Hydrangea quercifolia
A well-armored native shrub from eastern North America with a self-buff, a pinning hit, and dead foliage that plates it up once it drops to half HP.
Oak-Leaf Hydrangea is a sturdy Shrub that fights as an armored wall: low attacks but real DEF for its tier. It is native to Eastern North America and has no invasive card, so the arena only ever fields it in its native, bench-support role. Its damage is weak, so it is a defensive support card first and foremost.
Its starter attack, Drupe Drop, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 25 damage — a plain, low hit. The free once-per-battle ability, Thicket Formation, arrives at level 25: Closes into thicket — Bind, and the foe can't heal. It raises the plant's own ATK, helping its otherwise weak offense. The advanced attack, Briar Cage, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (20 damage) and pins the target, holding it in place as it lands. Most of your hydrangeas sit well below level 40, where only the starter is available. None of its moves carry an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn. See Moves.
Oak-leaf hydrangea carries a trait on each riser, and the first is straight botany: this shrub genuinely holds its dead foliage all winter. Marcescence (level 10) turns that into +4 DEF at half HP or below. Drupe Mast (level 68) cashes the plant out when it dies, healing each surviving benched ally 8% of its max HP. See Abilities.
It carries no trait keywords — no thorns, no toxin chemistry — so nothing punishes an attacker for hitting it. It is non-toxic: no contact recoil and no poison rider baked in. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear stacks on its already-good armor to make it a hard, if passive, wall.
At level 40 it reads 103 HP with 20 ATK — its ATK is low even for a herb, since it has no invasive form and never traded its bulk for offense. DEF is 11, solidly in the shrub band, so it genuinely blunts incoming hits. Its tempo is back-loaded: turn 1 runs on a slower initiative (37) that gets out-paced, but from turn 2 on its much faster SPD (52) takes over, so it opens behind and then keeps pace well. Retreat costs 12 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, it grows to 190 HP and 35 ATK, and its DEF climbs to 21 — as a shrub it hardens into a genuine armored wall, though its low ATK means it never becomes a real threat on its own. Retreat rises to 24 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature hydrangea acts last against almost anything young but is very hard to remove.
As a shrub it sits in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for x1.5 and takes only x0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which strike it for x1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play it as a native wall whose job is to soak hits and protect a hitter, not to deal damage — its DEF, HP cushion, and pinning move let it lock down and outlast a target while a stronger ally does the finishing. Its own offense is weak, so pair it with a real attacker. It is inedible, so any nutrient you feed it banks x1.25 XP rather than coins. It opens slow and leans on its armor as it levels, crossing over around level 31; it is always stronger at higher levels in raw stats, so 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.