Lithospermum officinale
Common gromwell (Lithospermum officinale) is a perennial herb that buffers your team where it is native and attacks where it has become invasive.
Common gromwell is a perennial herb — a soft, fast plant that leans on attack rather than defense. It is native to East Asia, Europe, and South Asia, where it plays a defensive buffer, and has become invasive in eastern North America and South America, where it fights as an attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Its starter attack, Taproot Anchor (unlocked at level 1, 2 Sun), deals 30 as a native or 33 as an invader: Anchors deep and holds the foe with it. Its once-per-battle ability, Allelochemical Priming (level 25, free), is pure utility: Primes root chemistry — Poison the foe. Its advanced attack, Rhizome Lock (level 40, 6 Sun), deals 22 native or 25 invasive: Locks the foe down underground and saps 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, Basal Rosette gives a small flat DEF bonus — the ground-hugging rosette shrugs off a little of every blow, the way it shrugs off grazing and mowing. From level 68, Resprout gives it a 60% chance to survive a single otherwise-lethal hit, clinging on at roughly a quarter of its health. It is a coin-flip-plus save, not a guarantee.
On the field it draws on field gear to shore up its weaknesses. With little natural armor it leans on amendments that add DEF or on healing gear to offset its fragility. 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 27 attack as a native, with 4 DEF. That is thin armor, so it takes close to full damage from any real attacker; its defense is its health pool and its tricks, not its DEF. Its retreat costs 16 Sun. On tempo it opens at 51 initiative (which orders the first turn) and cruises at 34 speed (which orders every turn after). It is a quick starter but a slower cruiser — it tends to land the first hit and then get out-paced. 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 34 attack outstrips its native 27; 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 50, but its armor stays low (8 DEF) — it never becomes a wall, just a bigger version of the same soft plant. Retreat rises to 33 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, Common gromwell's category (perennial herb) 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.
It is a middling card: quick and reasonably hard-hitting, especially as an invader, but with almost no armor it folds to any solid blow. Play it as a coin-earner and a fragile skirmisher that wants backup on the bench. 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 30 as a native (level 32 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.