Nasturtium officinale
A native-only, soft perennial herb that is slow off the mark but very fast in a long fight, healing as it goes — a North American buffer with no invasive form.
Watercress is a low, soft aquatic-margin Perennial herb that fights as a self-healing cruiser: light armor, plain attacks, and unusually high staying speed. It is native to Eastern North America and has no invasive form, so it only ever plays the native buffer role — there is no attacker version to build around. It is a modest card whose strength is longevity in drawn-out fights.
Its starter attack, Steady Growth, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 35 damage — a straightforward hit with no rider. The free once-per-battle ability, Chronosequence, comes in at level 25: Time on its side: +3 ATK and speed, kept. The advanced attack, Crown Division, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (42 damage) and mends the plant as it strikes. Most of your watercress sit below level 40, where only the starter move is available.
Watercress keeps a single always-on trait: Resprout. Because it draws only one eligible trait, Resprout arrives at half strength on the level 10 riser and matures on the level 68 one. When it works it lets the plant survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter health — but it triggers only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a coin-flip reprieve, not a guarantee. See Abilities.
Watercress carries no special trait keywords and is non-toxic: no contact recoil and no poison rider on being struck, so nothing punishes an attacker for hitting it. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear suits its buffering game and helps it survive to reach its fast late-fight tempo.
At level 40 watercress reads 84 HP with ATK of 27. DEF is just 4, low in the perennial-herb band, so it takes hits with very little armor. Its tempo is strongly back-loaded: turn 1 runs on a low initiative (18), so it is out-paced off the mark, but every turn after runs on a much higher SPD (48), so it is one of the more relentless herbs once a fight settles in. Retreat costs 12 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, watercress swells to 147 HP and 49 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 8 — as a soft herb it gains bulk in health, never armor, so it stays exposed to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 24 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so even its strong cruising speed collapses: a mature watercress acts last against almost anything young.
As a perennial herb, watercress is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants, 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 watercress as a native support piece built for the long game: it is slow to get going but pulls ahead in extended fights, healing as it trades. Its HP cushion and bench overshield help a fragile finisher survive, but its own damage is modest, so pair it with a stronger hitter and protect it through the opening turns. It is inedible, so any nutrient you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins, a steady growth investment. It is out-paced early and turns relentless as it levels, crossing over around level 25, so keep leveling it.
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.