Lactuca canadensis
A soft, fast native annual-forb that races off the mark but has almost no armor to survive a return blow.
Canada lettuce is an annual-forb — a fast, disposable weed built around speed rather than staying power. It is native across eastern and western North America and South America, and it is recorded as invasive nowhere, so on the board it plays a native-only role: a buffer that lends a small HP cushion, never an introduced attacker. It is a weak card in absolute terms, useful mostly as a bench contributor and a family-tree collection piece.
Its opening attack, Hypergrowth (unlocks at level 1), costs 2 Sun and hits for 32: "Bolts upward mid-fight: +3 ATK, kept for the match." The free once-per-battle ability, Old-Field Takeover (level 25), does "Overruns the whole field — the foe's bench withers and sickens." Its advanced attack, Groundcover Grab (level 40), costs 6 Sun for 29 and "Grabs low and holds — the foe is pinned and sapped." Most of your copies will be far below the level 40 snapshot where all three are unlocked, so early on you will lead with the starter alone.
From level 10 it carries Photoblastic — a light-triggered regrowth that heals a small slice of its maximum HP each checkup, but only in sunny weather. At level 68 it gains Reseed: on a knockout it leaves a fresh Seedling token on your bench, once per match, so the card trades its own life for a replacement body. Below level 68 it has only the sunny self-heal.
It carries no thorns, no toxin, and no keyword traits — striking it costs an attacker nothing. It is not a climber, so no Moss Pole. As a soft weed it wants cheap defensive gear (a Ca/Mg amendment for a little flat armor) far more than anything offensive.
At level 40 it reads HP 103, ATK 27, DEF 1, with a retreat cost of 12 Sun. Its opening tempo is 44 and its sustained tempo 41 — both high, so it is a quick starter that also cruises fast. As a native it lends a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield bar onto your active. Its DEF is near-floor and stays soft; direct damage scales by ATK ÷ (ATK + DEF), so its lack of armor means almost every hit lands close to full.
By the cap it swells to HP 190 and ATK 49, but DEF only reaches 1 — a soft annual gains biomass, not a wall. Retreat rises to 23 Sun as it roots deeper, and its tempo, inverted, sinks to about 1% of cap: the fast opener of its youth is gone. Maturing buys survivability through raw HP, not durability.
Canada lettuce is in the Ruderal succession group. It hits Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes) for ×1.5 and is hit for ×1.5 by Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs, broadleaf trees). It trades evenly with fellow Ruderals.
Play it as a fast native buffer that opens with a first strike and lends a cushion from the bench, not as a front-line brawler — its floor-tier armor means it folds to any real attacker. It is edible with a leaf you eat, so feeding it a Nitrogen amendment pays ×1.25 coins (any other fertilizer banks ×1.25 XP instead), which makes it a steady low-effort coin earner between fights. It fights as a quick skirmisher early and gains bulk with level, but turn order is only a small edge — level it up rather than holding 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.