Lobelia cardinalis
Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) is a perennial herb that plays as a native-only buffer in Supplant.
Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis, Campanulaceae) is a perennial herb in Supplant's battle system. It is native to eastern North America, western North America and South America and invasive nowhere on record, so it is a native-only card: a buffer, never an attacker. As a soft-bodied perennial herb it leans on its moves and traits rather than a heavy guard.
Crown Split (starter, unlocks at Lv 1, 2 Sun) — Splits at the crown and strikes from both. It hits for about 44.
Hemicryptophyte Hold (ability, Lv 25, free once per battle) — Hunkers at ground level — Bind and Wither the foe. An ability deals no damage; it is pure utility.
Deep-Seated Grudge (advanced attack, Lv 40, 6 Sun) — Roots in deep and refuses to let go. It hits for about 38.
The numbers above are read at Lv 40, the level its whole kit is unlocked; a card you catch far below that has only the moves whose levels it has reached.
This card keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool and locked in for good — the rest of the pool was dropped. They arrive on the level risers, one at a time, so for most of a card's life it is playing with just the first.
From Lv 10: Bitter principle — bitter sesquiterpene compounds that Wither any attacker that strikes it, cutting into the foe's own healing.
From Lv 68: Contractile roots that pull the crown deeper each checkup, adding a point of DEF at a time up to a small cap, so it hardens the longer a fight runs.
Read these off the card's own trait schedule; the category pool lists more, but this plant carries only these two. Learn more at Abilities.
No Moss Pole here — that fits only climbers (vines and epiphytes), and this is a perennial herb. With little DEF of its own, a Calcium/Magnesium amendment is worth more here than on a wall — every flat point counts on a soft card. A Cloche helps against Poison-heavy foes. See Field gear for the full kit.
At Lv 40 this card reads 103 HP and 27 ATK, with 4 DEF and a 16-Sun retreat. It has no invasive range, so there is no attacker split to show — it plays as a native buffer only.
Its opening tempo (51) sits above its sustained tempo (32): it is a quick starter that fades — likely to land the first hit on turn 1, then get out-paced from turn 2 on. Play it to open, not to grind. Both tempo stats fall as the card levels.
Benched as a native, it projects an HP overshield bar onto your active, sized by its rarity.
See Stats and the overshield for how these bars work.
By Lv 100 HP swells to 190 and ATK to 49, but DEF barely leaves its soft band at 8 — biomass grows, armor does not. Retreat rises to 33 Sun, and the inverted tempo has sunk to about its 1% floor, so whatever opening edge it had as a seedling is gone. It matures into a bigger, slower body that still takes hits like the soft card it is.
Roughly USDA zone 4a — it should come through winters that bottom out near -34 °C. Colder than that and it wants shelter, a wall, or a winter indoors. Its measured climate envelope runs from a cold edge near -5.0 °C to a warm edge near 27.7 °C — a Cool-temperate · wide-ranging band. Treat the zone as a rough guide rather than a promise: it comes from a regression whose error runs a little over one full zone, which is why the reading says "roughly."
On a card you will see one of four climate chips, read for wherever you are standing (so it shifts as you travel). Thrives here means your winter low and summer heat both sit inside its range, and it earns x2 battle XP. In range means it survives but sits near an edge, for x1.25 XP. Colder than its range or Hotter than its range means your winters or summers run past what it tolerates, for no bonus — and "colder than its range" is usually just a fact about the winter outside, not a verdict on the plant. Climate changes battle XP and nothing else: not damage, stats, growth speed or the economy.
As a perennial herb it belongs to the Competitor succession group. It hits the Ruderal categories — grasses, annual forbs, aquatics and bulbs — for ×1.5 and shrugs their blows down to ×0.667. The Specialists reverse that: succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes strike it for ×1.5 while resisting what it deals. Against other Competitors, and against the off-wheel Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and parasites), the exchange is even. See Succession & weaknesses.
A soft support card. It has little DEF to lean on, so it earns its place through its traits and moves rather than by trading blows.
Be honest about its ceiling: with floor-tier DEF it is not a card that carries a hard fight on its own. It is a fine single-player coin-earner and a family-tree collection piece, best fielded with a sturdier bench behind it.
It is not eaten in-game, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins.
One framing note: it fights as a fast skirmisher until about Lv 29, after which its rising bulk and attack take over from its falling tempo. That is about which edge dominates, not about being stronger young — a card is always stronger in raw HP, ATK and DEF at higher levels, so level it up. The Total power gallery below the article shows the crossover and the fully grown card.
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.