Hydrangea spp.
A fast, hard-hitting shrub that can bind its target, taxes anything that strikes it, and pays the bench out when it dies.
Hydrangea is a Shrub that fights as a fast, aggressive attacker: a strong hit for a shrub, rising speed in long fights, a binding advanced move, and a contact tax on anything that answers back. It is native across East Asia, Eastern and Western North America, Oceania, South America, and South Asia, and invasive in Africa and Europe, so the arena can field it either way, native buffer or invasive attacker. It is best used offensively, since it brings damage and little else.
Its starter attack, Tick Tumble, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun and lands a plain hit of about 31 damage native / 33 invasive. The free once-per-battle ability, Nurse Shrub, arrives at level 25: Shelters the whole bench — evens their health, and calls the fallen back. The advanced attack, Thorn Wall, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (38 native / 41 invasive) and can bind the target in place, stopping it from retreating. Most of your hydrangeas sit below level 40, where only the starter is available. See Moves and statuses.
This hydrangea holds two working traits. Extrafloral Nectaries (level 10) bills any attacker 3% of its own max HP on contact, bypassing DEF and shields. Drupe Mast (level 68) fires on the card's knockout, healing each surviving benched ally 8% of its max HP. See Abilities.
It carries no special trait keywords and is non-toxic, so an attacker takes no recoil or poison for hitting it. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear can shore up its thin armor; as an invasive, offensive gear leans into its high attack — which, with a contact tax quietly billing everything that answers back, is really the point of the card.
At level 40 it reads 103 HP native / 89 invasive and 28 / 35 ATK — one of the harder invasive hits in the shrub band. DEF is just 11, low for the band, so it does not want to trade blows for long. Its tempo is back-loaded: turn 1 runs on its initiative (39) and every turn after on its SPD (50), which is much higher, so it is out-paced off the mark but pulls well ahead as a fight runs long. Retreat costs 12 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and a benched HP overshield for your active; as an invasive it draws its higher ATK from traits but pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on each damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. Link Stats.
Matured to level 100, it swells to 190 / 165 HP and 51 / 69 ATK, but DEF only reaches 21 — as a shrub it gains far more health than armor, so it stays soft and depends on out-damaging the opponent. Retreat rises to 24 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so even a mature hydrangea acts late. Maturing buys HP and bigger hits, not survivability or a passive.
As a shrub it sits in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them, but it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), 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 Hydrangea as a straightforward invasive attacker: hit hard, use the bind to trap a wounded target so it cannot flee, and let its rising speed win the later turns. It is best kept on the offense in player-versus-player (PvP) and beyond — though Drupe Mast means trading it away still pays your bench. It is inedible, so any nutrient banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins, making it a fine leveler. It leans on speed and bulk as it grows, crossing over around level 29 as a native (about 31 as an invasive) — always stronger at higher levels, 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.