Rhododendron ponticum
A toxic shrub that poisons attackers on contact, resists fire and heals when Burned, while its own attacks carry a 2-stack Poison.
Rhododendron is a shrub, and it plays as a Shrub card. It is native to Europe and invasive nowhere, so in the arena it only ever fights as a native buffer, never an attacker.
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 toxic plant it also carries a Poison rider: every damaging attack it lands Poisons the target (2 stacks). 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 the Toxin keyword. 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: HP 121, ATK 20, DEF 11, retreat 13 Sun. Its tempo splits the usual way — initiative 29 orders turn 1 and SPD 34 orders turn 2 onward — and it is slower off the mark but steadier afterward — it cruises faster than it opens.
Being native-only, it always fights as the buffer: the +15% HP cushion is baked into that HP, and while benched it projects a green HP overshield bar onto your active. It never takes the invasive attacker role, so it pays no Faustian self-damage and concedes no attacker prizes.
Maturity firms it into the shrub band — DEF reaches 21, well above any weed — while HP grows to 233. Retreat rises to 26 Sun and its tempo sinks to its floor; a sturdy mid-weight, not a glass cannon.
Rhododendron 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 toxic shrub that poisons attackers on contact, resists fire and heals when Burned, while its own attacks carry a 2-stack Poison. A firm, spiteful buffer. It is not edible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks x1.25 XP rather than coins. The Total power gallery below marks its crossover — where its rising bulk overtakes its falling speed — at level 16; it only grows stronger with level, so never 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.