Persicaria madagascariensis
Bristly Snakeroot (Persicaria madagascariensis) is a soft perennial herb and perennial herb card in Supplant — a native-only buffer in the Competitor succession group.
Bristly Snakeroot is a soft perennial herb in Supplant, fielded in the perennial herb category. It is native to Africa and invasive nowhere in the game's regions, so it only ever plays the native, defensive role — there is no attacker version of this card. Its nativity — set by the arena region you fight in — is the spine of how it plays; see Nativity.
Its kit unlocks in three stages, and most cards you own sit well below the level where all three are live (the numbers on this page are read at level 40, where every slot is unlocked). See Moves and Abilities.
None of its attacks carry the initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn on a killing blow — it takes its turns in the normal order.
A card keeps at most two always-on traits, one per riser, and the rest of its category pool is dropped. This one holds:
See Abilities.
For field gear, a Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment adds flat DEF, worth more on a plant this soft than any single point of its own. Its growth habit is not a climbing or epiphytic one, so it does not take a Moss Pole.
Read at level 40: it carries 103 HP (with the native +15% cushion already in) and 25 ATK on 4 DEF (little armour). Benched as a native, it projects part of the segmented green HP overshield onto your active plant, sized by how threatened this species is; that shield drains front-first against direct hits but is bypassed by poison, recoil and splash. Damage is diminishing armour — a hit scales by ATK ÷ (ATK + DEF), and poison ignores DEF entirely. On Sun (cap 120, refilling in real time), the starter costs 2 and the advanced attack 6; retreating costs 16 Sun.
It is slow to open but faster once the fight settles: its sustained speed (34, which sets turn 2 onward) outruns its initiative (13, which sets turn 1), so it often takes the first hit and then out-paces the foe from the second turn on.
Grown to level 100, its HP climbs to 190 while DEF only inches up to 8 — biomass swells but armour stays soft, so it hardens as a bigger target rather than a tougher one. Retreat rises to 33 Sun, and its early tempo edge has faded to about its 1% floor by the cap.
It belongs to the Competitor succession group. As a competitor it hits Ruderals — annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs — for ×1.5 damage, and is resisted to ×0.667 by Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes). Weird-group plants are neutral both ways. There is no type effectiveness beyond this wheel; see Weaknesses & Resistances.
It only ever fights as a native, so play it as a buffer: field it for its HP cushion, or bench it to feed the overshield to a sturdier active. It is not an attacker. It is a middling card overall: fine for earning coins in single-player battles, but soft enough to want backup on the bench in a tougher fight. It is inedible, so any fertiliser you feed it banks ×1.25 XP — useful for levelling. It leans on its opening speed early and crosses onto a power footing around level 11, after which its accumulating HP and attack matter more than its fading turn-order edge. It still only gets stronger as it levels — turn order is about a 5% lever.
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.