Hieracium scabrum
Rough hawkweed (Hieracium scabrum) is a perennial herb that plays a native buffer, with no introduced range to make it an attacker.
Rough hawkweed is a perennial herb — a soft plant with a heavy single strike and an unpinnable root. It is native to eastern North America and has no introduced range, so it only ever plays the native buffer role — there is no attacker scenario for it.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Its starter attack, Rhizome Creep (unlocked at level 1, 2 Sun), deals 30 as a native: Creeps underground into the foe's back row. Its once-per-battle ability, Hemicryptophyte Hold (level 25, free), is pure utility: Hunkers at ground level — Bind and Wither the foe. Its advanced attack, Deep Root Strike (level 40, 6 Sun), deals 43 native: Draws on deep roots for a heavy blow.
These are the always-on traits this card actually keeps, and the level each one arrives at (a plant draws at most one trait per growth stage). From level 10, Basal Rosette gives a small flat DEF bonus — the ground-hugging rosette shrugs off a little of every blow, the way it shrugs off grazing and mowing. From level 68, Deep Taproot makes it immune to Bind — the taproot simply cannot be pinned.
On the field it draws on field gear to shore up its weaknesses. With little natural armor it leans on amendments that add DEF or on healing gear to offset its fragility.
Read at level 40, where every move is unlocked, it holds 103 health and 25 attack as a native, with 1 DEF. That is thin armor, so it takes close to full damage from any real attacker; its defense is its health pool and its tricks, not its DEF. Its retreat costs 12 Sun. On tempo it opens at 34 initiative (which orders the first turn) and cruises at 36 speed (which orders every turn after). Its opening and sustained tempo are close, so it holds a steady place in turn order across the fight. As a native it carries a 15% health cushion (103 versus 89 as an invader), and while benched it projects a green overshield bar onto your active plant, sized by how threatened it is.
Grown to level 100, its health swells to 190 and its attack to 45, but its armor stays low (1 DEF) — it never becomes a wall, just a bigger version of the same soft plant. Retreat rises to 23 Sun as the older plant grows more rooted, and its once-quick tempo has sunk to a sliver — it goes late in turn order now. Maturing buys it raw bulk and hitting power; it costs it the speed edge it had as a seedling.
In the succession type chart, Rough hawkweed's category (perennial herb) belongs to the Competitor group. Ruderal, Competitor, and Specialist form a wheel: Competitor hits Ruderal plants (annual-forbs, grasses, aquatic plants, and bulbs) for 1.5× damage, and takes 1.5× from Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, and epiphytes), resisting each the other way at about two-thirds. The off-wheel Weird categories are neutral both ways.
A fragile card whose value is one big hit (its Deep Root Strike) and a taproot that cannot be Bound. Almost no armor caps it hard; treat it as a finisher off the bench and a collection piece. Native-only. It is not a coin-earner through fertilizer — feeding it any nutrient banks 1.25× experience rather than coins, so its off-battle value is leveling and family-tree collection. On the power curves below, it fights as a fast skirmisher until about level 23, after which its growing bulk and attack take over from its fading speed — a shift in which edge dominates, not a sign it is weaker when grown.
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.