Trifolium pratense
A low, self-healing legume that plays either arena role and gives a nitrogen head start when caught wild.
Red clover is a low, spreading Perennial herb that fights as a durable, self-mending staller: cheap attacks, moderate damage, and a knack for hanging on. It is native to Europe and invasive across eastern and western North America, so the arena can cast it either way, as a native buffer for your bench or as an invasive attacker. It is a solid, unspectacular card whose best trick is economic: a legume that pays its way while a stronger hitter does the finishing. See nativity for how the two roles are decided.
Its starter attack, Steady Growth, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 36 damage as a native and 40 as an invasive. The free once-per-battle ability, Stabilization, unlocks at level 25: Pins the ground down — the foe stalls, and can't break away. The advanced attack, Winterkill, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (28 native / 32 invasive) and is another straightforward strike. Most of your clovers sit well below level 40, where only the starter is available. None of its moves carry an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn; it wins by outlasting. See moves.
Red clover keeps a single always-on trait: Resprout. Because it draws only one eligible trait, Resprout arrives at half strength on the level 10 riser and matures on the level 68 one. When it works it lets the plant survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter health, but it triggers only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a coin-flip reprieve, not a guarantee. See abilities.
Red clover carries no special trait keywords, and it is non-toxic: nothing punishes an attacker for hitting it, and it lays no poison of its own. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, general defensive field gear such as a Cloche or a Ca/Mg amendment suits its stalling game; as an invasive, lean into offense to make its aggression count.
At level 40 red clover reads 84 HP as a native and 73 as an invasive, with ATK of 28 native versus 40 invasive, a real but modest invasive edge. DEF is just 1, at the soft floor of the perennial-herb band, so it takes hits with almost no armor. Its tempo is even: turn 1 runs on its initiative (53) and every turn after on its SPD (53), which sit at the same value, so it is neither a fast opener nor a fast cruiser. Retreat costs 11 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield bar onto your active; as an invasive it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on each damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, red clover swells to 147 HP native / 128 invasive and 50 / 82 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 1: as a soft herb it gains bulk in health, never armor, so it stays vulnerable to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 21 Sun as it becomes more rooted, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature clover acts last against almost anything young.
As a perennial herb, red clover is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for x1.5 and is hit for only x0.667 by them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which strike it for x1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play red clover as a cheap, self-healing filler that trades evenly and buys time. As a native it is a decent buffer, the HP cushion and bench overshield keeping a fragile hitter alive; as an invasive its aggression is only middling, so it works better as support than as a finisher. Its real value is economic: it is an edible leaf plant, so feeding it Nitrogen pays x1.25 coins (any other nutrient banks x1.25 XP instead). On top of that it is a legume, so roughly one in four caught wild arrive already carrying a free Nitrogen amendment, a small economy head start that decomposes after about a month. It fights as an even-tempo skirmisher early and leans harder on its bulk as it levels, crossing over around level 42, but it is always stronger at higher levels in raw stats, so there is no reason to hold it back.
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.