on abilities. Thorns arrives on the level 10 riser and returns a little contact damage to anything that hits it. Resprout arrives on the level 68 riser, letting it survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter health — but it triggers only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a coin-flip reprieve rather than a guarantee. Neither is dropped once earned.
It carries the thorns keyword, which recoils on attackers, but no other trait keywords, and as a terrestrial herb it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. It is non-toxic on contact — its poison comes from the starter attack, not a contact recoil — so it shows no hazard ring for merely being touched. Because it plays as a neutral base card, general-purpose field gear fits it best; there is no native or invasive form to tune gear around.
At level 40 it reads 103 HP and 22 ATK in its base form. As a neutral card it gets neither the native +15% HP cushion and bench overshield nor the invasive ATK bonus, Faustian self-damage, or prize concession — it simply fights at its base numbers. DEF is just 2, the soft perennial-herb floor, so it takes hits with almost no armor. Its tempo is front-loaded: turn 1 runs on a higher initiative (42) and every turn after on a lower SPD (32), so it leads the opening exchange and is out-paced in a long fight. Retreat costs 14 Sun. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, wild strawberry swells to 190 HP and 40 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 4 — as a soft herb it gains bulk in health, never armor, so it stays vulnerable to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 29 Sun and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so its early lead is gone and it acts last against almost anything young. Maturing buys health and a bigger poison threat, never toughness.
As a perennial herb, wild strawberry is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which hit it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play wild strawberry as a scrappy early attacker: open with the poison strike, let thorns punish whatever swings back, and lean on resprout as a chance at one extra turn. As a neutral card it fits any slot without buffing or draining your bench, which makes it easy to drop into a team, though its thin armor caps how long it lasts. Its real strength is economic: it is an edible-fruit plant, so feeding it Phosphorus pays ×1.25 coins, while any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP toward growth — a reliable early coin-earner. It fights as a quick skirmisher until about level 30, after which its accumulated health carries it further — there is no reason to hold it back.
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.