Sunflora

Bellossom came from the same generation and the same stone, but it hides its origins much better. Sunflora makes no attempt to hide anything. It is a sunflower with short arms and legs, a green stem for a body and a round face surrounded by yellow petals, and it measures 80 centimetres for 8.5 kilos: considerably less weight than it seems to have when viewed from the front.

The Pokédex entries always repeat the same idea. It turns solar energy into nutrients, so during the day, when it is warm, it stays in constant motion and only stops when evening begins. The petals on its face gain colour as summer approaches. And one of the entries drops the technical term without dressing it up: heliotropism, the real name for the phenomenon that makes a sunflower turn its head towards the sun over the course of the day. Its official category, Sun Pokémon, leaves little room for interpretation either.

In its evolutionary line, it occupies the only position after Sunkern, which is a seed with eyes and little else. There is no third stage, regional form or variant: two steps and that's it. The jump between the two is one of the most abrupt between any two forms in the same family.

Of its 425 base points, the 105 Special Attack is the only thing that stands out. Underneath that are 75 HP, 55 Defense, 85 Special Defense, 75 Attack that it has no intention of using and 30 Speed, a figure that puts it behind almost anything that can move.

Chlorophyll doubles that Speed while the sun is up, and that is the entire plan. The alternative, Solar Power, raises Special Attack in sunlight at the cost of losing HP every turn, a trade that gets expensive very quickly with 55 Defense. Early Bird, its Hidden Ability, only serves to wake it up sooner.

The problem is not the Ability, but the type. Grass is one of the worst attacking types: Fire, Poison, Flying, Bug, Steel, Dragon and Grass itself take half damage from its attacks. Defensively, it adds five weaknesses—Fire, Ice, Poison, Flying and Bug—with a body that cannot take any of them.

Solar Beam, at level 31, fires without a charge turn under the sun. Leaf Storm, at 43, hits for 130 and lowers its Special Attack. Earth Power by TM is the mandatory coverage against Fire and Steel. That is not enough: it needs someone else to set up the sun, because Sunny Day does not appear until level 39 and costs a turn it does not have, and even with the sun up, any decent physical hit knocks it out.

In a normal playthrough, it is a different story. Against the Water-, Ground- and Rock-types you find halfway through the adventure, a Solar Beam backed by 105 Special Attack can clear entire battles with one button.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Grass, which lets it breed with a large part of the Pokédex's plant life and not much else. The gender split is clean, 50% female, so breeding a line does not depend on finding the rare gender or relying on Ditto.

The 20 incubation cycles work out at around 5355 steps, making it a slow egg. It is not especially worthwhile, because in Scarlet and Violet the species has no Egg Moves: what it knows is learned by level or TM, and there is nothing to inherit from a parent.

Evolution does not depend on level, friendship or time of day. Sunkern evolves when a Sun Stone is used on it, with no further conditions, which means it can be done as soon as the stone is obtained. It is worth waiting a little: it continues to learn moves by level after evolving, with Solar Beam at 31 and Leaf Storm at 43.

Its habitat is grassland, which fits a sunflower. Its catch rate, 120, leaves it in no-man's-land: neither the 45 of elusive species nor the 255 of things caught with the first Poké Ball, but a couple of attempts with a Great Ball. It grows at a medium-slow rate and gives 2 Special Attack EVs.