Sambucus lanceolata
A native-only shrub with a hardened-leaf damage shield and a fruit-fed heal, a sturdy mid-tier bench wall.
Madeira elder is a shrub: a firmer, slower card than the weeds, built to soak hits. It is native to Africa and invasive nowhere, so it plays only the native buffer role — a +15% HP cushion when fielded, and a projected HP overshield onto your active when benched. It has no attacker role.
Its starter, Tick Tumble (Level 1, 2 Sun), deals 26 and Shakes the tick load loose onto the foe. The free ability, Bramble Barrier (25), is A wall of thorns — the foe withers against it. The advanced attack, Coppice Comeback (40, 6 Sun), deals 21 and Cut it down and it returns — heal 35%. — a genuine mid-fight heal. See Moves.
From Level 10 it holds Sclerophylly: its hardened, leathery leaves subtract a flat amount of damage from every incoming direct attack, on top of DEF (unlike DEF, this is a straight reduction applied after the damage ratio, so it blunts small hits especially well). At Level 68 Lure stacks on: while it is benched, it draws bench-reaching chip damage — splash, scatter and drifting spores that would otherwise strike a random ally — onto itself instead, shielding the rest of your bench. Neither is a heal.
No thorns or toxin keyword. A Calcium/Magnesium field gear amendment adds flat DEF and suits its wall role; it is edible (fruit), so a Phosphorus amendment — the fruit match — pays coins (see Gameplay uses).
At Level 40 it reads 103 HP and 15 ATK, with a firmer shrub DEF of 11 — several times the herbs and weeds. Retreat is 13 Sun. Its opening initiative and sustained SPD are both 21 / 21: middling and even, neither a fast starter nor a fast cruiser. Sclerophylly's flat reduction stacks on top of that DEF to make it stubborn against chip damage.
By Level 100 HP reaches 190 and DEF firms to 22 — a shrub hardens into a solid mid-band wall, well short of a tree's armor but far above the soft categories. ATK grows modestly to 25, retreat to 25 Sun, and its already-slow tempo eases further. This card gets better with age: more HP, more armor, the same low speed.
As a Competitor it is strong into ruderals (annual-forb, grass, aquatic, bulb) for 1.5x and weak into Specialists (succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte) for 0.667x; neutral against other Competitors and Weird. See the succession wheel.
A dependable defensive card: field it as a wall that shrugs off small hits and heals itself with its advanced attack, or bench it to feed an overshield. It is edible with a resolved fruit part, so feeding it Phosphorus (the fruit fertilizer) pays the 1.25x coin bonus; any other nutrient banks XP. As a Vulnerable species it also pays a larger stewardship bounty when caught. It is a fine coin-earner and a solid single-player bench piece, though without an attacker role it will not carry an aggressive team on its own.
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.