Monarda citriodora
A soft, fast Ruderal annual that plays only as a native buffer, leaning on its bench and stubbornly reseeding when knocked out.
Lemon beebalm is an annual-forb, one of the soft, quick-growing Ruderal weeds. It is native to eastern and western North America and has no invasive range in the game, so it only ever fields as a native card: a fragile buffer that leans on its bench rather than a dedicated attacker. See categories for what an annual-forb is built to do.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Hypergrowth is the starter attack, available from Lv 1 at 2 Sun; it deals 30 and bolts the plant upward for a lasting +3 ATK, so it doubles as a self-buff. Germination Flush is the free once-per-battle ability, unlocked at Lv 25: The seed bank breaks at once: +4 ATK, kept for the match. It deals no damage. Arrowseed is the advanced attack at Lv 40 for 6 Sun, hitting for 37 with a barbed seed that festers afterward. None of these carries an initiative rider: despite being the reseed archetype, Lemon beebalm takes its turns in the normal order (turn 1 on initiative, later turns on SPD).
Read from its trait schedule, Lemon beebalm keeps two always-on traits that arrive at different times. Ephemeral Bolt comes in at Lv 10: it grants +4 ATK while the plant is above half HP, and that bonus vanishes the moment it drops below half - it burns bright early in an exchange, then fades. Reseed stacks on at Lv 68: when the plant is knocked out, the parent genuinely dies and concedes its prize, but a fresh Seedling token immediately steps up in its place. At the snapshot level of 40 only Ephemeral Bolt is active; Reseed is still ahead of it.
It carries no special combat keywords and is not toxic or thorny, so there is no contact recoil to strike into. It is a forb rather than a climber, so it is not Moss Pole eligible. Its best field gear is economic: because it is edible with a resolved leaf part, a Nitrogen amendment turns feeding into coins, while a Calcium/Magnesium amendment would add a little flat DEF to an otherwise paper-thin defence.
At Lv 40 it shows 103 HP (including the +15% native cushion), 22 ATK, and only 1 DEF, the floor-tier armor typical of a Ruderal weed. Retreat costs 11 Sun. Its tempo is middling: initiative 32 sets turn 1 while SPD 37 sets every turn after, so it is a shade quicker in the sustained fight than at the opening. While benched it lends a green HP overshield bar to your active; on the field it can itself hold up to four of those bars from benched natives. Being native-only, it never pays the invasive self-damage that attackers do.
By the endgame the floor-to-cap law swells its HP to 190, but its DEF barely leaves its band at 1 - biomass without armor, the mark of a soft weed. Retreat climbs to 21 Sun as it roots down, and its once-middling tempo has sunk to roughly one percent of cap, so the early-mover edge it showed at Lv 40 is gone.
Annual-forb sits in the Ruderal group. Ruderals reclaim from Specialists, hitting succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes for x1.5, but are crowded out by Competitors, taking x1.5 from perennial-herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf-trees. Against other Ruderals and the neutral Weird categories, damage is even.
This is a weak battler in absolute terms: floor DEF and modest ATK mean it wants a strong bench behind it and works best as a native buffer feeding its overshield, not as a front-line attacker. Its saving grace is Reseed, which makes it stubborn to remove once it reaches Lv 68. Outside battle it is a solid coin earner: it is edible with a leaf part, so a Nitrogen amendment pays x1.25 coins, and it is an easy family-tree addition. It fights as a fast skirmisher until about Lv 24, after which its growing bulk takes over the balance from its fading tempo.
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.