Hedlundia thuringiaca
A neutral cultivated tree with thorn recoil, a late bench overshield, and a heavy late-game wall of armor.
Cultivated Whitebeam is a Broadleaf tree that punishes melee with thorns and hardens into a wall late. It is a cultivated form that is neither native nor invasive anywhere, so the arena fields it on its neutral base line — it carries no nativity bonus and no nativity penalty. It is a solid defensive card: real armor, contact recoil, and a canopy overshield make it a capable back-row anchor.
Its starter attack, Acorn Drop, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 26 damage and splashing a little onto the opposing bench. The free once-per-battle ability, Canopy Recruitment, arrives at level 25: Pushes a sapling into the canopy: heal 35% and +3 ATK. The advanced attack, Heartwood, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (31 damage) and mends the plant as it strikes. Most of your whitebeams sit below level 40, where only the starter is open. None of its moves carry an initiative rider. See Moves.
Cultivated Whitebeam keeps two always-on traits. Thorns arrives on the level 10 riser and deals contact recoil to anything that strikes it — a reliable, non-random punish. Network arrives on the level 68 riser: while benched, it projects a gold Sun overshield bar onto whichever plant is active, a canopy-tree effect that makes it a strong support from the back. See Abilities.
Cultivated Whitebeam carries the thorns keyword, the source of its contact recoil — attackers take damage for hitting it, though this is a physical thorn effect, not poison. It holds no toxin: non-toxic, so no poison rider and no hazard ring. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a neutral card it takes no nativity gear bonus either way; defensive field gear (a Cloche, a Ca/Mg amendment) best complements its wall-and-thorns game. See nativity.
At level 40 it reads 103 HP, with ATK of 22 — as a neutral card it fights on its base stats with no native HP cushion and no invasive ATK boost. DEF is 24, mid-band for a broadleaf tree, so it is genuinely sturdy. Its tempo runs slow then relentless: turn 1 uses its initiative (46), every turn after its SPD (33), so it is out-paced off the mark but the faster cruiser in a long fight. Retreat costs 14 Sun. Being neither native nor invasive, it neither projects a native HP overshield of its own nor pays the invasive Faustian bench cost. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, Cultivated Whitebeam climbs to 190 HP and 40 ATK, and as a tree its DEF reaches 55 — it becomes a heavily armored wall, one of the sturdier cards you can field. Retreat rises to 28 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature whitebeam acts last against almost anything young. Maturing buys the network overshield and a deep armor pool at the cost of speed.
As a broadleaf tree, Cultivated Whitebeam is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants, which strike 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 Cultivated Whitebeam as a defensive anchor: park it in the back to feed the overshield, then bring it forward to soak hits, where thorns tax every attacker that touches it. It is a wall first and a support second, not a finisher, and its neutral stance means it plays the same in any region. It is inedible, so any nutrient banks ×1.25 XP, making it a steady growth-earner. It fights as a slow-building cruiser that leans on its armor as it grows, crossing over around level 27 — always stronger higher up, so keep leveling 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.