Terminalia phanerophlebia
A native-only broadleaf tree built as an armored wall - low attack, very slow to open, but hard to shift and able to set the whole stand alight.
Lebombo Cluster leaf is a broadleaf-tree, one of the Competitor categories and a canopy tree. It is native to Africa and has no invasive range in the game, so it only ever fields as a native card: a defensive wall, never a dedicated attacker. See categories for how trees fight.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Branch Slam is the starter attack from Lv 1 at 2 Sun, a heavy 32. Stand Replacement is the free once-per-battle ability at Lv 25: A fire that takes the whole stand — the foe burns, and so do its neighbours. It deals no damage directly but Burns the foe and its neighbours on the bench. Lignin Lockdown is the advanced attack at Lv 40 for 6 Sun, a low 22 that goes woody and stalls and wilts the foe rather than hitting hard. No move carries an initiative rider.
From its trait schedule it keeps two always-on traits, and notably neither is the usual canopy-tree pair. Buttress-Roots arrives at Lv 10: it makes the tree immune to Bind, so it can never be trapped or held in place and can always retreat. Heartwood-Core stacks on at Lv 68: extra DEF that grows with level, small at first but building to about +8 DEF by Lv 100 - a late-game wall-hardener. Because it drew these, it holds neither the Network Sun-overshield trait nor the Mycorrhiza bench-heal, so do not expect a benched-ally heal from it. At the snapshot level of 40 only Buttress-Roots is active.
It carries no special combat keywords and is not toxic or thorny. As a canopy tree, benching it projects a gold Sun overshield bar onto your active, backing up their Sun once the base bar runs dry. It is not a climber, so it is not Moss Pole eligible. Its best field gear plays to its strength - a Calcium/Magnesium amendment stacks even more DEF onto an already-hard tree.
At Lv 40 it shows 103 HP (including the +15% native cushion), a low 18 ATK, and 27 DEF - already far firmer than any weed, and rising. Retreat costs 16 Sun. Its tempo is lopsided: initiative 13 is very low, so it is slow to act on turn 1 and will usually be struck first, while SPD 34 is middling, so it cruises a little better than it opens. It is a slow heavyweight, not a racer. Benched it projects the gold Sun bar above; on the field it can also hold up to four green HP bars from benched natives.
This is where a tree earns its keep. HP climbs to 190 and DEF hardens to 63, a genuine wall built from wood density - the widest floor-to-cap jump of any category. Retreat rises to 33 Sun as it roots ever deeper, and its tempo sinks to about one percent of cap, so it is slower than ever to move. Age buys it near-unkillable durability at the cost of ever getting the first hit.
Broadleaf-tree is a Competitor category. Competitors crowd out Ruderals, dealing x1.5 to annual-forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs, but are outlasted by Specialists, taking x1.5 from succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes. Damage is even against other Competitors and the neutral Weird group. Remember that Poison ignores its DEF entirely, so a poisoner is its real counter despite the armor.
This is a defensive anchor, not a finisher. Its attacks are weak, but its job is to soak hits behind its wall of DEF, Burn the enemy bench with Stand Replacement, and stall the active with Lignin Lockdown while your attackers do the work. Its low initiative means it rarely leads an exchange, so pair it with faster teammates. It is not edible, so any fertilizer banks x1.25 XP rather than coins - useful for leveling it toward that Lv 100 wall. As a bulk-rich tree its power outweighs its tempo from very low levels, so it is a heavyweight almost throughout, with the crossover landing around Lv 9.
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.