Toxicodendron vernix
A native-only eastern North American shrub-herb that poisons on contact, opens fast, and can survive one lethal hit.
Poison sumac is a Perennial herb that fights as a contact hazard: it poisons on its opening attack and punishes anyone who strikes it. It is native to Eastern North America and has no invasive card, so the arena only ever fields it as a native buffer for your bench — there is no attacker version to play. It is a defensively minded card built around its poison rather than its damage.
Its starter attack, Rhizome Creep, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 30 damage and leaving the target Poisoned (see statuses). The free once-per-battle ability, Chronosequence, comes in at level 25: Time on its side: +3 ATK and speed, kept. It mends the plant. The advanced attack, Bitter End, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (30 damage) as a plain, harder hit. Most of your sumac sit well below level 40, where only the starter is available. No move carries an initiative rider.
Sumac keeps a single always-on trait: Resprout. Because it draws only one eligible trait, Resprout arrives on the level 68 riser. When it works it lets the plant survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter of its health — but it triggers only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a coin-flip reprieve, not a guarantee. See Abilities.
Sumac holds the Toxin trait at the toxic tier: striking it Poisons the attacker, and that recoil fires in player-versus-player (PvP) too. Sulfur soil does not neutralize it, though a Cloche-warded attacker absorbs it. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. Defensive field gear — a Cloche, or a Ca/Mg amendment for a little extra DEF — plays to its punish-on-contact game.
At level 40 sumac reads 103 HP and ATK 25 (this is a native-only card, so there is no invasive stat line). DEF is 4, a step above the perennial-herb floor, giving it a little more armor than most soft herbs. Its tempo is a quick starter but a slower cruiser: turn 1 runs on its initiative (46), which leads the opening exchange, and every turn after on its SPD (21), where it is out-paced. Retreat costs 16 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, sumac climbs to 190 HP and 45 ATK, and its DEF reaches 8 — better than a floor herb but still modest, so it gains most of its bulk in health. Retreat rises to 33 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so its early-turn lead is gone and it acts last against almost anything young. What maturing buys it is durability to keep its contact poison in play longer.
As a perennial herb, sumac is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for ×1.5 and is hit for only ×0.667 by them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which strike it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play sumac as a native buffer that taxes attackers: the HP cushion and bench overshield keep a fragile hitter alive while its contact poison and early-turn lead do the punishing. It is a support piece, not a finisher. It is inedible, so feeding it any nutrient banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins. It fights as a quick-opening skirmisher until about level 23, after which its growing bulk takes over, so there is no reason to hold it back from leveling.
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.