Morus rubra
A broadleaf tree that walls up behind heavy armor and feeds your bench a Sun shield — an Eastern North American native or a wide invader.
Red mulberry is a woody Broadleaf tree that fights as an armored support tree: it soaks hits behind a real wall of DEF, shares a Sun shield with your active, and later mends a benched ally. It is native to Eastern North America and invasive across Europe, Western North America, and South America, so the arena can field it either way — as a native buffer or as an invasive attacker. It is a sturdy, valuable bench anchor whose defense and support outweigh its ordinary damage.
Its starter attack, Branch Slam, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun and slams a heavy branch down for about 35 damage as a native and 35 as an invasive. The free once-per-battle ability, Shade Tolerance, arrives at level 25: Waits out the dark: heal 40%, and the foe can't heal. — a mid-fight mend that leans on its deep roots. The advanced attack, Lignin Lockdown, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (24 native / 25 invasive) and draws on the heartwood to strike and heal itself as it hits. Most of your mulberries sit below level 40, where only the starter is unlocked. None of its moves carry an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn. See Moves.
Red mulberry keeps two always-on traits on separate risers. Network arrives at full strength on the level 10 riser: while it sits benched, it projects a Sun overshield onto your active — the canopy-tree support trait that lets a fragile front-liner spend from your reserve and absorb more pressure. On the level 68 riser it adds Mycorrhiza, which heals a benched ally when it fires, but only about 60% of the time, so treat that bench heal as a coin-flip bonus rather than a guarantee. See Abilities.
Red mulberry carries no trait keywords — no thorns, no toxin, no spore chemistry — so nothing punishes an attacker for striking it; it is non-toxic, so nothing chemical bites back. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear — a Cloche, or a calcium/magnesium amendment — stacks onto its already-high DEF; as an invasive, offensive gear lets its heavy branch matter more.
At level 40 red mulberry reads 103 HP native and 89 invasive, with ATK of 25 native versus 27 invasive. DEF is 26, up in the broadleaf-tree band where a tree forms a genuine wall, so it soaks hits far better than a herb or grass; damage is diminishing armor (ATK ÷ (ATK+DEF)), not flat subtraction, so that DEF earns its keep the harder it is hit. Its tempo is front-loaded for a tree: it opens on a relatively high initiative (51) and can land the first hit, but its lower SPD (32) means it is out-paced from turn 2 on. Retreat costs 16 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active; as an invasive it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench each damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, red mulberry climbs to 190 HP native / 165 invasive and 45 / 50 ATK, and its DEF reaches 59 — a broadleaf tree keeps building its armor wall, so a mature mulberry is genuinely hard to dent and stands in front for a long time. Retreat rises to 33 Sun as it roots in, and its tempo has sunk to about 1% of cap, so its early-initiative edge fades and it acts last against almost anything young. Maturing buys it a fortress of bulk and armor at the cost of ever moving first.
As a broadleaf tree, red mulberry sits in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which strike it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play red mulberry as a defensive anchor and bench support: its tree-tier DEF lets it stand in front, its Network trait feeds your active a Sun overshield, and its late Mycorrhiza can top up a benched ally. As a native it is an excellent buffer; as an invasive it trades its support edge for pressure, though the Faustian self-damage chips your own bench. On economy it is a strong pick: it is an edible fruit plant, so feeding it Phosphorus pays ×1.25 coins, while any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead. It opens fast but leans on its bulk and armor as it levels, crossing over very early — around level 25 as a native and 27 as an invasive — because a tree is already massive as a seedling; and it is always stronger at higher levels in raw stats, so there is no reason to hold it back.
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.