Prunus umbellata
A native-only broadleaf-tree with thorn recoil and heartwood armor that hardens into a genuine wall, the strongest card of its batch.
Hog plum is a broadleaf-tree: the heavyweight of the categories, slow but armored, and it grows into a genuine wall. It is native to eastern North America and invasive nowhere, so it plays only the native buffer role — a +15% HP cushion fielded, and an HP overshield projected onto your active when benched.
Its starter, Limb Lash (Level 1, 2 Sun), deals 40 and Two lashes from a heavy limb. The free ability, Leaf Litter (25), is Buries the ground in litter — the foe's whole bench withers. — bench-wide pressure. The advanced attack, Transpiration Drain (40, 6 Sun), deals 29 and Pulls water up through the foe and keeps it. See Moves.
From Level 10 it carries Thorns: any attacker that lands a damaging hit on it takes a flat HP recoil in return — so a multi-hit attack eats the recoil once per hit. At Level 68 Heartwood Core stacks on, adding armor that scales with the card's level, up to a substantial DEF bonus at maturity, so its wall only gets harder the higher it climbs. Neither is a heal; this is a punishing defensive card, not a self-sustaining one.
It carries the thorns keyword, so biting it hurts. Its growth habit does not make it Moss-Pole-eligible. Its natural DEF is already high for its level, but a Calcium/Magnesium field gear amendment pushes the wall further; it is edible (fruit), so Phosphorus pays coins.
At Level 40 it reads 103 HP and 23 ATK, with a tree-tier DEF of 26 — an order of magnitude above the soft categories, and damage against it scales down sharply because armor is diminishing, not flat. Retreat is 15 Sun. Its opening initiative is 42 and sustained SPD is 30: a vigorous starter that leads turn one, then gets out-paced as the fight wears on — the classic tree tempo.
By Level 100 it becomes a wall in earnest: DEF climbs to 59 (from wood density plus Heartwood Core), HP to 190, and ATK to 41. Retreat rises to 31 Sun — an old tree is deeply rooted and expensive to pull — and its early speed collapses to near its floor. Everything about maturing this card is upside on defense; the only cost is turn order, which matters little.
As a Competitor it hits ruderals (annual-forb, grass, aquatic, bulb) for 1.5x and is resisted to 0.667x by Specialists (succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte); neutral against other Competitors and Weird. Note that poison ignores its armor entirely, so a poison attacker is its real counter. See the succession wheel.
The strongest card of this group and a proper anchor: field it as a wall that punishes attackers with Thorns and only hardens with level, or bench it to feed a large overshield. It is edible with a resolved fruit part, so Phosphorus (the fruit fertilizer) pays the 1.25x coin bonus; other nutrients bank XP. It fights as a quick skirmisher only very briefly — being bulk-rich, it is power-favored from a low level (about Level 20) and heavyweight the rest of the way, so there is every reason to level 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.