Robinia hispida
A binding shrub that locks the foe down and blocks its healing, plays as a sturdy buffer at home and a harder-hitting attacker abroad, and can arrive with a free nitrogen head start.
Rose acacia is a shrub, and it plays as a Shrub card built around binding the foe in place. It is native to eastern North America — where it fights as a buffer — and invasive in Europe, East Asia and western North America, where it takes the attacker role. As a legume it can also show up with a free fertilizer already applied (see Gameplay uses).
None of these moves carries an initiative rider, so Rose acacia never grabs first strike or an extra turn — its turn order is set by its tempo (see Stats).
The card keeps two drawn traits from the shrub pool, arriving at two different levels:
Rose acacia carries no certain trait keywords beyond what its schedule keeps above, and it is not Moss Pole-eligible (it is not a climber). Its best field gear is a Calcium/Magnesium amendment to push its already-decent shrub DEF higher, or a Cloche on the invasive attacker to shrug off contact poison. As a legume it interacts specially with Nitrogen — see below.
Read at level 40, Rose acacia is firmer than most early cards: DEF 11, retreat 14 Sun, with initiative 44 ordering turn 1 and SPD 42 ordering turn 2 onward — a fairly quick starter that stays middling afterward.
Its two nativity roles read very differently. Native, it is a buffer: HP 103 with a +15% cushion baked in, a benched overshield for your active, and a modest ATK of 19. Invasive, it is an attacker: HP 89 and a much higher ATK of 32 — the jump is the introduced-range term the engine adds for a spreading invader, and it only shows as the card matures. The invasive form also pays "Faustian" self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack (10 + level - 1, growing as it levels) and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out.
As a shrub, Rose acacia hardens with age: DEF climbs to 23 — firmly into the shrub band, well above any weed — while HP grows to 190 native. Retreat rises to 28 Sun as it roots in, and its inverted tempo sinks to near its floor, so the quick opening it had as a seedling fades to a crawl. A grown Rose acacia is a sturdy, bind-heavy mid-weight rather than a glass cannon.
Shrub is a Competitor category on the succession wheel: it hits the Ruderal group (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for x1.5, and takes x1.5 from Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), against which its own damage is resisted to x0.667. Lead it into weeds and grasses; keep it away from conifers and ferns.
At home, play Rose acacia as a buffer and a soft wall: it binds the foe so it cannot retreat, blocks its healing, and chips back at anything that hits it, while feeding an overshield from the bench. Abroad, it is a respectable attacker with real ATK, though the Faustian bench cost means you do not want a full bench of fragile allies behind it. As a legume, one in four caught in the wild arrives with the Nitrogen amendment already equipped — a free head start worth roughly 300 coins — but the nodules decompose after about a month, so it is an economy freebie, not lasting combat power. Rose acacia is not edible, so fertilizer you feed it banks x1.25 XP rather than coins. It fights as a quicker skirmisher until about level 30, after which its bulk and attack take over — but it only gets stronger with level, so there is never a reason to under-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.