Polygonum lapathifolium
A cosmopolitan annual-forb weed that plays for tempo and chip damage, useful mainly as a bench overshield donor.
Pale persicaria is an annual-forb: a soft, fast ruderal weed built for early speed and chip damage rather than staying power. It is native across a very wide range — Africa, East Asia, Europe, eastern and western North America, Oceania, South America and South Asia — and invasive nowhere, so it only ever plays the native buffer role. Fielded, it fights with a +15% HP cushion; benched, it projects an HP overshield onto whichever card is active. It has no attacker role.
Its starter, Colonize (unlocks at Level 1, 2 Sun), is a pioneer-spread attack: it ignores the target's armor and carries no fixed damage number — it hits harder each time it lands. The free once-per-battle ability, Ruderal Rush (25), is Weedy haste — a burst of speed, kept for the match. — a burst of speed kept for the rest of the match. The advanced attack, Choke Bloom (40, 6 Sun), deals 44 and Crowds the foe out, sapping its strength. All three moves are live at the Level 40 snapshot below.
From Level 10 it carries Rapid Cycling: at each battle checkup it gains a point of sustained SPD, up to five, so it accelerates the longer a fight runs. At Level 68 Ballistic Dispersal stacks on — when this plant faints it flings seed that chips every enemy for a small share of their maximum HP, a parting shot rather than a save. Both are always-on and fire reliably; neither is a heal, so it has no in-battle sustain of its own.
It carries no combat keywords — no thorns, no toxin. Its growth habit does not qualify it for a Moss Pole. Because its DEF is paper-thin, a Calcium/Magnesium field gear amendment (flat DEF) does the most for it; being inedible, any nutrient you feed it banks growth XP rather than coins.
At the Level 40 snapshot it reads 103 HP and 32 ATK with the native cushion, and its DEF is only 2 — a soft ruderal that armors almost not at all. Retreat costs 16 Sun. On turn order, its opening initiative is 14 and its sustained SPD is 34: it is slow off the mark but quicker as the fight goes on. Benched natives on your team stack green HP bars onto your active as an overshield.
By Level 100 its HP swells to 190 and ATK to 61, but DEF barely moves, reaching only 3 — a soft weed gains biomass, never armor. Retreat climbs to 33 Sun as it roots, and its inverted tempo has sunk to a sliver, so the turn-1 speed advantage it leans on early is essentially gone by the endgame.
As a ruderal it is strong against Specialist categories (succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte), landing 1.5x damage, and weak into Competitors (perennial-herb, vine, shrub, broadleaf-tree), dealing 0.667x. Against other ruderals and the off-wheel Weird categories it is neutral both ways. See the succession wheel.
This is a soft coin-and-collection card, not a battle centerpiece. Its best job is on the bench as an overshield donor for a sturdier active; fielded, it works as a fast chipper into Specialist teams but folds quickly once hit. Inedible, so feeding it any fertilizer banks the 1.25x XP boost rather than coins. It fights as a fast skirmisher until about Level 11, after which its growing bulk and attack take over — but turn order is only a minor lever, so level it freely; it is stronger, not weaker, mature.
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.