Lavandula angustifolia
A soft perennial herb that can shrug off one lethal hit and heal as it fights - a European native or a global invader.
Common lavender is a low, soft Perennial herb that fights as a fragile self-healer with one built-in second chance. It is native to Europe and invasive across Africa, Eastern North America, Oceania, South America, and South Asia, so the arena can field it as a native buffer or as an invasive attacker. It has almost no armor, so it lives on healing and luck rather than bulk. See nativity.
Its starter attack, Rhizome Creep, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 27 damage as a native and 31 as an invasive. The free once-per-battle ability, Perennating Bud, arrives at level 25: Breaks a stored bud: heal 40%. The advanced attack, Herbaceous Assault, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (29 native / 33 invasive) and mends the plant as it strikes. Most of your lavenders sit below level 40, where only the starter is available. No move carries an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn. See Moves.
Lavender keeps one always-on trait: Resprout. It draws only one eligible trait, so Resprout comes in at half strength on the level 10 riser and matures on the level 68 one. When it works it lets the plant survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter health - but it triggers only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a coin-flip reprieve, not a guarantee. See Abilities.
It carries no trait keywords and is non-toxic - no contact recoil, no hazard ring, no poison on its strikes. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear helps offset its paper-thin armor; as an invasive, offensive gear presses its higher ATK.
At level 40 it reads 103 HP native / 89 invasive, with ATK of 17 native versus 28 invasive - a meaningful invasive step up. DEF is just 1, at the soft floor of the perennial-herb band, so it takes hits with almost no armor. Its tempo is front-loaded: turn 1 runs on its initiative (40) and every turn after on its SPD (36), so it leads off the mark but is out-paced in a long fight. Retreat costs 11 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and a benched HP overshield onto your active; as an invasive it pays self-damage to its own bench on each damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, lavender swells to 190 HP native / 165 invasive and 30 / 57 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 2 - a soft herb gains health, never armor, so it stays vulnerable to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 21 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature lavender acts last against almost anything young. Leveling buys HP and a matured Resprout, but no wall.
As a perennial herb, common lavender is 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 hit 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 cheap, self-healing skirmisher that hopes to cheat one death with Resprout. As a native it is a passable buffer behind a tougher plant; as an invasive its damage is decent but its fragility means it works best striking and retreating rather than standing in. It is inedible, so any nutrient you feed it banks x1.25 XP toward faster leveling rather than coins. In player-versus-player (PvP) matches it opens fast until about level 28 as a native (around level 30 as an invasive), then relies on HP - always stronger leveled up.
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.