Zelkova serrata
An armored broadleaf tree that walls up on defense and hits hard as an invasive, buffing in East Asia and attacking across Europe and eastern North America.
Japanese zelkova is a broadleaf tree, so it carries a heavy armor wall and sits in the Competitor succession group. It is native to East Asia, where it takes the nativity buffer role, and invasive in Europe and eastern North America, where it becomes an attacker. Like most trees it is a slow, bulky card that trades tempo for staying power.
Its starter, Whomp, unlocks at Lv 1 for 2 Sun: The full weight of the tree, all at once. It deals 37 native / 38 invasive.
At Lv 25 it gains its free once-per-battle ability, Stand Replacement: A fire that takes the whole stand — the foe burns, and so do its neighbours. It is a burn-based control move that spreads to the enemy bench, dealing no direct damage itself.
Its advanced attack, Root Heave, unlocks at Lv 40 for 6 Sun: Heaves the ground up under the foe — trapped, and sapped. It hits for 20 native / 21 invasive and traps the foe. Neither attack carries the initiative rider. See moves.
This card keeps two always-on abilities, arriving far apart. At Lv 10 it gains Tannin Load — defensive leaf-and-wood chemistry, live at full strength from arrival. At Lv 68 it stacks on Mycorrhiza, a benched-ally heal that triggers only about 60% of the time it is eligible, so it is a helpful-but-unreliable sustain rather than a guarantee. Both feeding modes are late enough that for most of a player's collection this is a tannin-only card. See the abilities guide.
As a broadleaf tree it is a canopy species but carries no special trait keywords here, and it is not a climber, so it takes no Moss Pole. Its DEF is already high, so field gear is better spent on Sun economy (native buffer) or attack output (invasive attacker) than on more armor.
At Lv 40 every move is unlocked. Its DEF is 32 — a tree-tier wall, far above any herb or shrub, so incoming hits are heavily blunted (damage scales by ATK/(ATK+DEF), so a small attacker struggles to get through). As a native it reads 121 HP and 20 ATK with the +15% cushion, and projects an overshield bar while benched. As an invasive it reads 106 HP and a higher 24 ATK, pays escalating Faustian self-damage to its own bench per damaging attack, and concedes 2 prizes on knockout. On tempo it opens at initiative 32 but cruises at only SPD 13 — a fair starter that is then out-paced by anything quick, the classic slow-tree profile. See stats.
By Lv 100 it hardens into a full wall: DEF climbs to 74 on wood density, HP to 233 native / 203 invasive, and ATK to 36 / 46. Retreat rises to 41 Sun as it roots in, and its tempo has fallen to roughly its floor — a mature zelkova moves near-last but is extremely hard to remove. As a canopy tree it can also anchor a Sun overshield for allies that carry the Network trait.
As a broadleaf tree it is in the Competitor group: strong (x1.5) into Ruderal cards, weak (x0.667) into Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), even against other Competitors. Its main soft spot is poison, which ignores its armor entirely. See weaknesses & resistances.
This is a strong wall and a good single-player coin earner: it soaks damage, its burn ability pressures the whole enemy bench, and its advanced attack traps a foe in place. Play the native as a front-line tank and bench-buffer; play the invasive as a heavy hitter, watching the Faustian bench cost. Its low tempo means it wants to win by attrition, not by racing. It is not edible, so fertilizer banks x1.25 XP rather than coins. Because a tree's HP is already large early, it is power-favored from a very low level — it fights as a heavyweight for essentially its whole life, crossing over around Lv 7 native (Lv 9 invasive).
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.