Ludwigia octovalvis
A hard-hitting aquatic Ruderal that plays only as a native, wilting and locking down the enemy active while its bench props it up.
Mexican primrose willow is an aquatic, one of the Ruderal categories. It is native across Africa, East Asia, North America, Oceania, South America and South Asia and has no invasive range in the game, so it only ever fields as a native card - a buffer that fights through disruption rather than a dedicated attacker. See categories for what an aquatic brings.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Surge is the starter attack from Lv 1 at 2 Sun, a clean 43 of damage. Floating Mat is the free once-per-battle ability at Lv 25: Mats the surface over β Bind, and the foe can't heal. It deals no damage but pins the enemy active in place and shuts off its healing. Tidal Surge is the advanced attack at Lv 40 for 6 Sun, the whole water column at once for 49. None of the three carries an initiative rider, so it acts in the normal turn order.
From its trait schedule it keeps two always-on traits. Allelopathy arrives at Lv 10: a wilt aura that constantly weakens whatever enemy plant is active across from it. Turion-Dormancy stacks on at Lv 68, a revive save fitting an aquatic that overwinters as a dormant bud: it has about a 40% chance to survive one otherwise-lethal hit, clinging on at roughly 25% HP. At the snapshot level of 40 only Allelopathy is live; the second trait is still ahead of it.
It carries no special combat keywords and is neither toxic nor thorny, so an attacker strikes it without recoil. It is not a climber, so it is not Moss Pole eligible. Because it is edible with a resolved leaf part, its most valuable field gear is a Nitrogen amendment for coins; a Calcium/Magnesium amendment would firm up its otherwise soft DEF.
At Lv 40 it shows 103 HP (including the +15% native cushion), 29 ATK - strong for a Ruderal - and 2 DEF, still floor-tier soft. Retreat costs 16 Sun. Its tempo is even: initiative 32 orders turn 1 and SPD 34 orders the rest, so it opens and cruises at about the same middling speed. Benched, it projects a green HP overshield bar to your active; on the field it can hold up to four of them from benched natives.
Maturing carries its HP to 190 while DEF stays low at 3 - a soft weed swelling in biomass but never in armor. Retreat rises to 33 Sun and its tempo falls to roughly one percent of cap, so the modest early speed it had at Lv 40 is spent by the endgame. What it buys with age is the durability to keep its Allelopathy wilt and Floating Mat lockdown running longer.
Aquatic is a Ruderal category. It reclaims from Specialists, dealing x1.5 to succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes, but loses to Competitors, taking x1.5 from perennial-herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf-trees. Damage is even against other Ruderals and the neutral Weird group.
For a Ruderal it is a genuinely useful battler: its ATK and move power are high for the group, and the Allelopathy wilt plus Floating Mat's Bind and heal-lock let it grind down a bulkier opponent that cannot out-race it. Its soft DEF still wants a bench to hide behind. Outside battle it earns well: edible with a leaf part, it pays x1.25 coins on a Nitrogen feed. It fights as a fast skirmisher until about Lv 22, after which its rising bulk and attack take over from its fading tempo.
Leveling trades speed for power. A plantβs 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 β native adds a HP cushion, invasive an attack edge, neutral neither β with the card at its crossover and fully grown at LvΒ 100.