Kolkwitzia amabilis
Beautybush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) is a shrub that buffers your team where it is native and attacks where it has become invasive.
Beautybush is a shrub — a firm defender at home and a fast invader that can shield its bench. It is native to East Asia, where it plays a defensive buffer, and has become invasive in Europe, eastern North America, and western North America, where it fights as an attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Its starter attack, Chipmunk Horde (unlocked at level 1, 2 Sun), deals 25 as a native or 27 as an invader: Sends the hoarders through the foe's whole bench. Its once-per-battle ability, Chaparral Climax (level 25, free), is pure utility: Owns the dry hillside: heal 60% and +4 ATK. Its advanced attack, Sucker Punch (level 40, 6 Sun), deals 32 native or 35 invasive: Comes up from the roots before the foe sees it.
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, Sclerophylly reduces incoming direct-attack damage by a flat few points — tough, leathery leaves shedding part of every blow. From level 68, Lure works as a taunt: wherever the game would pick one plant at random to take splash, drift, or spread damage, this carrier soaks the hit instead, shielding its benchmates. Below half health the effect drops off until it recovers.
On the field it draws on field gear to shore up its weaknesses. A Calcium/Magnesium amendment adds flat DEF that suits its firmer frame. Native and invasive copies want different gear — the native buffer favors defensive and healing picks, the invader favors damage and speed.
Read at level 40, where every move is unlocked, it holds 103 health and 18 attack as a native, with 10 DEF. That is a firm mid-tier armor — armor is diminishing rather than flat, so it shaves a real fraction off small and medium attackers, though a heavy hitter still punches through. Its retreat costs 12 Sun. On tempo it opens at 40 initiative (which orders the first turn) and cruises at 53 speed (which orders every turn after). It is slow off the mark but relentless afterward — it often cedes the opening hit, then out-paces the foe from turn 2. 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. As an invader its attack identity is built from how widely it has spread, so its 26 attack outstrips its native 18; it pays for that aggression with self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack, and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out.
Grown to level 100, its health swells to 190 and its attack to 31, and its armor firms up to 20 DEF — genuinely tough, though never a tree-class wall. Retreat rises to 22 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, Beautybush's category (shrub) 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 useful support shrub: mid armor, high speed as an invader, and a high-level Lure that draws splash and drift damage off your other plants. A good bench protector and a capable attacker across its introduced range. 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 32 as a native (level 34 as an invader), 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.