Rosa multiflora
A tough thicket whose leathery leaves blunt every incoming hit.
Multiflora Rose is a shrub, and it plays as a Shrub card. It is native to East Asia, where it fights as a buffer, and invasive in Eastern North America, where it takes the attacker role.
None of its moves carries an initiative rider, so it never seizes first strike or an extra turn — its turn order is set by its tempo (see Stats). As a mild plant it also carries a Poison rider: every damaging attack it lands Poisons the target (1 stack). Poison is damage-over-time that ignores DEF and slips past the overshield, so it wears down even armored walls.
Read off the card's actual trait schedule, it keeps these always-on traits, arriving at the levels shown:
It carries no certain trait keywords beyond the schedule above. It is not Moss Pole-eligible (it is not a climber). A Calcium/Magnesium amendment is the most useful slot for its soft body; a Cloche shields an attacker from contact poison.
Read at level 40, where every move is unlocked: DEF 11, retreat 14 Sun. Its tempo splits the usual way — initiative 47 orders turn 1 and SPD 39 orders turn 2 onward — and it opens quicker than it cruises — a fast starter that gets out-paced as the fight drags on.
Its two nativity roles read differently. Native, it is a buffer: HP 103 (a +15% cushion baked in) and a benched HP overshield for your active, with ATK 19. Invasive, it is an attacker: HP 89 and ATK 33 — the higher figure is the introduced-range term the engine adds for a spreading invader, showing as the card matures. The invasive form 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.
Maturity firms it into the shrub band — DEF reaches 22, well above any weed — while HP grows to 190. Retreat rises to 27 Sun and its tempo sinks to its floor; a sturdy mid-weight, not a glass cannon.
Multiflora Rose is in the Competitor group on the succession wheel. It deals x1.5 to the Ruderal group (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) and takes x1.5 from Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), against which its own damage is resisted to x0.667.
A tough thicket whose leathery leaves blunt every incoming hit. Note it did NOT keep its Rosaceae thorns, so it leans on toughness rather than recoil. A sturdy mid-weight. It is edible (fruit), so feeding it Phosphorus pays x1.25 coins; any other nutrient banks x1.25 XP instead. The Total power gallery below marks its crossover — the level where its rising bulk overtakes its falling speed — at level 29 at home and 30 abroad; either way it only grows 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.