Penstemon laevigatus
A native-only perennial herb that leads turn one then fades, healing to outlast fights it cannot armor its way through.
Eastern beardtongue is a slender Perennial herb that fights as a quick-opening, self-healing staller. It is native to Eastern North America and has no invasive form, so the arena only ever fields it as a native buffer for your bench. It is a fragile, unspectacular card: it can lead the first exchange, but with almost no armor it survives by healing and outlasting rather than by winning trades. See nativity.
Its starter attack, Herbal Draught, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun for about 29 damage — a plain hit with no rider. The free once-per-battle ability, Allelochemical Priming, arrives at level 25: Primes root chemistry — Poison the foe. Its advanced attack, Deep-Seated Grudge, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (37 damage) and mends the plant as it strikes. Most of your specimens sit below level 40, where only the starter is available. See moves.
Eastern beardtongue keeps a single always-on trait: Resprout. It draws only one eligible trait, so Resprout comes in 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 safety net. See abilities.
It carries no trait keywords — no thorns, no toxin — so nothing punishes an attacker for hitting it, and it is non-toxic with no hazard ring. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear such as a Cloche or a Ca/Mg amendment helps most, since its base DEF is so thin.
At level 40 it reads 103 HP with 23 ATK; there is no invasive form, so it has only the one attack line. DEF is just 1, at the very floor of the perennial-herb band, so it takes hits with essentially no armor. Its tempo is front-loaded: turn 1 runs on a high initiative (38), so it usually leads the opening exchange, but every turn after runs on a slightly lower SPD (36), so it is out-paced once the fight settles. Retreat costs 11 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 it swells to 190 HP and 41 ATK, but its DEF barely moves to 1 — as a soft herb it gains bulk in health and almost nothing in armor, so even at the cap it folds to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 21 Sun and its tempo sinks to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature plant acts last against almost anything younger. Maturing buys HP and healing volume, never toughness.
As a perennial herb it sits in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for x1.5 and is struck for only x0.667 by them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which hit it for x1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play it as a native bench-sitter and early skirmisher: its high initiative lets it get the first hit in, and its heal plus resprout stretch fights out, but its paper-thin DEF means it should never stand in against a real attacker for long. Its best home is behind a stronger hitter, cushioning it with the overshield. Its value is also economic: it is inedible, so any nutrient banks x1.25 XP rather than coins, funding steady growth. It fights as a fast opener whose thin bulk only slowly takes over, crossing around level 26 — but it is always stronger in raw stats higher up, so never 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.